Introduction

Thank you very much for the space. I would like to start with a very simple question: is
there anybody in the room that is not familiar with the characteristics of Donald Trump´s
speech towards immigrants/foreigners, specifically the Latin-Americans and the Muslim
population? I wanted to show you some of his most popular declarations, and I would like
you to focus not only in what he is saying, but in the audience´s reaction.

(Video of clips )

I think the first clip is quite self-explanatory: “Donald J. Trump is calling for a total
and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country´s
representatives can figure out what the h*** is going on… [Crowd cheering] We have no
choice… (dramatic pause) . . . We have no choice” (Trump 2015, 0’49-1’0’’) so, his
rhetoric, as we have seen, has some distinctive characteristics. Most of them can be
described in not very positive terms, especially when he addressing the subject of
immigration, ethnicity, gender, class, basically, when he is not talking about the canonical
masculinity, whiteness, religion, sexual preference, and a long etcetera.

Also, I want to recall some of the events during his presidency that could to some
extent support the belief that most of his popularity is based on the emotions that he
expresses, “quality” that is recognized by his followers as “honesty”. We can bring up his
declarations about the Charlottesville's "Unite the Right" Rally, that he supported by saying
that some of the participants were “very fine people”, including the domestic terrorist that
rolled over some of the protestors against it, or the time he mocked a disabled journalist, or
the press conference in which he refused to answer to the questions of the journalist Jorge
Ramos, moreover, where he totally ignored him, for finally asking his security team to
expel him from the room.

What worries me is that any measure taken by this man is supported most of the
time by the feelings he displays, and that he “triggers” in the ones listening to him. Most of
the time, when he makes this “strong” declarations, people stand by him

not because of his [. . .] achievements, but because of what they think he stands for. For the
first time since the rise of fascism, culture matters more than prosperity to a great many
 people. This president has nurtured a version of identity in which you are not what you do,
or even what you earn and own, but what you feel (D´Ancona 2018)

But that is happening with the pro-trump America. What is happening to the counter
discourse? Is there any? And, how it is operating? I would happily say that there is a
considerable amount of citizens in the USA that are against his ideas, and that they are
actually doing something about it, both socially and politically. And the mass media, with
all the power that the contemporary world has conferred them, are included in it. In the
recent years, there has been an outbreak of movies, series, propaganda, comedy programs
that are trying to balance the situation.

And a particular case is the one aimed for young audiences, to kids and teenagers between
the 5 and the 16/17 years old. Movies such as Black Panther, Zootopia, Coco, or the TV
shows Stuck in the middle, and Elena of Avalor, for mentioning some of them. These
products are the ones that I am trying to analyze, by wondering, as the title states whether if
Disney´s magic or Marvel´s technology could save us from Donald Trump?

The immediate answer is that this is a very naïve question. Of course not. But, if we make a
close up to the rhetoric figures and the use of emotions that define Trump´s speech, we will
see that these products have some particularities that could help to some extent. So, my
hypothesis is that the appearance of films and television series focused on children that
address the issue of minorities and diversity in the United States is an attempt to condense
in the same cultural product a counter-discourse of respect, tolerance and acceptance that
works with the same discursive tools that the president uses: emotions as a pedagogical
tools and metaphors as creators of reality references.

For our purposes we will use the following theoretical framework: The concepts of
Symbolic Modeling and Vicarious capability as stated in the Social Learning Theory
(Bandura, 1977), to determine the social effects of both Trump´s, and these movies and
cartoons depiction of minorities in the USA. Also, we will appeal to the concept of
Metaphor and cultural coherence, proposed by (Johsen and Lakoff 2003) to analyze the
dynamics of power involved in their respective representations of communities such as the
African Americans, the Latin-Americans (specifically the Mexicans), and the LGTBQI
collectives. Finally, we will also retake the proposals from Sarah Ahmed in her book
Cultural politics of emotions (2013) about the use of fear, shame, and love for (des)
integrating a society.

Firstly, the approximation through the Social learning theory will help us bonding both the
use of metaphors and the concepts of vicarious learning and modeling, as the aim of these
theory is to explain how different images given by culture, in help to create our perception
of reality and the way in which we react to it. Bandura´s theorization incorporates spaces
that were not considered as “educational”, including the popular culture, and the media.
The last ones, he stated, are highly responsible of the formation of the children as they
transmit most of the models that are taken into consideration during observational learning,
in very brief amounts of time and with a broader reach that the ones that are given in the
school. Currently, the mass media are platforms where “a single model can transmit new
ways of thinking and behaving simultaneously to countless people in widely dispersed
localities” (Bandura 2001, 271)

