Disney is one of the largest companies in the media and it
controls a lot of the children’s movies that are produced and successful. This
means that as a company, it has a pretty big responsibility when it comes to
the messages it portrays. One class period, we spent the time watching a
documentary that was discussing Disney movies and the types of stereotypes they
were perpetuating. While many of my peers agreed with
this documentary, I disagree with most of the documentary's points. The documentary is
outdated, and since its release, Disney has come up with many new empowering
and diverse characters to add to their princess sphere.
I think that Disney movies are made for young children and
therefore have characters that those generations would enjoy. This does not
mean that older people cannot enjoy Disney movies – I am definitely one of
those people who still pays to watch Disney movies – but it does mean that we
do not necessarily have to pick apart every aspect of these movies. In doing
this, we are losing the idea that these movies are merely entertainment value
for children.
In my opinion, Disney makes movies in order to relate
historical truth to a fantasy world in order to get children interested in
learning about these events in history. A couple examples include the story of
Pocahontas, Ancient Greece history through Hercules, and a reference to world history
that is commonly missed in Toy Story.
Yes, the Disney movies are inaccurate at times, but that is
because they are not trying to be educational, they are trying to be
entertaining. Personally, I think that seeing these references made me want to
learn the actual story instead of me taking these scenes as the reality of the
situation. As I got older and re-watched my favorite Disney movies, I would
make remarks about the princesses’ unrealistic bodies, but not in a way where I
felt cheated. I understood that these were animated characters, not real
people.
As I grow up, I see Disney growing up as well. They are
reaching out to having princesses of different races and having different
storylines. In Frozen, it is not the love interest who saves Anna, it is the
power of sisterly love. There is a new princess movie coming out called Moana,
who is a Polynesian girl with no love interest in the movie; she simply is on a
quest to learn about her heritage. In the movie Brave, the main character
openly defies her cultural expectations within that time period and chooses to
have more “tomboy” characteristics. These are just a few of the examples from
more current Disney movies that show how the company is progressing as our society
progresses as well.
The issues highlighted by the documentary were simply
outdated and I think that thinking about the time period that those movies were
set in is important as well. My generation is now growing up and still watching
Disney because it was a crucial part of our childhood. I think that these
movies are meant for entertainment, but not for spreading racist or sexist
ideas. There was one example of the way Native Americans were portrayed in
Peter Pan which I agreed was over the top and unnecessary. Other than that, I
felt like the “magic” of the movies were being ignored and the fictional
characters were being picked apart for little reason.
Nowadays, these old Disney movies are used as punch lines
for our generation because they were important for our childhood and growing up
with those characters. It created a sense of unity among these children because
everyone knew who the Disney princesses and other characters were, so they had
something to play at recess. In my opinion, that was the main point of these
Disney movies, while providing some background to historical fact to get
children interested in learning more.
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