I just saw How to Train Your Dragon 2 with my four-year-old. He was riveted. The story of familial love and friendship with an overarching pro-peace theme replete with flying colorful dragons was appealing, I admit. But as soon as the bad guy was introduced, I was pretty much furious for the remainder of the movie. He giggled and cheered and clapped. I fumed. I considered stalking to the front desk and asking for my money back.
Why, you ask? Because the bad guy is very clearly an Arab person. Everyone else in the movie as far as I could tell is white. The mean, war-loving, maniacal villain is the only person of color in the movie and he’s clearly Arab. This movie is playing in the theaters at the very same time that a massacre of over 1,000 Palestinians is taking place and the corporate media has done every thing it can to rationalize the wanton taking of Arab lives.
I feel tricked. My son told me just before the film that he thinks Gaza should be free and Palestine should be free. We weren’t even talking about it at that moment. He raised the idea. And then he sat totally enthralled by a movie depicting heroic white people saving the human and dragon masses from a scary, warmongering Arab person who had forcefully gained control of the fiercest of dragons.
Dreamworks Animation: I want my money back! But what I’d really like more than anything is to be able to take my son to a movie that doesn’t demonize people of color while making grand statements about peace and family. Any true struggle for social peace must also be anti-racist.
