Feminism in Disney Films As we’ll know princesses are a big part of the Disney Film Industry and they are’ll have something in common, and that is that they are involved in a feminism social problem. The conflict between the Disney Corporation and the Feminist has been going on since the first Disney Princess movie in 1937. The majority audience of all Disney movie is Children. Disney movies today has expanded their arsenal to give the young people a lesson about ourself and our ever changing moral, but the way they do it the expose the wrongful side of being a princess and also can be transmitted the wrong idea to young people. For example, Disney has set a forth standard of how all of their princess are suppose to look like. The portrait of women in disney films are often the stereotypical version of them, the cultural beliefs of the 1940s are reflected to the roles of the women in society, and also it shows that disney films has a more male outlook than women's. …show more content…
Based on my analysis of the disney movies I have watched, I can assume that all princesses are skinny, beautiful, acquiescent, and they are usually housewives and that is exactly the standard, Disney has set. To add on that overweight women are unpleasant, unmarried and ugly. Also, it seems like a woman’s appearance is more valued than her intellectual ability. That is an example of an act of feminism, because of the reason they are females. Another big thing about Disney films is that they always display the women as always helpless and always in need of protection, based on my opinion that is so wrong, because in our society there are a lot of strong and cold blooded women. Those example emulate that Disney films are prototypical and they based their films off raw
Media is a powerful agent in entertaining children. It also influences and teaches the youth of society the suitable and appropriate gender roles that they inevitably try to make sense of. The power of media is very influential especially in the minds of the youth. Disney movies target the youth and plant certain ideas and concepts about social culture into the vulnerable minds of children. Media uses gender to its advantage, just like Disney productions. Humorous caricatures reveal some harsh realities about the portrayal of Disney Princesses in many movies made by the Walt Disney Company. Disney mixes innocence with the ultimate form of fantasy to capture an audience. Predominantly, Disney helps highlight the gender roles by showing the audience simply what they want to see. In the attempt to stick to the norm and portray stereotypical female characters, Disney created Princesses. Presented as damsels in distress and inferior beings to men, Disney Princesses give children an inaccurate portrayal of gender roles at a young age. Through Disney’s social success and intriguing films, such as The Little Mermaid, Snow White, Aladdin, Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, and Beauty and the Beast, Disney Princess movies portray stereotypical representation of gender roles through the denigration of the female image, targeting and ruining the perception of youth today.
Since Disney’s Snow White appeared in 1937, Disney princesses have been a present in pop culture. With the release of new movies frequent and re-release of decades old movies inevitable, a continuous stream keeps Disney princesses in the foreground of adolescent society. It is with the value of entertainment they have been created and as entertainment they should be viewed.
This investigation identifies the parallels between the Disney character and the women of the time period in which it was produced. The three sources evaluated throughout the investigation are the “Snow White and the Seven Dwarves” produced in 1937 by William Cottrell and David Hand, “Beauty and the Beast” produced in 1991 by Gary Trousdale and Kirk Wise, and “Mulan” produced in 1998 by Tony Bancroft and Barry Cook. As these movies were produced, the characteristics of the princesses came in three distinct clumps. For the purposes of this essay, Snow White represents the modest princesses from 1937 to 1959 as she is the most extreme example of these characteristics and sets the stage for those to come. For the curious princess of 1989 to 1992, Belle from Beauty and the Beast will represent the ongoing wonder of women striving for freedom.
Despite the tremendous steps that have been taken towards reaching gender equality, mainstream media contradicts these accomplishments with stereotypes of women present in Walt Disney movies. These unrealistic stereotypes may be detrimental to children because they grow up with a distorted view of how men and women interact. Disney animated films assign gender roles to characters, and young children should not be exposed to inequality between genders because its effect on their view of what is right and wrong in society is harmful to their future. According to Disney films, it is important for women to achieve the stereotypical characteristics of a woman, such as maintaining their beauty to capture a man, and being weak and less educated than male characters. The women in Disney movies are always beautiful, which helps them to find a man.
