When a tale is told, it is repeated and reconfigured to suit our backgrounds and our name. A tale in reality, is just a memory that has already been experienced and is being shared from a different point of view (Seger 386). Walt Disney Pictures creates scenarios where the situation of which characters are placed in, reflect families of the real world. Movies like The Jungle Book: a story about a boy raised by wolves in the jungle; and Finding Nemo: a father and his son lose their wife and mother and get separated at the son’s first day at school, have story plots that follow a realistic plot that could occur in a real-life family.
Mowgli--the child from The Jungle Book--has no real human mother or human father, but has a mother figure that had raised him. This is a mother wolf that took him in as her own, raising a few wolf cubs along with him. When personified, the image depicted by Mowgli and his wolf “family” represents a mother that is raises children on her own and accepts another child into her family. This is one of the many “non-traditional” families put together by Walt Disney Pictures to satisfy their parent-abusive animated movie requirements.
In a study conducted by Shelley A. Haddock and students from Colorado State University, Images of Couples and Families in Disney Feature-Length Animated Films, the students selected 26 movies to analyze based on the relationship between characters. It is explained that approximately 30.8% of the Disney movies they chose, were made up of “traditional” children with both biological parents. (Images of Couples and Families in Disney Feature-Length Animated Films) If only 30.8% make up the biological families of the most commonly watched Disney movies, then Disney decided to...
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...d “non-traditional” family traits to groups of characters describes very closely how each movie portrays a family easily found as close to us as the house next door.
Works Cited
Seger, Linda. "Creating the Myth." Signs of Life in the USA. 7th Edition. (2012): 386-395.
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Haddock, Shelley A. “Images of Couples and Families in Disney Feature-Length Animated
Films” The American Journal of Family Therapy 31 (2003): 355-373. Print.
Balraj, Belinda Marie and Kupusamy Gopal. “The Construction of Family in Selected
Disney Animated Films” International Journal of Humanities and Social Science
3.11 (2013): 119-121. Print.
Hecht, Jennifer, "Happily Ever After: Construction of Family in Disney Princess Collection
Films" (2011). Master's Theses. Paper 4094.
The Jungle Book. Dir. Wolfgang Reitherman. Narr. Sebastian Cabot. Buena Vista
Distribution, 1967. Film.
Finding Dory, The Jungle Book, Tarzan, Zootopia-I can't solely blame my younger sisters for watching these Disney movies as I was probably the one who suggested them.
...sms of Disney, these really can’t be validated as having any real effect on children and families. There is no harm in providing a fantasy and imaginative world for children to enjoy. Parents, along with the Disney Company, support the notion that a child should be a child. Children should have fun and enjoy the world of imagination while they are little. Parents also enjoy the world of imagination by providing it to their children.
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.
Produced in 2009, The Frog Princess is a Disney animation inspired by the Grimm Brothers’ fairytale, The Frog Prince. Both The Frog Princess and The Frog Prince deal with a multiplicity of issues, all of which contribute to supporting positive messages and morals (Ceaser, 2009). However, though The Frog Princess is based on a classic fairytale, it is far from being the same. The writers at Disney have taken a classic fairytale and created a “Monster” (Prince, 2001). This essay will examine the evolution of the original Grimm Brothers’ fairytale, the messages both main characters represent, and how the adaptation to fit a modern child readership diminishes a classic fairytale. Through discussing these arguments, this paper will prove that Disney’s adaptation into The Princess and The Frog is counter-productive in representing the original story’s messages, morals, and values.
When the word “fairytale” is mentioned, nearly everyone thinks of light-hearted stories with friendly characters and happy endings. However, these are not the ideas that classic fairytales originally sparked. In fact, numerous modern Disney movies were based off stories that were not so sugar coated. In the 19th century, the Brothers Grimm were responsible for multiple of these popular children’s tales. The Disney remakes of classic fairytales such as Cinderella, Tangled, and Snow White exclude the dark, twisted themes that are significant in the Brothers Grimm fairytales, because society tendencies continue to evolve toward sheltering and overprotecting young children.
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 has made it his life 's goal to create home entertainment for both young and old. From the creation of Mickey to his work in films, Disney had made it clear that happiness is something that everyone should have. Disney had also know that animations is not just for the imagination of the children. Early movies such as Snow White and Pinocchio have clear messages for the younger views. “In Snow White- the main characters are victims of injustice who are eventually restored to their rightful place. In Pinocchio, the characters Pinocchio, Jiminy Cricket and Geppetto are faced with dilemmas, and their own actions result in them becoming victims of ev...
Seger, Linda. "Creating the Myth." Signs of Life in the U.S.A.: Readings on Popular Culture for Writers. 4th ed. Ed. Sonia Maasik and Jack Solomon. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2003. 316-325.
If a girl was going to search for her Prince Charming, the first place she should look is in the world of animation. Animation has probably been around since the beginning of time. Although, the artwork that originally resembled animation was only one or two cels, animation today is made up of hundreds or thousands of cels.
Over the years, fairytales have been distorted in order to make them more family friendly. Once these changes occur, the moral and purpose of the stories begin to disappear. The tales featured in the many Disney movies - beloved by so many - have much more malignant and meaningful origins that often served to scare children into obeying their parents or learning valuable life lessons.
The debate over the good and bad aspects of Disney movies has been going on for years. It has become a part of pop culture in a way never expected through things such as YouTube videos and meme’s. While looking at multiple Disney movies may give a wider range of example of both the good and the bad in Disney movies, to help depict the effects the movies actually have on kids it is most beneficial to study just one movie. Zia’s essay argues that Disney movies have a good influence on children by teaching them good life morals. However, one of her examples, Mulan, is not an example of achievement through hard work like Zia explains, but rather a change made through magic, and example of the horrible historical inaccuracies made in Disney movies and the lack of parental respect that they teach children.
Wynns, S. L., & Rosenfeld, L. B. (2003). Proquest. “Father-daughter relationships in disney's animated films.” The Southern Communication Journal, 68(2), 91.
Towbin. M. A. et al. (2008). Images of gender, race, age, and sexual orientation in Disney
For decades Disney has been the source of happy endings, fairytales, and family friendly stories for children of all ages. These stories range from realistic and familiar, to the eye-catching magical fairytale. The key to each of these stories are the happy endings brought about by each of the characters unique personalities and dreams. Disney’s films are attempted to provide children with the basic understanding of wrong versus right, but instead influences our society’s beliefs and awareness. Although Disney’s efforts to provide the basic morals to our children are misleading and affect our society strongly, they also contain the use of racism in a form which shows the major differences between characters. The once admired and well-known characters are seemed to be recognized by their species, ethnicity and even their social class. Disney films have taken out of context and have persuaded their viewers understanding of racial stereotyping, which is thoroughly explained in Henry Giroux and Grace Pollock’s novel, The Mouse that Roared. They bring awareness to the underlying racial stereotyping in Disney films, which deeply affect our societies understanding today. Giroux and Pollock bring into perception these admired and regularly watched films through precise examples and racist rendering of the specific characters species and ethnicities which strongly influence our society and lead children to intake these negative influences.
In society today, there is pressure from all sides to conform to a certain ideal of beauty. People are overwhelmed with the different types of images and media forms that are telling people how to act and what to look like. Media is one of the most powerful tools at our disposal. It has the power to educate, affect social change, and much more, but if taken incorrectly people will take drastic lengths to change something about themselves. There have been many attempts to empower women through different types of media, but many have failed miserably. Over the last couple of years, Disney has struggled greatly with the representation of women throughout Princess movies because young girls are hounded with images of princesses,