What Made the Red Man Red? facts for kids

"What Made the Red Man Red?" is a song from the 1953 Disney animated film Peter Pan with music by Sammy Fain and lyrics by Sammy Cahn, in which "the natives tell their story through stereotypical dance while singing". Some modern audiences consider it racist and offensive due to its exaggerated stereotypes. Although a similar depiction was displayed within J. M. Barrie's original play, later adaptations have reimagined the Natives, while the Disney version—and this song in particular—were said to have "doubled-down on racial stereotypes".

It has been compared to the song "Savages" from the 1995 Disney film Pocahontas, which contains negative lyrics regarding Native Americans; in contrast with "What Makes the Red Man Red?", however, the offensive lyrics in "Savages" were written purposely, as they are sung by the villains of the movie, in order to illustrate the message that racism is wrong.

Production

Jonathan "Candy" Candido, who played the role of the Chief in Peter Pan, said the following in an interview with MousePlanet:

When I recorded [the song], I sang it with 10 bass singers from around Los Angeles. And if you hear the song, you'll notice my bass voice is almost twice as low as theirs ... You know, when you see the Indian chief, he's fat. I'm not fat. And he's real tall, and I'm kind of short. But you notice he looks like me. Also, he has the same dark eyebrows, and he plays with his hands like I do when I perform ... Ward Kimball's animation of the chief is full of the little visual gags that he always threw into his work, oftentimes just to keep himself amused. I especially love seeing how wildly exaggerated the chief's mouth shapes become, yet always manage to work well within the frame of his face.

—Jonathan "Candy" Candido, interview with MousePlanet

Context

Peter Pan and Wendy come across the Indians (who refer to themselves as "Injuns") once arriving in Neverland. Wishing to learn more about them, the Lost Boys ask the Indians three questions: "What Makes the Red Man Red?", "When Did He First Say 'Ugg'?" and "Why Does He Ask You 'How?'" This song is performed by "the big-nosed, guttural Chief character" accompanied by his tribesmen. The Indians pass the peace pipe to the children as they tell their tale.

Composition

Writer Kim McLarin of NPR describes it as a "bouncy, drum-heavy song", while the Best of Disney calls it a "labored routine".

Legacy

When the film has been syndicated on television, the native scene has often been removed. In the 1954 stage musical, a blond actress named Sondra Lee was cast as the Native American character Tiger Lily to perform "Ugg-a-Wugg", "a drum number of caricatured dance moves and lyrics of inarticulate babble".

Because of the perceived racial insensitivity of the characters and this song in particular by the time the film Return to Never Land was released in theatres in 2002, the Indians were not featured as characters in that movie. However, they appear physically in the tie-in videogame Peter Pan: Adventures in Never Land and in the Disney's Magic English series.

During production of the 2015 Warner Bros. live-action film Pan, the film's developers made a deliberate choice to distance the character of Tiger Lily and her people from Native American heritage and reimagine them as lacking any particular ethnicity, in order to "avoid the racial insensitivities of... Disney's 1953 animated film, which infamously featured the song 'What Made the Red Man Red?'"

The song is sampled in the Frank Waln song of the same title, in which he raps about the legacy of genocide and colonialism and criticizes the original song for its supposed racism.