Is Disney's "outdated cultural depictions" warning the right move?

What’s happening

Disney launched its steaming service Disney+ in mid-November—complete with classics like The Little Mermaid, remakes like Lady and the Tramp and original series like The Mandalorian, for all the Star Wars fans. Users had to deal with some technical glitches at first, with millions reportedly trying to access the website at the same time. But once the issue subsided, the company faced backlash on social media before viewers hit play.

Why there’s debate

Disney decided to include warnings about “outdated cultural depictions” and tobacco use in the detail section for certain films. “This program is presented as originally created,” part of the warning reads. Some of their productions—like Dumbo, Peter Pan and The Aristocats—were created decades ago, which has become problematic in the age of cancel culture and “woke” millennials. (The latter isn’t the past tense of the verb to wake, but rather used to describe an alertness to injustices within society.)

While some were thrilled to rewatch the classics as they were, calling this generation too “fragile,” others were disappointed. The dichotomy sparked discussions online about how the company dealt with so-called offensive content and whether they should make further adjustments.

What’s next

Despite being called out on social media, Disney+ has not made any changes to its current warnings. They have not addressed the issue publicly.

Perspectives

Pros:

Unaltered films can be teaching tools.

“They’re leaving them as cultural touchstones. Explain to kids why this is out of favor [sic] or why we don’t talk that way anymore or this is disrespectful to a certain race or a group of people—they can do that. But don’t mangle or cut the work. Let people see it as it was originally envisioned.” — Host Raymond Arroyo, Newsweek

The warning is a start.

“A simple content note that allows another opportunity to learn and grow? It’s hard to see how that ruins anything.” — Columnist Jen Zoratti, Winnipeg Free Press

The cartoons are still valuable.

“It’s also certainly true that outside of the contentious areas, there is a lot of other value in some of these classic animated features and cartoons. These are artifacts of animation history which should be preserved if only for that reason.” — Writer Dirk Libbey, Business Insider

Cons:

The warning isn’t accurate.

“The problem is that the categorization ‘outdated’ implies that at a certain point in time these things were okay. But they weren’t. While they might have been widely accepted, they weren’t okay. They were racist then and they are racist now.” — Editor Gabriella Geisinger, Digital Spy

Disney can do better.

“Having a disclaimer is better than the alternative, but other studios have handled similar situations better.” — Reporter Julia Alexander, The Verge

The warnings are inconsistent.