Feminism in Frozen 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, …show more content…
In typical Disney movies, men and princes are displayed as attractive, muscular, powerful, and great social skills. Kristoff breaks all of these assumptions through different character traits that are expressed through the film. Kristoff is not, in any way, the perfect and expected man and there is a song dedicated specifically to him talking about all of his flaws and how he is a bit of a “fixer upper” that proves it. The lyrics talk about how he has weirdly shaped feet, a strange relationship with his pet reindeer, is smelly, sensitive, and socially impaired. All these traits are true and seen throughout the film. Kristoff doesn’t have any friends other than Sven, his pet reindeer and the only other interaction he has other than with Anna, is when he is in a store and gets thrown out. As for being sensitive, it later states in the song that he has a desperation for healing hugs. Kristoff is a great character that can empower young boys and teach them to be unique and different and that it is alright to break gender …show more content…
After Anna is accidentally hit in the heart with ice by Elsa, her whole body begins to freeze and the only way to break the curse is by an act of “true love”. Immediately she assumes that she must kiss Prince Hans to break the spell, but when he revels his evil nature, Olaf explains to her that she is really in love with Kristoff and that she can kiss him to break the curse. In search for him, on one side of the ice she finds Elsa in danger with Prince Hans, and on the other she sees Kristoff. Instead of saving herself and having a “true loves kiss,” Anna decides to sacrifice herself to save Elsa from Hans’ sword. When she jumps in front of the weapon he whole body turns to ice but since she risked her life to save her sister because of the love she has for her, she unfroze. This scene showed young girls that they do not need to focus on just romantic true love, but to remember and cherish the love that can be expressed to
Every fairytale seems to have the usual prince saving the poor girl from harm or servitude or whatever horrid situation she may be in, and then companies like Disney add their movie magic and make it into a franchise. Others may add a twist or two, such as the film Ever After, directed by Andy Tennant. Yet no matter how the story goes, there is the same feminine ideas imposed upon the female lead. She has to compete with others for the attention of her “prince,” gender roles are a must, and morals are taught in some way or another through some kind of stereotype. These tend to cause some feminist outrage and even maybe a small outrage among parents who must deal with the children that watch these movies and read the stories because of the behavioral
For starters, Disney princess movies display the image of extraordinary beautiful sexy girls as princesses. They have long hair, small waist, flawless skin, nice cloths and beautiful voices (England, Descartes, Collier-Meek, 2). Unsurprisingly, young Girls want to have the qualities of these fictitious characters. They define beauty as having the perfect body image, just as Disney princess movies have taught them. Moreover, the bad people or witches in these movies always seem to be ugly, fat, or basically unattractive. This changes young girls’ view of the society, leading them to develop low self-esteem if they don’t meet the princesses’ standard (Dundes, 8). Since, Disney features the male character (prince) to be romantically linked to the female character (princess), young girls who do not think that they have the image of a princess will get the impression that they cannot be loved by handsome wealthy men (England, Descartes, Collier-Meek, 3). Also, they will consider themselves to b...
Disney’s new movie “Frozen” has caught the eyes of viewers and has surprised us all, reaching No. 1 in the box Office and have pass over $300 million of tickets sold, this movie has no sign of slowing down any time soon. “Frozen’ is one of the few recent Disney films to capture the classic Disney script, like “Cinderella” or “Snow White”, it’s a heart warming and loving story, guaranteed to thaw a frozen heart. Unlike the usual Disney princess story line where the girl has a poor life or things just don’t turn out like there suppose to, they wish upon a star, fall in love, then bibbidi-bobbdi-boo they have a happily ever after. Frozen strayed off from tradition and decided to go for more of a different approach. True love has always been a key concept for Disney films. Sleeping Beauty, true loves kiss broke the spell, Beauty and the Beast, true love broke the curse, Snow White, again true love broke the spell, its the same concept, but in Frozen instead added a twist and showed love between sisters Elsa and Anna. It adds a twist in tradition, so that a reason why older viewers and even critics can enjoy, its something new and different. The movie “Frozen” is based off of “The Snow Queen”, a fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen. The story is about an evil troll, also known as “the devil”, makes a mirror that when looked into distorts the beauty and good of people and things to the complete opposite, ugly and bad. One day the troll and his friends try to take the mirror to Heaven the make angels and God look like fools, but when they were almost there the mirror falls and shatters into little pieces almost dust. This “dust” travels around the world and gets into peoples eyes and into their hearts freezing them. Years later a girl n...
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.
...ic to think the mind set of past sixty years can alter in the blink of an eye. Our patriarchal society will always push unrealistic body image on women, and it is highly doubtful that it will change anytime in the near future. Disney has made some developments in a new direction by taking the initiative to adjust the role of their heroine characters. Although they are still unrealistically thin, leads like Pochoantas, or Mulan step way from the redundant model of the “Disney Princess”. Majority of the responsibility now falls on parents to teach children how to become independent females relying on their hard work instead of looks. The hope is that children can learn and realize that the character in their favorite movies, or even their beloved dolls are not real women and with the correct mindset and encouragement these young girls will become confident young girls.
