Feminist Representation In Beauty And The Little Mermaid

787 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Disney movies feminist criticism

In conjunction to these questions, the study did not justify the choice for categorizing Belle as princess. To be factual, Belle is a village girl and daughter of a man who create a collection of music boxes. She was no princess. Despite the fact she married the Beast, Prince Adam at the end of the movie, it was never stated whether she became a princess. In addition, the stated masculinity trait were not further elaborated by giving specific explanation.

On the similar note, (The Mask of Beauty: Masquerade Theory and Disney's Beauty and the Beast, Lara Sumera, 2008) studied the femininity representation in Beauty and The Beast, and The Little Mermaid using Masquerade Theory. The concept of masquerade is a branch of feminist film theory. …show more content…

However, as stated before, a combination of masculine approach and feminist approach will serve as a complete perspective on gender role and character representations in Disney movies. Masculinity Studies is an interdisciplinary field of cultural, social, historical, political, psychological, economic, and artistic analysis that interrogates the constructions of masculinity in communities across the world and at various times in history (Prof. Helena Gurfinkel, 2012). Henceforth, understanding of feminism requires understanding of masculinity, and understanding of the two approaches is required in understanding gender …show more content…

Other male characters such as Beast, Maurice and Lefou was excluded. Interestingly, the study used a mixed methodology research approach compromising of both qualitative and quantitative methods to the research problem. The study used Chi square tests to calculate the occurrence of each variable of interest compared to the role of each character. The variables are character descriptions, physical descriptions, socioeconomic status, sexuality, family structures and practices, aggression and character role. The qualitative analysis is done on the masculinity historically. This paper explored a different aspect of masculinity studies and thus contributing to the masculinity studies. Nevertheless, the study would be better–rounded if all the male characters of Beauty and The Beast is

Show More
Related

  • Analysis Of The Prince Is The Only Possibility: Subtextual Princess

    1006 Words  | 3 Pages

    Most women in their childhood had probably dreamt of being a princess and meeting their charming prince. As Walt Disney’s figures have been influential in this sense, the ideal portrayal of princesses still attracts young girls who imitate them, their lifestyle and their physical appearance. In Sleeping Beauty (1959) and in The Little Mermaid (1989) the narration is focused on the search for true love, personified by a prince, for self-accomplishment. It is crucial to differentiate the representation of femininity of the two protagonists in the two movies to better understand if the role of Princesses has changed over those last thirty years. The main figures in both movies

    Read More

  • Comparing The Film Beauty And The Beast

    896 Words  | 2 Pages

    This film, contrarily to its predecessors, scratches the surface of the male protagonists, and introduces men who are humanly flawed and relatable, taking them down from the pedestal they used to be on, and making them equal to the female characters. No matter how much one may despise the Beast for being aggressively temperamental, Gaston for his stupidity and violence, or even Lumière for his objectification of women, these characters have a life and a role of their own, and do not remain two-dimensional like the previous Princes. For example, Belle’s father never suggests that she marries a man and only caringly mentions Gaston as a potential companion and friend for his lonely daughter. In the same manner, the Disney Corporation is more open to sexual innuendos and female sexuality in the film as it has ever been with Lumière and Plumette’s affair being explicitly showed. Finally, as Dawn Elizabeth England, Lara Descartes, and Melissa Collier-Meek further explain this in their journal "Gender Role Portrayal and the Disney Princesses:"

