Feminism in disney films
At the forefront of their argument is an apparent desire to keep the heroine portrayed as a homemaker, and generally dependent upon males. While it is agreed that the early female characters, such as Snow White and Cinderella, were reliant on males, and generally possessed submissive qualities, there has clearly been a transformation since that time.
Godmothers:
The godmothers have been fairies, witches, and goddesses in the numerous variations of the story. In some Christian religions, a godmother is a "woman who sponsors a child at baptism and assumes responsibility for the child's religious guidance up to confirmation" (Websters 1990). In a more general sense, a godmother takes responsibility for caring for a child physically, emotionally and mentally.
In my texts:
Shrek 2:fairy godmother goes opposite of the norm as she doesn’t care about Fiona emotionally as she is not empathetic and sympathetic because she doesn’t accept Shrek even thought Fiona loves him. Instead she wants her son to marry Fiona, so she puts herself before Fiona which is not very caring.
Cinderella: fairy godmother helps Cinderella get to the ball so does care for her emotionally as that makes her happy. 
Sleeping beauty: there are numerous fairies, 3 good ones and one bad one which is the villain of the film.
Peter pan: Tinkerbell is a fairy but not a godmother. 
101 Dalmatians: no fairies/godmothers 
snow white and seven dwarfs: no fairies/godmother 
Representation of heroes/heroines:
Most beautiful person in the world:Physical beauty is always important especially in female characters. The human race has been obsessed with physical beauty most likely since it began. However, this gift is given first which implies that it is not as important as the gifts which follow. Still, we know that this princess will be beautiful and thus physically desirable.
Shrek 2: goes against this as Fiona is an ogre wife
All other historical texts this is applicable to this statement.
How heroes/heroines and villains are represented in disney animated films?
In fact, Disney’s idealized worlds rest largely on the artfulness of animation: good characters (e. g., Simban, the Sultan, Ariel, Pocahontas) display youthful traits such as big eyes and round cheeks (Lawrence 67) and are drawn in curves, smooth, round, soft, bright, and with European features; villains (e.g., Scar, Jafar, the Hun, Ratcliffe, Ursula) are drawn with sharp angles, oversized, and often darkly. Animation has available the same artistic capacity as illustration, where colour, shape, and size evoke certain psychological responses and attitudes towards an object.
Audience: (freud)
When fairy tales came into being "princes and princesses were as rare as they are today, and fairy tales simply abound with them. Every child at some time wishes that he were a prince or a princess--and at times, in his unconscious, the child believes he is one, only temporarily degraded by circumstances. There are so many kings and queens in fairy tales because their rank signifies absolute power, such as the parent seems to hold over his child. So the fairy-tale royalty represent projections of the child's imagination" (Bettelheim 1975).
Animation and audience:
Animated motion attracts our attention, mitigating its graphic fiction. Children, in particular, are attuned to animation because it visually stimulates their emotions (Moellenhoff 105) and Disney has shown itself "capable of understanding the way that children think and feel better than any other filmmaker" of our time (Rosenbaum 69). Observe any pre-schooler or grade schooler watch Disney–their eyes are wide and their bodies quake; laughter is spontaneous and fright discernible (Takahashi, 1991). As Bjoerkqvist and Lagerspetz (1985) found, children respond cognitively and physiologically to the meaning of the animation.
For children, animation pierces the consciousness and physical existence with experiential meaning, creating a realm of understanding unavailable via literacy or non-cinematic physical activity. Adults likely interact with cinema in a similar, though less transparent manner, given their socialization to self-control and public self-consciousness. Of course, viewers, young and old, recognize animation as fictive, not real: it’s just a cartoon! However, reality and fantasy do not compete in Disney, but "unite in a droll way" (Moellenhoff 114) exempting the stories from fidelity to extant or historical conditions.
