Since she is a princess, and seemingly innocent, we tend to overlook just how weird some of the things said in the film wild be if they occurred in real life.  Example: The GIF above.

Response to Roberta Trites’ article “The Little Mermaid”

In this article, Roberta Trites offered a new perspective to the film The Little Mermaid, which was even more negative than my own interpretation of the film.  After re-watching the film, and reading Hans Christian Andersen’s version, I realized how much the Disney film had changed the original story to make it fit into it’s own ideals for what a fairy tale should look like.  Trites’ first and main argument is that any signs of femininity that appear in the original story are not portrayed in the film.  This is very evident throughout the film.   For example, as Trites argues, “Andersen’s mermaid quests for a soul, but Disney’s mermaid, Ariel, quests for a mate.”  While Ariel wants the love of a man to bring happiness to her, Andersen’s mermaid wants much more, and uses man’s love to achieve that goal, which is much more empowering.

Although I do agree with a lot of what Trites is saying in the article, there were parts that I was not sure if I was completely on board.  For example, Trites argues that the palaces of Triton and Eric are built of “long, cylindrical towers,” whereas Ursula’s home is cavernous.  While these could be sexual symbols, I feel like castles have historically had towers, so it would only make sense that they did in the film.  As a juxtaposition, it would only make sense that Ursula’s palace is the opposite of those of the “benevolent” characters, explaining why they are cavernous.  All in all, this article is very detailed in explaining both how this film was altered from the original version, and how it was meant to send a sexist, non-feminist message to little girls and boys.    

What would Disney princesses actually look like in real life?

It’s interesting to note that although Disney princesses would look different from one another in actuality, Disney has done a remarkable job of making them all have similar physical features.  I think the video in this article does a good job of showing how they would all have their own defining characteristics, and would not all have size two waists.

The link to the article is below:

http://firsttoknow.com/disney-princesses-historically-accurate/

Are Disney amusement parks still meant for the average American?

Disney rose to fame through his films and amusement parks by appealing to middle class America.  As we discussed in class, being able to afford the trip to Disney World or Disneyland meant that you had made it as a middle class American.  However, in recent years, the prices at the Disney theme parks have risen exponentially.  I recently read an article in the Orlando Sentinel that addressed this very phenomenon.  One-day ticket prices are now over $105 per person, which is quite ridiculous.  This means that for a family of four to visit just the theme park, it would cost over $400.  This doesn’t even include the cost of transportation to the park (since people come from all over the country to visit), as well as lodging and food.  Prices like these prove that Disney is now trying to attract those in the upper-middle and upper classes of American society.  As Disney continues to attract those in the upper classes, will its fundamental values be lost?

The link to the article is below:

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/business/os-disney-tickets-100-20150222-story.html  

Response to The Little Mermaid

Re-watching The Little Mermaid this week, I was constantly frustrated with the message being portrayed.  The movie is overtly sexist and superficial.  Ariel, an innocent and unsuspecting girl, is constantly controlled by others, such as her father, the witch, and the prince.  Similar to Rapunzel in Tangled, and every other Disney princess, she has physical features that are meant to seem desirable, even though they are unattainable for any female.  She falls in love with a human after seeing him once, and wants to be with him even before she knows anything about him.  She is willing to give up one of her best features, her voice, in order to change her tail into a pair of legs and hopefully get the prince to fall in love with her.  To make things worse, he must fall in love with just her body because she cannot even speak to him.  All of this portrays how shallow Ariel is as a character, who cannot find happiness within herself.

Another very shallow character is the prince, who also falls in love after hearing the mermaid sing.  He is only in love with her external features, her voice and body, representing how two-dimensional he is as a person.  This is why he is so quick to fall for Ursula when she changes herself to look like Ariel, since all he remembers is a vague vision of her face and her voice.  Although the film degrades females in multiple ways, it also does very little to advance the personality of one of the main male characters, who ends up being the “good guy.”

This film portrays some very conservative and “traditional” American ideals that have been argued to influence girls negatively, but I also wonder how a film like this would affect boys.  As a child, I remember watching this movie, and although it is not a go-to favorite for most boys, it is still one that many of them end up watching while growing up.  What messages is it giving them?  For one, I feel like its biggest issue is that it instills ideals into boys about what girls should act and look like.  Ariel, with her high-pitched voice, is very emotional and does not think for herself.  She even requires the eels to convince her to see Ursula, instead of deciding to rebel by herself.  This makes boys think that girls are susceptible to doing what they want, and need the protection of a man.  At the same time, the two main roles of benevolent power in the film, her father and the prince, are both male, reaffirming the role of men being in charge.  All in all, watching this movie as an informed individual really opened my eyes to all of the issues in the film.

