Christensen, "Unlearning the Myths That Bind Us"

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Reading "Unlearning the Myths That Bind Us" by Linda Christensen was extremely interesting to me because I, like almost everybody else, grew up watching Disney movies religiously. To this day, The Lion King is one my all time favorite movies. I don't know what it is exactly that makes Disney movies so appealing to the younger children: maybe its the music, the stories, the animation or maybe all of these things. Whatever the case, Disney definitely knows what they're doing, and they know how to market themselves and target the perfect Audience.

Reading this article, I genuinely did not know how many stereotypes were in Disney movies. I didn't pay any attention to the fact that woman were always portrayed as weak, or the damsel in distress (until the more recent Disney movies came out), or that the buffoon was always portrayed as an overweight man, or that the older less attractive women were always the villains. Looking back, it seems impossible for me to not have noticed them.

Female Stereotypes in Disney Films In this video for example, it shows that in Cinderella, only woman of high class are capable of finding true love, or that women need to be domestic house wives and they should do them, not boys. In The Little Mermaid for example, the message is that all women need is a pretty face, and that intelligence or anything else does not matter and that women need to change who they are if they want to find a man to love them. In The Beauty and The Beast, Disney paints domestic abuse as if their is nothing wrong with it. It is important to note, though, that Disney has started to portray their female characters more appropriately. They are shown more recently as strong, independent, heroic, and determined.

"You Can't Be A Princess" What Would You Do?  is another video that has to do with the gender roles in not only Disney movies, but in real life is one from a TV show called What Would You Do?, and in the video, they show a little boy wanting to be a princess for Halloween, and then a little girl who wants to be Spider-man for Halloween and various peoples' reactions to these things. Personally I was shocked, and also realized that I might have reacted the same way and fell into the same stereotyping some of the people in the video did, because we are taught and brought up a certain way. "We are all raised to believe that princesses are girls, so why is this little boy trying to be one?" is what most people were thinking, and I would have thought the same thing at first. However, After everything we have learned in this class, and through this article to throw away the stereotypes we have, I think about it differently. So what if a boy wants to wear a princess costume, or a girl wants to wear a boys costume?


Disney Racial Stereotypes One other thing that Disney is notorious for is for racism in its movies (another thing that I did not know until after reading this article and then researching further and watching videos that showcase it). Take Aladdin, for example: in the very beginning of the movie, the merchant is portrayed with a very heavy Arabic accent, wearing a turban, and advertising stereotypical middle eastern merchandise. In Dumbo, for instance, the crows are supposed to portray the stereotypical characteristics of a southern African American, and I think the most obvious case of racism is in Peter Pan, during the song "What Makes the Red Man Red?".

Disney is most definitely using the SCWAAMP ideologies (whether they call it that or not). Every Disney character is always straight; up until the Princess and the Frog every Disney character has been for the most part white (excluding Mulan); Every character in a Disney movie has been fit and in great shape; and most Disney movies focus on the importance of the Male characters rather than the Female ones.  Also on the first page of the article there is a quote by a Brazilian educated Paulo Freire and he says "instead of wrestling with words and ideas, too often students 'walk on the words'", and I think that can be traced back to Johnson from the very beginning and the quote "Our collective house is burning down and we are afraid to say 'fire'". We can't expect to fix any of these problems in society or in the media simply by talking about them (or not talking about them); you have to be proactive.