Nowadays, he continues, it is impossible to talk of media without referring to electronic

devices, or to their educational implications, better known as “electronic acculturation”. As
its antecessors, the newspapers, the radio and even the oral tradition, the education provided
by these means surpasses the one gained through reading or at school as “the symbolic
environment occupies a major part of people’s everyday lives” therefore “much of the
social construction of reality and shaping of public consciousness occurs through electronic
acculturation. At the societal level, the electronic modes of influence are transforming how
social systems operate and serving as a major vehicle for sociopolitical change” (Bandura
2001, 271)

The cognitive process that allows the electronic acculturation, as well as other forms or
learning through images and the experience of others, is known as “Observational
learning”. This way of learning requires two conditions: Vicarious capability and Symbolic
modeling. The first one refers to the learning process that takes places without experiencing
the event or situation in the self, but through others or by references. Narratives of many
types, including the movies, and the series, collaborate in this, normally to transmit “a vast
amount of information about human values, styles of thinking, and behavior patterns”
(Bandura 2001, 271)
On the other hand, Symbolic modeling happens after the Vicarious learning, and helps to
fixate this experience in terms of “right” or “wrong”, as well as to construct the world that
allows to establish this criteria. This works by expanding “the range of verification
experiences that cannot otherwise be attained by personal action” and establishing the
coherence of every new learning compared to previous fixated information “by comparing
how well thoughts match some indicant of reality” (Bandura 2001, 269) Therefore,
Symbolic modeling is the concept that will help us to integrate our following element, the
metaphors.

Metaphors can be understood as the result of the symbolic modeling over the time, when
related to a specific association of ideas. Theorization around them is complicated, as it has
to consider the different levels of language, and as it depends of the focus given to their
origin, use, and effects. In this case, we will retake two definitions provided by Jonathan
Charteris-Black, based on both pragmatic and cognitive criteria. The first one considers
them as “an incongruous linguistic representation that has the underlying propose of
influencing opinions and perceptions by persuasion” (2004, 21), while the cognitive
definition explains them in terms of being “a shift in the conceptual system” (2004, 21),
based on the attributes that are taken from the original reference to the novel target context.
Additionally, metaphors are based in previously unperceived similarities in the two
referents.

As we can see, the first definition relates metaphor to the power implicated in language.
The images that are created to associate one concept with another are determined to a large
extent to a specific intentionality. The power of metaphor has been exploited by the
dominant groups since their very first use, described in classical texts, such as the
Aristotelian corpus, to explain how “metaphorical speech has been at the center of
rhetorical training and was regarded as a socially powerful but also dangerous ‘trope’ or
figure of speech” (Mussolf 2011, 302)

Nowadays, it is hard to conceive our use of language or our construction of reality without
using metaphors. Also, politicians serve from them both in almost every aspect of their
public endeavors, like the war-like language most of them use in campaign, that has being
assimilated as the essence of argumentation or political confrontation “Though there is no
physical battle, there is a verbal battle, and the structure of an argument—attack, defense,
counterattack, etc.—reflects this. It is in this sense that the ARGUMENT IS WAR
metaphor is one that we live by in this culture; it structures the actions we perform in
arguing” (Lakoff and Johnson 1980, 5)” or the use given by the alt right groups when
speaking about immigration as the source of the troubles of a nation.

The metaphor most commonly used for this last case is the association of immigrants with
vermits, pests and infectious agents. All this comparisons are made to dehumanize their
victims both verbally and practically, so that it “allows racists to denigrate their respective
targets by ‘demoting’ them from humankind’s central position in the Chain down to the
‘lower’ ranks of animals, plants, disease-engendering organisms or inorganic material
(Bosmajian, 1983; Chilton, 2005; Hawkins, 2001; Musolff, 2010; Rash, 2006; Richardson
& Wodak, 2009; Sontag, 1978)” (Mussolf 2011, 302)

A secondary effect of this metaphor that links immigrants (or any other minority) with
dangerous organisms is that it bonds the idea of this collectivity with the feelings caused or
glued (in Ahmed´s words) to the same animals, fungus, viruses or plants. Whereas
converting the tutsis in cockroaches (in the Ugandan genocide), the Jews in rats, or the
Latin immigrants in the frontier as “savage animals” that need to be kept away by a fence,
like the eldest son of Donald Trump declared once, the psychological effect of this
association is that whenever the word immigrant (of African American, Mexican, gay,
Muslim, women, etc…) is mentioned, it will automatically trigger a sense of “disaffection
and pessimism: fear of losing one’s job; (. . .) fear of losing national autonomy; fear of
losing old traditions and values (. . .) disappointment and even disgust with mainstream
politics and corruption; anger about the growing gap between rich and poor” (Rydgren
2007)” (Wodak 2015, 4)

So, on the long run, the use of metaphors is strongly related to the feelings that a particular
group needs or wants another one to experience, in order to be “treated as organizational
commodities” (Putman and Mumby 1992, 472) that will eventually help to “control both
the expression of and the interpretation of members' feeling” (Putman y Mumby 1992, 473)
that will also enhance the “loyalty, identification, and solidarity that bind a collectivity in a
particular way” (Putman y Mumby 1992, 473) Basically, by controlling the feelings of a
collectivity, and polarizing them, the group that orchestrates all of this is able to stay in the
power, sustained by this “emotional” capital that will resist any objetctive or rational
questioning.

