Disney Stereotypes In Movies

Disney movies have been the leading outlets for child education and social learning. Due to such power of influence controversies have been raised which include the following, but not limited to, gender roles and stereotypes, issues of independence, and misrepresentation. Many people argue that despite the morals and messages that occur within such films there are still underlying messages that deal with beauty standards and norms. However, others may argue that Disney is evolutionary and evolved the imagery of male/female standards. The controversy then becomes: are Disney films doing more harm than they are good? Due to certain themes brought on by such movies, it has left younger audiences with both positive and

Peter Pan. What do these movies have in common? They are Disney movies that many of us may recall as some of the best and most memorable movies of our childhood. The reality is that these movies portray discriminative racial stereotypes. In Peter Pan, there is a scene in which the characters are seen participating in a native tribal dance where none of the so called tiger lilies talk except for the male chief leader, who stereotypically speaks in a broken jargon. The significance of this scene shows the insensitivity of the media towards indigenous people and their portrayal as savages. In Dumbo, there is a particular sense of racism towards southern African americans. With the "Song of the Roustabouts,"Disney features faceless black circus workers working while singing, "We work all day, we work all

Apart from the stereotypes, recent Disney princesses have been counteracting the stereotypical images of a Disney princess. They are no longer waiting around for their prince to come and be with them. Instead, they are using their intelligence to achieve their dreams and aspirations. Also, they can be independent and that they don’t always need a man (Bowser n.p.). The portrayal of love in these films are different from the others. The characters are not focused in waiting for their prince. Rather, they were trying to achieve their dreams. In "The Princess and the Frog", Tiana pursues her dream in becoming a restaurant owner. She didn't need a male counterpart to be able to feel happy but only wanted to fulfill her dream to feel happiness.

Jennifer Rome vowed to herself when she gave birth to her daughter, Violet, that she would keep her away from all things princess. She “knew they could not possibly be good models for children with their supermodel good looks, small waistlines, and often scantily,” which led her to a general feeling of apathy (Rome, 1). As a mother, she says that it was hard to go anywhere without being trampled by Disney princess. From fruit snacks to clothing, princesses are everywhere. About two years later, Rome’s vow was shattered after Violet watched Disney’s Tangled for the first time.

Many little angels and princess have grown up watching Disney movies and falling irrevocably in love with the dashing, debonair and gallant princes who are forever rescuing the princesses or the sweet damsels from distress. Many sighs have been heaved and dreams woven around this witty, handsome hunks. Now those dreaming about how their favorite prince can see how their chivalrous prince looks like in reality courtesy of the digital artist Jirka Väätäinen,who created hyper-realistic images of this swashbuckling heroes.

In children’s film Anastasia (which is not a Disney movie) there are a lot of forms of interpellation, which I have never noticed before. Interpellation is when a film or book works to make certain social values more important. These can be values of race, gender, class, or any other values society thinks are important. In the video “Mickey Mouse Monopoly” they look at how Disney tries to portray values within their films. Some watch this and can’t believe they did not see it before but that is why interpellation is so important, it is mostly done unconsciously.

There are two ways in which Disney pervasively misrepresents race and culture while simultaneously battering their unsuspecting viewers with not so subtle messages of racial superiority or inferiority. The first, is through the use of racially coded slurs that are intentionally and deeply imbedded into their films storylines. These racially coded slurs are blatant attempts by

I have felt the impacts of stereotypes many of times, I was at Disney world and there was the guy that looked like he was from the middle east or somewhere in that area. He was going through the metal detector and nothing went off but the police decided to check him anyway. A stereotype is when we put false information and profiles on a race and we use that for the whole race and not just one, or are labels that are unfairly placed on people, and they affect all of us. Stereotypes can be defined as a fixed general set of characteristics that people believe represent a type of person or thing, and they impact our society in many ways (Stereotype). For example, in an interview with Guy Raz from NPR, Jamila Lyiscott says, “We think that

