I, along with many other children grew up watching the "classic" Disney films that we all know and love? (Question mark because of what I'm about to discuss.) I can't remember when exactly, possibly sometime in high school, a lot of people were talking about the hidden subliminal and sexual messages that are incorporated into many Disney movies. If you search subliminal messaging and Disney in Youtube or Google, there are so many videos that come up regarding the issue. So for this assignment, I decided to Google, stereotypes in the media and see what I can find and not so surprising, what came up was a video on Youtube about sexism, strength, and dominance in Disney films. The video is called, Sexism, Strength and Dominance: Masculinity in Disney Films by Youtube user sanjaynewton (I included their Youtube page linked when you click on the user name).
While watching the video, I noticed that there are many other videos that cover similar topics so I watched a few of them to determine which I wanted to discuss and I chose the one I did because it specifically pinpoints masculinity in Disney films, something that I feel isn't discussed as much because it seems as if people are more focused with the portrayal of women in media and the effect it has on women and young girls. Another reason why I chose to discuss this is because Jean Kilbourne does a great job discussing the portrayal of women in her documentary, Killing Us Softly but doesn't really discuss the portrayal of men in the media, at least not in the video we watched in class.
Masculinity, according to the many Disney films show that the man picks out women who have to meet his standards (according to The Emperor's New Groove and Mulan). These standards include: pale skin and eyes like the stars, love the male's strength and battle scars as well as cook whatever he wants (as said in the song "A Girl Worth Fighting For"). Also masculinity means having chiseled bodies and physical strength as shown with the characters: Hercules, Gaston (Beauty and the Beast), and with Mulan, the female character in the movie Mulan who has to go undercover as a man in order to fight in the Chinese army. When I was younger and watched Mulan for the first time, my reaction was positive, a woman who is fighting in the army! Not that I would fight in the army but I was happy to see a different kind of Disney movie, little did I know or pay attention to at the time, but Mulan is only allowed to fight in the army because she disguises herself as a man and learns how to be a man in the training scenes in the movie set to the song "Be A Man". In order to be a man, you have to be strong!
Other qualities of being a man include violence; fighting and winning in order to maintain the dominant status you worked so hard to obtain. This is shown in The Lion King between the lions, Mufasa and Scar who fight to maintain the "king of the jungle" status and in Beauty and the Beast when the macho Gaston fights the Beast, taunting him by saying, "What's the matter Beast? Too kind and gentle to fight back?" And then the camera closes in on Beast's face who looks sad and defeated. The narrator goes on to explain with the help of Aladdin in this case, that the most climactic scene in any Disney movie is a fight between two men either to win the love of a woman or to establish dominance.
Young boys and girls grow up with these movies, not realizing that they are essentially being brainwashed. In other discussions, it becomes clear that girls are told that they are weak and that they need to have small waists, disproportionate and unattainable bodies and boys are told that they need to have a woman cook and clean for them, that the woman needs to look a certain way and that as men, they need to be strong and have a chiseled body and huge, bulking muscles.
It interests me because of my love for Disney movies as a child and even now as a young adult. I'm not saying that people should boycott Disney movies or that I'm even going to boycott them but it's important that we understand what Disney was really trying to accomplish. Despite the hidden messages that they seemed to incorporate into their movies for whatever reason, they really seemed to think that they were smart. And Disney was smart, they made all kinds of movies and these Disney "princess" movies were key to their success. They know that they made their "princesses" look different enough, even going as far as to create an African American princess with the movie, The Princess and the Frog (2009). And sometimes, I wonder if they purposely made the "princesses" look different in order to avoid having anyone notice what they were really portraying with their many movies.
This assignment asked us to also come up with alternative advertising strategies and I think that the alternatives that should be utilized are similar to Dove's Real Women campaign. The media knows well that what they do are watched by so many people so in order for things to change and for the problems many young people deal with regarding body image to go away is if the media changes what they choose to show. The media needs to stop with the idea that women and men need to look and act a certain way and instead embrace what we should focus on and that is the diversity that makes up the human race. People come in all shapes, sizes and colors and this should be portrayed in what we are consuming via media. The problem with embracing people for who they really are goes even farther back to the fact that people still have problems accepting those who are different from them. So really, in order for anything to change, people need to get over themselves and accept that there are different people in the world and you don't have to agree with what someone thinks but you should let them think what they want.
The video incorporates various Disney movies made in different decades as well as audio from the documentary, "Mickey Mouse Monopoly" (2001) by Dr. Justin Lewis, Journalism, Media and Culture Studies at Cardiff University. It shows the portrayal of men in The Incredibles (2004), Beauty and the Beast (1991), The Emperor's New Groove (2000), The Little Mermaid (1989), Mulan (1998), Hercules (1997), The Lion King (1994), Aladdin (1992).
References: Killing Us Softly 4 - Advertising's Image of Women [Trailer]
Sexism, Strength and Dominance: Masculinity in Disney Films
Image - gaston.gif
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