Schwartz Reading Response: "Dopey's Legacy: Stereotypical Portrayals of Intellectual Disability in the Classic Animated Films"

As an optimist, I usually like to give Disney the benefit of the doubt when the company is accused of promoting negative messages of spreading the wrong ideals in the films. Although I would like to believe that Disney did not purposely set out to express contempt towards individuals with intellectual disabilities in its movies, the arguments presented by Schwartz are truly compelling in her article “Dopey’s Legacy”. By structuring her argument effectively by utilizing a clear and concise thesis statement, well-reasoned and logical points and most importantly, Schwartz provided ample evidence to validate her controversial claims. I really enjoyed this piece because of the thought-provoking manner in which it discusses the topic of mental or physical disability in the context of Disney, something that I had never even though to consider before.

With mental/physical disabilities still being major issues in society today, I'm surprised that so few people write about the topic as it relates to film and television. In this piece, Schwartz not only presents one example of Disney’s stereotypical portrayal of individuals with intellectual disabilities, but three, with each example displaying shocking evidence. Schwartz chose to deal with the highly entertaining and comical characters of Dopey from Snow White, Gus from Cinderella and Le Fou from Beauty and the Beast. While these characters are from very different films, from different time periods they are all connected by the fact that they all share three common characteristics of being 'childlike, non-human and fools/’The village idiot’. After reading the piece, however, I noticed that the points made about Dopey are much stronger the the arguments for Gus and Le Fou. It is clear that Schwartz is trying to use multiple examples of different characters showing physical or mental disability over different time periods in Disney's History, but Schwartz stumbles somewhat with the execution. In particular, I disliked his examples of Le Fou in that it is fairly clear that he struggles to make as strong of an example as he makes for Dopey.

I also really enjoyed this piece for the personal reason that it was particularly pertinent to my topic for our class' first essay for defending/refuting a Disney film. Choosing to write about the role of education in Tarzan as an empowering and humanizing tool. While reading Schwartz' piece I couldn't help but notice the parallels between Tarzan/gorillas and Dopey/Gus/Le Fou as being depicted as sub-human due to disabilities of some sort. Looking at this topic through the perspective of my paper, I was able to notice the truly appalling examples of disability in Disney films that exclude those with disability as the "other". Moreover, while "Dopey's Legacy" has a few weak points, I truly enjoyed the piece for the way in which it made me think about disability in our society and how it is portrayed in media. And the piece helped me get a quote for my paper which never hurts.