The Disney Channel

It's been over a week into the easter holidays now, and although I've been doing plenty of revision (honestly!), I've also been fairly susceptible to what I call 'holiday boredom'. This has meant succumbing to the evils of the Disney Channel, a habit i've been trying to kick for the past few years, to no avail. I don't know what it is that makes it so addictive, but for some reason i'll happily sit there and watch an episode of something that i've seen at least five times, when I couldn't bear to watch an episode of any of my favourite 'proper' programs for any more than three times.

Anyway, while watching an episode of Wizards of Waverley Place the other day, something occurred to me. In this episode there was a character in a wheelchair, a topic that in any British drama would have used as most of the storyline for the episode. However, in this instance the fact that the character was in a wheelchair was completely inconsequential to the storyline. In fact, it wasn't even mentioned. This man was treated as a normal person, and even managed to help the protagonists escape a 'dangerous fate'. I've looked up the actor playing the character, Daryl Mitchell, and he is actually a wheelchair user, and not just stuck in one to make the cast seem more diverse.

This made me think of more ways in which programs on the Disney Channel actually shows real life better than British dramas, for example the casts in most of the shows are usually ethnically diverse, including Caucasian, Black and Asian actors. The casts are often also mixed in gender, for example there are many shows with male (The Suite Life of Zach and Cody, Zeke and Luther, Pair of Kings) and female (Hannah Montana, Sonny With a Chance, Shake It Up) protagonists. The portrayal of older characters is sometimes mocking, but there was an entire storyline in an episode of Sonny With A Chance in which the main characters are shown by an older character that they are just as capable as them, and should not be discriminated against because of their age.

However, the channel isn't completely diverse. For example, all the characters are shown to be heterosexual, and while there is the occasional 'effeminate' character, the audience will never be shown that they are anything other than straight. As the channel is shown in America, this is hardly surprising, as in many states it is usually a taboo subject, and people are often discriminated against because of their sexuality, and if the channel decided to introduce any story lines on the subject they would probably lose a good 30% of their audience due to parents of the children watching the channel. As for regional identity, there is a good deal of stereotyping, mostly to do with British people. The character Mason in Wizards of Waverley Place is one of the few Brits in any of the programs, and is heavily stereotyped as tea loving and eccentric, and used words like 'jiffy' in normal conversation and has a very posh accent. There was also a Scottish character in a Canadian show, 'Overruled' on the channel called Rusty, who was also stereotyped, wearing kilts and playing bagpipes at least one an episode, with a fairly light, understandable accent for the Americans.

In conclusion, although the Disney Channel still has a long way to go before it reflects reality in a non stereotypical way, it is better than many British dramas, as it is better at being racially diverse and showing disabled people to be normal. So there's my attempt at justifying a colossal amount of time wasting.