Society cements certain roles for children based on gender, and these roles, recognized during infancy with the assistance of consumerism, rarely allow for openness of definition. A study conducted by Witt (1997) observed that parents often expect certain behaviors based on gender as soon as twenty-four hours after the birth of a child. The gender socialization of infants appears most noticeably by the age of eighteen months, when children display sex-stereotyped toy preferences (Caldera, Huston, & O’Brian 1989). This socialization proves extremely influential on later notions and conceptions of gender. Children understand gender in very simple ways, one way being the notion of gender permanence—if one is born a girl or a boy, they will stay that way for life (Kohlberg 1966). “According to theories of gender constancy, until they’re about 6 or 7, children don’t realize that the sex they were born with is immutable” (Orenstein 2006). The Walt Disney Corporation creates childhood for children worldwide. “Because Disney are such a large media corporation and their products are so ubiquitous and wide spread globally, Disney’s stories, the stories that Disney tell, will be the stories that will form and help form a child’s imaginary world, all over the world, and that’s an incredible amount of power, enormous amount of power” (Sun). Because of the portrayal of women in Disney films, specifically the Disney Princess films, associations of homemaker, innocence, and dependence are emphasized as feminine qualities for young children. Thus, children begin to consider such qualities normal and proceed to form conceptions of gender identity based off of the movies that portray the very specific and limiting views of women (...
In the article Construction of the Female Self: Feminist Readings Of the Disney Heroine, Jill Birmie Henke, Diane Zimmerman Umble, and Nancy J. Smith are looking at the female self and how it was developed based on two theories: Standpoint by Parker Follet and the psychological development of girls by Gilligam. That by examines gender identity especially girls and how media exposure affects them through analyzing five of Disney movies: Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, The little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, and Pocahontas. They segmented the article into three titles: The Oxymoron of Power and the Perfect Girl where they introduced the two theories in which they built their critic on, Construction of the Female Self where they talk about the evolution in the female character from Cinderella to Pocahontas, and Construction of Self in Relation to Others where they talk about the evolution of the self in relation to others from power-over to power-with until power-to. Finally they concluded that even if the female character in Disney’s movies was changing to become more
Disney is one of the biggest empires in the world. It is a brand that everyone knows about whether they invest in it or not. According to the Forbes Most Valuable Brands list, Disney ranks number seventeen in the world—behind popular brands like Apple and Microsoft and above Wal-Mart. The Disney Empire is a business, a brand that can be found almost everywhere, even in the Dollar Store. The brand’s accessibility is what makes it easy for children to become consumers. The consumerism of princess culture is what I will focus on in this essay, discussing the impact Disney’s Princesses have on young girls and their identity, and how popular culture discourse is beginning to fight back against the empire.
Disney has portrayed women in movies by the use of animation characters for over a century since the 1900s. There has been a very big change since the early 1900’s to modern day in Disney’s depiction of the personalities of the women, their attitudes and ideologies towards men, and the way they are portrayed in the movies. This progression has had a distinct development, from passive damsels in distress in need of the help of men, to being superheroes. Therefore, the evolution of women in Disney movies will be analyzed through the use of university level feminist essays, as well as a research paper written about gender roles in Disney animation. The evolution will also be analyzed through examination of the clips of the movies themselves.
Disney princesses are fun for all ages, but their target audience is young children and “as children grow and develop, they can be easily influenced by what they see and hear”. Therefore, what they see and hear in Disney movies leaves an impression on them. The first princess, Snow White, was created in a time where each gender and race had a specific role in society. Recently, many believe that Disney has come a long way in regards to gender and race since Snow White, as several multi-cultural protagonists have been introduced subsequently, and gender roles do not appear to be as stereotypical as they once were. However, many of the apparent innocent messages about race and gender in these movies, can be exposed as otherwise. Despite their mask of progression, Disney princesses still have the potential to corrupt the minds of young children through sexism and racism.
