Disney+ Subscribers Slam The Streaming Service's 'Outdated Cultural Depictions' Warning
The highly anticipated streaming service Disney+ launched on Tuesday (November 12) and has boasted more than 10 million sign-ups in just over 24 hours.
While the platform is being praised for its wide range of nostalgic content and new programming, the reviews aren't all positive for the budding streaming giant. Users have begun noticing a disclaimer that appears in the descriptions for some of the company's oldest and most iconic programs. In an attempt to proactively "address" some of the racist depictions shown in some of them, the warning, "It may contain outdated cultural depictions," closes out the brief synopsis for some pieces of content, and this is bothering fans for a few reasons.
One user started by pointing out that this blanket disclaimer has only been applied to some films and series, and not others, lending to a noticeable inconsistency in its labeling of what is considered an "outdated cultural depiction."
"Feel like it's worth mentioning that this copy isn't used uniformly," one Twitter user wrote. "The 1992 Aladdin, which has lots of racist/Orientalist tropes, doesn't get a warning. Fantasia's 'Sunflower' character remains edited out, but the Zebra centaurs are still in, with the note. Etc, I imagine."
Others are criticizing the warning for not accepting enough of the blame and serving as a diluted form of damage control.
Users even compared Disney's one-liner to Warner Bros.' fuller statement, with many claiming that the former paled in comparison with accepting responsibility for its offensive material.
"The cartoons you are about to see are products of their time. They may depict some of the ethic and racial prejudices that were commonplace in American society," Warner Bros. wrote. "These depictions were wrong then and they are wrong today. These cartoons are being presented as they were originally created, because to do otherwise would be the same as claiming these prejudices never existed."
It's not all negative feedback for Disney+, however. Some subscribers are giving the service props for even acknowledging that their older content was culturally insensitive and applaud them for taking accountability.
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