A 2012 study on how representation on television impacted children’s self-esteem found that minorities tended to experience lower self-esteem than non-minorities, pointing to negative racial stereotypes onscreen as an explanation. It’s crucial for children to see characters who look like them and their families in TV and film and that there’s a noticeable relationship between low self-esteem among minority groups and negative media portrayals of said groups.
“When the only portrayals audiences see of minority characters are negative, those portrayals transcend to public image.”
– Carlos Corts, A Long Way to Go: Minorities and the Media
We have known about this for years, yet only within the last decade or so has representation in children’s media become a priority for major networks.
Misrepresentation of ethnic groups in media can cause confusion and self-doubt among children of these groups, hence the importance of positive portrayals of all groups in animation. As Laura Scott stated in her article The Importance of Representation in Kids’ Cartoons, “cartoons can be an extremely influential and important form of media if handled correctly.”
For Millennials and Gen Zers, one of their earliest proper exposures to a non-white main character in an animated program was through Nickelodeon’s Dora the Explorer (2000 – 2015) which depicted a 7-year-old child of Hispanic heritage in the lead role who speaks to the preschool-aged viewers in both English and Spanish. The show won a Peabody Award in part due to it’s series mission which has Dora teaching Spanish words and phrases to the young audience, making it one of the few children’s television programs to introduce language skills and multi-lingual education at such an early developmental stage.
Thankfully, proper representation in animation is rapidly increasingly for the emerging generation as well: Generation Alpha (children born between 2010 and 2025). Alphas are the most ethnically diverse generation to date with the U.S. Census Bureau stating that over 50% of Alphas born in 2011 (the second year of the generation) were from minority families, and this is predicted to increase in the future, hence the need for proper representation in children’s media. Perhaps the most recent example of a major film handling representation properly is Disney’s 2017 megahit Coco.
The film takes place in Mexico and features dark-skinned individuals, but it never makes it about the race of the characters – the film always makes it about the characters as they are and that’s it. The film never explicitly states that it’s a Mexican-oriented film – Mexico is simply the setting. It never tells the viewers that its characters are Hispanic – they simply are. If you turn all the characters into talking animals and have the initial setting take place on Mars, the story stays the same. However, because it does take place in Mexico and features an all Latino cast – it’s subtly stating that it doesn’t matter what your skin color is, you can still relate to the story, with Hispanic cultures able to relate to it even more so because it features Hispanic folklore and culture.
The extensive lengths the film makers went through to depict an authentic representation of Mexican culture clearly worked for Disney and Pixar as Coco grossed over $800 million worldwide on a budget of $175 million and becoming the highest grossing animated film in Mexico’s history. The massive U.S. gross of $209 million could be due in part of the rising Hispanic population especially since, according to the Pew Research Center, Latino-Americans are one of the fastest growing ethnic groups in the U.S., with the Hispanic share of the nation’s population expecting to reach nearly 25% by 2065. However, it’s generally believed that the film’s success was due primarily to the story and the inclusivity and representation it featured.
This enchanting film gives millions of children of Mexican descent the opportunity to see their stories, their culture, and ultimately themselves on the silver screen.
– Mirel Herrera, Representation Matters: How the Movie Coco Celebrates Mexican Culture
From Dora the Explorer to Coco and beyond, the creators, producers and other behind-the-scenes executives at major animation studios are finally beginning to become aware of the societal shift towards representation and inclusivity this emerging generation is craving, and it’s all for the better.
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