Stereotypes Of Women In Disney Films

Not many companies can influence the childhood development of many Americans like the Walt Disney Company. Disney, named after their founder, began as just an animation studio called The Walt Disney Studios, which the company describes as “the foundation on which The Walt Disney Company was built”. Today, Disney produces various items targeted at children like toys, clothing, and animation (“Company”). In the paper, Images of Animated Others: The Orientalization of Disney’s Cartoon Heroines From The Little Mermaid To The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Celeste Lacroix of the College of Charleston assesses the portrayal of female heroines from Disney animated films that depicts human main characters, examining the sexualization of non-European or the “exotic” others, and brings to light Disney’s strategy to instill an attitude of consumerism in children. Despite my memorable sentiment with Disney animations as a child, I agree with Lacroix’s assertion that Disney impose consumerism onto children, especially with DVD commercials, tie-in products and “apps” on smartphones and tablets.

Watch the movie Tangled and you’ll find yourself hooked, desiring the knowledge of what’s next. While watching this movie, two main literary themes became apparent. Disney's Tangled is the story of a stolen girl trapped in a castle with her captor as a mother. Throughout the story, Rapunzel wants nothing more but to leave her . Tangled’s plot employs many gender stereotypes and shows a large socio-economic divide.

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

In the movie “Beauty and the Beast”, the role of a man and woman in an abusive relation is practically spelled out and strait from Disney’s female lead jar. Belle is kidnaped by the Beast and forced o live in the dungeon until her father is ripped away from her. During this time she is completely defenseless to the Beasts onslaught and often retreats within herself and rarely confronts him. Beast on the other hand, portraying an abusive male, does everything to a tee. He yells, bangs on doors, throws furniture, and even threatens starvation when Belle goes against him. Belle, being the kind and gentle female lead, looks past all his rage and finds he prince inside; highlighting the common problem in abusive relationships. The abused partner holding onto the hope that their abuser will change, that they will love them and show them the tenderness that used to be there. Women (could also be men) are supposed to take the abuse and wait it out, showing nothing but love while the abuser rampages and eventually, things will be just like the fairy tales.

In Henry Giroux’s book, “The Mouse that Roared” he argues that Disney animated movies lead to the end of innocence in children. He focuses mainly on the images that Disney portrays towards gender roles and gender stereotyping. He primarily targets the issues that women are portrayed as being subordinate to men and are viewed as property and objects of desire instead of as human beings. Giroux is unconvincing in his argument because he writes above the level of thinking and comprehension that most children who are exposed to Disney films would posses; by focusing on specific scenes, while ignoring the overall morals throughout the rest of

“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.

Written in 1756, Jeanne-Marie Le Prince de Beaumont’s fairy tale Beauty and the Beast perpetuates gender roles and stereotypes. It was written by a female French novelist who may have incorporated a part of French culture and history into this fairy tale. Disney’s Beauty and the Beast roughly follows this version with a couple of changes. In Disney, the antagonist is the very manly Gaston who tries to kill the Beast and Beauty has no sisters in this version. Instead, Gaston can be seen as a stereotypical character with attributes such as a very large ego, well-muscled, and a macho attitude. Certainly, in Beaumont's Beauty and the Beast as well as Disney’s rendition, the male and female characters encompass the typical gender roles and stereotypes such as submissiveness in Beauty, masculinity in Beast, and the proud arrogance and jealousy seen in Beauty's sisters.

For decades now, Disney Corporation has been providing us with countless films made to delight and amuse children and adults alike. But not all Disney films seem particularly appropriate for their target audience. Many of these films portray violence, gender inequality, and skewed views of leadership roles that seem altogether inappropriate for impressionable young children. Better and more contemporary heroines need to be added to Disney’s wall of princesses in order to counteract years of sexism.

Gaston is Beauty & the Beast’s evil power, but also represents the new dichotomy between male and female characters in the 1990s. They are separate from each other and both men and women grow to be less passive and unidentifiable, gaining new individual power. These new traits and “male transformation of the 90s” could be a response to the criticism of masculinity of the 1980s, as suggested by Susan Jeffords in her article (Jeffords 1963). In fact, as women were gaining more and more independence, some critics argued that men should go back to their previous

The Disney film “The Lion King” is a great example of how females are seen as subordinate to males. Giroux states, “All of the rulers of the kingdom are men, reinforcing the assumption that independence and leadership are tied to patriarchal entitlement and high social standing” (Greene 582). This is the case for most Disney films that the male characters have power over the female characters. The female characters are depicted as weak and dependent on the male characters. This can give young girls the wrong idea of what type of roles they should take on. If they keep seeing female characters being portrayed as weak and dependent on males they may think that they should be the same way. However, not all of the female characters in these movies are portrayed the same way.

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.

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

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

Disney's Beauty and the Beast can be seen as a very honest way of depicting how society feels about the gender roles of men and women. Firstly, of the main characters, two out of the three are in fact males. The interesting thing about this balance is that despite there being a higher number of males in the film, they are both shown to be at least partially villainous. Throughout the entirety of the film, the only two characters, main or otherwise, who truly embody and possess typically masculine characteristics (chivalry, a wish to fight to protect women, strength etc) are both depicted as being wrong, evil, and negative. The first of these two men is Gaston. Gaston is by all accounts, the villain of the piece. His great crime? He

“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.