Written by Lisa Wade; Originally published at Sociological Images.
This six-minute video, uploaded to youtube by Sanjay Newton, does a wonderful job of explaining and illustrating the portrayal of masculinity in Disney movies. It’s pretty troubling when laid out so simply.
Via Dr. Danielle Dirk’s blog for her Contemporary Sociological Theory class.
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More on Disney: pickaninny slaves in Fantasia? yes, the happiest place on earth?, the working poor at Disney world, how Disney came to Times Square, media consolidation and Tinkerbell, the real Johnny Appleseed, fallen princesses, modernizing the fairy tale, racist Disney characters, infantilizing adult women, advice for young girls from the little mermaid, gendered Disney t-shirts for kids, deconstructing Disney princesses, Disney makes over Minnie Mouse, are the new Disney princesses feminist?, making light of sex slavery at Disneyland, Disney diet food for kids, race and gender in Princess and the Frog, socializing girls into marriage, and…
…did you know that the very first political tv commercial was made by Disney? I like Ike!
This is great, I think. I always notice that we talk a lot about girls and Disney, etc. but that boys are learning all sorts of messages from Disney both direct, like they make the case for here, but also indirect– they are also taking in messages about girls and what girls are like/should be like…
THANK YOU for posting this. Ever since I found out we were having a boy over 3 years ago I’ve said that having a son doesn’t give us a free pass in talking about gender issues. (My husband fully agrees.)
Hmm. I’m really interested in the premises he’s questioning, because there’s merit to the notion that Disney’s promotion of stereotypical gender roles is harmful to boys as well as girls, and being able to look critically at those kinds of messages and analyze them is important to me. I think he choose his representative examples poorly, however, given the context of the characters – i.e., Gaston is never the hero of the film, and is therefore a poor choice to illustrate how Disney promotes a very narrow beauty ideal for men, or how Disney promotes violence as a positive masculine trait.
I did like his point about the major, defining conflict of most Disney feature films involving one male overcoming another – Aladdin defeating Jafar, Simba defeating Scar, the Beast defeating Gaston, Peter defeating Captain Hook – hell, even in Mulan it’s Mushu, not Mulan, who delivers the final blow to Shan-Yu. That seems worth exploring to me, because it seems explicit that boys are expected to compete with others for attention and affection; note that equal collaboration or cooperation are rarely available as options (i.e., heroes may have sidekicks, but never co-heroes). I also see a message there about worthiness, but it’s trickier to tease out: do these battles subtly teach our boys that they only deserve love/attention if they can overcome major hardship and/or conflict to win it?
Thank you! As an auntie and mama to boys and girls, I’m so glad to see masculinity, gendered socialization, and their effects on boys being examined!
Thanks for your post.
I had a similar disconnect with some of the characters as jaqbuncad.
At the end of The Incredibles – the only way that Mister Incredible wins is by admitting that he’s not strong enough to do it alone, and then by cooperating with his wife and family to defeat the bad guy. The boy Dash at the end of the story – he learns to subvert his desire to win the race in the interests of fitting into society.
At the end of this video, the author asks “What might happen if Disney .. embraced caring compassion and vulnerability as valid parts of masculinity?” Judging from the ending of the Incredibles (2004), that seems to be what’s already happening.
I don’t disagree that there is a need to tease out media messages of masculinity — there are a lot of resources out there for parents of girls but it is harder for parents of boys to find similar support/resources.
But like a few other commenters, I didn’t find this particular piece to have the best examples of skewed masculinity. A lot of the examples were villains or comical/flawed characters who had to change. Even my 4 year old knows that Gaston is “not nice” and they boo him when he tries to take Belle’s books — they certainly don’t see him as a role model.
There is a misunderstanding in the interpretation of example by author and commenters. I think the author was plucking certain direct Illustrations of what he was examining, and was not connecting to the overall storyline of the characters…The examples are not all-encompassing in the respect that you think they should be, having fresh knowledge of the story rather than the simplistic view of character persona’s illustrated within the storyline. I can’t figure how to say that less convoluted, well, Im too lazy right now to organize that, but if you let it ruminate, maybe it can make sense to someone.
Ahhh. There is a difference in that author is “plucking” Disney personas that represent his points without regard to the eb and flow of the storyline (thats better!)