Values and ideology:
Disney animations are unequalled in their narrative loyalty to dominant ideology and cultural values, consistently leading audiences to "realistically" believable fantasy lands. In the Lion King, for instance, Disney relies on our continuing cultural affection for royalty. Close attention to the narratives and character traits suggests that although Disney animations remain "naive, childlike, even childish" (Moellenhoff 114), they are not the fairy tales of imagination that children need (Bettleheim, 1977), nor are they socially progressive. Rather, Disney animations are self-contained confections mass-produced by adults writing, selling, and promoting themes for product licensing and private profits (Herman & McChesney 54)–with consumerist values and ideologies supportive of capitalist globalization.
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937 film)
Representation:
The Queen is a fictional character in the Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs fairy tale and the Disney animated film based on it. The Queen was often referred to as "Queen Grimhilde" in Disney publications of the 1930s.The Queen is extremely beautiful but very evil and very proud and vain. She seduced and married a widowed King who had a daughter called Snow White with his first wife.(femme fatale) After the King died, the Queen sent Snow White to work in the castle and forced Snow White to abandon her title as Princess, similar to the situation of Cinderella.Aside from being the first ever classic Disney villain, the Queen holds symbolic status above the rest of the Disney villains and is regularly seen as their leader - although the most powerful is traditionally Maleficent, even she follows the Queen.The Queen ranks #10 in the American Film Institute's list of the 50 Best Movie Villains of All Time.
Wider context:
Snow white can cook all of the dwarfs’ favourite meals, and would clean their house while they are away. A feminist critique of the film or fairy tale quick to point out the creation of a subordinate role for the woman by the protective male hegemony. This would lead feminists to label the film as anti-feminist, with the usual paternal ideology driving the story.
Before Snow White, Grumpy had control over the dwarves, and realized his homo-erotic sexual fantasies by isolating the seven of them from the world of women to conduct their own drunken homosexual orgies. As twisted as this may sound, Disney is merely portraying the societal structure of a world at war, when the male and female spheres are divorced from each other by distance, and homo-erotic bonds grow between the males and separately between the females.
It is obvious the queen hates men- the only one in her court that we see is the huntsman, rudely ordered to do the queen's bidding as a slave. The queen operates as the dominant matriarch in a system excused of any sort of patriarchy. Men seem all but expelled from her kingdom.
Therefore, Cinderella's wicked stepmother cunningly chooses her words with care and -- unlike her awkward daughters -- never lets her temper get the best of her. She simply smiles an icy smile and handles matters in her own way ... behind the scenes.
Representation:
Cinderella uses everything short of physical force to persuade her stepmother that she has every right to attend. This makes her one of the more memorable Disney heroines. Actress Helene Stanley performed the live-action reference not only for Cinderella, but also for Princess Aurora in "Sleeping Beauty"
Until this movie, the role of Peter Pan had always been played by a young woman. Instead, Walt Disney chose to portray him as a 12-year-old boy. Disney explained the age by saying, "He is 12 years old forever simply because he refuses to grow up beyond that comfortable age."
Audience:
There are numerous other differences, including the revision of Tinker Bell's "death" (whereas in the original play she gets knocked out by a poison, in the animated film she gets knocked out by a bomb), which can be attributed to Disney's history of artistic license and reshaping of content to be more suitable for younger audiences.
Representation:
Tinker Bell (who wears a slim, green dress, slippers, and yellow panties) owes her shapely form to the Pin-up girls of the war.
Representation:
The version of Captain Hook who appeared in the Disney animated film adaptation of Peter Pan was a cowardly fool, Though he has his evil moments, Hook is overall a comically inept villain compared to other Disney villains such as Jafar or Maleficent. He apparently loves loopholes — after he promises Tinker Bell that he will not lay a finger (or a hook) on Peter, he then lays a bomb in Peter's hideout, since he didn't say he wouldn't do that. Captain Hook appears briefly in the animated film Shrek 2, where he plays the piano in a tavern, representing the musician Tom Waits who wrote and performed the song in question, Little Drop Of Poison.
