Proceedings of the 1st Arts & Humanities Conference, Venice

GROWING UP WITH DISNEY: GENDER REPRESENTATION AND SPECTATORSHIP OF FAIRY-TALE CINEMAS.

FEI JIUN KIK

Abstract:

This is an old fashioned lesson from Disney movies: the happily ever after romance is gained from a long term pain-bearing and a passive rescue-waiting of a young, pretty and sweet princess. As children are being exposed to Disney homogeneous and highly repetitive princess genre – these stories slowly gain a foothold in the development of young children and eventually become the first gender teacher of global children since 1937 when the Snow White was introduced. Children are raised with stereotypical gender expectation: the princess plays the passive role of the lonely, timid, and waiting for the courageous prince to rescue her from the complicated family affairs or free her from her life imprisonment, immortality curse, and the abusive stepfamily. However, over the years of typical fairy-tales, it is observed there is a shift in female characters and storyline development in Disney genre. This new wave of female characters or princesses in recent fairy tales convince researchers that a breakthrough of gender stereotypes in film making is well underway. It also reflects a substantial weight of feminism ideology injected into message of these films, constantly challenging the relevance of conventional masculine-superior characters in today’s reality context. From a passive role, the new princesses in now portrayed in the light of independent and self-determine gender ideology providing an awareness, insight and stimulation towards viewers’ feminism development in their girlhood. By following the discussion, this work analyses the development of gender portrayals of Disney movies, by studying the changes of female representation through characters and storylines; and the influence of Disney’s princesses in female spectators’ development. Also, the progression of gender concept of classic and modern princess movies will be identified, the reflection of feminism in traditional and contemporary children cinemas, and the elaboration of the gender identification that developed in Eastern female society will be explored.

Keywords: Disney, princesses, gender, portrayal, spectatorship, females, films.

DOI: 10.20472/AHC.2016.001.009

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