Jeff Brunner put together this analysis of the evolution of the Disney princess. What do you think? Progress?
Sent in by Fiona A.
UPDATE: Commenter Jackie sent in this version for the Disney princes:
For most posts on Disney princesses, look here, here, here, here, and here. Two other great posts include this rejection letter (“we don’t hire women”) and this post on the original inclusion of black slaves in Fantasia.
it has nothing to do with Disney, guys. These stories have been around forever. Everyone knows that.
Nobody forces these things into disney’s laps, either. They pick them based on something, and these are noteworthy common elements.
Disney chooses stories with weak females and then simplifies them and takes away any strength or character the females may have. There are a lot of old fairy tales with strong women. See The Ice Queen, Tatterhood, and the Handless Maiden for a start. There are lots more.
Yes, but Disney didn’t choose to narrate Rumple Stiltskin:
King chooses woman for her hard work and impressive skills, which she has commissioned from a man with use of her wealth and by entering a dodgy contract in order to win King and associated wealth. Queen risks loosing bridal wealth due to dodge contract. Queen commissions another man to find out personal information about the debt collector in order to avoid paying up debt. Queen wins. King carries on lording over the land completely unawares.
Dear Mike,
Everyone? Forever? Are you living in a fairtale Mike? You should do a little more research into the moral, social and religious information that has been produced for children since ‘forever’ and then note the reckless objectification of women and right winged political and religeous brainwashing being produced by Disney since they started to ‘educate’ our young.
Aww. Someone wishes she was a princess.
i am always floored by how mothers are conspicuously absent from most Disney movies. or if mother figures are present, they are envious and cruel. –Mary
oh, and i forgot–where is Esmerelda (Hunchback) in all this? Remember the Cardinal storming about, fire blazing behind him, repeating “If I can’t have her, she’ll burn…”???? That scene twisted up religion, sexuality, and threats of physical violence–very disturbing.
Esmerelda is a gypsy and not a princess, so we’ve not been talking about her. We’ve also not been talking about a huge number of other disney characters.
You might be interested in:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roles_of_mothers_in_Disney_media
I think they only present stepmothers as envious and cruel. Or, I can’t think of any cases where they have a bad mother who is not a stepmother.
Hey, I think Belle is an exception…she’s smart, she sacrifices herself to save a parent and she trasnsforms the prince through her patience, not just her looks. And, frankly, I think the whole Beauty and the Beast thing is kind of hot, but that’s just me.
why then, did they name it “beauty and the beast” and not “patience and the beast”?
Because her name translates to Beauty…At least in the Disney version…
It’s called beauty and the beast because that is the english translation of Le Belle et Bete (or Beeauty and the Beast in french, from the original title of the tale). The main characters name is Belle in the novel.
The movie also added elements such as the prospect of female learning and the threat men felt from the idea of a woman developing her own thoughts. It implies also that woman retain the ability to develop a relationship and emotions despite physical appearance, something the males in the film could not….just fyi
Keep in mind the element of Stockholm Syndrome — Belle is imprisoned by the Beast only to fall in love with him, in spite of his occasional rages. Sure, he gives her some nice stuff — but would you fall in love with someone who imprisoned you? Not far off from Bella falling in love with Edward (her stalker who threatens to kill her) in the Twilight series …
“Patience and the Beast” has no alliteration… not as snappy.
hahaha i’m sorry, i laughed hard when i read this. so true thoug- not snappy at all.
Although I do admit that none of those girls seem to be women of strong characters, I feel the need to point out that not one of these characters’ movies took place in modern times.
They were in a world without flushing toilets. To have an independent, strong woman in one of these movies would not fit the zeitgeist.
Perhaps one day Disney will do Joan of Arc and the kids can sing along, “I’m burning in the rain, just burning in the rain. What a glorious feeling…”
Jasmine and Ariel both fought against their roles to some extent, albeit they fought their way right into a man’s arms.
They’re in worlds with magic and intelligent animals, some of which talk. The world is already distorted from historical accuracy, and they were clearly trying to have the women be more progressive in Aladdin and Beauty and the Beast.
Popular folk tales, turned into Disney films, then savagely oversimplified by people at no-name universities — yes, the end result will seem pretty bad.