Does Disney really promote family values?

While browsing the Internet, I came across an article titled, “Why adults like Disney Cruises,” which basically explained that the cruises did a good job of keeping children entertained.  As a result, there was plenty of adults-only time, and adults-only spaces, that offered a variety of amenities for relaxing, such as a pool with a swim-up bar and yoga classes.  I understand that going on a family vacation can be stressful, and not especially relaxing for parents who have to constantly look after their children.  However, I find it interesting that Disney seems to be separating families instead of bringing them together on their cruises.  Aren’t family values something that Walt Disney and his company stand for?  Shouldn’t, if anything, these cruises offer opportunities for families, with parents who are probably often busy with work and kids who are at school for most of the day, to spend time together and bond?  I’m sure these also exist on the cruises, but it seems interesting that adult alone time is one of the key factors of these cruises.

The link to the article is below:

http://www.foxnews.com/travel/2015/02/13/why-adults-like-disney-cruises/

Response to “With a smile and a song…” by Tracey Mollet

Overall, I think Tracey Mollet makes a good argument in this essay, and uses reasonable examples to show how the film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs drew upon ideologies and issues of the time period to influence the storyline from that of the Brothers’ Grimm to something more relevant to society in the 1930’s.  After explaining her thesis, she does a good job of giving a basic background about the state of the country during the depression, which is invaluable for reminding readers not only about how far-reaching the economic impacts were, but also how American values and ideals were under attack.  This is, after all, why Franklin D. Roosevelt was critical about the state of democracy in the United States if the New Deal was not a success.

One of Mollet’s arguments that really resonated with me was how the film not only was relatable for movie goers at the time, but served as inspiration for them to improve their own lives.  Snow White, in Mollet’s opinion, served as a model case for the classic “rags to riches story of the American Dream.”  The dwarfs, who represent the common man, transform throughout the movie.  For example, Grumpy, who represents an older generation of people who are not as tolerant of women having larger roles in society, eventually transforms to accepting Snow White for who she is.  These ideas did not seem too far-fetched in terms of the argument being made.  That being said, there are counterarguments to what is being said, such as that these ideologies represent an outdated view of gender and society, which is why they are dangerous to show to the children of today.   

Despite the overall sound argument, I do not completely agree with the thesis.  Mollet argues that Disney himself played an important part in transmitting these messages in his films.  However, since Disney himself never claims that his films had hidden messages, it is hard to prove that he had a part in including all of these messages in Snow White.  Instead, these ideologies may have coincidentally applied to what was going on at the time, which explains why it was so popular.  After all, context always plays a role in how someone interprets a work of art.  Children who watch Snow White today will see something different than those who watched it when it first came out, for example.  While Mollet’s argument remains in tact, I just think less emphasis should be put on how Disney influenced the film, and more on how the film influenced the American people, in this particular case.

Comparison of Disney’s Snow White to the Brothers’ Grimm version

After watching Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, and then reading “Little Snow-White” by the Brothers’ Grimm, I was surprised to see the parts of the story that the Disney animators decided to keep, and which were changed.  The first part that really stuck out to me was that the little house in the Brothers’ Grimm version was already neat and tidy, which was completely different from the house in the film.  The first thing Snow White sees as her duty upon finding the house is to clean it.  While this seems like a minor difference, it signifies a mindset that was popular at the time that a woman’s only job, and true “duty” is to clean up after men.  After all, Walt Disney did not have to make this small change to the story, but in doing so he is instilling “proper” family values and responsibilities.

Another difference that I noticed was that the Disney creators decided to romanticize Snow White’s death by calling it the “Sleeping Death” in which she was not actually dead, but in a constant state of sleep.  In the original story, Snow White is actually declared dead by the dwarfs, and there is no ambiguity in the term used.  This makes sense, not only because it is a children’s film, but also because one of Disney’s goals was to bring joy and happiness to people.  Since people went to theaters to forget their troubles, it only makes sense that they would not want Snow White, the innocent, beautiful princess to actually die. 

The last significant difference was that Snow White coughed up the apple piece instead of being kissed by the prince to revive her from death.  This not only stresses the romantic aspect of this film, but the fact that the prince, a male character, ended up saving the day.  It sends the message that women are dependent on men to get them out of their troubles, and that they are weak on their own.  This sexist view is concerning, especially when it is in a children’s film, since it will influence their own views as they grow up.

