33 Days Until Halloween...

With Halloween rapidly approaching, kids everywhere are searching for their costumes. When I was younger, all of the girls were Disney princesses and the boys were superheroes, so it is not shock that kids today continue to look toward entertainment for costume ideas. Disney recently put out a costume based on their new movie Moana:

As you may imagine, this costume was instantly controversial. The idea of wearing someone's skin was deemed as cultural appropriation. However, Disney removed the costume from online and apologized, stating that the makers of Moana put a lot of work into respecting the Polynesian culture and this was just a slip up. How many times should we forgive Disney?

Reflective Post: Mothers in Disney movies

Upon brainstorming topics for my upcoming essay, I began to notice the amount of absent mothers in Disney movies. I was analyzing Mother Gothel in Tangled when I came to the realization that she is not Rapunzel's real mother, leading me to question how often this occurs in movies. I did some research, and stumbled upon this article. Listed in it are four different categories: movies with absent parents, mothers killed or captured, adoptive mothers or stepmothers, and single mothers or fathers. All of our childhood favorites fall in these categories. For example, the Lost Boys, Belle, and Lilo all have absent parents. Ariel and Nemo both lose their mother at the beginning of the movie, while Elsa and Anna lose both parents. In Cinderella, Tangled, and Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, each main character has a stand in mother, and all of them are evil. All of these situations cause a lot of the main characters to be raised by single parents. I thought that this was an interesting theme, and I wondered what could have caused it. Walt Disney's mother's death does not seem to influence the writing too much, but at the time people did not live very long, so it was common to have step mothers or adoptive parents. The article also suggests that not having parents forces the protagonists to "venture into the world alone," which could make for a better plot line for any movie. If you're not convinced of the extremity of the missing parents theme, this Buzzfeed List demonstrates the parental status for all of the Disney princesses.

The difference between how these stand-in mothers and fathers are portrayed in the movies are unbelievable though. Belle's father, for example, is just a sweet, old man, unaware of his responsibilities as a father and pretty weak, considering Belle is trying to help him. However Disney mothers (or stepmothers) are typically strong women, although often villainous, as seen in Tangled, Cinderella, and Snow White. Even Rapunzel's true mother is portrayed as the strong queen in the movie, whereas the father is more sensitive and cries on Rapunzel's eighteenth birthday. The fathers in these movies are noticeably weaker, further exemplified through Mulan feeling the need to take her weak, old father's place in the war.
I must applaud Disney for this move. Disney has a bad reputation for creating princesses that are unrealistically beautiful and perfect, yet they are subtly challenging what it means to be a masculine and feminine figure in their movies. While the protagonists typically fit their female gender mold, with the exception of Merida and Mulan, the parents that are alive show interesting characteristics, mostly through more sensitive fathers and strong, overbearing mothers. Yes, the mothers are often the villains as well (the evil stepmother, Mother Gothel, Evil Queen), but villains are villains because they pose some sort of threat to either the protagonist or to society, meaning they must be pretty powerful figures.
The tide could be turning though for these Disney princesses. In fact, the newest princess, Moana, will have both parents, Tui and Sina, featured in the movie. In this Movie Pilot article, Moana's mother is described to be "sympathetic to her daughters concerns and desires, and acts as a mediator between Moana and her father," while her father seems to be doubtful and critical of his daughter's ability. That is quite a change for the roles of the Disney parents, as we would expect the father to be more understanding than the mother due to previous movie plot lines. Aspects of Disney movies are constantly changing, and maybe this is trying to portray what is more real today. Daughters are known to be closer to their mothers even with the occasional clashing, so maybe Disney is trying to show a healthy mother-daughter relationship to set an example for little girls everywhere. Whether or not Moana's parental status is important to the movie is for you to decide when the movie is released in November.

You could also argue that the absence of parents is simply an obstacle. The princesses with deceased parents are able to continue their lives and find their happily ever after, so does that mean we can too? This is the Disney hope I have previously mentioned in other blog posts: the hope that taking a rough route will lead to something greater. If children learn this at a young age then they will be more equipped to tackle life's obstacles with ease and find their true happiness. Some say this is unrealistic, but there is no harm in having hope, in fact, it can only cause optimism and a sense of reassurance.