There’s a reason we don’t have War and Peace in grade 3 curriculums — too much information. TMI! Popular folk tales need to be boiled down for kids. Disney does that. If you redistill the film version it will, no doubt, get ugly as it’s left a shadow of a shadow of a tale.
This is the stupidest thing I’ve seen all day.
Is it possible for you to disagree with the content without personally insulting the author? That would lend a great deal of credence to your argument. Particularly since you don’t see fit to present your name or credentials.
Where’s the insult? Mephisto simply said that this is the stupidest thing he/she’s seen all day and provided (fairly) good reasons as to why.
My day is still young, but it’s hard to imagine that I’ll encounter anything stupider than this before it’s done…
Did you really use the word stupider? I hope you were just trying to be funny.
This is the biggest load of crap I have ever heard. Silly feminist have ruined the good name of women who would like to choose situations in which to use their sexuality. Choice is the true feminist belief.
Do they really choose, though? For the most part they seem forced by circumstance or ignorance of contemporary ideology. I think Belle and Jasmine are the only ones you can make that argument with.
hmmms i honestly feel that disney movies really ought not be the subject that is criticized in its portrayal of women… and i dont get why there are so many of these around… of course, there’s the argument of the unconscious integration of child into a patriarchal society with all these implicit underlying constructs… but this implicit underlying constructs apply for so many other movies and so many other aspects of reality… to choose these movies as a site of repressive gendered dichotomies is just an attempt to pick a fight with something whose main goals are not to articulate something so devious……
watching them as a child, disney movies worked on a conscious level to evoke in me the need for respect and love (something that has really stuck with me for some reason)…and i think this is something that can be used to refute the objectification of women that is brought out here. there really is no need to for this swipe at the movies… after all the moral a child usually takes out of it is good…no? and isnt that what we arent concerned about??
What if the moral the children take away is that you simply need to get married in order to live happily ever after?
I have to defend them. Yes Snow White was loved for her beauty but also because she was kind and caring (traits that are undervalued in both sexes today). No she didn’t have any talents and she was naive, but it was the 1930s. Aurora wasn’t a very well developed character so there’s not a lot to say about her, but the original fairy tale is a sexual one and it’s hard to adapt that out of it without changing the plot so much that it’ll be another story entirely. And again it was made a long time ago. Jasmine rebelled against the oppressive customs she was born into, refusing to marry just for the sake of marrying. She wanted her own life, friends and adventure and she did something about it. Yes she had to be saved in the end but so did all the other (male) characters. It was Aladdin’s movie after all, he had to be the hero. Ariel didn’t change her appearance to be more attractive to Eric, she did it so that she could physically reach him. She is saved by him but she saves him too earlier in the movie. Belle saves the Beast with her patience and kindness not her sexuality. It was those things that changed his interest in her from a means to an end to genuine feelings. Cinderella I’ll grant you but again it was made a long time ago. Let’s also remember that Pocahontas and Mulan are part of the Disney princess range too and soon Tiana will be as well. Pocahontas saves her man rather than the other way around (and like Jasmine refuses to marry for the sake of marrying) and Mulan saves the whole of China (and also doesn’t want to marry for the sake of marrying). Tiana works hard for her dreams. There’s loads I could say on this subject but it’d probably require an essay so I’ll just stick to the points raised by the picture. 
[...] http://contexts.org/socimages/2009/10/25/disney-princesses-deconstructed/ [...]
But even in Cinderella, there is this sense that Cinderella ends up with the prince not because she is beautiful but because she is mentally strong enough to endure life with her evil step family. There is bravery in her ability to take their abuse without reciprocating it: she is strong enough to hold her values above her desire for revenge. You could consider this undignified and weak, I suppose, but there is also a kind of courage to it. Even though her prince doesn’t explicitly love her because of her courage, there is this sense that she ends up with the better fate because she is deserving of it. Maybe it’s easier to see in the contrapositive: her sisters don’t end up with the prince because they are too weak and shortsighted to value anything above themselves.
