How Dangerous is Disney?

 

Popping the G-rated Disney film into the DVD player and pressing play has become second nature for hundreds of parents across the country. Disney movies reinforce the common assumption of enchanted innocence and wholesomeness. Disney movies are vital and cherished memories of my childhood. Who doesn’t smile with joy at the thought of Timon and Pumba or Aladdin and Jasmine? However, those innocent and good-natured movies may have more impact on children’s understanding of sexuality than meets the eye. I am a huge Disney fan therefore I did a little research on studies that have been conducted on the movies America fell in love with and came across some very interesting issues. 

Researchers Karin Martin and Emily Kazyak argued in their report published in Gender & Society that, “despite the assumption that children’s media are free of sexual content, our analyses suggest that these media depict a rich and pervasive heterosexual landscape.” Martin and Kazyak studied the portrayal of heterosexual relationships in a variety of the highest-grossing G-rated films between 1990-2005. Their results revealed that heterosexuality was constructed in these films by portraying hetero-romantic love as transformative, exceptional, magical, and powerful. Furthermore, there were also a vast amount of depictions of masculine characters gazing in awe at feminine characters.

Hetero-romance is a major plot line in a majority of Disney films and reinforces the theme of heteronormativity. Martin and Kazyak describe heteronormativity as positioning heterosexuality as, “always assumed, expected, ordinary, and privileged. Its pervasiveness makes it difficult for people to imagine other ways of life.”  But Disney presents heterosexuality as not just ordinary but privileged. Heterosexual relationships are repeatedly presented as special, distinct, exceptional, and different from all others in animated Disney films. The researchers observed that the lead characters are often surrounded by, “music, flowers, candles, magic, fire, balloons, fancy dresses, dim lights, dancing and elaborate dinners.” For example, Aladdin and Jasmine fall in love as they fly on a magic carpet through a star lit sky, and eventually kiss as fireworks go off in the background. Sergin and Nabi's (2002) noted that the idealized portrayals of marriage in the media often lead to unrealistic expectations of what marriage is and should be. The moments of hetero-romantic love often involve characters being engulfed in magical swirls of sparkles or leaves as they stare into each other’s eyes. 

The power of the hetero-sexual relationships is often represented through a kiss. One of the most striking examples is in The Little Mermaid when Ariel must kiss Eric in order to retain her voice and her legs. During The Lion King Nala and Simba kiss and only then does Simba realize he must return to his home to regain the throne and save his family and entire kingdom. At the end of Beauty and the Beast Belle and the Beast kiss and suddenly the entire kingdom is transformed from winter to springtime, flowers begin to bloom and everyone who was enchanted by the spell is restored to their human state. The transforming power of a heterosexual kiss does not apply to homosexual kisses depicted in Disney movies. For instance, in The Lion King Timon and Pumbaa touch lips while sucking on opposite ends of a worm during dinner. They both look at the camera stunned and horrified. The kiss is treated as funny, creating a stark contrast between the power of heterosexual kissing and homosexual kissing. Martin and Kazyak also noted that Villainesses in Disney movies often resemble drag queens, such as Ursula in The Little Mermaid, who was actually modeled after the famous transvestite Divine. By associating drag queens with the villainous characters this sends a powerful message to children that drag queens are bad or evil and should be avoided. Locroix acknowledges that these characters and actions are not just representations of individual people but are encodings of ideologies. The stories and characters represented in these films assist in how children construct their understandings of sexuality and relationship norms. 

Ellen Junn argues in her research of the media portrayals of love and sexuality for child audiences that lead females almost always start as single in the film and are shown in the conclusion as married or attached to a male. She noted that females are depicted significantly more than males striking coy love poses, giggling, combing their hair, and behaving in a sexual manner in Disney films. 

In Toy Story 2 a large group of almost entirely white Barbies are shown dancing and singing at a swimming party. The male characters who initially pass the party reverse the car they are riding in and gaze mesmerized by the scene in front of them. In The Hunchback of Notre Dame the Gypsy Esmerelda dresses seductively and dances provocatively while a large crowd of men stare wide-eyed, screaming and cheering as they toss money on stage to her. These scenes portray a message that women use their bodies for men and have an effect of normalizing men’s objectification of women’s bodies and the heterosexual desire it signifies. 

