Keaton Hughes

Date of Award

2018

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelors

Department

Social Sciences

First Advisor

Zabriskie, Queen

Area of Concentration

Sociology

Abstract

The Disney Corporation has long been a major player in US, and in many cases global, cultural narratives. This thesis examines episodes of four Disney Channel original series from the early 2000s. Two, Even Stevens and Lizzie McGuire, center on white families, while the other two, The Proud Family and That’s So Raven, center on black families. At the dawn of the new millennium, many Americans imagined racism as a thoroughly 20th century phenomenon. Nevertheless, academic and residential spaces, like those portrayed on the Disney Channel, have historically been shaped by and continue to perpetuate systemic racism in the United States. In this thesis, I conduct a qualitative content analysis of episode plots to determine how each show depicts its respective family. My findings fall into three categories: Race, Youth Lifestyle, and Family Organization. I find that the four fictional families in my sample are depicted as alike in many ways. However, I also observe racialized cultural markers in The Proud Family and That’s So Raven. Ultimately, I argue that these markers reinforce individualist conceptions of race, and thereby obscure the effects of social structures on individuals.

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