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Essay on feminist criticism
Basic elements of feminist criticism
Essay on feminist criticism
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Katha Pollitt is a prize winning poet, critic and essayist, who often writes about gender politics, media trends, domestic and foreign policies, and popular culture. In “The Smurfette Principal,” she revealed the inequity of gender in children’s programming, using her own experience as a mother of a three year old daughter. She examines children’s books, movies, and TV programming and finds that in most of them male characters are active main characters and female characters are just sidekicks, or helpers of the males. She named this principal “The Smurfette Principal.” This Christmas Pollitt gave her daughter Sophie, her own cassette of The Little Mermaid. Ariel, the teen-ager fish girl who trades her voice for legs to marry to a prince, who …show more content…
She chose Ariel, because comparing with Cinderella, or Sleeping Beauty, she is active and main character of her own life. She even saves the prince who she is willing to marry. If you check the kids section in a video store, almost every one of the videos will be for boys and boys starred videos. Same for the TV programming, Pollitt could not find a single cartoon or show with a female main character. Even in her childhood there were only male characters. The Smurfette Principle is on every show. For example, popular Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the message is boys are the center and the girls are only there in relation to boys. Sesame Street is the only place which you see girls having fun together, but even there the stars the real stars whom kids cherish are males too. Pollitt knew one girl who was disappointed when she found out that even Big Bird, her last hope was a boy. “Let’s play weddings” says her little niece, which is the only time where the girl is the center. All these lead to sexism. Little girls are choosing their dream depending on boy characters when admiring the clothes of princess same time. Some try to be exceptional women in men’s world, others just taught to accept their
Quenzer is a mother and also a blogger for The Everyday Mom Life. On August 2016, she posted an article called “Be The Princess If That’s What You Want to Be.” She argues that parents should not steer their children away from what feels normal to them. She explains that most people associate princesses and pink with girl activities and applaud those who love blue and orange. The girls who love princesses and pink should not be ignored. She states, “If I don’t believe she can [be kind, generous, and polite] while being a princess and liking the color pink, then I am part of the problem. If I don’t believe that she can enjoy things that are still traditionally stereotyped as girl things and still be strong, brave, and fearless, then what am I teaching her” (Quenzer). Quenzer claims that she should not depict what her daughter can be, but she wants her daughter to find her own passion. Quenzer adds to Liechty’s argument because she adds that even though the princess culture can teach a child values, it can also allow children to discover who they are. Quenzer also furthers Bartyzel’s claim because she argues that parents should not narrow what it means to be feminine. The author’s purpose is to inform parents that they should not limit their children in order to persuade the audience to let their child find their passions. The author writes in a suggestive tone for parents. I agree with this claim because I believe
Your sparkling eyes gazed at the television, reading the word “Cinderella” by Disney. You had all your Cinderella toys lined up, ready to grab whenever necessary. Your Cinderella pajamas on, and your tea set is all prepared.Your mom adored your love for princesses. Didn’t we all love to sing along to the Disney movies about princesses and true love? Peggy Orenstein sure didn’t. Peggy Orenstein, the author of Cinderella Ate My Daughter has a sharp opinion about how a “pretty and pink” culture is influencing girls in a negative way. The author proves this argument by discussing gender colorization, dolls, and princesses.
Females are often looked down on by society as males stereotypically dominate the roles of machismo and independence, leaving no space for females to demonstrate their own strength. Coraline, a children’s animation intended to be a fantasy but instead a production laced with horror elements, includes numerous female characters that embrace society’s predetermined standards. As the audience follows the journey of the protagonist Coraline, stereotypes of women being dependent and not having a voice are unrefreshingly accepted by the female characters in the film.
The Little Mermaid is an animated movie about Ariel, a mermaid, who disobeys her father, King Triton, to meet the love of her life, Eric. Ariel beings to feel love for a human. Their love is not accepted, because King Triton views humans as undesirable creatures. There is an allusion of my life within this movie, because I fell in love with someone my dad prohibited me to be with, Victor Chicas, due to a family feud between our families. The Little Mermaid and my love story with Victor are similar in showing that love changed my perspective over the Chicas family.
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
Gendered roles are evident in all forms of the media. For my research, I decided to view the gender construction in cartoons. After viewing the Cartoon Network for a day, I decided that Dexter’s Laboratory would be the best show to document the gender roles and common ideologies of men and women in society.
