Disney?

Kuonji · 3 months

Disney films have almost always portrayed traditional gender roles for both women and men. Analyze how you feel about traditional gender roles and you'll find out how you feel about Disney films. There's not much more to it.

ninjaguineapig · 3 months

OTOH, you have Mulan and Pocahantas.

HolyCounsel · 3 months

You have nailed the MR angle - the social code that states that it is men who must suffer and toil and pay before being accepted as a partner.

I think little girls are much more shortchanged, however. The motif for femininity is physical beauty and vulnerability, and the moral is to be faithful and passive. A male hero can win through strength, intelligence, bravery, etc., but all the girl can do is wait. Not very inspiring, is it?

clockworkgirl21 · 3 months

When Disney does fairy tales, I want it to follow the fairy tale. That's why I hated Tangled. (First, she was abusive. She hits the man several times in the face FOR NO REASON and people still like her.) In fairy tales, women are damsels in distress and the men the rescuers. This is because fairy tales are old and this is how it was. I don't believe it should be this way in real life, but a fairy tale isn't real life. Now, there is nothing wrong with the female character being strong or independent. Cinderella was. But if you're going to make a movie of a fairy tale, it should follow how the fairy tale was written. Another one that bothered me was Jasmine. Jasmine came from a time and place where women were little more than property. Where would she have gotten her feminist ideas? Nothing wrong with her being angry she's being married off, but her "I am not some prize to be won!" scream was silly because during that time, she basically was, and would have been since birth. Who would have told her otherwise? I sincerely doubt the daughter of a sultan hundreds/thousands of years ago would have had such an idea.

hardwarequestions · 3 months

I think a kids movie risks losing its audience if it strays too far from whats simple.

Lawtonfogle · 3 months

Because Disney movies are literally fairytales invented during the middle ages. You're welcome.

[deleted] · 3 months

You summed it up pretty well.

carchamp1 · 3 months

Great post. I see some posts on here making the point none of this matters. I beg to differ.

A couple quick points: mostly girls watch these movies, and they watch them over and over again. Dad with daughter here so I know. I personally see Disney Princesses all around me. Some are three, and some are 30, both waiting for Prince Charming. I would say, "of course", these movies have had an affect on generations of girls and women. I am serious, also.

I would be really skeptical of any notion that these movies affect many boys/men. They just don't watch these movies that often.

Can parental involvement reverse this Disney conditioning? Sure. But let's not pretend none of this matters.

C0CKPUNCHER · 3 months

Sometimes a product is just a product. Your identity is infinitely more shaped by your parent's and their parenting of you than social expectations and examples.

Saerain · 3 months

I'm a little confused by the talk of ‘impossible standards of beauty’ in the context of stylized cartoons. It seems to me that you might as well ask why anime glamorizes Graves' disease or what the hell is going on with this sort of thing.

But I generally agree with the rest. Of course, most of this has been observed to death about Disney.

InfinitelyThirsting · 3 months

First, I agree with a lot of what you say. A lot of Disney films promote traditional gender roles, though they do get better over time. Now, to nitpick:

So, to have true love, men must go out of their way to please a woman, must spend (presumably) a fortune "proving" that they care, while all the woman does is sit back and be skeptical and freak out every time he does nothing and she expects him to.

That isn't a general song. The guy is having relationship problems, and this is her advice to him. She also doesn't sit back and do nothing, she is all over the traditional gender roles of cooking and cleaning and sewing etc, and sings plenty of love songs for her "love", and then comes through and saves the hero at the end, and opens up her own shop to support herself. The song alone is bad, but in context isn't so.

As for the picture you showed with the princesses, that's also biased. Snow White's also shown to have traditional assets of cleaning and cooking, though that isn't what saves her, to be fair. Sleeping Beauty is spot on--terrible movie for gender roles but goddamn Maleficent is amazing, so I like it anyways. Sleeping Beauty is really way more about the prince and the villain than the damsel. Prince Phillip for the win.

Jasmine is a little more active--she takes control a bit, in distracting Jafar, and at least she does stand up for herself, but she's still in the is-rescued camp, yeah. It's a better balance between traditional, without having the princess be utterly useless. Then again, it's one of the only ones that isn't mostly about the female lead. It's about Aladdin.

