Disney 2016 Beauty And The Beast Case Study

The Walt Disney Company is a well-known franchise that is specifically popular among young children. This franchise’s growing popularity is due to their heart-warming, family-friendly animated films. In any given year these animated films were released, almost always they had a common theme present throughout the movie: the classic female princess who needs to be saved by the strong, handsome prince. Due to this common prevailing theme, this essay will analyze the claim that Disney only writes its characters to follow heteronormative roles with intentions to teach young viewers that they too must follow their gender heteronormative norms to be accepted by society. To prove this claim is true, research need to be conducted.

The Disney princess films are some of the most common in the world today. Because of their popularity, these works speak and evaluate, in significant detail, by various scholars. Numerous people disapprove these films for their seemingly sexist and oppressive gender messages. They find fault with the princesses serving as role models for young girls. Though, when one attentively scrutinizes the movies and compares the individualities of the princesses to the progressive woman of their time, one may obviously see the positive messages.

In the past years, Disney/Pixar has revolutionized the premise of their movies by shifting away from princesses and portraying resilient male characters as the protagonists of their highly successful animated feature films. From 1995 to 2008, Disney/Pixar released eight films, all of which included a male lead, yet these characters are arguably unlike any other protagonist in early Disney animated films. In their essay, “Post-Princess Models of Gender: The New Man in Disney/Pixar,” Ken Gillam and Shannon R. Wooden call attention to the new manner Disney/Pixar use to depict their heroic male characters in their movies. Gillam and Wooden claim that Pixar is using their movies to promote the acceptance of a new standard of masculinity capable of embracing feminine traits, as conveyed by the male characters within the films. As a viewer, it is easy to recognize the emasculation of the male protagonists within Pixar movies, however, the authors’ claim is faulty; they fail to acknowledge that society now has room for a new sympathetic man because it is straying way from a patriarchal beliefs of the past.

There are many positive and negative gender role portrayals in each of my selected Disney films. However, In this chapter I will be focussing on the negative gender roles. I will also be looking at people’s views on these portrayals through the use of a questionnaire, an interview and secondary sources, in order to discover if other people think that these roles are negative or positive. I will start by looking at the overall issues in the films, and then investigating where issues that are present in the films.

In order to undergo this study, both primary and secondary research will be conducted in order to obtain information for the foundation of my personal interest project. Through the use of questionnaires and secondary data I will be able to establish the general stereotypes and prejudices within the Disney princess movies and the feminists views upon the films. Secondary data will allow me to closely analyze all of the Disney princess films and will allow me to outline the changing aspect of gender roles in regards to recent Disney films.

Disney is a massive media company, from producers and providers of entertainment internationally family and media enterprise with networks, parks and resorts, studio entertainment, and cooperative media. Disney has taken a lot of disparagement for enacting sexist stereotypes in their movies when their main characters being females. This day and age, every moment counts in children’s education and culture. Overall parents want their kids’ entertainment to be not just fun, but also educational. Therefore,when Disneys movies send the wrong meaning or show wrongful images parents push away from the films away from their kids. These female characters who be situated to look for just romance and a rescue from a prince like the other Disney films that typically are focused on the concept of “true love.” By assembling Disney’s records of their past films with female roles it moves toward that Disney only comprehends women as fragile, incapable, and dependent women because of their roles in the movies.

Disney wrote in a time where women were in fact lesser than men, and were valued more differently than they are now. “We typically accept “masculine men” and “feminine women” as normal” (Brym, 2014). Many have this preconceived notion of women being feminine, soft, emotional, sweet and submissive, while men are perceived to be masculine, aggressive, tough, daring and

The Disney classic movie from the 1990s, has also been a reason as to why “Beauty and the Beast” has gained more international popularity. Madame de Beaumont’s edited English version is another factor to the growing fame of the classic French fairy tale. Although “Beauty and the Beast” is an original tale geared towards older audiences nowadays, it still serves to be a favourite to millions of all genders, and

Masculine and feminine principles are found in every living human being. The presence of both principles makes a person complete. Some of the prinipals may be stronger in one person than another. The feminine principles are usually associated with the moon because of the moon's cycle with the reproductive cycle of the female and with the fertility of the land. The sun is a masculine principle because in many cultures it symbolizes heroism and courage and is thought of as the light of conscious knowledge. Through time a society’s view of masuline and feminine principals are altered. In the four decades between Walt Disney’s Cinderella (1955) and Michael Eisner’s Beauty and the Beast (1991) society’s veiw of men and women can be seen.