I apologize for people who aren't huge Disney fans and may not have understood all of the references I made,but I hope you could at least understand the gist of what I'm trying to address. Although the Walt Disney Company and traditions are beloved and cherished by thousands of people around the world (including myself) and symbolize the epitome of wholesome family entertainment, the power of these films to create, produce, and disseminate ideological constructions of sexuality should not be underestimated. Of course I am not trying to suggest that there is only one definitive reading of these films, however the dominant messages should be acknowledged. The potential for Disney films to influence children’s attitudes and understanding of sexuality is incredible powerful due to the enormous popularity of Disney advertising as well as the ample availability of the films. I do not suggest banning Disney films by any means, I just suggest adopting a more critical and perhaps apprehensive view of the films that are marketed as innocent and wholesome.

Works Cited

Junn, E. N. (1997). Media Portrayals of Love, Marriage & Sexuality for Child

Audiences: A Select Content Analysis of Walt Disney Animated Family Films. [S.l.]: Distributed by ERIC Clearinghouse.

Kazyak, E., & Martin, K. (2009). Hetero-Romantic Love and Heterosexiness in

Children’s G-Rated Films. Gender & Society, 23 (3).

Lacroix, C. (2004). Images of animated others: The Orientalization of Disney’s cartoon

heroines from The Little Mermaid to The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Popular Communication, 2 (4).

 Segrin, C., & Nabi, R. L. (2002). Does television viewing cultivate unrealistic expectations about marriage? Journal of Communication, 52(2).

 Spring Break: Featuring Boobies, Short Shorts and Your Favorite Disney Channel Stars

While tabling for the Townie Street Party (the kick-off event for the Ann Arbor art Fair) this Monday, I passed the time by admiring elaborate painted faces and the wacky colored hair of children. However, an older co-worker of mine took the opportunity to notice how short and tight the clothing of young girls seemed to be in comparison with previous years. I soon began to notice just how much ass cheek was struggling to stay hidden inside the super cut-off shorts and mini-dresses of girls ranging from 10 to 15. Something's off when there's a Disney character shirt paired with hot pants.

When you think about the Disney Channel Stars of the past few years, many (Miley Cyrus, Vanessa Hudgens, Demi Lovato etc.) have been surrounded by controversy. Many parents are concerned with the actors lives outside of their on-screen roles because these stars come to be viewed as role models. Let's face it, if my role model is posing nude and doing bong rips, I- being a young impressionable adolescent girl in this scenario- will want to strip down and smoke a few puffs too. I remember recently coming across this ad for an upcoming movie featuring Disney Channel stars Selena Gomez and Vanessa Hudgens. Nearly everyone was furious with their attire and posing although the film will not be appearing on The Disney Channel. Actress Selena Gomez urges her younger fans not to see the movie due to its controversial nature; however, mere mention of the actress in the movie could send fans swarming to the box office.

Sexually explicit content is getting consumed at younger ages each year; adolescents are frequent viewers of R-rated films (J.D. Brown et al., 2005). According to the J.D. Brown et al. (2005) reading for this week, girls who mature earlier maintain high interests in viewing information about sex, relationships and dating on TV or in movies. From this movie promo it is clear what the move is selling. As adolescent girls learn more about relationships, dating and sex, they actively consume sexual media content (Brown, White, Nikipolou, 1993). This movie can be especially dangerous on adolescent girls if they perceive the content to be realistic (Taylor, 2005). The  portrayal of Selena Gomez and Vanessa Hudgens in this film is especially dangerous because many girls identify them as role models. Young adolescent fans relate to these girls or want to be like them. According to Ward and Rivadeneyra (1999), the level of identification a viewer maintains with the character produces a strong connection to sexual outcomes such as recreational sex attitudes and an estimation of sexual encounters of peers.