White vs. Black Princesses

During our library session this week, I was doing some research on the Disney film Tangled, when I came across an interesting post in Entertainment Weekly (the link is below).  In it, the author stresses the fact that The Princess and the Frog was not a big box office success because it “failed to attract young boys,” so the new film would emphasize the main male character, Flynn Rider.  This is interesting, but it makes me wonder, could it be for other reasons as well, such as the fact that the princess was not white?  There have been studies that show that white Barbie dolls are much more popular than their black counterparts, and there are constantly controversies about the pricing inconsistencies between two seemingly similar dolls, the only differentiating factor being skin color.  This is something I will definitely look into, and blog more about in the future.  In the mean time, the link to the post is below:

http://www.ew.com/article/2010/07/02/tangled-disneys-princess-problem

Response to “Why Disney Scares Us,” by Kevin Shortsleeve

The first part of this article that really stood out to me was, on page 3, when Shortsleeve describes how several different “villains” in popular culture were modeled after Walt Disney.  These include the cartoonist who designs monsters for the developers of “World Children’s Land” amusement park in Godzilla on Monster Island (1972), and the theme park developer in Jurassic Park (1993).  In both examples, there is a tie to theme parks that are supposed to be “fun” and “happy,” but end up being scary and disastrous.  This shows that there was an overall trend after the death of Disney (and maybe before as well) towards criticism of his works and his ways of practicing business.

I can see how Shortsleeve, who wrote this article in 2004, does not see much of a difference between the Disney corporation in the 1930’s, and the Disney corporation in 2004.  That was before movies like Frozen (2013), Tangled (2010), and The Princess and the Frog (2009) were released, highlighting a change in the messages Disney was trying to promote in their films.  At that time, movies like The Lion King (1994), Pocahontas (1995), Mulan (1998), fit the sexist and/or racist undertones that were evident in earlier Disney films, even though they may have deviated from the original script of only having Caucasians as important characters.  Many of the newer films have shown that Disney animators have started to change their ways by incorporating their first black princess, and making female characters more independent and self-sufficient.

One major criticism that Shortsleeve has of Disney, that I do not agree with, is that Disney has somehow tricked America into believing that the Great Depression was “the Golden Age of America (pg. 10),” and that we have started to forget just how terrible the time period was for many Americans.  I do not agree with this, since I believe a majority of people are taught about how hard this era was for many, and we have all seen pictures of the awful droughts and conditions Americans were living in.  Instead, I think Disney, quite openly, used his films as a way to make people forget about how bad their lives were at the time.  By watching these films where stories ended happily every after, Americans were given hope that things would work out at a time when many had little hope left. Disney used what he knew best to find a way to give Americans a break from the harsh realities of the time.  As a result, it’s no wonder that the Disney Corporation is so set on keeping this time period relevant, since it is when Disney had much success in giving hope to so many people.

Response to Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs

I decided to write this response before reading the Brothers’ Grimm original version, so that I could write about my thoughts on the movie without being influenced by outside works.  Watching the movie, the original Disney full feature film, I was surprised at how closely it resembled modern Disney films.  It followed, or more like set, the path for how all fairy tales would be structured in the future.  There was a clear hero and a clear villain, with no ambiguity as to who was who from the very beginning.  Although Snow White was the main character, she appeared to be weak and vulnerable from the very beginning, when she first ran away from the prince into the castle.  The prince, who represented masculinity, was the good guy who saved the princess in the end.  And, of course, all the princess ever wanted was a man who would be her “true love.”

It is interesting comparing the role of Snow White to modern princesses, like Rapunzel in Tangled.  While current films have tried to expand the roles of females in their animated films, Walt Disney did no such thing with the original Snow White.  Snow White’s first reaction when she entered the dirty cottage that belonged to the dwarfs was to tidy it.  In her plea to the dwarves to let her stay, she promises to keep the house clean and cook for them.  In other words, what Disney is trying to say, is that the only she was good for was to look after the home of the men she was living with.  She was also extremely vulnerable, as she decided to eat the apple, despite the suspicious circumstances.  The other main female character is the queen, who is the obvious villain.  There is no compassionate side to her, and she is seen only as a ruthless woman who will do whatever is necessary to obtain what she wants.  Adding to that, she becomes even crazier once she transforms herself into an old lady, resembling a witch.  This symbolizes and draws from a dark period in American history, during the Salem Witch Trials, when women were falsely accused of being the source of evil in society. 

The scene when Snow White takes a bite of the apple may also be a reference to the bible.  The queen tempted Snow White to take a bite of the apple, which would be the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden.  This could be compared to the snake (Satan) tempting Eve to take a bite of the forbidden fruit, and then convincing Adam to do the same.  In both examples, the female is to blame for what happens next. In this analogy, Snow White’s “Sleeping Death” would represent the death and pain that mankind now suffers as a result of this sin, and the prince’s kiss that brought her back to life would be Jesus dying on the cross for all of humanity.  There are subliminal messages in this film, which may be why adults are just as fascinated by it as children are.