In light of the film we have been talking about recently, I decided to change my laptop background:

Small comment, larger implications

I am currently driving down to Miami with the Men’s Crew Team for our spring break trip.  As we began to enter the vicinity of Florida, our coach commented, “Who wants to stop by Orlando and visit Disney World?”  While this comment was a joke, and no one gave it a second thought, it had me thinking about just how big of a name Disney is.  It has gotten to the point that Florida is synonymous with Disney World, and vice versa.  After all, my coach is a graduate student studying something engineering-related, and it has likely been a while since he last watched a Disney film on his own.  On top of all that, there were other interesting places that we could have checked out on the road from Duke to Miami, but Disney World was the one that really stood out. 

I have a feeling that the familiarity of Disney’s name is only going to continue to increase, as Disney continues to build theme parks around the world, and broadcast films in multiple countries. Disney will no longer be a name that is popular only in the United States, but it will be big across the industrialized world.  We see Disney making moves for this to happen, not only with their theme parks, but also with TV shows and movies being released with more diverse characters, and in multiple languages, to attract a broader viewership base.  While this can be a good thing, it will be especially important to make sure that we do not take everything in these films for granted, and that we make sure the messages being told are ones of acceptance and harmony.

Calculated costs: when and where to give scholarships

Earlier this month, Disney announced plans to launch a Corporate Scholars Program, which means $1 million will be donated through the United Negro College Fund, in order to “offer financial assistance to high-achieving African American students in underserved communities across the country.”  This is a great program, both for black students, and for Disney.  The very last line of the article (written by ABC) reads, “Students must have an interest in pursuing a career in the entertainment industry, among other requirements.”  In class, we have discussed that a large percentage of the people working for Disney, as animators or in powerful positions, are white men.  This, to me, seems like another move by Disney to increase diversity among the corporation’s employees.  Offering scholarships and internship opportunities to gifted African American students, and having them study something related to the entertainment industry, puts them in the perfect position to be hired by Disney in the future, which is likely the goal.  This is an interesting approach, as it is a win-win situation for both Disney and the gifted students.

The link to the article is below:

http://abcnews.go.com/US/walt-disney-company-announces-corporate-scholars-program/story?id=29418740

How Disney continues to impact each generation

While looking up the possibilities for more Lion King movies, I came across an article about Disney’s plans to create a sequel, called “Lion Guard,” that will be released on the Disney channel this fall.  While there are already to other sequels, The Lion King 1 ½ and 2, this will be a different approach since it will not be released in theaters.  An interesting point that the article brought up is that this franchise made $987.4 million globally just from the film release, and over $5 billion worldwide from the theater adaptation.  That is not to mention the television series The Lion King’s Timon and Pumba and attractions at the Disney Parks and Resorts, as well as other merchandise.   Disney has done a masterful job at making money from this story, and does not seem ready to give up yet.

What a sequel on the Disney channel means is that this story will be passed on from generation to generation.  While people my age who grew up watching the original film will likely not end up watching a made-for-TV new edition to this series (a feature film, maybe), it will introduce this story to kids of the next generation, who would otherwise have a whole host of new movies to watch instead.  By doing this, it allows them to continue selling their merchandise and ensure that The Lion King continues to have appeal with future generations.  This, to me, shows how Disney is a tool that brings together people of many generations who all have positive memories related to Disney movies and theme parks.

The link to the article is below:

http://deadline.com/2014/06/disneys-latest-lion-king-sequel-lion-guard-starts-production-for-tv-786966/

Imagine Disney films in real life!

According to an article on Tech Crunch, Disney has been testing with Virtual Reality for a while now, and is looking to start rolling out some of their projects within the next couple of years.  Already, at Disneyland Paris, there is a 4K experience that “lets you see what it would be like to move around at the same size as the Pixar film’s minuscule hero.”  They are also working on projects such as a Toy Story-based shooter that lets you and several others participate in a virtual reality-based setting.  All of these experiences sound just as fun to me as they probably do to children much younger than me, which is indicative of the fact that Disney has found a way to attract people of all ages.  I’m excited to see what Disney theme parks will be like five or ten years down the road, when technologies beyond our imaginations will likely be used on a regular basis.

