Animated movie characters with strabismus are more likely to be villains, study finds

Strabismus, a misalignment of the eyes that occurs especially in children, has no bearing on intelligence or personality, but animated movies tend to use the condition to signify a villainous, dopey, or clumsy character, according to a new study from researchers at the University of Colorado School of Medicine.

“When animators are figuring out what a character is going to look like, they have to decide on every little detail of that character's appearance, and so it's not by chance that an animated character happens to have strabismus,” says Michael Puente, MD, assistant professor of ophthalmology who focuses on pediatric ocular health. “That's something that the animation team made a deliberate decision to do, and I imagine that they have reasons for that decision.”

“Our study suggests that commonly, the reason that a character is depicted as having strabismus is if that character is unintelligent or undesirable, and that animators see strabismus as a way of visually conveying that undesirable trait,” he continues.

The research, published this month in the journal Pediatrics, analyzed 46 characters from animated 125 films made by Walt Disney, Pixar, DreamWorks and Studio Ghibli, and found characters with strabismus were 14 times more likely to be depicted as unintelligent than intelligent and six times more likely to be followers than leaders.

These depictions, the researchers say, can have harmful effects for children with strabismus by perpetuating stereotypes that can negatively affect a patient’s self-confidence and influence the perception of strabismus by young impressionable audiences.

The role of strabismus in mental development

There are several causes for strabismus, which can look like crossed eyes or one of the eyes drifting toward the ear. For some young patients, the condition can be a sign that they need glasses, but for most it’s a neurological issue where the signals from the brain to the muscles that control the eyes are not calibrated correctly, causing some of the eye muscles to pull too hard or not enough.

Surgery can help address those muscles and is successful about 80% of the time, Puente says. Often, he encounters young patients who ask for the surgery because they are self-conscious about their appearance.

“Every day I have kids that are asking me for surgery, and that says a lot as children tend to be apprehensive of medical care,” he says. “But strabismus often affects these kids so much that they’re asking for a fix. I don’t think there are a lot of other pediatric surgeons that have that experience.”

While strabismus can have impacts on a child's visual development, it also impacts the way that they interact with society, their peers, teachers, and their friends.

“Kids with strabismus, unfortunately get bullied a lot for that difference in appearance,” Puente says. “There have been studies that find that they're less likely to get invited to birthday parties. Kids in school are less willing to sit next to a kid with strabismus. There have been surveys of teachers that have found that teachers tend to assume that students with strabismus are less intelligent, and all this stigma affects the way that children develop psychosocially.”

Trends translating to reality

Negative perceptions in media can contribute and magnify these stereotypes, Puente and his fellow researchers say. They weren’t able to find a single primary protagonist with strabismus, however comic-relief characters or villainous characters with strabismus were common.

Researchers found only three characters that were considered “leaders,” but one was a villain and the other was depicted as “unintelligent.” In 125 films and 46 characters with strabismus, there was only one that was found to be intelligent, the character Forrest Woodbush from Pixar’s The Good Dinosaur.

Puente says he hopes the study can shine a light on how pervasive negative depictions are in media created for children and show animators how it affects young patients.

“If animators recognize that they tend to always portray strabismus so negatively, I hope they can reflect on that and maybe when they have an undesirable character or a bad guy or a ‘dumb’ character, they think twice before giving it strabismus,” Puente says. “It sends a message to their very young, impressionable audience.”

“There are lots of people with strabismus, and it would be great to have some characters with strabismus that could be role models and are portrayed positively,” he continues. “That just doesn’t exist in any of these movies in our study, but I think that would be a really impactful change.”