Disney Pixar Gender Roles

Walt Disney Animation Studios is a large part in America’s entertainment industry. Reaching children and adults through their many platforms, Disney has been influencing people for over 90 years. These films have played a huge role in the society displays of gender roles. This is seen in the representation in their characters, more importantly females. Culture has been going through changes in the past couple of decades and Disney reflects the changes in society through its characters. Popular culture rises with each of Disney’s films and become well known with their recognizable roles. The Disney Princess line up has been a rising influence since 1937 with Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, and continues to present with the current release of Moana, the most revolutionary Disney Princess as of yet.

In the article, “Post-Princess Models of Gender: The New Man in Disney/Pixar,” written by Gillam and Wooden, they argue that Disney's line of animated movies depict a “new man.” Their argument is based around three movies: Toy Story, The Incredibles, and Cars. Gillam and Wooden then state that all three of the movies start with a traditional alpha male character who, throughout the movie, begins to accept his more “feminine” aspects. The idea that the two present is that the lead characters show traits of “acute loneliness and vulnerability.” From there, Pixar emasculates the character through some type of disempowerment that then leads to the overall maturing of the characters (Gillam and Wooden). Throughout the article they bring up many great arguments of which I agree to. However, Gillam and Wooden only cite the three movies mentioned above, when in fact Disney/Pixar has continued with the trend of having an “alpha male” character who throughout the film becomes more mellowed out and less dominant. The idea of emasculation can be carried into the Pixar movie “Up,” where the viewer can witness acute loneliness, slight depression, and eventually the admittance of defeat, where the character is forced to take on help and accept the “emasculation”.

The website is titled “Growing Up With Disney” and covers eight Disney movies produced in 1989 to 2016. Each movie gets its own webpage that focuses on the female lead character and each webpage includes a summary of the movie and a reflection of my thoughts on the character. The reflections focus on the formations of gender roles and how Disney has changed in the span of these eight movies. The audience targeted is those who share the same love for Disney movies and grew up watching them.

Questioning the masculinity within male characters of Disney/Pixar, by watching their son's perspective on the film "Cars," in "Post-Princess Models of Gender: The New Man in Disney/Pixar," Ken Gillam and Shannon R. Wooden examine multiple movies and point out that the leading male characters in "Cars," "Toy Story," and "The Incredibles," are victims of emasculation. Prior to Disney/Pixar releasing nine movies, Disney conveyed all its main male characters to be "alpha male" (472). However, Pixar opened new types of characters, those that led to having the characters' masculinity stripped by another supporting character in the film. The authors draw attention from the strong male model to the "New Man" (476) role. Gillam and Wooden focus on the main male characters in each of the movies who all start with a high machismo personality, which rapidly transitions into an effeminate identity.

What young girl does not dream of becoming a princess and living in a castle happily ever after? Virtually every young girl identifies with princesses and has watched at least one Disney Princess movie. From the first movies of Snow White and Cinderella, to the later movies of The Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast, to the most current movie Moana, Disney Princess movies permeate not only the movie theaters, but also our culture. In fact, “becoming a princess is as easy as purchasing a tiara and hosting a princess-themed birthday party or buying a Halloween costume and playing pretend” (Garabedian, 2014, p. 23). Nonetheless, as declared by Princess Merida in the movie Brave, “there comes a day when I don’t have to be a princess. No rules, no expectations. A day where anything can happen. A day where I can change my fate” (Andrews & Chapman, 2012). In other words, does the life of a princess measure up to the expectations of little girls everywhere? The Disney Princess brand has grown incredibly popular, especially with young girls. In spite of this, the franchise has also become extremely controversial due to potential gender stereotypes in the films. “Gender is one of the most discussed topics in today’s society…[it] represents and also reproduces certain attributes, expectations and roles which are associated with male and female…influencing the views and opinions of future generations” (Maity, 2014, p. 31). Yet, is the Disney Princess brand harmful to young children due to gender stereotypes? Two essays that contemplate the Disney Princess brand and gender stereotypes with opposite viewpoints on this controversial issue are “Girls on Film: The Real Problem with the Disney Princess Brand” by writer Monika Bartyzel and “In Defense of Princess Culture” by writer and mother Crystal Liechty. However, Liechty’s essay “In Defense of Princess Culture,” is the most effective article in convincing the audience of her point of view due to the claim, support, warrant, language, and vocabulary employed.

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.

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

Disney’s Pixar has always had a traditionally “alpha male” role for its leading male characters, but there is possibly a “new male model” concept that has overtaken this predominant alpha male role as portrayed in the article, “Post-Princess models of gender: The new man in Disney/Pixar” by Ken Gillam and Shannon R. Wooden. Within the article, Gillam and Wooden use a well-structured article with supportive examples that effectively strengthen their ideas and theories. The observation in Disney’s Pixar promotes a new male model in their films which expresses more feminine traits is effectively reinforced by the author’s success in organizing the evidence and examples which support their ideas: also the authors effective use of structuring the article to draw your attention to the main issues being discussed to successfully connect to their thesis. Effective introduction of their topics and ideas in a sufficient orderly fashion and present these ideas which give a lot of their theories and ideas strength in persuading the readers to think a certain way about the topic. The authors succeed in addressing their theory that in Disney’s Pixar films there is a new male model which has transformed the previously “unambiguous alpha” male role.