The link to the article is posted below:

http://techcrunch.com/2015/03/05/how-disney-thinks-about-virtual-reality-for-its-theme-parks/

Response to The Lion King

I remember towards the end of my senior year of high school, when my teacher announced that we were going to watch The Lion King, I was genuinely excited to see it, much more so than I would have been for say Mulan, Pocahontas, or many of the other Disney animated films.  Even though I had outgrown children’s movies, there was still a part of me that knew I would enjoy it as much as I did when I was six years old.  Re-watching it then, I realized I was right, and that the movie was great.  It felt like I was watching it for the first time, since there were so many parts that I had forgotten about.  Before watching it this time, though, I wondered if I would be as captivated, since this time I did remember most of the storyline because it was still fairly fresh in my memory.

Watching The Lion King for this class was just as great an experience, although this time I watched it from an analytical perspective.  As far as Disney films go, I thought it had a much deeper message than, say, many of the fairy tales.  The whole idea of the Circle of Life, and the wisdom that Mufasa passed down to his son, were much more than any six year old child is looking to get out of a Disney animated feature film.  This, to me, is a testament to the effort and time Disney animators put into their films.  Even if the end goal is to attract small children and make money, they still want to create films that will be remembered and that can be enjoyed by adults as well, which I would think is a fairly complicated task.

One key criticism with this film is that there are sexist undertones, seeing as the female lions never stand up to Scar and the hyenas until Simba returns to save the day.  Looking at Disney’s track record with sexism in their animated films, I would not be surprised if this is just a continuation of their tendency to undermine women in their stories.  However, in a lion pride, the males are always the ones who fight for control of a group of females, so I wonder if in this case the writers were just trying to be more realistic in the depiction of these lions.  This would also make sense, considering after the release of The Lion King, Disney started to make a push to include more diversity in their films, as well as a set of more dynamic female characters.

Response to the Amanda Putnam's article

In her article “Mean Ladies: Transgendered Villains in Disney Films,” Amanda Putnam argues that both male and female villains in Disney films are consistently given characteristics of the opposite sex, while the heroes and protagonists portray stereotypical gender roles.  She believes this is especially dangerous, as it influences children into believing that there are negative connotations associated with males having feminine qualities and females having masculine quantities. In my opinion, there were many valid points made in this article.  Even just looking at the villains in movies we have watched so far in this class, like The Lion King’s Scar, or The Little Mermaid’s Ursula, one sees how these characters exhibit characteristics that are not stereotypical of their gender.  In addition, Putnam uses a broad range of examples to prove her point, which creates some validity to her claim.

While Putnam’s overall claim may be true, some of her examples were a bit of a stretch in my opinion.  For example, in describing the hyper-femininity of Disney princesses, she claims that “A proliferation of stereotypically female behaviors, such as standard finishing school traits, pre-occupations with domestic work, as well as an affinity for animals also mark many of the princess characters as ultra-feminine, at least as Disney defines it.”  While the first two examples make sense, the third is not a trait I would consider to be any more feminine than masculine.  After all, for a long time men have been known for having close bonds with animals such as dogs or horses.  Putnam also groups The Lion King’s Scar, Aladdin’s Jafar, and Pocahontas’s Ratcliffe into the group of characters known as “mean ladies” to her daughter, which does not make sense.  If the real “mean ladies” are female villains who exhibit masculine traits, then how would male villains who exhibit feminine traits also be considered “mean ladies?”  While I understand what she is trying to say, this appears to be a logical fallacy.

While this article is an attack on the Disney corporation’s ideologies, it also includes social commentary.  On page 149, Putnam states, “However, it is the noxious combination of transgendered characteristics with these characters’ evil plots and exploits that makes this spicy blend so unpalatable once clearly recognized—and yet, that combination goes unrealized by most viewers, whether child or adult-accepted without examination, reinforcing the heterosexism of current contemporary culture.”  Putnam appears to be arguing that a reason these transgendered characteristics are not often talked about are because many people do not even realize the subtle messages being told in the same way they would be able to spot traditional sexism or racism.  Or if they do spot these characteristics, they agree with these portrayals, or see no issue with them, which is an issue within itself.  This is such a big problem because it leads young, unassuming children to believe that the only way to be good and live a happy life is to stick to strict gender roles and stereotypes, and if they deviate from that path, they risk alienating themselves from the rest of society and being viewed as the bad guys.  This can be very detrimental to tomboys and tomgirls, and those who do not fit perfectly into the mold of what society expects from males and females.