Walt Disney's Sleeping Beauty(1959 film)
Representation:
Maleficent finds her target and strikes. Savouring her victory over the weeping good fairies, she gloats, "You poor simple fools, thinking you could defeat me, me! The mistress of all evil." But Maleficent had best not underestimate her moral challengers. Maleficent's fearfully unkind persona was voiced by Eleanor Audley, who had previously performed Lady Tremaine, the wicked stepmother in "Cinderella" (1950).
Princess Aurora's long, thin, willowy body shape was inspired by that of Audrey Hepburn. (Model)
Disney, in their version of Sleeping Beauty, creates the Princess Aurora as the epitome of womanhood and femininity, while Maleficent is her exact inverse. The structure of the Sleeping Beauty tale gives Disney the perfect opportunity for designing Aurora as the ultimate woman. The fairies are each supposed to give the girl a gift at her birth that will make her the picture of perfection. In Disney's Sleeping Beauty, the first fairy grants her beauty, including "lips that shame the red, red rose" and "sunshine in her hair." Maleficent, in contrast, has a sharp, pointed face, sneering lips, and no hair at all. The gift granted by the second fairy is the gift of song. Princess Aurora has a beautiful, melodious voice, while Maleficent's voice is scratchy and low.
Throughout the movie the direct contrast between Aurora and Maleficent is very apparent. Maleficent is drawn surrounded in gloom, dressed all in black, her face a pale and hideous shade of green; Aurora, with her soft pink complexion, wears light blue dresses and is surrounded by sunshine. Maleficent sits, smoldering with rage in a distant, gray castle, encircled in storm clouds, while Aurora waltzes about in the warm, green woods. Aurora converses with cute, furry animals; Maleficent lives among dim-witted, boorish, troll-like henchmen. (Binary opposition) Maleficent is active and clever and unruly. She is toweringly tall and devoid of feminine feature (such as hair) and the complete opposite of the standard of feminine beauty set by Aurora.
She is a lonely woman. The three "good fairies" have each other and are motherly figures who end up raising the princess, but Maleficent is without anyone. As the green fairy, Fauna, explains: "Maleficent doesn't know anything about love or kindness or the joy of helping others." A woman's life should revolve around love and the joy of helping others, but these are qualities in which Maleficent is deficient. By presenting Maleficent as unwomanly, Disney is able to make her a monstrous anomaly and therefore to deny the threat of feminine power. (Feminism)
maleficent is sourround by green flames this connote her jealousy and fury when she is not invited to the birth cermony of princess aurora. she is given horns which connotes that has devil like qualaties. around her neck it looks like bat wings which is animal which not very liked. they use the diegetic sound of thunder when maleficent appeared this was because this would frighten children and make them feel alienate towards her. as she lived in the "forbidden mountain" which was isolated from the kingdom where it was dark,gloomy and thundery potraying malaficent personality.also the music used when malaficent would appear on screen would be loud dramatic music.furthermore, as she lived at the top of the mountain its could connote how she is superior and powerful.
aurora is shown sweeping/cleaning at the age of 16 which in more liberated times she would be seen as an adult in other words a women this was shown to represent the sterotypical role women had back then.
Representation:
The prince must fight his way through the thorns, hacking them to pieces valiantly with his sword. Upon surpassing this obstacle, he must then deal with the evil Fairy. She assumes the form of a horrible dragon (black and green, of course), and they do battle, whereupon the prince kills the dragon. This represents a considerably more significant effort on the part of the prince, as well as creating a sort of test to demonstrate that he is truly worthy of the princess.
Audience:
It also serves to put some action into a tale otherwise devoid of any violence, again appealing to youths who are used to action-packed cartoons.
Audience:
By making Maleficent an inherently evil person, Disney sets up an evil for the audience to hate, and thus an easier conflict to identify. Disney seems to consider this especially necessary in dealing with young children. It makes all the sticky moral questions go away, and the children can simply hate the witch.