Snow White epitomizes the token “house wife.” Aurora was a macguffin in a movie where she was supposedly the star. Jasmin is a modernized version of Snow White with the illusion of depth but no real interests. Ariel’s main focus was rebelling against her father and chasing a man for the vast majority of the film. Belle exists to serve the men of the story. Cinderella is so blatant nothing needs to be said. Mulan sings a song about how she wishes she were a boy.
are these one lined responses supposed to make a point about something? so its wrong to be the house wife? the woman going after the man (which would be seen as an exercise of her prerogative in some contexts)? mulan sings a song bout being a boy (huh? watch the film and understand the context pls)…
arent u the one forcing token roles onto the characters? shouldnt we stop with this constant articulation of these supposed repressive dichotomies that the films supposedly perpetrates? while it does raise awareness of patriarchy and while it does seem to criticise it, all it really does is to articulate an entrapment… this then works as a reiteration of an overarching ideology from which there is no escape…
its all a matter of perspective isn’t it? and taking things out of contexts is a poor consideration of the perspectives that exists not merely in the films but in reality as well… =/
Look, both the comments by Liz and by Macguffin can be taken as true. You know why? Because these are short, children’s films. They run for how long, 90 mins? They don’t have time to create really complex characters, either in the females or the males. There has definately been a trend towards greater complexity, depth, a variation between characters in the more recent Disney films and I think that this is, at least, an improvement.
MacGuffin, you say that Jasmine has the “illusion of depth but no real interests”. Given how long the movies run for, I would say that the illusion of depth, in any character, is about all you will ever get. And no real interests? Please, do you expect them to be able to tell us her favourite food, that she loves watching the acrobats, that she loves to read the myths and legends of Arabia? Or conversely that her favourite thing to do is try on new silks (although that doesn’t seem in keeping with her character)? The point is, no character in a film of this length, is ever going to have many real interests. I note that Aladdin’s real interests seem only to be pretty girls and money, with the occasional good deed to other street kids. The only interests ever exposed for characters are those necessary for the storyline (eg Ariel likes to collect sunken human artifacts, as this interest is crucial to the storyline)
I think this was the most intelligent response I’ve seen. Women of the past (and present) have had to use what society allows them in order to survive. The story of Snow White was written eons ago during a time that a woman’s only purpose was to marry and bear male children. That she prevails against evil with wisdom (“I’m outta here”) and kindness (and don’t forget cleaning the house full of tiny slobs–that takes a strong stomach) and is rewarded by true love is beautiful. Remember, she loved and was loved by the seven dwarfs, too. She wasn’t so superficial that she rejected them for their appearance. It would have been impossible, given the time, for Snow White to turn the dwarfs’ home into a thriving B&B and sue the pants off that witch for attempted murder.
True, Disney movies are sappy and simplistic and show only beautiful people as worthy of love. That I will agree with. They only have a short time to tell a complex story that 3 year olds will understand. But everyone dreams about what they will never have. Girls dream of being a beautiful princess that won’t have to struggle to survive. Boys dream of being a pro football player surrounded by money. Neither one is realistic, but dreams are fun.
[...] by the surprise pregnancy faerie who brought me a daughter. And with her an overwhelming supply of Disney princess themed, bubblegum pink, gender enforcing rules on a [...]
[...] via SociologicalImages [...]
I have never understood the attraction to Disney characters and movies, I never even liked them as a kid. I refuse to buy my nieces anything Disney, they get art supplies, books and good music instead.
To the people defending Disney’s choices regarding their characters’ personalities, there have been PLENTY of strong women throughout history that they could base characters on, but they don’t do that. They force inferior, weak characters tainted by a misogynist viewpoint on impressionable children. They are a mega-billion dollar corporation that perpetuates the big lies.
Are these values imbued in to these characters because they are women or because they are princesses? Are you sure this is not instead an attack on the ruling class and the bourgeois mercantile class?
Although many of these tales were recorded and made famous by the educated and wealthy of the 19th century, the tales are of plebeian origins.
Maybe it is not women who are portrayed as vapid but wealthy women. Maybe the message isn’t ’sexuality is not the only worthwhile commodity of women’ but ‘the only worthwhile commodity of _rich_ women.’
All of these characters are rich or become rich. None of them have any depth of character or true complexity. They offer nothing but their mockery of the wealthy. Maybe you’re confusing slander against the rich for some imagined propagation of gender roles and stereotypes. After all, both Cinderella and Aladdin worked very hard to get where they ended up. They aren’t lazy and deserving of squalor like the rest of the poor.
