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Depiction of women in movies
Gender roles and stereotypes in disney movies
Gender roles and stereotypes in disney movies
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Most of society defines masculinity as strong, non-emotional, independent, and competitive. Femininity is typically thought of as weak, nurturing, soft, and emotional. Most media has begun to redefine the way society thinks of typical characteristics of men and women. Disney/Pixar seem to be a big part of this redefinition as Gillam and Wooden point out in their article “Post-Princess models of Gender: The New Man in Disney/Pixar.” An example of this happens in Disney’s “The Pacifier” when Lieutenant Shane Wolfe defies his masculine role by showing his nurturing side while taking care of the Plummer children, becoming Lulu’s den mother, and helping produce Seth’s musical— “The Sound of Music”.
Wolfe first breaks the typical assumption of masculinity
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.
The animated film “Mulan” came out in 1998 and is based on a Chinese legend of the same name. It tells the story of Mulan, who disguises herself as a man and takes her father’s place in the army (IMDB.com). The main theme of the movie is that girls can do anything boys can do, demonstrated through Mulan holding her own while training with men and going head to head with the Villain, Shan Yu, multiple times. However, while the movie breaks down gender roles and stereotypes for women, it leans heavily on toxic masculinity.
male characters in Disney animated films needs to be addressed if we expect children to be able
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.
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. According to Disney films, it is important for women to achieve the stereotypical characteristics of a woman, such as maintaining their beauty to capture a man, and being weak and less educated than male characters. The women in Disney movies are always beautiful, which helps them to find a man.
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 (...
In the article Construction of the Female Self: Feminist Readings Of the Disney Heroine, Jill Birmie Henke, Diane Zimmerman Umble, and Nancy J. Smith are looking at the female self and how it was developed based on two theories: Standpoint by Parker Follet and the psychological development of girls by Gilligam. That by examines gender identity especially girls and how media exposure affects them through analyzing five of Disney movies: Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, The little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, and Pocahontas. They segmented the article into three titles: The Oxymoron of Power and the Perfect Girl where they introduced the two theories in which they built their critic on, Construction of the Female Self where they talk about the evolution in the female character from Cinderella to Pocahontas, and Construction of Self in Relation to Others where they talk about the evolution of the self in relation to others from power-over to power-with until power-to. Finally they concluded that even if the female character in Disney’s movies was changing to become more
Myers mentioned in his article that this generation of young discouraged, angry men feels abandoned with the today’s norms. Male movie stars and athletes have further influenced the masculine norms. In males perspective, liking a feminine color, doing feminine actions, listening to specified girl music is considered to be less manly. These have greatly affected the likes and dislikes of many men. The entertainment industry has created a big gap between what is masculine or feminine. This has caused a big separation and it's getting worse. Male are taught to be man of the house, strong, and powerful, but sometimes they’re belittled by society that they can’t do certain things and all the power is
Once upon a time, there was a 16 year old mermaid princess named Ariel who gave up her voice, an important part of her identity, in order to be with a man who she became infatuated with at just one glance. Ariel has a very traditional gender-stereotypical role in the film, as the helpless, clueless, naive, physically weak, submissive, and attractive female protagonist that Disney films, especially the classics, portray so often (England). There is a lot of controversy surrounding this film in regards to its patriarchal ideals. The Little Mermaid, like most media, is build for the ‘male gaze’, a term coined by Laura Mulvey that suggests that visual entertainment, such as movies, are structured to be viewed by a masculine consumer. I will argue that the male gaze perpetuates harmful gender-stereotypes in The Little Mermaid.
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.
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...
...n by naming the title of the movie after the main female protagonists. Just look at the Little Mermaid, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty and even Beauty and the Beast. All are movies about the females being damsels in distress and having a male come to their rescue. Charles Perrault’s original version portrays the perfect version that children all around the world should be watching. Children are already very impressionable and what they watch when they are younger is how they eventually will act. How they grow up rests on the children movies and books of that generation. Those movies and books are what form the future leaders of our countries and for one very impressionable company, such as Disney, to be favoring one gender more than the other can result in chaos. Overall, Charles Perrault’s feminist lens in his story can lead girls to an empowering high self-esteem.
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
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,