Are old villains creating bad vibes?
BYU study says Disney may reinforce biases
Cruella De Vil.
If she doesn't scare you,
No evil thing will.
What's scarier than a mean old lady trying to skin Dalmatian puppies for profit?
And what's nastier than an old stepmother locking a sweet girl in her room to keep her from the prince who would make her a princess?
A rotten villain is a great part of many beloved stories, but researchers at Brigham Young University want to know why so many cartoon villains are old people and why so many older cartoon characters are depicted negatively.
Dozens of older Disney animated characters may have helped form or reinforce the negative impressions young children have of older people, according to a new BYU study published by the Journal of Ageing Studies.
Nearly half of all older characters in 34 Disney animated movies are represented negatively, BYU communications professor Tom Robinson said.
"The thing that astounds me the most is that if females or a minority group were portrayed this negatively, we'd be aghast," Robinson said. "There would be riots, boycotts. But 42 percent of older characters are portrayed negatively, and I'm not sure people are shocked or even upset by it, which I think is kind of sad."
Robinson did not condemn Disney, pointing out that most older Disney characters — 58 percent — were presented positively.
The observational study, he said, confirmed conclusions in a study he published last year that showed 62 percent of older characters in TV cartoons are portrayed positively.
But he remained worried about the high negatives in both studies. In contract, another study he did found older characters portrayed positively 97.5 percent of the time in national magazines targeting seniors.
Why a media company would portray older people positively to older consumers is obvious, Robinson said. What isn't obvious to him is why portrayals of older people are more negative when children are the consumers.
Robinson has made a career out of studying representations of older people in the media. He was particularly disturbed by a 1986 academic study that showed that by the time children arrive in kindergarten, they already have developed negative stereotypes of older people.
"I couldn't understand how that was possible," he said. "I was shocked by that, and I've looked to see why it is."
He began studying portrayals of older people in TV and magazine advertising and TV sitcoms and dramas. When he read another study that showed ageism exists in a lot of classic literature, Robinson decided to look at cartoons because of their socializing function.
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