One of the most fascinating aspects that Professor Halberstam mentioned even within the first lecture was the media's influence on children's gender perception through simple concepts such as which colors are designed for which gender. It is not a new concept to me, since the topic seems to be of much discussion in multiple courses especially within academic settings. One company that has a particularly large influence on children is Disney, and they partake widely in the painting of gender norms.
In specific, I would like to address the topic of Disney princesses. Many girls declare their dream profession to be a "princess." This does not come as a surprise, since most of the Disney movies that involve princesses, they are usually the characters that get treated most kindly. Examples that I am talking about range from Snow White to Beauty and the Beast, Cinderella, and, even lately, Tangled. Over and over again in the movies, the audience gets shown a somewhat disadvantaged girl who waits for her prince charming to arrive one day to make her life better by living easily ever after in the arms of a cartoon equivalent to Zac Efron.
Therein lies the problem - the female character always seems to be waiting for a prince to stumble along and choose her. Rarely, very rarely is the plotline that a prince is waiting for the perfect princess to come along. Instead, if the story is from the prince's perspective, he goes across the country to find the perfect princess. The prince gets to do the active choosing, while the princess does the passive waiting and hoping. And somehow the message is so slyly built into the plotlines that even parents have a hard time realizing the subconscious messages passed onto their children, often not intended by the parents.
There is a disclaimer, though. Disney is not the only culprit in this dilemma. Many other film makers, such as Dreamworks (Shrek, anyone?) partake in this societal brainwashing. Furthermore, not every children's movie focuses on gender roles in such a way. As a matter of fact, children's movie makers are now starting to give more control to the feminine gender and even start playing with gender expression within movies (such as Toy Story 3 - Pixar seems to have guts!). All in all, it is a complicated issue to think about as a parent - should one let children watch such classic childhood movies and risk instilling values in them that one does not necessarily want to plant in young minds, or should one avoid all of those movies and risk having the child be out of touch with a firmly established classic cultural aspect within society?
P.S. This post was inspired by a colleague Christine Weitbrecht through her discussion on Tangled - http://www.neontommy.org/news/2010/11/tangled-successful-revamp-classic-disney-formula
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