I fear this movie will be viewed by many of Selena and Vanessa's fans. And although Selena urges younger fans not to see it, it's not as though there will be a warning label on the ticket- oh wait, I forgot there are those movie ratings everyone ignores. Many stars that start out on Disney move on to more edgier roles as they advance in age; it is only natural that they wish to be taken more serious an an actress/actor. However, they often forget they signed their careers away and will forever be crippled by Disney. Few careers make the transition from Disney to successful careers where they are taken serious. Every life decision is criticized and pressured by the media because the influence these stars have on young children is so powerful. I can guarantee that PacSun sells out of pastel colored short shorts a week after this movie premiers.

 Side note: I'm actually really interested in seeing this movie. Don't worry though- I hate pastel colors.

I Just Wanted to Be a Princess

Now, I'm not trying to bash on Disney movies here because like I'm sure many of you can agree, they were a huge part of my childhood. I literally watched Beauty and the Beast everyday for a year when I was 3. It's my favorite Disney princess movie because Belle is prickly, smart, curious, and unsatisfied with her village life, exclaiming early on in the movie that "There must be more than this provincial life." She is also a brunette, which I came to appreciate after Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty's popularity. I'm not sure that I really need to provide a recap for everyone, but for those of you who haven't popped it in the DVD player in a while, this Disney movie is a tale about a wicked, selfish prince who, as a price for being mean to a sorceress, is doomed to live his life as an ambiguous "beast" unless he can find a woman to love him before the last petal of an enchanted rose falls. His entire household is transformed into various items that talk (teapots, feather dusters, candlesticks, etc) and his castle becomes overgrown deep in the heart of the forest as the years pass and he remains a beast. Enter Belle, a beautiful, intelligent village girl with an eccentric father. She is an avid reader and longs for adventure and romance, resisting the everyday boredom of village life as well as the aggressive advances of the brainless village heartthrob Gaston. Her father stumbles upon the beast's castle when he becomes lost on his way to the county fair, the beast is enraged when he finds Maurice sitting in his parlor, throws him in a dungeon. Belle goes searching for him, ends up in the castle, volunteers to take his place as prisoner, winds up stuck in the castle. Eventually the beast is tamed by Belle's prickly charm and they fall in love, hopefully you guys know the rest of the story, but the curse is broken and the beast turns back into a prince and they live happily ever after.

There are just so many things to address here. First, I'll address the obvious--this story could not exemplify more perfectly Galician's Love Myth #7 as discussed in Bader's study on love songs: "The love of a good and faithful true woman can change a man from a 'beast' into a 'prince'" (2007, p. 149). The beast and Belle argue and yell at each other, but despite everything they grow into mutual respect and love--not because the beast is necessarily a good person, but because Belle is patient, kind, and strong. In a way, their relationship pattern follows Ward's finding that "the work of relationships is [...] the exclusive domain of women" (2003, p. 356). It is not a partnership; it is Belle who breaks through the beast's angry exterior to literally uncover his true self--that it's a handsome, fabulously wealthy prince is just a bonus. I'm worried about the effect this had on young girls like myself who ate this stuff up in our youth. Literally this movie is showing us that it's totally okay to stick with a jerk who lashes out at you and frightens you because there's probably a really great guy deep down there and it's up to you to bring that out of him. In real life, some guys are just really terrible people and no amount of patient, kind love will bring out a "prince" that isn't there. If today's young women are experiencing bad relationships, this is the type of movie that told us our bad relationships are our own fault and it's our responsibility to fix the relationship or the man. Clearly I have no data to back up my speculations--but it's been proved time and time again in media studies that heavily consumed media such as the Disney Princess franchise will have some time of effects on the audience.