Reading Response: Team Rodent Part 2

It is no secret that Carl Hiaasen despises Disney. With one look at the title, one can tell that this text will not be a praise of Disney, but rather a criticism of the large company. Like the word choice in the title, Hiaasen uses provocative, aggressive diction to portray his negative view of Disney. In doing so, he is highly convincing. After reading Giroux's articles about Disney I was not convinced that the company was ruining the country, however Hiaasen is very persuasive. While I will never stop being a fan of Disney entertainment, how the stories are told in Team Rodent surely opened my eyes to issues occurring underneath the magical surface of Disney.
The most shocking situation Hiaasen mentions is that of the Disney community Country Walk, "a subdivision of gabled upscale houses and condominiums in southern Dade County" (Hiaasen 53). These houses were built by Arvida who were previously owned by Disney. What is shocking is that a hurricane came through and completely tore apart this area, more than any other area with identical weather conditions. When looking into it, investigators and engineers "found ample evidence of sloppy construction practices" (54). Houses are used as protection and shelter, yet Disney and Arvida failed to provide that. Hiaasen's incorporation of this occurrence was wise because Disney, his target, stripped ordinary people like the audience, of their basic needs, not to mention how little every homeowner got for compensation. This was just the first moment I felt shocked in the second part of the text.
Hiaasen's aggressive tone really drills in his view and persuades the audience to take his side. For example, when discussing the opening of the Animal Kingdom, the author clarifies what Disney aims to create at their new park: "Animal Kingdom is inhabited by real wild animals--not robots, not puppets, not holograms, not cartoons, but living and breathing creatures that (unless Disney starts tranking them) will eat, sleep, drool, defecate, regurgitate, sniff each other's crotches, lick their own balls, and occasionally even copulate in full view of tourists" (69). This is a highly provocative clarification and his word choice here is so casual that it serves to compare what is natural to all of the unnatural things at Disney. Wildlife, and everything Hiaasen lists them doing is natural to our world, yet Disney is "a sublime and unbreakable artificiality" (80). Thinking about this makes me aware of how unhealthy it is to get all of your entertainment from fake, unnatural sources, one of the many reasons why I am more hesitant about Disney now.
While I do think Hiaasen's aggressive tone works most of the time, I also believe he hurts his argument by currently wishing ill will on people. He states: "Now, in my lifetime I've seen many tourists so poorly behaved they deserve to be eaten alive by something" (80). Similarly, he notes: "A rhino scandal would have been dandy" (78), because it would have created so many problems for the company. His negativity and harsh wishes towards the company decreases his credibility because it suggests extreme bias. If an audience picks up on bias then the may be more distrusting when reading facts or stories. Although this could be a reason not to trust Hiaasen, I do trust him enough to acknowledge the underlying issues within Disney and how much we all probably do not know.

90's Disney

As one of the last so-called 90's babies, I felt it was my duty to share an article I found: 28 Things All 90's Kids Will Understand by BuzzFeed. Not only are all of these things accurate, they created so much nostalgia for me reading them! Take me back to the days of all things Disney and no responsibilities!

