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Gender and Disney
Women's role in disney movies essay
Disney movies analyse
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The Disney Corporation is one of the biggest companies that our society has seen develop. Disney products are everywhere; they produce “children’s books, cartoons, computer software, and toys” (Towbin, Haddock, Zimmerman, Lund and Tanner, 24). In 1937, Disney released its first full-length animated movie, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Since then, this business, in regards to media, has been on an economic roller coaster that only goes up. In a study published by the Journal of Feminist Family Therapy entitled Images of Gender, Race, Age and Sexual Orientation in Disney Feature-Length Animated Films Professors Towbin, Haddock, Zimmerman, Lund and Tanner from various universities, looked in depth at Disney movies. In the article, the authors …show more content…
Disney movies are intergenerational, in a sense that families with people of all ages have can find a common past time in them. Based off a study done by Professors Towbin, Haddock, Zimmerman, Lund and Tanner, Disney movies produced from 1937-2000 have five common themes for the male gender and four common themes for the female gender (24). In regards to this movie, two themes from the male gender themes were looked at when applied to the movie Frozen, which was released in 2013. The Disney feature-length animated film Frozen has very different gender roles presented than that of Disney movies from pre-2003. When it comes to the villain, Hans, critics have realized that he is different from other Disney villains in the sense that he pretends to love Anna, the princess character, and uses that power to manipulate her. This type of blind emotional manipulation is unique to Frozen. Since Frozen was the only modern movie looked at in this paper, it is possible that this manipulation could only be a one-time thing for Disney. However, going off of the study done by Towbin, Haddock, Zimmerman, Lund and Tanner, the Disney Corporation does not see any problems in using past themes
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.
The two movies I chose to watch this week was “The Road to El Dorado” and “The Emperor's New Groove” as my choice of animated films to analyze. The animated film, “The Road to El Dorado” stereotypical representations of race, ethnicity, gender and sexuality are added in children’s films. I see sexuality played out most of the time in these Disney films. There is only one woman, and her name is Chel. There are many single female characters in otherwise male dominated movies who are portrayed as sexy. It is unfortunately very common and reinforces the idea of women as tokens, and the audience will not find stories interesting unless their focus is men’s issues and lives. As soon as Chel appears she is immediately characterized as an object that
Disney owns multiple television networks, is a large producer of box office hits, owns multiple theme parks and resorts across the world, and is a major supplier of children’s toys (Junn, 1997). For these reasons, and because of Disney universality, meaning its popularity worldwide, it has the ability to be globally influential on society’s youth. The potential for gender stereotypes in Disney movies was the reason for this study as it could have significant ramifications in the future (Thompson & Zerbinos, 1997). In an attempt to analyze the potential gender differences in Disney movies, we watched and coded five popular Disney movies, noting the character’s name, gender, and the occurrence of four predetermined behaviors, giving order, aggressive behaviors, performing domestic duties, and primping. Therefore, in the current study on the occurrence of gender stereotypical behavior in Disney tales and based on previous studies by Thompson and Zerbinos (1997), (Junn,1997), and Leaper et al (2002), first, we predicted that male characters would exhibit masculine stereotypical behaviors such as giving orders and being aggressive, more often than feminine stereotypical behaviors and women would display feminine stereotypical behaviors such as performing domestic duties and primping, more often than masculine stereotypical behaviors in Disney movies. Second, we hypothesized that women would have more fluidity in these
I found “Someday My Prince Will Come” to be a very interesting and enlightening article, sometimes when watching Disney movies at face value, it is easy to miss just how heterosexually driven these movies are. Many of the Disney movi...
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.
We can see that throughout the making of Disney movies the gender images have not evolved to match the changes in our society now, they have stayed stereotypical and similar to when Disney movies were first made in 1937 (Towbin et al 2003). In studies of 16 different Disney movies Mia Towbin (2003) and others
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 (...
[1] Information was mainly taken from the Harvard Business Case Study “The Walt Disney Company: The Entertainment King”
Presently, Disney known for its mass media entertainment and amusement parks technically bring warm feelings to many children and some adults. Personally, Disney elicits magical fantasies that children enjoy and further encourages imagination and creativity. For decades Disney has exist as an unavoidable entity with its famous global sensation and reach. Furthermore, Disney is a multibillion dollar empire with an unlimited grasp on individuals and territories. An empire per se, since they own many media outlets, markets, shops, etc., you name it they got it. However, the film Mickey Mouse Monopoly presents an entirely new perspective on the presumed innocence projected in Disney films. This film exposes certain traits Disney employs and exclusively portrays through its media productions, specifically cartoons for directing and nurturing influence beginning with children. Mickey Mouse Monopoly points out camouflaged messages of class, race, and gender issues in Disney films that occur behind the scenes intended to sway viewers towards adopting Disney values.
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.
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.
We have all grown up watching Disney animated films and for most of us, it was the most memorable part of our childhood. What we didn’t and don’t realize till this moment is that almost all the disney animated movie portray stereotypes such as racism, gender stereotypes and the. Through its atrocious stereotypes, Disney animated films such as Lion King, Snow White and The Little Mermaid suggests that women are less in power than a man, skin color plays an important role in determining the character of a person and transformation a princess goes through, in order to get the “prince” of her dreams.
of influence in both the characters and gender roles of people in our society. The films have brought about the shaping of morals, behaviors and characters of not only children, but also adults in todays society, through engaging them in a constant series of unthinking consumption. In addition, most of the films in Disney bring out many different gender roles and people who grew up watching them have been influenced greatly by the content in the films (Blum 13). This paper will involve the various roles played by the characters in the films and how their roles have influenced the society at large.
Given the existence of modern technology, individuals are immersed in the mass media now more than ever before. Media, especially television, is a source of entertain for adults, adolescents, and also young children. According to research, children reportedly spend approximately 2.5 hours a day watching television (Larson, 2001). However, there has been increasing awareness of the potentially problematic implicit messages that may be communicating to children through media consumption (Smolak & Murnen, 2001; Freeman, 2007; Levine & Murnen, 2009). Disney, one of the most successful establishments in the film industry with a target audience consisting mainly of children, should not exception to this scrutiny. Though a majority of its movies are