Obviously I’m not being serious but really? So we grow up thinking we’re princesses and princes. We grow up thinking we’ll be famous movie stars. They’re selling, we’re buying, they’re earning, we’re working. It’s a con. The idea is to make you feel bad so you can be sold some other nonexistent sense of security. Sure, it didn’t start out that way.
The odds of survival for children and women in the medieval period were less than that of men but wealth gave people a serious advantage. Nubile women were very valuable when you consider how many died in child birth. What kind of egalitarian stories can you expect under those conditions? We’re certainly in a different time and we certainly need new tales for ourselves and our children.
Why waste your time on these relics and old cons? Write some new stories. Be the inspiration for our children. It’s good to analyze these stories for their failures and how they’re inadequate for our day and age, but it’s time to move on and make something new. Get to it and stop screaming to high heaven for other people to make the changes that you want. Get to it!
The problem is not the historical accuracy, reality or “time period” of the worlds they live in. Perhaps as adults we can make those connections and contextualize the images and archetypes presented to us.
That said, these are kids movies. You’re indoctrinating children into a patriarchy where physical appearance is priority one.
Gabe makes an astute point with limiting the analysis to gender alone. That said, we still have to consider WHO we are marketing these images toward.
[...] Link via Popped Culture [...]
This is very true. Girls are being raised to be pressured into being “beautiful” and to want the acceptance of men. Also, just recently I finally saw a black princess. Why has this suddenly come into play??? The president perhaps. This is totally unfair for African American girls and Hispanic girls…where is their princess??? And Dora doesn’t count.
I believe The Princess and the Frog went into production a few years before Obama became a major deal. The movie was delayed because of concerns about racism, so there was a bit of redesign and rewrite.
The black princess (Tiana) has been in the works since 2006, so it has nothing to do with Obama. Keep in mind she’s also the first American princess. Cinderella, Aurora, and Snow White were all from the 40s and 50s, so you can’t really expect them to have been racially diverse, considering the time period. Since the new wave of princesses started in 1989, we’ve had Ariel (white), Belle (white, French), Jasmine (Middle Eastern), Pocahontas (Native American), and Mulan (Asian). Now we have Tiana (black, American). The next one will be Rapunzel (white). Other popular female characters include Alice and Wendy (both white and from the 1950s), Esmeralda (gypsy), Megara (white, Greek), Jane from Tarzan (white, British), and Lilo (Hawaiian). I don’t really see an absence of diversity, although it would certainly be nice to have a Hispanic princess. I have no doubt that that’s in the works; it would be hugely lucrative for Disney if nothing else to have a beautiful Hispanic princess to put on merchandise.
I’m not sure I agree that Belle’s only asset is sexuality, but then, it’s been a long time since I saw that movie, and I may be biased – being bookish in itself seems like a good thing to me.
What I find so creepy about that story in hindsight is the “if you stay with a nasty/abusive man, your love will change him”-angle.
The only problem I have with this and from all that I have read on here and on Neatorama, I am not alone in this, is that this is just inaccurate.
The simple and vague statements might make some people interpret truth into them, but quite honestly, I can’t see how anyone would be able to substantiate these claims with detailed evidence from the movies themselves.
Obviously this was meant for some form of entertainment. Unfortunately, it fails at this, because there is little truth to it and people are getting sick of these overly biased looks at fairy tales that ever so often intend to reveal something “shocking” about them, which no one had ever considered before. Unfortunately, making things up for this purpose just makes people mad.
This is the case here. A played out idea, badly executed and with little substance.
I’ve noticed several comments about how there are “No Hispanic Princesses”…seems like almost everyone has forgotten “Gargoyles.” Yup, the old kids tv series. Elisa may be a cop instead of a princess, but she is still the toughest, coolest, most ass-kicking female character that Disney ever created. She was my favorite character when I was growing up, because she was someone who was real enough to aspire to, and cool enough that I wanted to be her.
So that’s why there isn’t a Disney Rumple Stiltskin, eh:
King chooses woman for her hard work and impressive skills, which she has commissioned from a man with use of her wealth and by entering a dodgy contract in order to win King and associated wealth. Queen risks loosing bridal wealth due to dodge contract. Queen commissions another man to find out personal information about the debt collector in order to avoid paying up debt. Queen wins. King carries on lording over the land completely unawares.