Disney has books, movies, and theme parks scattered across the globe so there is likely no question as to why Disney has become a household name. Though, some of the images and lessons portrayed in the motion pictures by Disney have been ridiculed for not upholding the values and beliefs of women. However, Disney was only pursuing the doxa, or the “commonly held opinions” (Aristotle, 34), of their times, which can be seen through the progression from Disney’s first princess film, Snow White (1937) to their most recent princess movie, Moana (2016). Over the course of the years, Disney, has changed their depictions of females in their movies since the releases of their classic Disney Princess films. In this essay, I will be dissecting the princess movies of Disney and how Disney created each of their films with attempts to keep up with the doxa, as discussed by Aristotle in On Rhetoric and how Disney portrayed the roles of women in society through their films.

The male characters in Disney films have evolved with today’s society, in which male and female counterparts are equal. In the era of Walt Disney, the prince saved the princess, as seen in Sleeping Beauty. The prince possessed masculine or hypermasculine characteristics – strong, muscular, broad, tall, ambitious and hard. However, in later Disney the male characters began to soften, as seen in Hercules. In Masculinity as Social Semiotic Identity Politics and Gender in Disney Animated Films, Robyn McCallum discussed how the male protagonist in films such as Mulan, Hercules and Tarzan transformed into a “new man”, a man that possessed stereotypical female traits (McCalllum, 2002). However, it can be argued that although the “new man” has mentally changed they have physically stayed the same since Sleeping Beauty.

The Disney is huge animation company and their films are an enormous part of the entertainment industry in the whole world. They influence all kinds of people, from children to adults. Also, Disney was created over 90 years ago, and till this very day its most entertaining animation company. Throughout period of time, they have played a tremendous role in how society displays gender roles. As Janet Wasko explains: “Disney provides an opportunity to analyse an entire popular cultural phenomenon from various perspectives […]” (Wasko, 2001). As modern culture goes through many changes, Disney has also been in major changes in the way they represent their characters, especially females.

The Walt Disney Corporation, over the past century, has become a phenomenon of its own, globally impacting the lives of families. A popular trend within Disney, recently, has been to reinvent their one-time classic films, Sleeping Beauty for instance. With the release of Maleficent, Disney sought to change the perception of the film and retell the story with a new spin. As can be expected, a change this large caused mixed reviews in the film’s. However, one group was particularly appreciative of the new rendition- feminists. Maleficent’s story is retold in a manner supporting a strong female lead, rather than a sleeping Aurora who was absent through the majority of the original film. Through the retelling, Disney is able to set the stage of female empowerment. In the article, “Imagining Ecofeminist Communities via Queer Alliances in Disney’s Maleficent,” Joe Hatfield and Jake Dionne make a case for Maleficent as a queer (non-normative) person who encapsulates the duality of natural versus unnatural. However, a vital part of this argument relies heavily on the “queerness” of Maleficent. The argument presented by Hatfield and Dionne is valid in making a point of the existence of ecofeminism throughout the film, but fails to make a strong case for the queer relationships presented; Disney retells the tale of a once scorned villain in a positive perspective through a land of magic and enchantment, not from

The representation of women in Disney films has indefinitely transformed throughout the decades due to Disney’s need to gradually create conventional views and ideas of women. When comparing the 1998 Disney film, Mulan, and the 2016 Disney film, Moana, people may suggest that both are progressive feminist films that accurately depict their individual cultures, while uplifting the women in these films. However, with further analysis, Mulan consists of not only sexist views towards women, but also underlines stereotypical gender roles that men are greater than women. Moreover, Moana reflects a change of the conventional woman in Disney films by rejecting the female stereotypes as well as creating a headstrong and independent character who

“Beauty and the Beast” is a fairy tale entrenched in many cultures and the human imagination. Despite the original “Beauty and the Beast” tale by Jeanne-Marie LePrince de Beaumont, being defined by a male character, Carol Ann Duffy’s poem, “Mrs. Beast” includes the female perspective. His only ability is pleasing his wife sexually, not emotionally. He is shown as weaker than his wife due to his unattractive image. The beast is surprised that the narrator is interested in him and depicted as desperate to keep her attention even if he has to live with her neglect. She is portrayed as a power hungry, sovereign character who is assertive over his husband by taking control of one’s sexuality while maintaining her feminine identity. Duffy incorporates the gender switch as the female character illustrates the stereotypical male dominant role. By Mrs. Beast treating the husband as inferior, shows the similarities of how men have treated women throughout the years. References to the other fairytales are integrated to show how male dominance has been in society for decades. Mrs. Beast is cognizant of gender prejudice but is incapable of seeing female-male affiliations as anything other than an endeavor for supremacy, thus maltreating the beast the way she claims how men have taken advantage of women.