Disney strongly portrays gendered stereotypes using their eleven official princesses. Young children, specifically young girls in this case, are extremely susceptible to being influenced by the portrayal of these gendered stereotypes. Golden and Jacoby performed research regarding how preschool girls interpret the gendered stereotypes shown through Disney Princess media, through both the young girls’ pretend play behaviors and the discussion of the princesses. Golden and Jacoby performed this research project in order to examine the perception of young girls in relation to princesses and awareness of gender-role stereotypes, a different research study found that girls who lived and accepted gendered stereotypes, in believing that women

According to A Dictionary of Journalism, the media is defined as journalism as part of a much broader field of public communication organizations, including newspapers, magazines, radio stations, TV channels, the film industry, the music industry, websites, advertising, and public relations. For young children, media plays a predominant role in developing schemas of one’s identity, including body image, and gender roles. Young children spend the majority of their time viewing media, therefore the process of generating one’s identity based on his or her observation of media is inevitable. Disney’s princess movies have brought significant effects to children’s development of their identities. There are three main stages of Disney movies. The first stage is the “princess” stage, where the movie depicts the most stereotypes (i.e. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs). The second stage is the “rebellious” stage, where the princesses are illustrated as curious and adventurous, yet still show the aspect of female stereotypes (i.e. Jasmine in Aladdin). The third stage is the “hero” stage, where the princesses are shown to fight the female stereotypes (i.e. Mulan). Although Disney has portrayed more complex, yet evolving gender roles as time went on, Disney’s princess movies had significant effects on young audiences by planting changing gender stereotypes.

Zootopia is Disney’s New York City, the city of opportunities, where “anyone can be anything” (Zootopia). A female bunny can even be the first police officer in Zootopia history. Despite being constantly discouraged from persuading her dream, Judy Hopps proves her doubters wrong and becomes Zootopia’s first bunny police officer. Once at the male dominant Zootopian Police Department, the hopeful Judy is placed on parking duty and is outsmarted by the fox, Nick Wilde. On her second day, she is almost fired for insubordination, but Judy is given one last chance to prove herself by finding one of the missing predators. With the help of Nick Wilde, she begins her investigation, where she is constantly disrespected by the male characters. However, her feminine and masculine qualities allow her to eventually gain their respect. With Judy in the lead of the investigation, it is discovered that the once innocent Mayor Bellwether was behind the disappearances and she is arrested. Zootopia is once again peaceful and is under the protection of the respected Officer Judy Hopps. By comparing Judy Hopps to the other gender roles present in the film, Zootopia shows that moving between the masculine-feminine spectrum should be accepted and encouraged.

Many People are interested to know how we get our gender roles. The articles “Why Do We Make So Much Of Gender?”, “Post-Princess Models Of Gender: The New Man in Disney/Pixar” and “Dude, You’re a Fag: Adolescent Masculinity and the Fag Discourse” comply well with this topic. Gender roles have dramatically changed in the past few decades especially the roles of females as in the past they were thought to be the property of men. Stereotypes have played a big part on gender roles. The most common male stereotypes are independent, strong, and aggressive; whereas females are delicate, emotional and supportive. However, when these sexes act in opposite manners they are labeled “fags”. Although Gender role discrimination may be considered nonexistent in today 's society it still plays a huge role in our lives.

Disney is one of the most successful and largest companies in the world. They have their hand in nearly every form of entertainment as well as media, and broadcasting. Disney is best known for their animated films, unique cartoon characters, catchy musicals, and fairy tales that most of us were first introduced to as children. They are one of the few entertainment companies in the World whose primary demographic is children and teens. Nearly everybody is familiar with the Disney name and its brand, and its realistic to suggest that nearly everybody has experienced a Disney film and animated character at some point in their lives; which may have helped to influence them or their behaviors or even their

For my final paper where we had to pick a topic from current popular culture, I decided to write my paper with the focus on Disney movies. More particularly with the focus on the Disney princess movies. When it comes to the Disney movies they have always been and will always be such a huge part of our society. While growing up most children grow up watching these movies and get the idea that that is what they want to be when they grow up. When you ask a young girl what she wants to be when she is older there is a good chance that she will say that she wants to be a princess when she grows up. I have always been such a huge fan of Disney movies and I have a feeling I always will be. I found it very interesting this semester when we spend the short class period talking about the Disney female and male characters. It is rather interesting and something that I can say that I really never noticed before but the fact that the majority of all the female characters all had the same face shape. Whereas the males there were none two that were the same. However for this paper I will be looking into the relationship to cultural meanings about gender and other identity markers, such as race, sexuality, and cultural norms as seen in some of the more classic well known Disney movies.

Introduction: As long as there have been civilizations, there have been stories, myths that are told to children. These stories are usually the basis of the cartoons characters except some which are from creator’s imagination. This story telling is a means of not only comforting and amusing a child, but of teaching the child the societal norms of their nation. These are memorized by children and remembered forever. Children idolize their favourite character, the character they have most in common with and are best able to identify with, and try to emulate that character’s