Blog post #2 - Critical Analysis of Disney
Before I went to Boise State I was at the College of Western Idaho, I was still a Communication major and took classes that did a critical analysis on certain movies and how it relates back to the way society views things. We mostly focused on old western movies or romantic comedies and how certain aspects of these films are harmful in the way that they normalize certain unhealthy behavior or thought processes. They never bothered me because I wasn’t necessarily attached to the movies we were analyzing. Last week in class when we saw the “Mickey Mouse Monopoly” documentary I was feeling a lot of different emotions. I have seen small bits of the documentary before so I knew the context but being able to see it all put some things into perspective for me. I am a huge lover of Disney movies and all things related to Disney, and even though this documentary tears apart these films and showcases the negative effects they have on children, I found it super interesting that these have stayed so popular without any scrutiny and currently are still very popular movies shown to children of all ages. It blows my mind that my mother knew these movies like the back of her hand and never saw anything wrong with any Disney movies, well she didn’t let me watch Sleeping Beauty for a while because the dragon scared me, but that’s completely different. Never mind the fact that in this movie as a woman, she has no say as to what goes on in her life, goes into a sort of coma after her finger is pricked in a scary violent manner, and then the only possible way for her to be saved is for a man to kiss her. There are plenty other Disney movies with “worse” plot lines but that’s the one that came to mind for me when it comes to my childhood. Beauty and the Beast was one of my favorites and it took me by surprise when the psychologists in the documentary talked about how horrible that movie was and damaging to the children watching it.
This documentary made me realize just how powerful images are to children and how much communication affects them even if it’s coming from a cartoon animal. After taking classes like this one and the Communication Gender and Difference class I am much more critical of films and their messages. I now notice how all women, especially if they are main characters, speech in a higher volume, have softer voices and are all extremely sexually appealing. They all have extremely small waists which would be almost physically impossible to obtain in real life, perfect makeup all the time no matter how young the character is, the seductive look, the innocence, and as always, being saved by a more powerful man. I thought about if it ever affected me and then I remembered when I was a child, my most favorite Disney princess was Cinderella. I thought about when I was at church in the daycare center I would volunteer to sweep up after snack time, I would pretend I was Cinderella, being forced to do hard labor and waited to be rescued by my parents. I would act sad and in despair and then when my parents would show up I would dramatically drop the broom and run up to them and hug them. I never realized how even I was affected as a kid and I wonder if it shaped anything undesirable about me.
An example I thought was interesting is in the book, “Cinderella ate my Daughter” by Peggy Orenstein, speaks on how much Disney movies affect our children and their behaviors. She goes into saying that they can lead girls to thinking they need to be hyper sexual to attract boy’s attention and that they always need to be saved which could lead to co-dependence and many other issues. The author tells a story in the beginning that spoke to me; it’s about when she was at a friend’s wedding and when she turned around her daughter was gone. She assumed she ran off to play with the other kids but she wanted to know exactly where she had gone so she went looking for her daughter. She finds a circle of children all talking amongst each other and when she gets closer she sees her daughter in the middle of the circle, laying on the floor with her eyes closed while all the children are whispering to each other “who will it be?” while a couple young boys stand off to the side looking a little red in the face. She breaks up the circle and tells her daughter to get off the floor immediately and asks her to explain what’s going on. Her daughter is upset and embarrassed and tells her that they are playing “find the prince”. She is the princess and one of the boys is supposed to kiss her and wake up, the point of the game is the princess can’t move until she is woken up by her prince. The mother was deeply disturbed that her daughter played games like this, thinking that she as a girl can only lay on the floor and cannot move until some boy decides to kiss her. She thought if she played to many Disney movies but she doesn’t remember her daughter watching very many, she realized how strongly things like this stuck with children and decided to do more research on it and write this book. Her other mother friends stopped talking to her because they couldn’t understand why she was looking so deeply into something “kid friendly” and thought she was making problems out of nothing.
After reading some of the book and watching this documentary I realized I must be extremely careful what I let my future children or even my little sister watch. They soak it up like sponges and if there’s no one there to explain certain things to them, they can go their whole life thinking certain behaviors and ideals are okay. We as consumers should understand what we are letting into our minds and the minds of younger, more mold-able people. My bottom line is Disney is like lots of other movies; it’s got some good parts, some great parts, and some bad parts, it’s our job to decide what’s okay to let in and what needs to be explained.
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