Another aspect I'd like to mention is the character of Gaston, the brainless village heartthrob. He is quite stereotypically a chauvinistic meathead who seeks the most beautiful girl (Belle, unfortunately) to marry, so that she might remain his stay-at-home wife, cooking and cleaning all day and taking care of the sons they will have together. Just so many things going on here. We've got Kim et al's male heterosexual script codes of actively pursuing sexual relationships, treating women as sexual objects, sexual prowess as masculinity, and showing off physical strength (2007, p. 147-148). Gaston takes every opportunity to present his over-the-top manliness, talking about his hunting and fighting skills, his ability to eat, his huge muscles, and the fact that every inch of his body is covered with hair in the song "Gaston." Surprisingly Gaston actively pursues Belle for marriage, which is completely against the stereotype that men are afraid of commitment (Kim et al, 2007, p. 148), although because this is a Disney movie aimed at children I think they substituted Gaston's desire to bang Belle with his desire to marry her. Gaston is clearly a bad choice for any woman in the movie to choose as her partner, but is the beast really any better? Gaston is, in a way, also a beast; why couldn't Belle's patient and kind love transform him from a beast to a prince?

I love this movie and always will, but I think it's interesting to consider the Disney princess movies that were coming out in the early 90's  in terms of the effects on my generation of women, the young girls who probably consumed these movies the most heavily during their heyday. This movie challenged the traditional Sleeping Beauty-Snow White-Cinderella notions of waiting to be saved by Prince Charming, portraying its lead character as a smart, strong young woman who wanted more out of her life than just marriage and babies. She gets her adventures, to some degree, during her stay at the beast's castle, but in the end of the movie Belle ends up married to Prince Charming anyway. What happened to her dreams? The progressiveness of Belle's character almost hits the mark but falls short at the end of the movie when she finds herself happy with wearing pretty dresses and dancing in the arms of her prince. If you look at the other popular princesses of the same time, we've got other curious, stronger female characters (Ariel, Pocahontas, Jasmine) that, with the exception of Pocahontas, end up happy because they end up with Prince Charming despite their smarts and desire for more out of life than just royalty. But, as a 3-year-old girl, I wanted to see these princesses with their true loves in their pretty dresses--so who's to say Disney did anything wrong?

Movie Analysis: The Princess and the Frog

Disney movies, though considered classics, have been (especially in recent years) credited with creating and perpetuating unrealistic portrayals of love, romance, and relationships. Many of Disney’s animated movies center around a princess figure who, in many cases at the tender age of 16, falls madly in love with a man upon meeting them, becomes certain that this man is THE one, gets herself into trouble with an evil villain on a power trip, finds herself needing to be saved by that man from that villain, and, in a brief yet triumphant exposition, rides off into the sunset to live a glorious and uncomplicated Happily Ever After with her savior/husband. Over the years, this storyline has garnered more than a few raised eyebrows by independent women tired of being reduced to a damsel-in-distress figure. Disney’s 2009 film, The Princess and the Frog, seemed to be, in many ways, an attempt to remedy that longstanding storyline with a strong, independent female character (as well as an attempt to make up for some prettay offensive past racial portrayals, but that’s another topic for another blog.)

While Disney was successful in creating a self-sufficient female to a degree, when all was said and done, they still ascribed to the traditional sexual roles for Tiana and Naveen, the two main characters. Tiana comes from a tight-knit but low-income family in New Orleans, and dreams of a future where she can do what she loves (cook) without having to worry about money. Her goal is to open her own restaurant, a dream initially held by her father, who died before it could be realized. She is highly determined and works two waitress jobs to save enough money, but she is met with condescension and ridicule by everyone around her who don’t believe she has what it takes to be an entrepreneur. Naveen is a prince from Maldonia whose parents have grown tired of his squandering of wealth and playboy lifestyle and have cut him off. The purpose of his visit to New Orleans is to regain riches by marrying a wealthy debutante, but an unfortunate run-in with a Hatian voodoo witch doctor turns him into a frog. (Evil villain on a power trip: check.)

At a costume party, frog Naveen mistakenly believes that a ball gown- clad Tiana is a princess and begs her to kiss him in order to return him to his human form. Tiana, desperate after her down payment for the building she intended to house her restaurant was out-bid, consents to kiss him only after Naveen claims to be "fabulously wealthy" and promises a monetary reward in exchange for her help (Del Vecho & Clements, Musker, 2009).

