"Si" and "Am" wreaking havoc

The following was written by Nell Fleming - Racial Justice Coordinator at the YWCA of Charleston.

As Racial Justice Coordinator at the YWCA of Charleston, people increasingly come to me with questions about what is or isn’t considered racist. I was recently asked the following question:

“I was [viewing the scene from Lady and the Tramp with the havoc-wreaking Siamese cats] on YouTube and saw in the comments that some people think this is racist. Having had Siamese cats all my life, I see it as more of a depiction of a typical Siamese personality. Does it strike you as negative towards Asians?”

I admit the question surprised me because the person asking it is someone whom I usually go to for advice. The piece seems so obviously negative to me that it gave me pause. I wondered, if a trusted friend did not recognize the racist elements of the scene, where do we stand as a society in our education about what is racist, especially outside of our binary paradigm of black and white?

I knew why it felt racist to me, but in order to analyze the piece fully, I took a look at the opposing comments referred to in conjunction with the song clip the YouTube video. The comments had very little substance, but made general claims that the piece was racist or the piece was not racist. The main claim to prove the piece was not racist was that Siamese cats “really do act like that.” And so I watched the clip again to see what exactly Siamese cats do and don’t do in real life as opposed to cartoon life.

Here is what I found. If you watch the video without the sound, indeed you see two Siamese cats ("Si" and "Am") wreaking havoc in a house, though to the extreme and in slap-stick fashion – much like two cats might do given enough time and opportunity. As a cat lover, I remember not so fondly being afraid of a friend’s Siamese Cat, who used to sneak up on me when I arrived, and grab my arm when I would walk by. I have no trouble suspending disbelief that Siamese cats would have ulterior motives when it comes to humans or dogs.

However, the two things that you can “see” that are not realistic to Siamese cats are the eye shape and the tooth shape. The exaggerated slanted eyes and the buck teeth are not drawn on the cats as a cat caricature, but as a personification of Asian persons – in this case, Siamese (Thai). It is a stereotypical representation that is extremely negative in origin. This shouldn’t surprise anyone who knows the history of Disney and racist content, which has improved moderately over the years, but in small degrees at a time. (Aladdin came under fire for the depiction of Jasmine and Aladdin as “white middle class persons” whereas the villains and the commoners otherwise were very ethnically Middle Eastern in their appearance and talked with significant Arabic accents, among other things.)

When you listen to the song without watching the clip, however, this is what you hear: Siamese cats talking not like the Lady and the Tramp are talking in white middle- or lower-class English, but with accents of Asians speaking broken English that is obviously their second language. The fact that these cats are considered the “evil element” in the story makes it clear that being foreign, or Asian, or an immigrant is being compared with the characteristics of being dishonest, conniving and most definitely not trustworthy. When you put the images and the song lyrics together with the animation, you get two things: 1) A clever, fun, rhyming song that is fun to sing (for some) with two entertaining characters who resemble the cats we love to love or love to hate, and, 2) One of the most horrible representations of racism in children’s entertainment in the twentieth century.

For further analysis of Disney and racism, visit:

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/1329215/disneys_most_racist_films_and_characters.html

http://www.cracked.com/article_15677_9-most-racist-disney-characters.html

http://www.nhaeyc.org/newsletters/articles/Racism_in_Childrens_Movies.pdf

Some definitions of racism:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&rlz=1C1RNNN_enUS362&defl=en&q=define:racism&sa=X&ei=xuooTIK-GMH98AaS-dCaDg&ved=0CBUQkAE&cts=1277749802556