White royalty  : whitewashing from Prince of Persia to Sofia the First

Wright, Lindsay Paige

Publication

White royalty : whitewashing from Prince of Persia to Sofia the First

Wright, Lindsay Paige

Publisher

[Fort Worth, Tex.] : Texas Christian University,

Date

2013

Abstract

Walt Disney's Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (released May 28, 2010) and Sophia The First: Once Upon a Princess (released November 18, 2012) are two entertainment pieces marketed as fantasies for mass audience consumption that use White actors/representations to tell the story of a non-White character. After historically placing race in film, defining whitewashing and its relation to Eurocentrism, and revealing the scarcity of leading roles for minorities, analysis of both The Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time and Sofia the First: Once Upon a Princess utilizes John Fiske's Three Levels of Coding with insight through Stuart Hall's interpretation of Antonio Gramsci's hegemony. Eurocentrism is therefore identified within whitewashing and revealed as a continuation of White favortism in modern entertainment media.