Beauty And The Beast Stereotypes

The first princess Walt Disney’s studio brought to life was none other than Snow White. The eponymous animated film is still a well-known story since it was released in 1937. In many ways the film does not hold up to today’s standards, and it is devoid of any characters’ worth being interested in. ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs’ has some of the most overt gender stereotyping, and relies on centuries old tropes to tell a story that was problematic to begin with. While Snow White may not be as popular as Moana, she is still a prominent part of the princess line-up. After eighty years and multiple re-releases, Snow White’s iconic image is practically synonymous with Disney. With Disney’s worldwide influence on children and media, it’s hard not to think of the repercussions of the princess phenomenon.

“Beauty and The Beast” is a classic well known romantic Disney movie that depicts the gender role of men and women in society. The film is based upon a smart young female protagonist named Belle who is imprisoned by a self-centered young prince after he has been turned into a beast. They both learn to love each other in the end and throughout the film there are several examples shown portraying the roles of gender. In the film the main characters Gaston and the Beast portray themselves as rude, conceited and more important than the woman even though the main character Belle is a woman whom is considered odd, yet smart, and unrelated to most women in society.

These traits reinforced the stereotype regarding women’s place in the home. Cinderella in particular epitomizes the ideals that form the cult of domesticity, as evident by her domestic roles with her step family and the importance placed on Prince Charming as a hero and caretaker for Cinderella, which is consistent with the archetype shown throughout Disney movies (K Heinzelman). Males and females are equally represented in the two movies that I chose. Females are more likely to be emotional, need rescuing, and are portrayed in service roles.

Disney’s Coercive Portray of Man’s Role Towards Woman by The Character of Beast Jeanne-Marie’s Beauty and the Beast and Disney’s popular counterpart both claim for a more profound value than superficial attractiveness through Belle’s romantic story. This is reflected by the character of Beast, which both stories depict as an ugly creature that needs to love and find love by other ways than what appear beautiful to sight. However, Disney represent this character significantly different than in the classic tale, making an ideological difference in the story and certainly transmitting opposite views about the masculine role in a couple relationship. In this Essay, I argue that Disney’s changes to the original character of the Beast in Jeanne-Marie’s tale, demonstrate an oppressive, interested and unequal relation with Belle that may motivate to have this view, and expectation, of men with woman in a relationship; which contrast with Jeanne-Marie’s kind Beast character. This

“Through the cheerful music, funny characters, and happy ending, the character of Snow White starts the Disney trend of a domestic woman who becomes a damsel-in-distress relying on a prince to come and save her” (Barber, 2015). The original 1812 tale of Little Snow White by the Brothers Grimm portrays Snow White as a small, naive, self centered little girl who can’t seem to listen to anything she is told, and who has to rely a prince she doesn’t even know to wake her up from the dead. Two hundred years later, in the 2012 movie version Snow White and the Huntsman, the director Rupert Sanders revisits the original tale of Snow White, but decides to change it up a bit. In this version of the tale, Snow White is a strong, independent young woman who seems to be able to do anything she decides to do. In Sander’s version, Snow White not only conquers the cruel queen, but she conquers the labels society often places on women. Unlike the Grimms Brothers, Sanders develops his Snow White's character in a way that fits with women’s empowerment that the current generation now fights for everyday.

Disney emphasizes the importance of physical attractiveness when the prince falls in love with Cinderella the minute he looks at her. Instead of being interested in her when she starts talking or after he sees her personality, the prince is only concerned with Cinderella’s beauty (Cinderella and Mulan Gender Stereotypes, Afton). After the prince falls in love with Cinderella, her life changes dramatically. The prince saves her from her living situation, and she goes from being sad, alone, and not noticed by anyone to being a princess. Cinderella is soon happier than ever and has everything the other girls could only dream of.

A child is exposed to patriarchy since the day they are born; to pink and blue pajamas, and to the toys they get, it is even in the smallest details of many classic fairy tales. The famous "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" is a worldwide story transcribed by the Grimm Brothers during the 19th century; an era where human rights were negotiable on gender and sex. This tale is part of many fond childhood memories, although the underlying sexism is shown when analyzing that beauty is held to be the most valuable trait for a woman, it depicts them with stereotypical gender roles, and that good or evil women are decided if they are feminine or not.

A routine pattern in Disney movies is the inclusion of a prince to save their princess from danger. This repeated relationship between the two love interests is a major reason why Snow White is not only illustrated with mother-esque traits but is constantly seen child-like; a scared and passive girl who never acts to save herself. Disney deems it obligatory to the plot to depict a female character whose survivals relies on a man. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs depends on this theme heavily by having the life of Snow White hang on a thin thread if not saved by the prince and his non-consensual kiss of true love.