Disney promotes sexisim by forcing young girls to live in a patriarchal world. Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, The little mermaid, Aladdin, and Snow White are all examples of popular Disney movies that encourage young viewers that they need a man to save the day. Yes, it’s true that there are recent movies such as Moana and Frozen that prove otherwise, but how long will it take to completely get over the fact that women are mainly viewed as secondary citizens compared to the men? There are countless examples of how Disney movies influence this theme, and how much the female characters’ actions, ideas and thoughts are not included in a Disney movie.
Leichty mentions in her article, “In Defense of Princess Culture”, the love her daughter has with the princess phenomenon and later expresses her opinion on that subject (Leichty 471). The concept of young ladies idolizing a Disney Princess has been met with great reservations from many, but Leichty states, “WHAT’S SO AWFUL ABOUT THAT?” (Leichty 472). Positive attributes for a Disney Princess and their favorite movie line provide families with nights of conversation with a superior family oriented topic on the screen. A Disney Princess will provide families a sense of morality, considering the immoral items that can be viewed on many movie screens and television screens. The pure magic a Disney Princess can provide is an uplifting, enjoyable and exciting moment for all through their popular movie line or even catching a glimpse of the very popular Disney theme park. Many Scientist and parents debunk the popular princess culture and perceive that they are bad for children. Many articles have been written and several research attempts to provide proof of the destruction a Disney Princess could bring on the youth of America. That research has never provided factual regards to that topic, and one researcher could not find any evidence that a princess changed emotional behavior or that the princess could be considered as a bad role model for children (“The Princess Pride” 2). Many scientists and parents have tried to prove that a Disney Princess is a bad role model, but the magic of Disney prevails over such negative responses and one author writes, “Disney princess power is girl power, and they've got 10,000 megajoules of that zipping through them” (“The Princess Pride” 2). Considering all the negative role models in the world, a Disney Princess can provide positive family memories, morality and magical experiences for young
England, D. E., Descartes, L., & Collier-meek, M. (2011). Proquest. “Gender role portrayal and the disney princesses”. Sex Roles, 64(7-8), 555-567.
Disney and old fairytales threaten gender politics and ideal women roles by giving certain stereotypes for domestic and personality traits. Fairytales that have turned into Disney productions have sculpted domestic roles for women that consist of cooking, cleaning and caring for the children. Disney has also created these princesses with personalities that are shy, passive, and vulnerable. The cause of these stereotypes are making individuals obliterate their own identities and becoming clones from the mold that was prepared for
Feminist theory was derived from the social movement of feminism where political women fight for the right of females in general and argue in depth about the unequality we face today. In the aspect of cinema, feminists notice the fictitious representations of females and also, machismo. In 1974, a book written by Molly Haskell "From Reverence to Rape: The treatment of Women in Movies" argues about how women almost always play only passive roles while men are always awarded with active, heroic roles. Moreover, how women are portrayed in movies are very important as it plays a big role to the audience on how to look at a woman and how to treat her in real life due to the illusionism that cinema offers. These images of women created in the cinema shapes what an ideal woman is. This can be further explained through an article 'Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema' written by a feminist named Laura Mulvey in 1975. She uses psychoanalysis theories by Sigmund Freud to analyze 'Scopophilia' which is the desire to see. This explains how the audience is hooked to the screen when a sexy woman is present. In a bigger picture, where Scopophilia derives from, 'Voyeurism' is also known as feeling visual pleasure when looking at another. Narcissism on the other hand means identifying one's self with the role played. It is not hard to notice that in classical cinema, men often play the active role while the women are always the object of desire for the male leads, displayed as a sexual object and frequently the damsels in distress. Therefore, the obvious imbalance of power in classical cinema shows how men are accountable to moving the narratives along. Subconsciously, narcissism occurs in the audience as they ...
In society today, there is pressure from all sides to conform to a certain ideal of beauty. People are overwhelmed with the different types of images and media forms that are telling people how to act and what to look like. Media is one of the most powerful tools at our disposal. It has the power to educate, affect social change, and much more, but if taken incorrectly people will take drastic lengths to change something about themselves. There have been many attempts to empower women through different types of media, but many have failed miserably. Over the last couple of years, Disney has struggled greatly with the representation of women throughout Princess movies because young girls are hounded with images of princesses,