5. The Jungle Book

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_v2exWrsGOc&w=584&h=390]

Another great one from the Disney volumes of race is The Jungle Book, based on the novel by noted Orientalist Rudyard Kipling. Instead of portraying them as crows or watermelon-eating babies, Disney instead decides to change their race stripes and make them monkeys. Although the boy speaks with a proper British inflection, Louie talks with a wild jive, clearly meant to be Satchmo. In song, he tells the boy: “I want to be like you,” or rather, “I want to be more white.” Louie wants to be a man, and the way to do that is to walk like him and talk like him.

Takeaway: Never adapt the book of someone who earnestly advocates for the “White Man’s Burden” being a thing.