Naveen's imperative statement, "You must kiss me!" (Del Vecho & Clements, Musker, 2009) assumes that Tiana won't refuse and is directly in line with Holz Ivory et al.'s 2009 study of dominant and submissive traits in television couples. Naveen gives orders, makes sexual advances, and offers promises of being able to financially provide for Tiana (Holz et al. 2009). 
Not even self-sufficient Tiana is immune to Naveen's promise of money, but her kiss turns her into a frog instead of turning Naveen human because she is not actually a princess. Upon discovering this, instead of being apologetic for his role in turning her into a frog or grateful for her attempt to help him, Naveen is angered to discover Tiana's true, more humble identity. 

He takes pleasure in telling her that he's actually broke, and thinks nothing of the fact that he lied to her to get what he wanted. In this way, Naveen is only kind to Tiana until he discovers that she is of no use to him. Even though he has less money than she does (with no source of income), he still has a sense of superiority because of his background and social standing. This correlates with Kim et al.'s 2007 breakdown of courtship strategies. Even though Naveen is not courting Tiana at this point, he is still lording his power over her, which is indicative of the typical masculine strategy (Kim et al., 2007). He doesn't have any money, which is contrary to the typical script of a man's power being rooted in his income, but because of his title as prince, he still feels that he has the upper hand, and makes no attempt to hide that from Tiana. 
Finally, because this is still, after all, a Disney movie and because being transformed into amphibians, getting lost in a bayou, and meeting a jazz-loving, trumpet-playing alligator can only be a bonding experience, Naveen eventually falls for Tiana. Mind you, throughout this entire journey, Tiana has been fed up with Naveen. She finds him spoiled, selfish, entitled, lazy, and condescending, and she is still focused on opening her restaurant above all else. But when Naveen plans a romantic evening and decides to propose to her, her formerly goal-oriented mindset dies at the hands of flattery and sentimentality. 

(Speaking of, a proposal? Really? Not "Hey, you're pretty cool after all, maybe we should get coffee sometime when this all blows over?" They've known each other a matter of DAYS. But I digress. Again, this is Disney.) 
This once again plays into Holz Ivory et al.'s (2009) idea of dominant and submissive roles. Naveen's impulsive and decisive proposal, although it gets derailed, is typical of the "dominant" partner. Meanwhile, though this isn't shown in the clip, Naveen's advances make Tiana more confused about what she really wants. When Ray, her firefly friend, tells her of Naveen's intentions, she becomes willing to cast aside all prior doubt, dislike, and motivation for independence and assumes the more passive role. 


All in all, The Princess and the Frog seems to send something of a contradictory message. As far as Disney movies go, it's fairly progressive. I mean, the 16-year-old, free spirited, borderline certifiable Ariel (of The Little Mermaid) sold her voice to a sea witch so that she could have a pair of legs in order to get into the pants of a man she'd never met. Comparatively, Tiana may as well have been burning her bra. However, it seems like Disney's message through The Princess and the Frog was "We love independent women! We applaud them! Determination is great! But when it comes down to brass tacks, all women really want is the right guy to sweep them off their feet." It did challenge certain roles; Tiana is more hardworking, more street-smart, and makes more money than Naveen. However, other roles were reinforced, like Naveen's confidence in his sexual prowess, and confidence in his wealth, even though that wealth was based on reputation and prestige rather than actual earnings. Furthermore, Tiana becomes more passive and sentimental as the movie goes on. Once she knows that Naveen is interested in her, she becomes eager to be the wife of a man who, a few days before, she didn't even like as a person. Disney reinforces the idea that the desire for romance trumps a hope for personal and individual success.


Del Vecho, P. (Producer) & Clements, R., Musker, J. (Directors). (2009). The princess and the frog [motion picture]. United States: Walt Disney Pictures.


Holz Iovry, A., Gibson, R., & Ivory, J.D. (2009). Gendered relationships on television: portrayals of same-sex and heterosexual couples. Mass Communication and Society, 12, 170-192. 


Kim, J.L., Sorsoli, C., Collins, K., Zylbergold, B., Schooler, D., & Tolman, D. (2007). From sex to sexuality: exposing heterosexual script on primetime network television. Journal of Sex Research, 44(2), 145-157.