“The mermaid swam with her prince toward the beach. She laid him in the fine white sand, taking care to place his head in the warm sunshine, far from the water. She also had to give up her voice, which she had done so willingly, endure tremendous amounts of pain to have the legs of a human, and give up her life as a mermaid as well as never be able to be with her sisters at the bottom of the ocean again. The little mermaid passed all of the tests that the universe threw at her, but in the end, she did not get to marry the prince and this is a great example of a message from the author that life can be unfair sometimes.
This is rather disturbing as this does not give much of a happy ending like most fairytales generally do. It does however show some true love that is prevalent in the Disney version. The Little Mermaid has the option to kill the prince in order to save her own life and turn back into a mermaid but she is unable to. ‘She flung it (the knife) far away from her, into the waves’. The Disney version has a happy ending following the regular, one dimensional plot. Ursula transforms herself into a princess that the prince will marry but she is found out at a crucial moment. Ariel is rarely at fault throughout the film and the ending is no different the evil witch hypnotizes the prince, so she unlike the original cannot be blamed and is then saved eventually by the
“The Little Mermaid” was originally a fairy tale written in 1837 by Hans Christian Andersen that has since inspired several movies adaptations, once of which being “The Little Mermaid” produced by Disney in 1989. Both the movie and book portray a young mermaid that face the tribulations that comes with growing up and her struggle to obtain what she wants most in life, however the mermaid’s ultimate fate and personality is evidently disparate within these two versions.
Turner-Bowker, M. (1996). The 'Turner-Bowker'. Gender stereotyped descriptors in children's picture books: Does "Curious Jane" exist in the literature? Sex Roles, 35(7-8), 461-487. Ya-Lun, T. (2008).
She longed for a different body, and she wasn’t that happy on her own. The Little Mermaid was in a way searching for her “immortal soul,” and she was worried about finding love. The Little Mermaid’s family encourages this, and her grandmother helps her to be able to do that. Her sisters helped her to find the prince, and to find out more information about him, as well.
Mermaids, a thing of fairytales every little girl wanted once to be, have been the subject of many wishful dreams sparkling the imagination of adults and children alike. This most commonly known story of mermaids is Disney's The Little Mermaid, but this story was not an original creation of this animation conglomerate. In 1836 Hans Christian Andersen wrote the original little mermaid with a different narrative than Disney portrays. Disney's blissful rendition of the little mermaid is beloved by millions, but this version differs from the original solemn tale, boldly changing visual aspects, the character’s personalities, and it's ‘happy ending'.
In 1989 Ariel, from “The little Mermaid,” was the girl—or should I say fish—that every girl wanted to be like, and her lasting impression on all girls around the world has continued to this day. She represents individuality considering she’s the only mermaid princess out of all the Disney Princesses, which include: Snow White, Cinderella, Aurora, Belle, and Jasmine. There have been more added to the original line-up, but you guessed it, not one of them has fins and a best friend who happens to be a crab. Ariel is truly unique, and that’s why she has the power to lure young girls into her world. One of those girls, not surprisingly, is me.
For me, Ariel was the personification of cool. Even her name was cooler than mine. My name was wooden, it fell to the ground with a thump, but Ariel's danced. When she scratched the energetic verticals of her name--Ariel Acosta--the letters became edgy and hip. My swirling cursive seemed clichŽ in comparison. I liked hanging out with Ariel because she made me feel cool too. I was insecure with my conformity. I felt guilty that I owned clothes from the Gap, that I had cried at Titanic, that I worried about my hair. With Ariel I felt validated. If Ariel thought I was cool, well, then maybe I was.
Stereotyping women is not only rampant in the adult world; it also flourishes in the kiddie universe as well. Here, there are depictions of women and girls as motherly or innocent, silly, and passive. This occurs not only in popular programming on Public Broadcasting, but also on television in other countries. Mothering images on Philippine TV has shown some of the same trends that is seen in the United States. Although “Teletubbies and Barney & Friends display an equal representation in number, each show displays gender stereotyped qualities,” it is obvious that these programs are sometimes reinforcing the wrong ideas about gender roles to children, roles that feminists have been battling for almost half a century. “Both programs demonstrated clear gendered roles with males being more active and females being more social and passive. This distinction appeared most obviously in the real-life segments of both programs with women as mother or passive viewer of action. Neither program shows women or men in non-stereotypical roles, indicating at an early age children are exposed to gender-specific occupational expectations.” Each show has children as additional characters, and each episode consists of a live action activity.