[...] On the original post a commenter offered a flip-side-view of what Disney teaches young boys. (yes, they have commenters that are actually involved!) [...]
I have read several versions of many of the original fairy tales that the Disney Princesses are based on.
The original Little Mermaid is a HORRIFIC tale that warns of the dangers of changing who you are to interest some pathetic male. She ends up deciding to kill herself instead of him when he marries someone else. If I remember correctly, she ends up killing her sisters too.
Beauty and the Beast was improved by Disney. I hated the Beast transformation to a man at the end of the tale, otherwise I love the original story and the movie. In both, Belle is very smart and curious. Some versions of the story are more horrific and she barely survives her discovery of her hosts secrets (the previous “wives” were murdered).
[...] Contexts Posted on November 11, 2009 by Kathy Contexts [...]
[...] Link via Popped Culture http://www.neatorama.com/2009/11/10/sociological-deconstruction-of-the... November 10th, 2009 [...]
[...] and before my coffee, eyes unfocused with sleep and lack of glasses, I checked my email to find this article about Disney Princesses from Andy. The article itself is not that interesting, because, let’s [...]
“They are a mega-billion dollar corporation that perpetuates the big lies.”
Disney knows that this perception exists, which is why you see a movie like Enchanted, where they are creating a parody of their own stories so that they can reinvent their four-to-five billion dollar annual princess machine. Disney is just as much a part of our culture as Walmart, McDonalds or General Electric. These companies that are judged wicked because they meet demands from people. Little girls have always liked to hear stories of princesses since long before Disney, cultural legacies from the past, like feudal Europe – not a nice place for common women, but much better as a princess. Now, this feeling is democratized, Disney offers the princess feeling to all girls. They reinforce this demand, like any profit oriented company would. This is the way the capitalist system works. Would you rather have empty shelves, or those with goods, many of which you dislike?
[...] got this link via the yews’ blog about fairytales and thought i just shared [...]
[...] Disney princesses, deconstructed [princes, too!] — An awesome rundown in two images of why I may never own a Disney animated [...]
[...] The Sociological Deconstruction of Disney Princesses{source} [...]
[...] princess perception problem that is seeping into our churches. So they sent me the following link deconstructing the Disney Princesses and Princes. I’m putting this up here just for conversation. They were being funny girl leaders (Liz and [...]
[...] contexts.org, Jeff Brunner has provided this biting analysis on the “evolution” of Disney’s [...]
[...] Disney Princesses, Deconstructed A depression analysis of what Disney leading ladies teach young girls and boys. (tags: disney gender sociology media culture sexism film sociologicalimages blog post) [...]
The moral of THIS story is that you can twist and simplify anything to lend credence to an agenda. In this case, that’s the feminist assertion that Disney has and continues to present a sexist view of women.
Sadly, what valid point there may have been regarding more archaic female characterizations as perpetrated by Disney in the past, it’s overshadowed by the fact that several of these female characters were portrayed as strong, capable, smart and courageous in addition to, yes, sometimes relying on some charm and feminine wiles. Gosh, we’d better not say any woman’s ever done THAT, eh?
As for the cries of racism and color preference… At the time most of these films were made, this was a mostly white nation of European descent and these are/were mostly European fairy tales. The bulk of the target market for these films has been (and still mostly is) white. It’s no more racist to cater to your desired market here than it is in any other country. The new Princess and the Frog film has a black female lead.
At some point we have to recognize the changing of societal norms and take the old with the new and learn from it, not try to cover it up with huffy, stentorian arguments about fairness, equality and other things we didn’t really subscribe to as openly in 1937 or 1950 as we do, today. We’ve evolved. It’s cool. We don’t have to make Cinderella a mixed-race with a chainsaw that kicks the crap out of guys to teach girls to be independent or have a sense of self worth.
I think the Jasmine criticism is misplaced. She’s not forced into marriage because of some Disney conspiracy against women. It’s the middle east during the times of the arabian nights. Hell, in Europe during the age of kings, women were forced into marriages. It’s just the way it was.
I notice no mention is made of the Gaston character in B&TB, probably since he doesn’t fit into the oppression meta-narrative about the story some want to build.
