comedic plot. Silverman, an archeologist, estimates that as it is presented
the film contains elements that span 3,000 years and 275,000 square
kilometers of space (ibid.: 309). As a result, “In Disney’s hands, Groove so
significantly departs and appropriates from the archaeologically known
Inca Empire and other pre-Columbian civilizations of ancient Peru, that it
is a textbook example of hyperreality and simulacra.” The terms
hyperreality and simulacra are often used in media studies; simulacra are
copies of an original that no longer exists, or as in this case, that never
existed to begin with. That is, Disney’s ancient Peru looks as though it is
meant to be a copy of the original, but in fact is created out of whole cloth.
Baudrillard (1994: 1) calls this hyperreality, or a map that precedes the
territory it supposedly describes.
It could be argued that Groove is simply a well-intentioned but failed
attempt to represent Incan culture. Images and icons might be seen as
nothing more than an attempt to establish an unusual and exotic setting. In
fact, the feel of the film is distinctly present-day U.S. in narrative strategy,
social conventions, humor, and language.
This is a case where all voice actors use their own varieties of English.
There are no attempts at an accent that would evoke Incan culture, because
the story, in reality, has nothing to do with that time and place. The goal
seems to be to evoke other cultures only in so far as they will mesh with
the expectations of an American audience. This is done by assimilation
and objectification, and the result is children’s film which strips an entire
culture of its history and trivializes what is left behind. And accomplishes
all this in some 90 minutes.
The unfortunate result of all this is that the majority of children who see
this movie – many more than once – will retain Disney’s version of Incan
culture because it is the only version they will ever be exposed to. Few
American students will have an opportunity to learn in more detail about
the more complex – and interesting – history of the Incan people.
Animated films offer a unique way to study how a dominant culture
reaffirms its control over subordinate cultures and nations by re-
establishing, on a day-to-day basis, their preferred view of the world as
right and proper and primary. Precisely because of animation’s (assumed)
innocence and innocuousness, the film makers have a broader spectrum of
tools available to them and a great deal more leeway:
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