Up to this point it has been explained a process that starts with vicarious learning through
media and political language, both based on the use of metaphors as symbolic modeling of
reality and backed up by emotions. Once the audience has been constantly exposed to the
same idea, it will be fixated as the actual situation and, moreover, they will experience
determined emotions whenever the original concept is brought up. If the metaphor and the
feeling associated to it is positive, the result will be that both the group and the society will
have “higher their collective aspirations (. . .) stronger staying power in the face of
impediments, [a] more robust (. . .) resilience to adversity, and [a] higher performance
accomplishments” (Bandura 2001, 270). On the contrary, when the metaphor and the
feelings have a negative focus, the outcome will be that it will “the group is encapsulated
from outside social ties and influences” (Bandura, 1982; Hall, 1987), which means that the
target group will eventually face many types of social isolation.

As I have previously mentioned, whenever Trump speaks about immigration or any other
minorities, his statements tend to link this groups to concepts such as rapist, drug dealers,
terrorist, and undesirable elements that should not be allowed inside HIS (I want to be
emphatically about the possessive) country. As a consequence, this words and the people
that embody them, are seen as objects of fear, disgust, shame, anger and the desire of both
revenge and violence. That is the reason why creating alternative models is so important,
when not necessary, because, by modeling the children´s images of a reality, we change
their indicants of it and their approaches/reactions.

So, most of the programs and movies that I have already mentioned tend to use one or two
or all of the resources that I mentioned. As explaining one by when would not be the most
practical approach, they have been categorized in two groups, depending of their main
objective. Ones tend to work primarily with metaphors and they subjugate the emotions as
the final result of this redesigning of the image. The second group, directly appeals to the
emotional language, with minimal use of metaphors.
I would like to give you a slight panoramic, with a special focus on their approach to Latin
American immigrants. I have to recognize that this selection is based in emotional and
cultural criteria, even though I recognize that this is not the only collective that needs to be
addressed differently by the media and the Donald Trump´s discourse.

The first group is defined by their emotional appeal. Even if the environment that is
displayed in the screen is fictional, the situations depicted in them is relatable, as well as the
emotional implications that are carried through the narrations and the dialogues of the
character. In this group I would include the movie Black Panther, the TV program about a
Latino family Stuck in the middle, and the animated movie, Coco. I would show you some
pictures of the reactions of children when seeing Black Panther for the first time and how it
was mediatized as positive publicity for the movie (pictures). As we can observe, the
argumentation is completely based on the smiling, cheerful or tearing faces of the children,
which reflect that “Efficacy beliefs influence whether people think self-enhancingly or self-
debilitatingly, optimistically or pessimistically” (Bandura 2001, 270)

Also, the final scene contains a message that has no apparent relation to the universe in the
movie, but that immediately connects with the outer world, basically by their use of
vocabulary related to fraternity, duty, and their reference to the wall (clip) “we will work to
be an example of how we as brothers and sister on this earth should treat each other. Now,
more than ever, illusions of division threaten our very existence. We all know the truth:
more connects us, than separates us, but in times of crisis the wise built bridges, while the
foolish built barriers”. We can trace here some of the elements proposed by Ahmed about
the “multicultural love”, which is defined by a promise of cohesion that allows that
anybody can be accepted in this community, as long as they share the same pure values that
the rest of the members.

We should not forget that Ahmed´s approach to this type of love is critical, when not
skeptical, as it can be used as a weapon to homogenize the incoming members of a
community. Even though, the use that prince T´Challa has of this notion of sisterhood and
brotherhood is directly taken (or is directly inverting) the other type of nation that is
defended by Trump, based on a masculine sense of belonging and progress that tries to a
avoid “The risk of being a ‘soft touch’ for the nation, and for the national subject, is not
only the risk of becoming feminine, but also of becoming ‘less white’, by allowing those
who are recognized as racially other to penetrate the surface of the body” (Ahmed 2013, 3)

This is the reason why not only Black Panther, but Stuck in the middle and Coco fend for
this “positive”, even “feminine” approach to the multicultural nation and love. Because, on
the long run, what they are doing is re-appropriate the basis of the mechanism of
“reproduction of the national ideal” (Ahmed 2013, 194) and, therefore, they are subverting
the original message and purpose. So, when we see declarations as the one made in Stuck in
the middle by the latino olimpic medalist Laurie Hernández, who says that “For me, being a
latino is being a good person” or the praise for family and unity made in Elena of Avalor or
in Coco, especially on the last song “El latido de mi corazón” (My proud heart, would be
the most suitable translation), we are observing an attempt to counterbalance the emotional
use of language from the president.

