The subject of women and how they were regarded over the course of the modern era is not by any means new. As the media evolved in the twenty-first century, physical, social and cultural expectations of women were tied together in the medium of film, causing controversy amongst viewers. The changes in the way women have been represented during the years of Disney animated films have been recorded and could be linked to the changing attitudes towards women in current American culture.
Although Disney is commonly associated with childhood innocence, giving young children the possibility to dream and fantasise, it is important to question the ideology and values that Disney promote. Although largely positive values arise from Disney Animation, there has also been a backlash of criticism against Disney. This negativity could stem from some of the inaccurate gender interpretations, conservative values and ideologies the films promote. ‘Such characters warrant critical attention because they are not just representations of individual people but are encodings of ideology and embodiments of ideological values’ (Fiske, 1987, cited in Lacroix, 2004, p.217). Therefore the aim of this dissertation will be to investigate the potentially prejudicial representations of gender in Disney’s feature animated films, focussing on the representations of the leading female protagonists.
The dissertation will analyse the construction of the female characters of the Walt Disney Studio between 1937 and 2013, attempting to establish the extent to which these characterisations were shaped by wider popular stereotypes. Drawing on the scholarship of gender theorists, this paper will examine the evolution of Disney heroines and will explore the relationship...
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...mine is not directly the main protagonist in Aladdin, it is important to review her character due to becoming a princess in the story and in terms of race and whether it affects her role in society. Although race is an important role in this film, given the word count, it is not within scope of this dissertation that this will be explored entirely.
The final chapter explores the post-feminist Disney princesses of the years 2000 to the present day, concentrating on Tiana from The Princess and The Frog (2009). This chapter provides an introduction to Disney Pixar and the modern Disney princess. This film has also been chosen due to Tiana being the first female lead of African American descent. In addition, the most recent Disney princess film Frozen (2013) will be outlined to support and help conclude to how the female princess has changed over the course of time.
Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, and many other Disney movies all have one thing in common, they feature a female lead who needs a male figure to save them. However, things started to change after the release of Mulan in 1988. Movies that were only representing female leads as weak and always needed to rely on someone, started to feature females who showed off their more masculine side. Mulan was one of the first animated films that had started to dive into that, not to mention it was based on a true story, making it even more powerful. In the article “Post-Princess Models of Gender: The New Man in Pixar/Disney”, authors Ken Gillam and Shannon R. Wooden explore Pixar movies show male characters who were not afraid to show their emotions
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.
From a young age, princess culture has impacted the lives of numerous people. Some individuals may have spent their childhood parading around in the attire of their favorite Disney princess while they put on their best rendition of the character they admired most. Ohers may have only seen a few Disney princess movies here and there and went seemingly unfazed by the phenomenon. With Disney’s debut of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, princess movies would provide the defining factor of the Disney entertainment empire for years to come. From this, fairy tales embarked into a territory that would touch the lives of many individuals
For this engagement essay the article Mean Ladies: Transgenders Villains in Disney Films by Amanda Putnam and the chapter “Someday My Prince Will Come”: Disney, the Heterosexual Imaginary and Animated Films by Carrie L. Cokely will summarized, analyzed, and engaged with using the Queer analytical framework.
A little girl sits on the floor with her gaze fixed on the television screen in front of her, watching magical images dance before her eyes and catchy songs flow through her ears. Even though she had seen it at least twenty times before, she still loved The Little Mermaid just as much as she did the first time she watched it. As she watched it, she longed to be a beautiful mermaid with a curvy body and wonderful singing voice like Ariel. She longed to be saved by the handsome Prince Eric, and fall in love and live happily ever-after like Ariel did. In today’s society, women strive to achieve equality between the sexes. 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.
For several years now, Disney seems to be determined not to offend anyone in order to keep its audience; indeed we are confronted with animation films full of compromises; they are not as degrading for women as Snow-White and the Seven Dwarves (1937), but they are nonetheless still filled with clichés. Films such as The Princess and The Frog (2009), Tangled (2010), Wreck-it Ralph (2012), have in common the sense of being progressive and however we can notice the resurgence of harmful gendered stereotypes on the subjects of the social scale, women’s role in society, or the status quo. Frozen comes in and turns out to be no exception. Though it includes several encouraging and gratifying elements, it contributes insidiously to spread numerous
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 (...
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.
Considering that, by viewing a Walt Disney film, they will alter their perspective as a result of identifying themselves as being similar to a princess. The unrealistic tale of Walt Disney films motivates children to act in a different way. In these issues we tend to investigate the perception of children towards viewing the films. As well as identifying themselves with specific fictional characters shown in Walt Disney films. Furthermore, we can discern the different emotions of female children within viewing it.
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.
Zipes, along with other scholars such as Eleanor Byrne and Martin McQuillan, authors of the book Deconstructing Disney, explore and catalogue the various ways in which Walt Disney-the man-and Disney-the corporation that is his legacy-perpetuate social figurations of race, gender and ethnocentrism through they films they produce. They furthermore critique Disney for reducing fairy tales to over-simplified, over-sanitized and over-sentimentalized banalities designed solely as a profit-generating products. Such analyses prove to be truly important work, as the socio-cultural ideas propagated by Disney, as well as the means by it executed such propagation prove key in unlocking the messages that are sent through seemingly harmless "entertainment". As Zipes keenly point out,
Each Disney princess has different positive attributes that make her unique, the most recent Disney princesses are especially fitting in today’s society. In Jena Stephens’ analysis of the three most recent princesses, excluding Anna and Elsa, she describes Rapunzel by saying, “Her forward thinking, desire to prove she is just as capable as a man, and realistic dreaming make her a great role model for young girls”. Whether it is to become a princess and marry her true love like Cinderella or open a restaurant like Princess Tiana, all of the Disney princesses have aspirations. Jena Stephens says, “The words that Tiana sings about the necessary hard work it will take for her to reach her dream stand out as a message to young viewersone that does not covey that love is the only thing that will make girls happy”. Not only do Disney princesses have dreams but they make their dreams come true with hard work. As Liz Gumbinner described her trip to Disney World with her daughters, “The princess luncheon led to a great discussion later in our hotel room, in which we told our girls that it is okay to be strong, smart, hardworking and still dream of marrying a prince”. Disney princesses carry themselves in a humble and confident manner. The princesses are beautiful but they are not conceited. Lastly, they are never stuck up but rather loving and independent which makes their character so
When Disney released the animated film “The Little Mermaid” in 1998, mermaids were making their resurgence in popular culture. The “imagineered” version of Han’s story tells of the mermaid princess Ariel who falls in love with the human prince Eric. She too traded her voice for legs, but unlike the original version, after a monumental battle with the evil sea witch, Ariel and Eric get married and there's a happy ending for everyone. Many analyses have been done on the effects of Disney princesses and how they perpetuate gender roles, however “The Little Mermaid” may be the most explicit in its portrayal of the beautiful and submissive mermaid. Ariel is gifted with a splendid singing voice; she uses her voice to empower herself and get the courage to leave the ocean.
Critics have warned the public audience about Disney programming’s affect on the “invasion and control of children’s imagination” (Ross 5). These movies express the typical gender roles “such as males being physically strong, assertive, and athletic, and females being prone to overt emotion, inc...
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