Young girls watching the Disney version of Sleeping Beauty see an outlet for their feelings of strength and power in Maleficent at the same time they desire to be like the ideal set for them in Aurora. They come to feel this good woman/bad woman dichotomy within themselves-- and to believe these are two separate selves which are incompatible with one another. Disney makes the "good woman" and the "bad woman" so separate-- such complete, binary opposites-- that it seems impossible that they can co-exist within one person. A girl ends up feeling that in certain situations she is one, and in other situations she is the other; she aspires to be like the ideal woman, presented in Aurora, but she enjoys using power like Maleficent. She will see a division between the kind and loving, and the powerful and strong within herself, rather than seeing the combination and the way they work together within her and combine to create one, complete personality.
theorys:(Freud and Mulvey theory applied)
Spindle in sleeping beauty: A spindle is "the thin rod in a spinning wheel serving to twist and wind the thread" (Websters 1990). The spindle can have a shape tip and usually does in illustrations of the story. In psychological interpretations of this tale, the spindle is considered to be a phallic symbol.
Wider context:
Fairy tales were used by a number of parties in the Weimar Republic as political propaganda, primarily in order to indoctrinate the youth to the party line. The Social Democrats, the Communists, and the National Socialists all used fairy tales extensively. The messages contained in fairy tales such as the Grimms' were particulary useful for conservative groups, because classic tales such as "Cinderella" and "Sleeping Beauty" "reinforced the patriarchal order and gender specification in German upbringing." Because they were already well-suited to the message some political parties wanted to convey, "as far as young listeners and readers were concerned, the fairy tale came to be used in a conservative sense that had political overtones."
The Social Democrats and Communists attempted, largely unsuccessfully, to write new tales or rewrite old ones in order to introduce their own morals, social views, and political agenda into children's literature. These were not very successful for a number of reasons, including the fact that audiences of the tales did not appreciate having new endings tacked onto their classic tales, and preferred tales which did not represent a challenge to the status quo.
In addition to indoctrinating young people, fairy tales like "Sleeping Beauty" became a form of political propaganda which bolstered the Nazis' popularity among the general populace. By comparing Hitler to heroes in beloved, univerally known tales, the Nazis shored up support for their political activities and reinforced the image of Hitler as the unerring Führer. An example of this sort of glorification is Adolf Holst's Der Drachentöter ("The Dragonslayer"), in which Hitler is the prince who battles hell to free the princess (Germany) and wake it up -- "and all of the people cried out: 'Heil!'"
the film also helps reinforce the status quo by using the song lyrics of "hail to the king,hail to the queen,hail to the princess aurora." this is a dominant ideolgy of respecting royalty which is reversed in shrek 2. as shrek does not respect royalty but is still seen as a likeable character.
One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1961)
Representation:
Cruella De Vil: The villain of the film; an eccentric rich woman who has the puppies kidnapped in order to turn them into fur coats. She is a social parasite; she visits her ex-classmates, keeping a pretence of friendship, while taking advantage of their fears.She'll do whatever she has to do to get those beasts and their coveted coats. And once in her evil hands, those puppies must never leave "Hell Hall" alive. Cruella may live for fur -- but the pups, well, she doesn't give much thought to them. Created by Marc Davis, talented animator of both Maleficent and Cinderella, Cruella is considered a masterpiece of animation art and design.
links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinderella_(1950_film)
http://disney.go.com/vault/archives/villains/tremaine/tremaine.html
http://disney.go.com/vault/archives/villains/maleficent/maleficent.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Disney_Villains
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Pan_(1953_film)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walt_Disney
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_White_and_the_Seven_Dwarfs_(1937_movie)
http://lass.calumet.purdue.edu/cca/gmj/OldSiteBackup/SubmittedDocuments/archivedpapers/fall2002/Artz.htm
http://www.gwu.edu/~folktale/GERM232/sleepingb/Disney.html
http://disney.go.com/vault/archives/villains/cruella/cruella.html
http://www.gwu.edu/~folktale/GERM232/sleepingb/Disney_vs_grimm.html
http://www.gwu.edu/~folktale/GERM232/sleepingb/Nicks_base_page.html
http://www.purewestmedia.com/writing/snowwhite.html
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0053285/trivia
http://studentweb.tulane.edu/~mkuczyns/home.html
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