    Read More

  • Disney Princess Culture

    1404 Words  | 3 Pages

    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

    Read More

  • Disney Argumentative Essay

    810 Words  | 2 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Disney and Traditional Stereotypes

    1067 Words  | 3 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Gender Roles in Disney

    2315 Words  | 5 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Beauty and The Beast

    661 Words  | 2 Pages

    Through the three revisions of Beauty and The Beast, the fairy tales retold share many similarities as well as many differences according to their time period. In all three versions femininity and masculinity are presented in many ways. Femininity is shown through all three main female characters, Belle from the famous Disney film “The Beauty and The Beast”, the narrator in “Tiger’s Bride”, and Psyche in “Cupid and Psyche”. In all three versions, the female characters breaks society’s expectations of a typical woman. In CP Psyche stands up to Cupid’s mother Venus and accomplishes these activities usually performed by males. She shows society that women can overcome male activities and have strength to complete the same tasks. She breaks tradition of the male character fighting for her because in this version she takes on the hero role and fights for Cupid. This was not something ordinarily done by woman characters during this time. In TB the narrator breaks the tradition of the innocent stereotypical woman figure. The narrator exposes and does things most woman would never have the nerve to do. She shows society that women can fault their beauty in other ways. Even if society does not make it acceptable to have sex before marriage, she shows that women can expose their body and beauty in many ways. In DB version Belle is a great example that women should not be looked at as dolls and let males have control over them. She shows society that woman can be independent and educated. She does not get married to the most handsome male in town however she goes after someone who deeply cares about her. She displays a great example of how woman have their own mind and can think for themselves. Woman are allowed to make decisions and have ...

    Read More

  • Disney and Gender Identity

    1424 Words  | 3 Pages

    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 (...

    Read More

  • Construction Of The Female Self Summary

    1218 Words  | 3 Pages

    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

    Read More

  • Gender Roles In Beauty And The Beast

    1180 Words  | 3 Pages

    Social factors have always encouraged the idea that men embody masculinity and women embody femininity and, thus, certain gender-norms are expected accordingly. In the past, such expectations were traditional and to go against them was frowned upon by the general public. Contemporarily speaking, there is more freedom to avail oneself of today than there was once upon a time. Jeanne-Marie LePrince de Beaumont’s fairytale adaptation of ‘Beauty and The Beast’ was published in 1740. During this time, men and women were compelled by the social conventions associated with their gender. When analyzing the literary work, the reader can grasp what gender roles are eminent in the characters identity and motives. By exploring the choice of language being

    Read More

  • Disney Princesses' Influence on Young Children

    1103 Words  | 3 Pages

    In today’s modern age, young children are being raised by their TV screen. Reining from the original tales of Perrault and the Grim Brothers, the Disney princess line has been a staple on the screens since the 1930s (Do Rozario 1). However, these princesses have gone through dramatic changes to remain relevant to todays youth. The effects that can be influenced by the roles expressed in these types of films send mixed messages to the audience, causing them to ask themselves whether or not they should believe what the princess is expressing on the screen.

    Read More

  • Essay On The Role Of Women In Disney Animation

    1714 Words  | 4 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • The Trouble with Beauty and the Beast

    556 Words  | 2 Pages

    Disney attempts to show the feminist qualities of Belle. For example the movie portrays her as intelligent and not easily swayed by love, in the case of Gaston. However, the Beast is advertised as the possessor of ‘beauty’ and Belle must learn its nature; Belle’s fate is his. It is Belle, robbed by her traditional beauty, who is being instructed from the Beast in how to elicit beauty form beastliness. She must learn to love ugliness and literally embrace the bestial. Another problematic element might be Bell...

    Read More

  • Argumentative Essay On Disney Princesse

    1063 Words  | 3 Pages

    Since 1937, when Snow White was created, Disney princesses have been falsely portraying women. While their personalities have changed to keep up with society’s standards, their unrealistic body

    Read More

  • Feminism and the Movie Industry

    1785 Words  | 4 Pages

    Feminism is a movement that supports women equality within society. In relation to film, feminism is what pushes the equal representation of females in mainstream films. Laura Mulvey is a feminist theorist that is famous for touching on this particular issue of how men and women are represented in movies. Through her studies, she discovered that many films were portraying men and women very differently from reality. She came up with a theory that best described why there is such as huge misrepresentation of the social status quos of male and female characters. She believed that mainstream film is used to maintain the status quo and prevent the realization of gender equality. This is why films are continuously following the old tradition that males are dominant and females are submissive. This is the ideology that is always present when we watch a movie. This is evident in the films from the past but also currently. It is as if the film industry is still catering to the male viewers of each generation in the same way. Laura Mulvey points out that women are constantly being seen as sexual objects, whether it is the outfits they wear or do not wear or the way they behave, or secondary characters with no symbolic cause. She states that, “in traditional exhibitionist role women are simultaneously looked at and displayed, with their appearance coded for strong visual and erotic impact so that they can be said to connote it-be-looked-at-ness.”(Mulvey pg. 715). Thus, women are nevertheless displayed as nothing more than passive objects for the viewing pleasure of the audience. Mulvey also points out through her research that in every mainstream movie, there is ...

    Read More

More about Feminist Representation In Beauty And The Little Mermaid

Open Document