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Essay sample impacts of disney movies
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I. Introduction
Disney is one of the biggest powerhouses in the media world through its control of many television stations, motion picture studios, and ABC, which has this influenced much of the cultural learning that goes on today (Giroux & Pollock, 2010, p.156). This control gives the Disney corporation a very influential position and has allowed them to develop an ideological hegemony by selling “Disney Magic” to children. Parents are coerced into letting their children watch Disney films due to the prominence of the films in our culture but also because of how this corporation has become ingrained into the socialization of children. In particular, Walt Disney movies are one of the main ways that children unknowingly are taught the values,
The movie begins with a female, who longs for more from the life that she is living. There is then some sort of conflict that leads to the entrance of the male figure into her life and they begin to create a relationship. This relationship is in some way threatened by some external force, in which, the female needs the male to save her from. At the end of the movie, the female and male live happily ever after, after resolving the conflict. This repetitive plot line is in the first Disney Princess movies, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, and Cinderella and in more recent releases like Beauty and the Beast, The Little Mermaid, and Tangled. Through these media images reinforces the gender binary of heteronormativity to young children (Palczewski & DeFrancisco, 2014, p. 228). Heteronormativity is how social institutions, such as Disney, “reinforce the presumption that people are heterosexual and that gender and sex are natural binaries” (Palczewski & DeFrancisco, 2014, p. 16). Thus, the formulaic plot line that Disney Princess films follows communicates to children that the normal and only sexual orientation is heterosexual and more specifically, to young girls, that marrying a man is the only way in which her life can be
Every fairytale seems to have the usual prince saving the poor girl from harm or servitude or whatever horrid situation she may be in, and then companies like Disney add their movie magic and make it into a franchise. Others may add a twist or two, such as the film Ever After, directed by Andy Tennant. Yet no matter how the story goes, there is the same feminine ideas imposed upon the female lead. She has to compete with others for the attention of her “prince,” gender roles are a must, and morals are taught in some way or another through some kind of stereotype. These tend to cause some feminist outrage and even maybe a small outrage among parents who must deal with the children that watch these movies and read the stories because of the behavioral
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.
The Disney Organisation which was first created by Walt Elias Disney on October 16th 1923, is perhaps one of the most powerful and prominent corporations in the world. Disney is best known for all their motion pictures which are aimed at a family audience, in recent years Disney collaborated with Pixar to develop further within the motion/ animation industry. According to Forbes.com Disney is ‘number eleven on The World’s Most Valuable Brands’ list. And is worth an estimated 179.5 billion dollars. The Disney Corporation is constantly putting a spin on well-known fairy tales and folk tales, whilst also creating new and innovative stories such as Frozen which is one of the largest grossing Disney films to date. From Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs to Frozen Disney’s films have become iconic and have had an influence on society by creating the ideals of good winning over bad and
...aves Princess Jasmine multiple times and falling in love at first sight. They also live happily ever-after together, just as every other Disney prince and princess in every other Disney movie. Parents should be aware of the subliminal messages that their children view in the Disney movies they are watching, and grow up to believe that is how life goes. The children that are growing up watching Disney movies with such strong gender stereotypes are learning things they may factor into their own futures, and think that acting the way of the Disney roles is the only way for them to live their life in a happy manner. The way Disney animated films assign gender roles to their characters effect young children’s views of right and wrong in society. It is wrong, and they should not be exposed to such material growing up because it is harmful to their future expectations.
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.
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.
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 (...
Disney is a company that almost everybody has either seen, heard about, or been to. Throughout the years that Disney has been making movies, some people have been saying that Disney shows stereotyping through their movies. Even though some people do not notice these stereotyping images, some people do notice them and do get very offended. Disney has been around since the early 1920`s when “Walt signed a contract with M. J. Winkler to produce a series of Alice Comedies — this date is considered the start of the Disney company first known as The Disney Brothers Studio”(Wikipedia 3). In the past, Disney has had many different claims about stereotyping, but nothing was really done about the issues. Despite claims that Disney invents perfect role models for children, Disney actually creates their characters based upon stereotypes.
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
"Feminism isn't about making women strong. Women are already strong. It's about changing the way the world perceives that strength" (Anderson). Throughout time and still to this day, women struggle with oppression due to the difference in gender. For centuries, women have been seen as the inferior gender due to their inclination of vulnerability along with inheriting maternal instincts. Men did not become the more powerful gender because of their superior strength, but because they were not occupied within the domestic sphere that were supported by women instead. This independence was rarely granted to women due to them being preoccupied with the responsibility of supervising children, while it allows men to experience more opportunities. The message Disney grants to their viewers is an awareness about gender equality in the world, which allows them to influence the way the world
Princess films are centered around a female character who meets the love of her life and, like in other fairy tales, ends with their wedding (Ross 4). Initially, the Disney princesses’ have portrayed a typical female role in the film, showing the expected gender roles in American society (England Descartes Collier-Meek 563). These gender-based stereotypes are influenced by the time period they were made in, but also originating from old fairytales made centuries ago. “Society’s increasing reliance on the use of television and videos to occupy children warrants continued investigation of how exposure to media may affect children. Given that media portrayals like those in the animated movies of Walt Disney often reinforce societal stereotypes related to gender, ethnicity, and culture, parents may consider a more thoughtful approach to the use of television and videos” (Disney Movies 1).
When Disney first launched its first princess film in 1937. The young female character was very feminine and was meant to represent what girls should want to aspire to be like. ‘Snow White’ was the first full length Disney film and this film generated around £184,925,486 in the box office. This film was the start of the ‘Disney Princess’. The term ‘Disney Princess’ is now known worldwide and in many ways this label does not represent positive connotations in the 21st century, the associations with label shows you to be dependent and stuck in the social hierarchy where women are at the bottom.
Disney films have always been a huge part of the pop culture. They featured instantly recognizable characters among every age group. These characters, especially the princesses, have been very influential, more precisely on young girls, from Belle to Frozen. However, the majority of these films revolve around the same plot with minor differences: it is always a tale about finding romantic love, a prince charming who saves the princess from a danger and they live happily ever after. However, in 2012, Disney and Pixar produced Brave, a movie that challenged the types of Disney movies we were used to. It favors feminism and gives girls a nontraditional princess model. Brave stars a strong female protagonist, Merida, and an influential plot that
Disney’s princess movies produced after and despite the efforts of the Women's Liberation Movement conveyed an inaccurate and sexist message about the role of women as silenced wives in society. The Little Mermaid, released in 1989, was the first Disney princess movie following Sleeping Beauty in 1959, after a three-decade period of recess encompassing the Women’s Liberation Movement. These next set of films, including Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin, were produced from 1989 to 1998, before another decade of relapse (“List of Disney Princess Movies”). Although some of the films in this batch were markedly better at providing strong female leads, such as Mulan, who saves China, and Pocahontas, who stops a war, plot lines still primarily focus on the
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