Gaston, in contrast to the Beast, was a physically beautiful specimen who is initially shown making the local females swoon. Belle, however, not only isn’t taken in by Gaston, but in fact rejects and humiliates him. Part of the point, of course, is to contrast inner and outer beauty (the Beast and Gaston, respectively).
Anyway, claiming Belle’s only asset is her sexuality is a pretty ridiculous thing to say; she is smart, strong-willed, and brave on top of being patient and beautiful, and it’s her decisions (not the Beast’s) that drive the story from beginning to end.
For those complaining about Stockholm Syndrome, bear in mind the the Beast and his whole household staff are in a pretty tight situation; their only hope of becoming human again lies with this strange woman who suddenly appears at their doorstep. They’re not just imprisoning Belle for the hell of it. Despite this, the Beast shows great generosity of spirit by letting Belle go to her sick father even though this probably means he can never break the spell, and it’s this sacrifice that wins Belle’s love, not the fact that she’s stuck with the guy (which, by the way, she isn’t at the end).
Exactly what I’d have said if I noticed this thread sooner.
Ask a few kids what the names of the other characters in the Disney princess movies are, or what the story is about. I bet you more than a few wont know.
Do we really even need to discuss the strength of the characters or the impressions they might leave on our children? My only concern is with their ever growing bosoms and shrinking outfits. These movies are promoted as treasures and classics by Disney, ‘vaulted’ for years and released for a limited time for greater profit. A lot of kids haven’t even seen the actual movies, but they are pummeled with products bearing the images of these unarguably sexy cartoons with their perfectly curved figures and bedroom eyes, lounging in front of castles and in many cases dripping with jewels and gold.
I have been studying these products in stores lately. More shading goes into creating their cleavage than in their faces. I might know that in the movies Belle loves books or Ariel refuses to conform or Tinkerbelle is a loyal friend…but all my six-year-old foster daughter sees is a pretty face with a nice rack and a lot of pretty things… though she might not describe it as such.
Where is Bambi? Alice in Wonderland? Lady and the Tramp? They are off somewhere being not as marketable because Disney is a business and business knows what sells.
[...] here’s another analysis of Disney princesses – and it’s not pretty. The fairytale existence isn’t all it’s cracked up to [...]
[...] This has not always been the theme of the Disney movies. In fact The Disney Corporation has presented children worldwide with images of women who depend on their looks and sexuality to achieve a favorable outcome. These images have had a direct effect on children today; changing their behavior patterns and teaching them about sex at too young of an age and encouraging them to act in a sexual nature. [...]
I think y`all are hilarious arguing about Disney movies. I mean seriously, if you put this much time into other things you might have that house in the Sweden Alps you always dreamed of.
Kids don`t look that deep into movies and can differentiate movies from real life, I know I did, I saw all these movies when I was a toddler and they didn`t make me want to enslave a woman or take her rights away. Seriously, go look up that Sweden home and chill about children`s movies.
The Sweden Alps? Really?
The point is that the media, all media, are pushing a particular image on our kids. The princesses are an isolated example of a much bigger problem here. The problem being that at every turn our kids are being sold images of airbrushed, plastic, unattainable perfection.
We call it harmless because its for children, but its shaping the perceptions of future adults and will lead to a more dumbed down, superficial America than what we have even today.
Every person of influence in a child’s life, whether they’re 2 or 22, needs to be able to point out these misconceptions and say “that’s bullsh** and here’s why, now go ahead.” , rather than “oh, that’s harmless, go ahead.”
See, Lizz, if you hadn’t taken the time to rebut anonymous’s I-like-this-wool-over-my-eyes comment, you totally could have had the time and energy to *move* the Alps to Sweden and build a home there.
[...] a story by CNN reporter Breenana Hare, who suggested that this new princess was making a break with the old princesses in more than one [...]
Pocahontas was a princess, unless you don’t believe that an indigenous culture qualifies.
In fact, she wasn’t. There wasn’t such title among them. Her father was a powerful chief but they traced descent matrilineally. After Powhatan’s death the new chief would have been a maternal relative of his, not any of his children. Pocahontas might have had influence as Powhatan’s favorite daughter, but their concept of heritable power differed from ours.