The second group is defined by how they use the metaphors to create an alternative, even
opposite, image of the one usually provided by the media and the government about
immigrants and diversity. Also, through their narratives, they denounce how “Symbolic
interaction theory suggests

that identity and meaning are socially constructed by applying familiar experiences and
routines to specific

situations.20 Thus, continuity and novelty are linked in meaningful ways. It is curious that
they even retake the notion of animals as means of representation, but in this case, instead
of dehumanizing, they are following the tradition of the fable, that serves from animals to
teach a moral, so that their message is more easily apprehended, as they “are coherent with
the major orientational metaphors of the main-stream culture” (Lakoff and Johnson 1980,
24). Also, they

The two examples that I would like to examine are Marlon Bundo and Zootopia. I believe
that most of you are familiar with the Disney movie, but the children´s book created by
John Oliver is not so popular. Nevertheless, both of them are the story of two rabbits that
are pursuing a dream. In Zootopia, the girl rabbit wishes to become a police officer, a
profession denied for “small, cute, animals”, while in Marlon Bundo we meet a boy rabbit
that wishes to marry… another boy rabbit.

As we can see, gender and sexual orientation have strong implications in both narratives. In
Zootopia we can find a feminist reading, even though it was oriented to diversity, as the
conflict is based on the interaction between the animals that used to be predators and the
small mammals that were their prey. The final message of the movie is that we are not
determined by nature, but by our own personal choices and that a society that praises
diversity instead of being afraid of it is stronger. As any other Disney movie, the argument
is quite predictable, so I will not provide any further exploration. I would only like to
mention three particularities about the movie.

As I have priory stated, the fact that Zootopia´s use of metaphor is stronger than the other
two characteristics we have analyzed, does not mean that they cannot also explore the use
of emotions, and particularly how fear can disintegrate a society: When agent Hops (the
Bunny) “discovers” the reason why predators are becoming dangerous again, the fictional
press of the movie starts the news with the following declarations “More bad news in this
city gripped by fear” (1:13’39’’-1:13’43’’) before they start describing all the attacks that
the “wild” animals have inflicted to the “good and peaceful” herbivores. The scene the
turns to the covering of a manifestation against racial division, followed by the way in
which life is changing in Zootopia and how everybody is becoming distrustful, aggressive,
and how life becomes more difficult for every mammal, recapturing the double utility of
fear in the mass media, that

has been fuelled by formal agents of social control, who serve, on the one hand, as 'news
sources' for daily newspaper and TV reports, while on the other hand, are promoted as the
saviours, protectors and eradicators of the sources of fear. Thus, entertainment, fear and
social control have helped join the interests and narrative of popular culture with an
expansive social control industry (Altheide 2006, 4)

In the case of Marlon Bundo, our other example, we have almost the same metaphorical resources
and approximation to emotions, but in this case, we are addressed through anger and humor. This
story about two boy rabbits that are harassed by the vice president/stink bug/Mike Pence because
they want to get married was specifically written as a reaction agains the children´s book that Mike
Pence was selling to finance associations that promoted conversion therapies and other activities
against the LGTBQI collectives. In his own words, you should buy the book because: “Do you
want the regular Bundo Book or the better Bundo book? It´s at betterbundobook.com. All our
profits from this are going to the Trevor Project, which provide crisis and suicide prevention
services for the LGBTQ. And AIDS United, which works to end AIDS epidemic in the US, and
those are two great reasons to buy this book. Another is that selling more books than Pence would
probably really piss him off. So there´s 3 great reasons right there” (Oliver 2018)

As we can see, anger was and should be a reason powerful enough both to write the book and to
buy it. What Oliver´s reaction is showing us is that “in the midst of a heated argument, when we are
intent on attacking our opponent's position and defending our own, we may lose sight of the
cooperative aspects of arguing [. . .] when we are preoccupied with the battle aspects, we often lose
sight of the cooperative aspects” (Johsen and Lakoff 2003, 10). But, unlike Mike Pence,
Donald Trump and Brett Kavanaugh, as well as other politicians from the same views, he is
using humor and metaphors to balance the situation. This ironical response also recurs to
the fantasy or fictional, that, according to Ahmed, is commonly used by the hate groups
(particularly by the white supremacist ones), to constitute the ordinary white subjects and
their lives as something that is in crisis and that them as the “real victims”, potentially
endangered by the scary newcomers (Ahmed 2018, 79)