Gender, Race and Disney Princesses

1045 Words3 Pages

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.
Since they are formally known as princess movies, people tend to focus more on the feminist issues and a blind-eye is directed towards the masculinity issues; nonetheless this does not confirm their absence, even in recent Disney films. In the first Disney Princess film, the men (Prince Charming and the dwarves) were always the ones to do the saving, implying the strength of men. Strength and masculinity always come hand in hand with Disney films to this date. In Mulan, there is an entire song about what it means to be a man. Allegedly, what it means to be a man is to be as “swift as a coursing river”, with the “force of a great typhoon”, and have the “strength of a raging fire”. Even in their most recent Disney princess film, Kristoff is in the business, which requires him to move the ice around a lot. Ice is a hard and heavy substance and Kristoff’s ability to move...

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...in the film who took up more time than Tianna herself proving Disney’s “blatant racism and white [centralism]”. White centralism in these films can encourage it in the children who watch it as well, leading to further racial discrimination in society.

Works Cited

http://romancenovelsforfeminists.blogspot.ca/2013/01/ranking-feminism-or-ranking-race.html http://www.bustle.com/articles/17264-7-problematic-lessons-disney-movies-teach-boys-about-masculinity https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CWMCt35oFY http://theorizingmasculinity.blogspot.ca/2014/03/sexism-strength-and-dominance.html http://disneyforprincesses.tumblr.com/post/30365386014/the-problem-with-lottie-and-tianas-friendship https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHyzAbV6nuM https://medium.com/disney-and-animation/7c0bbc7252ef
http://likefeminismneverhappened.tumblr.com/post/13126810215/brave-new-pixar-world

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