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More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
The representation of women in society
Portrayal of women in media, how does this contradict gender norms and feminists
Gender influence on gender in society
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Recommended: The representation of women in society
Comparing the Ways in Which Women are Presented in Disney's Sleeping Beauty and Mulan
Mulan is a family film, animation, fantasy, adventure, comedy, and
musical. It tells the story of a young Chinese girl who decides to
take her fathers place who, is ill and defends her country. Only men
can go into battle but she disguises herself as her father. The
tagline is: “The flower that blooms in adversity is the most rare and
beautiful of them all.”
Sleeping Beauty is a Fairytale, family film, musical, animation and
romance. It tells the story of a young girl, who has been put asleep
by a fairy. The spell cannot be broken until a prince kisses her.
The tagline is: “Wondrous to see, glorious to hear and magnificent new
motion picture.”
Sleeping Beauty was made and produced in the 1950’s at this time of
life, society was recognised in Disney films to be where the girl is
blonde and wants to be saved by the strong prince and that is what the
majority of girls wanted to be like at the time.
However Mulan is modern and it turns out that she is the heroine.
This proves how much society has changed and shows the different ways
that women are presented during that period of time. Cross-dressing
is also the case in this film. In the Chinese culture women are not
allowed to go to war for their country so Mulan disguises herself as a
man and makes herself look like a man with her features and clothing.
There is no way this would happen in films like sleeping beauty.
If danger occurs during the film Mulan would battle and act more
heroically, whereas sleeping Beauty would be scared and need some
heroic man to save her. This would be seen as sexism nowadays as it
is the man who does all the battling and not the women.
According to Vladimir Propp, Mulan is a heroine and Sleeping Beauty
isn’t Mulan fights battles.
In the article, “Little Girls or Little Women: The Disney Princess Affect”, Stephanie Hanes shows the influential impact that young girls, and youth in general, are experiencing in today’s society. This article goes in depth on the issues that impressionable minds experience and how they are reacting as a result. “Depth of gender guidelines” has been introduced to youth all around the world making it apparent that to be a girl, you have to fit the requirements. Is making guidelines of how you should act and look as a gender going too far?
In addition, this film explores a new way to love, breaking the trope of Disney’s traditional and antiquated love stories. Beauty and the Beast is not about love at first sight, but rather a more realistic representation of love, when two equal people learn to know and appreciate one another. As Charles Solomon explains in his insightful article "Animated Heroines Finally Get in Step With the Times” in the Los Angeles Times:
The first and most noticeable change which happened to the Disney’s princesses is the existence of woman of color as the princesses. From the first princess movie in 1937, Disney exclusively uses a White woman or a Caucasian woman as the princess - from Snow White to Belle, all of these princesses are White women. Though the notion of racial discrimination abolishment had been reverberated since 1950s in America, only on the sixth movie in 1992 the first colored princess, Jasmine, appeared as the official Disney’s princess. After Jasmine, impressively and consecutively, Disney releases three more princesses from colored women before using White women again as the princesses.
In this investigation, I aim to explore how females are represented in horror films. The representation of females and males has changed dramatically in society and this is reflected in horror films. However, traditionally women in general are characterised as the damsel in distress because stereotypically they are playing the weaker role and are in instantaneous danger and attacked by a stronger character, usually played by a male.
Hope Edelman’s “The Myth of Co-Parenting: How It Was Supposed To Be. How It Was”, Edelman struggles to break the stereotype that has been placed on her by society, of her being the stay at home mom, while her husband remains the sole supporter. Peggy Orenstein’s “Cinderella and Princess Culture” fears a similar stereotype that has been placed on her daughter for her to be very feminine and dependent, which has been placed on young girls by the highly demanding princess culture. Both authors are very outspoken feminists and both believed that women should be more independent and be encouraged to make their own choices. Edelman is currently living in what one can assume is a “Feminist’s Nightmare”, she has been unintentionally degraded by her
I have watched the Grimm's Fairy Tale Classics of Beauty and the Beast where I talk about the films use of archetypes. Maria I believe is the archetype of the innocent because she was happy with not getting anything at all from her fathers trip to the market. The father is to possibly be the archetype of the caregiver because he wants to get his daughter Maria a present. The father also wants to protect her from the beast after he stole from the beast by giving up his life. The beast is the archetype is the lover because he just wants someone to love him and marry him. I want to say that this fairy tell complicates archetypal because at the start of the story the beast appears to be the evil villain or the bad guy but we later learn that
Roles of Women in A Raisin In the Sun, The House On Mango Street, and A Yellow Raft In Blue Water
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
The biological differences that set apart the male and female gender throughout any culture remain eminent. Men are perceived as the stronger and dominant gender; women play the role of the weaker. In each culture the expectation of the manner in which men and women behave are influenced by the ideals and customs of that culture. In most predominant cultures, the man undertakes the role as a leader, and the woman devotes her life to the husband. Throughout history, traditions and literature provide a template to the identities of various cultures. Sleeping Beauty’s classic tale of a beautiful princess takes a central precept that previous patriarchal archetypes dominated during the 17th Century. The archetypal perceptions of women resulted from conscious and unconscious literature influenced by male-dominated perspectives and social standards.