[...] too long ago, a picture was making the rounds on the feminist sites where someone had taken each Disney Princess a…. While I hotly disagree with the analysis of bookwork Belle, it illustrates the lesson a little [...]
Author: Tiffani W
Comment:
Honestly it is unbelievably shocking to me how you juxtapose incredibly lucid, perceptive insight with random liberal hatred and homophobia.
Everything in your post was perfect. Well-organized and insightful. And then:
“He was not a promiscuous liberal pig, or an asshat with a homosexual or bisexual mindset”
I honestly don’t understand how such vitriol like that can come forth without you having some kind of cognitive dissonance about it. It legitimately seems similar to the way in which cults brainwash people by introducing new terms that only the indoctrinated understand, thus further removing them from their previous lives.
What the HELL does liberalism or homosexuality have anything to do with Snow White?!?!?!
I’m legitimately struggling here, and I know it’s OT, but if you or someone else could explain to me how such deep-rooted hatred can spring from someone who otherwise seems so intelligent and articulate, it would really help me learn a lot.
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Alessandra’s original post:
Alessandra 4:18 pm on October 28, 2009 | # | Reply
“the comments in the photo above about many of these movies is simply not true. In order to really believe the accusations you have to ignore 98% of the movie context”
Wasn’t this weird, the degree of just plain lying about the characteristics of the plot and the characters? It wasn’t just painting with a broad brush, it was painting with a completely wrong colored brush in the first place. I mean Snow White and “her burgeoning sexuality” and “her only asset, physical beauty is what saves her in the end.”
I considered this an original socimages troll post. If the objective was to generate commentary and discussion, it certainly achieved this aim.
As already mentioned, Disney’s Snow White is never reduced to her external appearance, quite on the contrary. Although she is pretty on the outside, just about every single attitude and action from her character in the movie is also very, very “pretty” from a 1930s and Disneyan perspective. This is no coincidence at all, it’s a consequence of express intent from Disney, reflecting his (and others) views about what would be a model young woman at the time.
Her heart is kind and pure, she is modest, chaste, nice, cheerful, graceful, feminine, responsible, active, good-organizer, good housewife, sane, etc. She is truly a model, and not in any way because of her appearance, although that is part of what she is.
On the contrary, it is the woman in the movie who is obsessed with her looks and who only considers her value based on her looks who is the ogre, the evil one, that is, the Queen. This message in the movie is very clear.
Furthermore, regarding “burgeoning sexuality,” the Queen doesn’t ask who is “hottest” or the “sexiest” of them all, but who is the most beautiful. Although there is a tinge of a very light idea of the sexual within the larger whole of Snow White’s external beauty, it is practically negligent and highly irrelevant. The competition isn’t focused on the sexual.
Moreover, it is absolute nonsense to say that what “saves” Snow White in the end is her beauty. What saves her is the Prince’s committed, sincere love for her. He was not a promiscuous liberal pig, or an asshat with a homosexual or bisexual mindset, but a guy who had found his true love, thought he lost it, but lives to discover it come to life again. Furthermore, he is rich, and she is poor, yet this poses no obstacle for him to value her (just like rich people tremendously value poor people in real life 
Concerning some other criticisms, it’s true though that she is not a female action heroine of the 21st century, and gets very scared and has that whole frail thing while in the forest sequence.
Also, the criticism about true love being instantaneous in many of these films is quite valid. At the same time, this is a fairy tale, so although not ideal or unproblematic regarding its extremely oversimplified idea of “instantaneous true love,” Disney’s Snow White gets a little discount, in my opinion.
With all its annoying problems, which there are many of various kinds, I could never get tired of watching Disney’s Snow White. I love her soprano voice, I love the little visual gags, the visual aspect of the characters, and I love the classic, elegant, utterly gorgeous 2D animation. Disney Corporation has somewhat kept their animation style, but it has dropped down in quality in the last few decades. And what is a major loss that is. It was golden, now it’s a slightly dull silver at best.
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Tiffany, as you know by now, this blog is a farce. It is not intended for dialogue or exchanges, but only appropriate for ideological parrots whose only way to deal with questions that show them to be wrong is to censor them.