They play a role in putting emphasis on themes such as a woman’s passive nature and their beauty. Fairytales are a mode of enhancing the difference between the genders and supporting the dominant gender. Disney films and children’s fairytales put a high amount of emphasis on the theme of feminine beauty ideal (Baker-Sperry & Grauerholz, 2003). It is a social construct that believes that the greatest asset a female has is that of her physical attractiveness and a female should strive to achieve and maintain it. This leads to one believing that females are oppressed, devalued and objectified, particularly in a patriarchal society (Baker-Sperry & Grauerholz, 2003). According to Baker-Sperry and Grauerholz (2003) women find beauty to be empowering and like to engage in rituals that enhance their beauty. Bordo (1993) believes that woman and adolescent girls achieve a high social status and maintain their self-esteem by engaging beauty rituals through the course of the day (as cited in Baker-Sperry & Grauerholz, 2003). The importance of female beauty ideal and physical attractiveness in society is emphasized in many Disney films and children’s media. According to Chyng (2001) many films emphasize the importance of sexuality and often-female characters are portrayed as overly sexual (as cited in Towbin, Haddock, Zimmerman, Lund, & Tanner, 2004).
Of course, this could be justified by the target audience, as it is a Disney princess film after all. However, this relationship between two sisters is special enough to be analysed. Indeed, female friendship is often depicted as conflictive, in films such as Bride Wars for instance, whereas male friendship is made more valuable, as seen in most Seth Rodgen films. Here, the feminine solidarity is the core of the plot in Frozen, which motivates each protagonist’s designs and solves central issues of the
Disney is a company that almost everybody has either seen, heard about, or been to. Throughout the years that Disney has been making movies, some people have been saying that Disney shows stereotyping through their movies. Even though some people do not notice these stereotyping images, some people do notice them and do get very offended. Disney has been around since the early 1920`s when “Walt signed a contract with M. J. Winkler to produce a series of Alice Comedies — this date is considered the start of the Disney company first known as The Disney Brothers Studio”(Wikipedia 3). In the past, Disney has had many different claims about stereotyping, but nothing was really done about the issues. Despite claims that Disney invents perfect role models for children, Disney actually creates their characters based upon stereotypes.
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
In “Little Girls or Little Women? The Disney Princess Effect,” Stephanie Hanes covers the sexualization of young girls and women in every aspect of the media that influences children and teens. She explains that girls see media figures, movies, and sports being sexualized, and how this is causing children to associate looking and acting a certain way to being ‘the perfect women’. Hanes believes the hypersexualized media is causing girls to obtain a negative body image and it’s killing their self-esteem. The author proposes what she believes society should do about overcoming this obstacle, and how people can crush the stereotypes about women; to her everyone is responsible and should aid in fixing these problems. She explains that the media
Once upon a time, there was a 16 year old mermaid princess named Ariel who gave up her voice, an important part of her identity, in order to be with a man who she became infatuated with at just one glance. Ariel has a very traditional gender-stereotypical role in the film, as the helpless, clueless, naive, physically weak, submissive, and attractive female protagonist that Disney films, especially the classics, portray so often (England). There is a lot of controversy surrounding this film in regards to its patriarchal ideals. The Little Mermaid, like most media, is build for the ‘male gaze’, a term coined by Laura Mulvey that suggests that visual entertainment, such as movies, are structured to be viewed by a masculine consumer. I will argue that the male gaze perpetuates harmful gender-stereotypes in The Little Mermaid.
Back in Ardenelle, Anna realizes that Hans has bad intentions towards her. When confronted, Hans lock Anna in a bedroom, as he gets his strategies in order to kill the sisters. Olaf notifies Elsa that she is dying, and only the love of family can cure her. Elsa finds her way back to the village, regains courage, but ends up locked as well. Kristoff and Olaf must find a way to get the sisters reconcile, and the cure for all.
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’s men often have the story revolve around them even when the story being told is not about them. Cinderella, Snow White, and Sleeping Beauty are all movies named after the female characters and yet it is the men who represent the role of heroes. The Beauty and the Beast story becomes a battle between two male characters while Belle does nothing but wait for a victor to come claim her. In The Little Mermaid, it is again about the male saving the day, not Ariel becoming her own hero. What I noticed is that girls will read books that have boy heroes, but boys will not read books that have girl heroes. Lori Baker –Sperry states in her viewpoint, “Cinderella was not, however about or for the boys. The boy’s actively move the story to a place more about them. In this way, they de-centered the central character and instead turned to other components of popular fairytales that are more interesting to them, such as chasing dragons and engaging in adventurous swordplay.” At a young age, it was enforced that males play a more important role in society than women did. Disney classifies the prince as more important and portrayed as more likely to have a better job, more independent, intelligent, athletic, confident, responsible, than female characters. The role model for any main character is a father figure whether the main character is male or female. Most of the cases when it is a male
When the movie begins you are introduced to the two main characters, Elsa and Anna. Elsa is the oldest sister who has a power that she can’t seem to control. Anna is the young sister who goes after Elsa, who ran away after everyone discovers her powers. These two alone play really good beside each other. There is also a guy, Kristoff. No, Kristoff is not a prince. He’s an average joe who helps Anna on her journey and works along side his buddy the moose, who really serves no purpose in the movie. And finally there’s Olaf, the snowman. He’s the silly character that brings everyone together and keeps everyone laughing. Olaf is a really important character in the movie because he represents the relationship that Anna and Elsa have once had. Of course these are not the only characters throughout the whole movie, but they are the main ones, and like every great movie there is a villain. It wasn’t just the characters that had my attention but the story itself was great.