This article discusses the third generation of Disney princesses (The Princess and the Frog’s Tiana, Tangled’s Rapunzel, and Brave’s Merida) and how their roles and characteristics change the archetype of the stereotypical female. Stephens begins by providing a summary of The Princess and the Frog. Discussing Tiana’s mindset of working hard, she introduces the main goal of Tiana: to own a restaurant. The entire movie is based around Tiana’s motive of “obtain[ing] her restaurant” and not about her finding true love, even though she eventually does (Stephens 96). Stephens leads into mentioning how “her goal determines every path she chooses” in the movie, unlike previous Disney princesses whose dreams were there but not acknowledged (97). She
All four Sleeping Beauty stories have one thing in common, Sleeping Beauty always pricks her finger on a spinning wheel/flax. In Sun, Moon, and Talia, the story takes place in a country house. Talia gets raped by a king who finds her in the country house and she gives birth to two beautiful children named Sun and Moon. Talia is awoken because one of the twins had sucked the splinter out from underneath her finger. There are several major characters of which include, Talia, Sun, Moon, the King and Queen. In the end the Queen tries to throw Talia into the fire, but instead, the Queen gets thrown into the fire and Sun, Moon, Talia, and the King live happily ever after. In the next story, Sleeping Beauty in the Woods, there is a party for the newborn princess and all, except one fairy, were invited. The eldest fairy,
The Disney movie, Mulan, is a fantastic movie that depicts gender-stereotyped roles, socialization of gender roles, and consequences of over stepping one’s gender role. Both males and females have a specific role in the Chinese society that one must follow. Mulan made a brave choice pretending to be a man and going to war against the Huns in place of her father, risking serious consequences if she were to get caught. She broke the socialization of gender roles and could have been faced with very serious consequences of her actions. The Chinese society in Mulan exemplifies the typical gender roles of males and females, the consequences of displaying the opposite gender role, and showed what the society expected in males and females in characteristics and attitudes.
Social factors have always encouraged the idea that men embody masculinity and women embody femininity and, thus, certain gender-norms are expected accordingly. In the past, such expectations were traditional and to go against them was frowned upon by the general public. Contemporarily speaking, there is more freedom to avail oneself of today than there was once upon a time. Jeanne-Marie LePrince de Beaumont’s fairytale adaptation of ‘Beauty and The Beast’ was published in 1740. During this time, men and women were compelled by the social conventions associated with their gender. When analyzing the literary work, the reader can grasp what gender roles are eminent in the characters identity and motives. By exploring the choice of language being
Over the years, Disney has presented many movies to their audience—most having a Princess as the protagonist. These movies became a babysitter for most parents in the early stages of their child’s life. Most people found these movies as relatively harmless. The obvious assumption about the Disney Princesses is that they only desire true love since almost every movie ends in romance. Parents just viewed these movies as romantic movies on a child’s level. However, these movies were not solely intended for an audience of an age that can be counted on both hands. They were intended to speak to “an intelligent and active audience” (Sumera 40). However, there are many people who disagree with the ways of the Disney Princess movies. The disagreements lie within the portrayal of women gender roles in these movies. It is argued that Disney portrays women as a being nurturing individuals without any control over their identity. The women are unable to think for themselves, because they are uneducated, and they are quick to fall in love with the first man that pays them any attention. However, this is not completely true. The people that are against the portrayal of women in the Disney movies are failing to recognize the underlying concepts in these movies. For example, Belle, in Beauty and the Beast, was well educated, Mulan went to war despite the consequences, and Merida, in Brave, stood up to her mother in refusal to marry. The Disney Princesses desired intelligence, bravery, strength, and independence—not true love’s kiss.
In a typical classic romantic movie, there is always a Gallant, young, brave prince and a beautiful innocent girl who needs to be saved. In the movies, the prince finds the girl and saves her from her horrible life, then he brings her to the castle, they fall in love, get married and live happily ever after. The film I watched completely fits this description. It exemplifies the genre perfectly. The roles of men and women in the classic movie Cinderella really emphasize the gender roles and the biases than used to be a big part of their society and their daily life during that time period. Also, the film showed how women are represented in classic romantic/fairytale films. After watching this movie, I can clearly see the expectations of each gender and how most decisions are based on appearances. There was a big contrast to when I compared those views to society's views today.