Hidden Messages In Disney Films

Watching Disney films is sort-of a childhood ritual that almost every child has the pleasure of going through. These films are cute, funny, adorable, and yet, behind the marvelous scenes of Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, The Little Mermaid and the other dozen films by Disney, lies a familiar ideological system set in place by none other than Walt Disney himself. The film I watched was Tangled. This was the first time I watched this film, but I felt as though it had very similar hidden messages in certain scenes that were like the other Disney films I have watched. The movie was about Rapunzel, a lost princess that spent most of her childhood locked up in a tower. Like many other Disney movies, the princess is the main character and an unexpected

Could Disney be saying that women are naturally healers? At the end of the movie, Rapunzel is chained up in her tower and Rider comes to her aid in case she was in trouble. Rider is then stabbed by Mother and is critically injured. Rapunzel then proposes to Mother that if she would allow her to heal Rider, then she will stay by her side like before and won’t ever leave the castle. Mother agrees and lets Rapunzel tend to her man. In this instance, Rapunzel just wants to heal Rider; her love. She is prepared to sacrifice her life, dreams and feelings for his benefit. This suggests that women are tend to men, when they

We see when Rapunzel is getting her hair braided by the three other girls that she is happy. I feel as though this associates women’s happiness with the braiding of their hair. This may be a bit extreme, but I felt as though it stuck out like a sore thumb. Also, in the beginning of the movie, we see that Rapunzel’s “weapon of choice” is her frying pan. Meaning that what she grabbed is a representation of women in the kitchen. Like the previous example of the braiding of the hair, I believe that I could be wrong or it could be argued from another perspective, however, when one searches or thinks about an image of a women in the kitchen, it is likely they will envision a woman with a frying pan.

In the movie, I felt as though it was a bit tough to find examples of women characters getting in charge of what they want. One instance I could think of goes back to the Maximus example I stated earlier, where Rapunzel used her cuteness/sexuality to get what she wanted, which was for Maximus to leave Rider alone so that she and him could go to see the lanterns. Possibly another example is when Mother confronts the two brothers. Just like Rapunzel, Mother changes her tone to that of a cute, adorable woman and said that she can offer something of more value than that of the crown they