A little girl sits on the floor with her gaze fixed on the television screen in front of her, watching magical images dance before her eyes and catchy songs flow through her ears. Even though she had seen it at least twenty times before, she still loved The Little Mermaid just as much as she did the first time she watched it. As she watched it, she longed to be a beautiful mermaid with a curvy body and wonderful singing voice like Ariel. She longed to be saved by the handsome Prince Eric, and fall in love and live happily ever-after like Ariel did. In today’s society, women strive to achieve equality between the sexes. Despite the tremendous steps that have been taken towards reaching gender equality, mainstream media contradicts these

As children, we have grown up watching classic movies, most likely Disney movies. As we grew up, we have come to know that boys have to brave and courageous, while girls have to be rescued or are weak. Disney movies have influenced children’s mind with stereotypes, are Disney princesses really great role models for young girls? Should young boys be “manly” or “strong” like a prince? Personally, I believe that they are not great models, the movies are a representations of how women or men should act or behave like in the past, for example, the story of Cinderella.

Not only do corporations take over individual will’s they use this power to create a new culture. Bartyzel offers a lot of negative influences that Disney has on individual will and that will lead them to create new culture. Bartyzel writes, “The Disney Princess franchise doesn't celebrate the increasingly diverse world of princesses; instead, it pulls back the progress the company had made, pushing more forward-thinking female characters back into the reductive feminine stereotypes of the past” (Bartyzel 468). The fact that Mulan came out for the fierce warrior aspect was later covered up by Disney through redesigns. The author writes, “The redesigns come after the films-which means that the ultimate message is that these characters have found happiness in this restrictive femininity, as the nonstop Disney marketing that young children are subjected to on a daily basis begins to act as a real- world sequel to the films themselves (Bartyzel 469). Therefore, the changes that princesses can be strong was undone by Disney through remodeling and thus new culture where girls are considered girls if they match personality similar to that of princesses. Likewise, Lopez notes that a similar effect is happening in the society through the use of Social Networking. He claims, “Facebook- a group of linked pages on a giant Web site- is constraining and not very powerful. In order to use it, you have to use it the way they want you to, and that's not a whole lot of ‘using’” (Lopez 484). Like Bartyzel, Lopez believes that Social networking corporations are controlling the lives of individuals without them noticing the change and since its popular with teens everyone wants to try it. He also claims, “[the information] will [be] use[d] in marketing studies and advertising profiles, and it will turn that information over to any government agency that asks for it. You have no control over that. It's in the user agreement. It's published and it's no longer yours. It belongs to Facebook and anybody Facebook wants to share it with (Lopez 484). Facebook has authority over individuals information and that information can be passed on to anyone Facebook wants was not the original purpose of the internet. Internet was developed so

There is a lot of pressure to conform to what society thinks is right. The media influences people how to look and act a certain way. One thing many people might not realize that influences children are Disney animated films. Disney animated movies are what many people grew up watching. Looking further into the popular animated movies, there is a lot to be said about the stereotypes found in them.

Generally, Disney collection displayed a different set of stereotypes but contemporary films have exhibited an interesting findings which could be generalized on the contemporary Disney Princess films which is the strength of this study. The present study clearly demonstrate that there is a mix of stereotypical and non-stereotypical which is due to the gender role transformation. However, it is imperative to note that despite of gender role transformation certain behaviors and stereotypes are still prevalent even in the contemporary movies.

The mention of Disney often takes people back to childhood memories about animated films that portray messages such as love, friendship, believing in one’s self, morals, good versus evil and happy endings for the princes and princesses. However, the stories themselves have a large of amount of gender stereotypes, cultural biases, class differentiation, and unrealistic expectations of how society is supposed to be compared to real life such as being a gorgeous thin Caucasian girl or a muscle man. Even though the stories have been made to be more mainstream than the original fairytales written by Charles Perrault, the Grimm brother’s and Hans Christian Anderson; the stories still keep the idealistic portrayals of gender types from their

Disney successfully blurs the border between entertainment and pedagogy but introduces the misuse of stereotyping and social influence.