The Little Mermaid is just disingenous. She doesn't change her appearance to be more attractive, she does it to be physically capable of being with him. Of course, Prince Erik, while badass at the end of the film, is portrayed as a giant idiot for mistaking shapeshifted Ursula with black hair for the singing redhead who saved him. Yeah, yeah, magic, but come on. They're both obviously young and stupid--she runs away from home for a guy she meets ever so briefly, he gets married on a whim, argh.

Belle's isn't honest either. She's also shown to be very smart and literary, and strictly speaking it's her capability for love, not her sexuality, that saves him--not saved by a kiss a la Snow White or Sleeping Beauty, but the declaraction of love. Don't forget she also saves her father from the Beast, and that had nothing to do with sexuality. That movie is horrible at depicting relationships, though, with a lot of abuse and Stockholm Syndrome. I mean, I love it, but it's not healthy.

Cinderella is also spot on, though. It's easily my least favourite Disney film. She's lame, the prince is lame, the villains are just mean people... it doesn't have much going for it.

This, I think, is a much better way to put it. But older Disney films are just awful for both. Women are trophies to be earned (a huge part of what Jasmine brings up in her film, which is great--she doesn't want nor need gifts and money, she wants honesty and someone who is interested in her as a person rather than a prize; she fell for Aladdin the street rat right at the start).

sonja_newcombe · 3 months

It's FANTASY. As in "not in the least bit like reality and not now or ever meant to be". It's not intended to be taken as some kind of guide on how to live your life, but a pleasant distraction from the shit that is real life.

They're all adaptations of old fairy tales, all made into feel-good movies for kids when they were never, ever meant for children. The Little Mermaid actually has a depressing and sanguine ending, not the happy-happy, joy-joy that Disney turned it into.

I really wish people would stop making out like it's supposed to be some bastion of equality and reality.

TheBrohemian · 3 months

We had a discussion on this topic last week in psychology of gender.

My perspective: Disney's writers are drawing on personal experiences to giver personality to their characters.

Imagine twenty five to thirty years before each of these movies was made (when the writers would have been children). What was the role of women then? What are the roles of females in their newer movies?

truthjusticeca · 3 months

I think you 'get it'. Lion King is alright

[deleted] · 3 months

My only issue with Disney is the portrayal of love. How "the one" exists and how love lasts forever. How women are all about feelings and never doing anything wrong when it comes to hurting the guy emotionally.

rebelcanuck · 3 months

Honestly, they're just children's cartoons. They're simplified and formulaic. I don't think young children can grasp 3-dimensional characters, so they get archetypes, with the same storyline every time.

wagesj45 · 3 months

Those are all false summations. I could just as easily point out the pros of each movie in how they inspire courage in the face of adversity, self reliance, teamwork, friendship, etc.

[deleted] · 3 months

Tangled: strong, brave princess helps bumbling idiot man help her defeat another strong woman to get her crown.

The horse is seriously smarter than the man in that movie. That said, I really still liked the movie.

BearofHappiness · 3 months

I would love to see a Disney film that didn't have a love interest.

I wonder how that would work. MOnster's inc was awesome.

furryfurryfurry · 3 months

My ideal Disney character is Maid Marian in Robin Hood because she's such a hot vixen. Robin Hood too. Basically if I was a fox I would be them. But I'm a husky dog.

Why does IgneousLoyola keep banning me just for being a furry? I think maybe he is a little bigoted. Stop it. How come baaaaadaaaaasss never gets banned for being a troll, but I do just for saying stuff that's totally true about my furry life?

mikesteane · 3 months

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drinkthebleach · 3 months

I don't give a fuck about how it portrays the genders, but it's ended up giving every girl my age a giant Princess complex.

1angrydad · 3 months

I think it's a cartoon and probably unworthy of advanced academic deconstruction. Much like the debate over violence in cartoons, any child that could be so dramatically influenced by a fantasy probably had issues going in.

It's just a cartoon.

Baadasssss · 3 months

My favorite bit is practically all Disney movies had been "if you believe and wait, your wish will come true/your prince will violently stab the drag queen with his ship's penis/your abusive lover will become an Aryan superman/etc" until The Princess and the Frog when they decided "hard work and perseverance pays off" is what they need now.

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