Reading Response: Henry A Giroux

Henry A Giroux, in his piece Animating Youth: The Disneyfication of Children's Culture written in 1994 provides a complex argument that is often not thought of when discussing Disney. Disney is very good at covering its tracks, portraying itself as truly magical and the best place in the world. However, Giroux suggests that there is much more going on with the company, and that being ignorant to it only increases the problem. Giroux recognizes the importance of studying Disney as it contributes to culture, but thinks that children are receiving negative messages from the entertainment monopoly: "Children's culture is a sphere where entertainment, advocacy, and pleasure meet to construct conceptions of what it means to be a child occupying a combination of gender, racial, and class positions in society that one defines oneself through in relation to a myriad of others" (Giroux 65). Basically, what he means is that children are subtly influenced by Disney which creates beliefs regarding gender, race, and class in their adulthood. While Giroux presents interesting points about these subtle influences, some of his arguments seem to be too much of a stretch. Giroux discusses major problems with the movies Aladdin, The Lion King, and Beauty and the Beast. In Aladdin, "the 'bad' Arabs are portrayed with thick, foreign accents, while the anglicized Jasmine and Aladdin speak in standard Americanized English" (73). While I agree that this suggests that Americans are good and foreign people are bad, I simply do not think that young kids pick up on this. Young children watch movies for entertainment and not for a deeper hidden meaning, and truthfully, I've seen Aladdin many times and have never picked up on the subtle racism until being enlightened by Giroux. The same goes for The Lion King, "where all the members of the royal family speak with posh British accents while Shenzi and Banzai, the despicable hyena storm troopers, speak through the voices of Whoopi Goldberg and Cheech Marin in racially coded accents that take on the nuances of the discourse of decidedly urban black and Latino youth" (73). I have the same thoughts toward this argument. While it's true that the racist undertones are wrong, who's to say that children recognize these little details? I'm not convinced. In Malcolm Gladwell's Blink, the author describes a study in which children were monitored while watching Sesame Street to see how much they were learning from it. The researchers found that while the kids paid attention closely when the animals were on the screen, they were completely distracted when they were supposed to be learning. If these children are not learning from shows meant to teach, how will they learn from movies meant simply to entertain? Furthermore, Giroux stretches his argument on Beauty and the Beast, calling it a "rejection of hypermasculinity and a struggle between the macho sensibilities of Gaston and the reformed sexist, the Beast" (71). I agree with Giroux when he deems Belle a feminist, but I do not see a reason to label Belle's act of transforming the beast into a loving, sensitive character as a rejection of hypermasculinity. Maybe she should be respected for her charitable act instead. Diving too deep into Disney is ineffective because the target audience, children, are unable to think this deeply about the movies and stories Disney produces. There are some things better left on surface level, and Disney should be one of them. This is not to say that Disney is a moral company, however, and Giroux's arguments about how Disney indeed turns children into consumers should be taken seriously and thought about carefully.

Emma Watson as Belle

The internet has been going crazy for the new live adaptation of Beauty in the Beast. When the short teaser came out a couple months ago, teenagers and adults everywhere were in awe of the film's beauty, reminding them of their favorite movie so long ago. Recently, a sketch of Emma Watson's costume was released leading audiences everywhere to obsess over how much Emma Watson looks like Belle and how perfect she is for the role. The question is: do Belle and Emma Watson really look alike, or does the world just love both of them individually? Here's your chance to decide.

Moana: How Different is She from the Other Princesses?

Let's face it, with Disney movies, we typically find the same plot: a girl undergoing some sort of transformation that leads her to finding her true love and her happily ever after. Not knowing anything about the upcoming movie Moana, I decided to read a short article about the main character. It turns out, Moana is not looking for love, but actually becomes her own hero. In addition, the article claims Moana will be the first Polynesian princess and "action hero" princess, meaning she is representing a completely new demographic in the Disney world, and is built more athletically and more able to perform physical tasks. The women working on the movie wanted Moana to not "be blown over by a strong wind," knocking on the skinny builds of all of the other Disney princesses. Moana seems to be a unique movie, and I am looking forward to its release come November.

How Disney has Shaped my Beliefs

The adventure is one aspect that many Disney movies focus on. Mulan joins an army, Cinderella goes to the ball, Anna sets out to find her sister and Belle searches for a heart in an unforgiving beast. All of these princesses face major challenges: Mulan has to conceal her gender, Cinderella must sneak away from her evil step mother and step sisters, Anna travels through a blizzard with a stranger, and Belle is in an unfamiliar place trying to understand the lifestyle of someone so angry. Movies like these have affected my beliefs because they have normalized rocky adventures, that is, an adventure with some sort of obstacle or challenge that the protagonist needs to overcome. These adventures suggest that going through something tough will lead you to a greater outcome. This idea of persistence and embracing the change has been something that I, and many others, need to believe in, in order to cope with the struggles of every day life. Many criticize the idea of a happy ending, but the hope that comes from this can actually be very impactful. Moving to Durham and leaving all of my friends and family behind has been tough, but the belief that there truly is potential for happiness keeps me going. If Mulan can return home to her family a hero, Cinderella can find the man of her dreams and escape her awful family, Anna can save her sister and her kingdom, and Belle can change the dynamic of a whole town by impacting one lonely beast; then I can make new friends, try new things, and start a new life in a strange new environment. Truthfully, I cannot just credit Disney for this resulting mentality of mine. My family and my mentors have shown me what real life hope looks like and demonstrated realistic optimism. However, the mere repetition of happy ending stories through entertainment must affect a child in awe of the beauty on the screen. Teaching children to dream and never give up is one of Disney's strongest suits, and even today I am utilizing the characters' persistent mindsets to keep me hopeful during this tremendous change in my life.