Blog 2 (sorrynotsorry I made this whole post about Disney)

For my second blog entry, I was inspired by a fellow classmate, who suggested that the song "I Wanna Be Like You" from the Disney movie The Jungle Book is similar to the situation in Latin American countries in the 1800s, shortly after they won their independence from Spain. In the song, the king orangutan is analogous to these newly independent Latin American countries. Like Latin American countries wanted to be like European countries and the United States, the king orangutan wanted to be like humans, and so he sought Mowgli for help, because he believed Mowgli could teach him how to make fire. Latin American countries wanted to copy the industrialization, urbanization, infrastructures, liberal ideology, and overall "progress" of European countries and the United States, hence: “I wanna be like you!”

For this blog entry, I was inspired to find other Disney songs that are (partly) analogous to the era of Europeanization and nation-building in Latin America. I found four:

1.      The first song I came up with is “Part of Your World,” sung by Ariel in The Little Mermaid.  In it, Ariel expresses her desire to become a human, and leave her life as a mermaid behind. She thinks that life will be better “up where they stay all day in the sun.” Sebastian, her crab guardian/mentor, however, is disdainful of humans, which he sings about in his song “Under the Sea." Thus, in this situation, Ariel is the white, intellectual elite of the Latin American countries who wanted Europeanization, and wanted to be part of that European/United States world; Sebastian, on the other hand, would be the majority of the citizens of the Latin American countries who were apprehensive about modernization, and wanted to stick to traditional ways of life.

 

 

2.      The second song I thought of is “Gaston,” from Beauty and the Beast. After Gaston proposes to Belle and she turns him down, Gaston is “down in the dumps,” and his friend, Lefou, tries to cheer him up by listing all the things Gaston is best at. After the song, Gaston concludes that he is the best person for Belle, and that he will do anything to get her to marry him. In this situation, Gaston is the European ideologies forced by elites onto newly independent Latin American nations. Even though it would have been more effective to “adapt” these new ideologies rather than “adopt” them, the countries tried to copy them exactly. The elite were convinced that these were the best strategies for the new nations, when actually they had some negative consequences (discussed later); Gaston was convinced he was the best for Belle, when really he was a jerk.

 

3.      In the next song I found, I just focused on one quote, and my analogy is kind of obvious: “You think I’m an ignorant savage/And you’ve been so many places, I guess it must be so.” This song is “Colors of the Wind”, sung in Pocahontas, in which Pocahontas is singing to John Smith. The intellectual elite of Latin American countries considered the people of the countryside to be barbarians, while the people of cities were modern, "civilized," cultured, and knew better; Domingo Sarmiento wrote in his Facundo: Civilization and Barbarism that the Native Americans of Argentina were savages, and should be destroyed.

 

 

4.      The final song I came up with was “Following the Leader," from Peter Pan. It is sung by Michael and the Lost Boys as they play “follow the leader,” with John as their leader. They sing: “We’re following the leader, the leader, the leader/We’re following the leader, wherever he may go.” In this case, “the leader” is European countries/the United States, and the Lost Boys are Latin American countries. The Latin American countries (the ruling elite, at least) were so eager to follow the lead of their European models that they did so almost blindly, and before they knew it, they had created economic dependency on the European market, the majority of the population was impoverished, and there was a cultural clash between those who wanted “progress,” and those who didn’t.