“I’m legitimately struggling here, and I know it’s OT, but if you or someone else could explain to me how such deep-rooted hatred can spring from someone who otherwise seems so intelligent and articulate, it would really help me learn a lot.”
I’m sorry, but I won’t waste my time here “explaining” my perspective, only to have it deleted, because it doesn’t conform to the dominant idiocy of the the majority. And what you call “deep-rooted hatred” is what I call your profoundly ignorant bigotry.
Thank you for the “intelligent and articulate” in any case.
Have fun reading a bunch of bloated asshats glossing over and running away from questions they can’t deal with.
I love the Princess analysis. Gonna blow it up to poster size for my nieces.
You’re right on the money. The folks complaining are not up to speed with the way the studio operates and the historic changes that have taken place in fairy tales. Many of the characters that we know of as being simpering and passive were quite strong in the original folktales. Red Riding Hood, for one, was a crafty character not unlike coyote in Native American stories. Somewhere along the way, that was threatening to someone in authority and she was made into a weak little girl who gets rescued. In stories, boys stray from the path and win kingdoms. Girls stray from the path and get punished. It is not defensible. And it is not traditional either, except during a very narrow historical window.
The Disney studio doesn’t come up with their own stories. And whatever they adapt, be it legally or otherwise, they squash into a product. Old Walt himself was a savvy businessman, though not much of an artist. He used to steal the drawings from his animators’ desks and pass them off as his own. These same animators that he testified against to the House Committee on UnAmerican Activities. Yep, he called them out as “commies”. And why? Because they were not content with being very poorly compensated for their hard work and skills and had the nerve to try to unionize! Zounds! And for this, he wanted them blacklisted. Yeah, Walt was a real prince. He would have loved to play golf with Dick Cheney.
He was sexist, racist and anti-labor. He imposed those values on his films. Check out the crows in “Dumbo”, or listen to the song of the roustabouts as they pitch the tent. It is all rather chilling. The most telling thing to me are the elephants in that movie. Dumbo is the lone male. The rest of the circus elephants are female and portrayed as vicious, nasty old and middle-aged women. The only good female elephant is Dumbo’s mother AND SHE IS MUTE!!! OMFG!!! How can you fail to see Disney’s flat out hostility for women. He must have felt very threatened for some reason. Perhaps he had a cluster B personality disorder and split them black for some reason? I have no idea. But made my stomach flip flop when the parents of my kid’s friends bought all those old Disney princess movies for their daughters and let them watch them over and over and over again, so the subliminal messages were really drummed in, in a way that the original theater-going audiences never experience.
In Disney films, women are good if young and beautiful and weak. Women are evil if mature and powerful and they don’t fit your standard of beauty. The only strong women in Disney films are EVIL.
Nowadays the motivation is strictly corporate. They’ve got a product. For years it sold. Twenty years ago, they were making money hand over fist selling their tired old princess crap to boomer parents with VCRs. When they made new product, errr, films, they wanted to replicate the successful formula. In these films that have a certain look and are cell animation style (now done on computer), they don’t vary the formula. And they don’t come up with original ideas. Does McDonald’s shoot for original? Are they looking for something healthier, fresher, better? No. They want to sell the same horrible slop. The damages caused by the manufacture and consumption of their product (I’m loathe to call it food) are of no concern to them. Sales matter. Period. Likewise with Disney. So McDonalds can offer you a burger or a McRib or whatever, and it all pretty much tastes the same. So, too, with Disney; they can take public domain fairy tales, appropriate, steal stories (The Lying King) from other studios, or adapt books that they’ve acquired (and it’s all about acquisition now, ain’t it?) be they Rudyard Kipling’s “The Jungle Books” or “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” and it all comes out the same. When I saw the trailer for Hunchback, I actually stood up in the theater and shouted out “SOMEBODY STOP THESE PEOPLE”.
It’s crap. Let your kids see something decent and creative. Better yet, let them loose to run in the woods. Keep them away from this shit.
[...] with a minority group, their beliefs about the minority group are heavily shaped by the media. Disney fairy tales and fantasy-themed genres teach male geeks that women instantly fall in love with men who are rich, [...]
for crying out loud! These films are FICTIONAL! If you dont want your kids “Influenced” by them then dont let them to watch the movies.
They’re just FAIRYTALES with FAIRYTALE VALUES.
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