While Snow White’s dream is to marry Prince Charming, the film contains scenes that expose her delicate characteristics in which only females undergo. In Disney’s 1937 film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the directors present outdated female stereotypes of a woman who is expected to fulfill the needs of a man to conform to their patriarchal society. These clichéd values are concealed by the conventional romance exhibited while emphasizing the traditional notion of love. Snow White gracefully tends to her daily chores but immediately exposes her fragility when Prince Charming tries to interact with her.

More recent disney shows more female protagonists who show strength, independence, ambition, and talent. However, even these "exception" princesses can be said to have "princess standard" qualities such as submissiveness and weakness/lapse of judgement. Gendered stereotypes and behaviours are still very prevalent in recent disney films, though their portrayal has become more complex over the years, reflecting changing gender roles and expectations in American society. Gender expectations were less complex when the first Disney Princess movies were produced and with the rise of feminism in the 1970s through current times they have become more complicated. Women used to take care of the house and the children, and these skills are showcased by the early princesses, such as the princesses in Cinderella and Snow White and the Seven

The Disney movie that has been chosen for my analysis is Beauty and the Beast, which is about the love story between a beast and a beautiful girl. The girl in the movie Belle is an ordinary and poor girl who becomes a princess when she falls in love with the beast in the film who actually is a prince in real, but a magic spell cast over him turns him into a beast. Belle who lives in a small town is shown to be a beautiful, skilled, brave and a very caring girl. Belle is basically a nerdy introvert girl who keeps to her herself and lives with her father. She loves reading as it is shown in the movie that when she goes to the castle of the beast she wishes that she had a library this big for her to sit in and read all day long.

Typically women are stereotyped as a beautiful girl that spends her day cooking and cleaning for men to come home to. They are often childish and primarily interested in relationships and marriage. Since Disney’s first princess film in 1937 Snow White is the perfect example of Disney’s gender stereotypes. Snow White spends her entire day cooking and cleaning for the seven dwarves until she is poisoned and her fate left in the hands of a prince whom she marries. In the Little Mermaid, princess Ariel is forced to rely solely on her looks to win over prince when her voice is exchanged

Beauty’s role in beauty and the beast glorifies her as a sweet girl who can find light in any darkness. She prefers to move forward in life rather than sulk in misery. Being such a positive female character allows her to fall in love with a man who is not of the society standards of handsome, name Beast. She was more intent on focusing on what he had to offer as a person. Karen Rowe states in “Feminism and Fairy Tales” “such alluring fantasies gloss the heroine's inability to act self-assertively, total reliance on external rescues, willing bondage to father and prince, and her restriction to hearth and nursery” (Rowe). The heroine being beauty in this case, doesn't have opinions or rights because her character wasn't created to. Rowe believes that fairytales have paved the way for our expectations towards what women and men should be doing and what romance is. Rowe argues that “These "domestic fictions" reduce fairy tales to sentimental clichés, while they continue to glamorize a heroine's traditional yearning for romantic love which culminates in marriage” (Rowe). Beauty’s character found herself in these “sentimental cliches” with her

In the films "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" and "Dumbo" children can observe the role given to women in the house and racial discrimination. According to Mishkat de Ram (2016), the first film mentioned shows the role of women because the princess works as a servant for seven men (par.3). The role of the princess establishes in children a prototype about how women should act in the home. In Dumbo, the film does not show the faces of the black characters. These are portrayed as people who can not read and write. In the film, they live only to work (par.3). These are examples of how Disney films portray racial and sexual stereotypes.

The story also opens with great promise in presenting the idea that the male character, the spoiled, selfish, and unkind prince, is actually the one with the problem (Dickens, 2011). In a break from the traditional format of fairy tales’, the acceptance of inappropriate behaviors in men, such as having a lack of moral values and being judgmental of one’s exterior appearance, is not tolerated but rather when these characteristics are displayed by the prince he receives harsh punishment. The female enchantress who has been unjustly judged by the prince uses her magic to change the prince into a hideous, grotesque, alarming Beast and placed his entire castle and staff under an enchanted spell to be broken only by true love (Booker, 2010). The second hint that Disney’s revision of the tale is attempting to break from the norm, is the presentation of their second male lead, Gaston. Gaston is the “hunky, but dimwitted” sought-after man of the town striving for Belle’s affection who is driven only by his own instinctual nature and ego (Dickens, 2011, p. 81). Upon completion of these main characters we see the stage set for potentially a different take on a female’s value exceeding her beauty and a male’s value needing to be more than brute physical strength and appearance. Disney seems to support the ideal that individuals should try to “find what their innate characteristics are and develop them,” by Belle’s declaration “I want much more that this provincial