Conclusion Post

Through this course, I have learned a lot about Disney that I never knew before. By starting the course with reading Giroux, we were instantly introduced to some of the criticisms of Disney and why the company is known to be so controversial. Through this course, I think I have constructed one main belief about Disney and its critics and that is that Disney should not be expected to have moral obligations when truly they are a company whose goal is to make money. However, this course has also enlightened me on the major moral flaws that do occur within Disney. So, while we should not necessarily expect Disney to have a high moral standard, we may still criticize how disappointing some of Disney's choices are.
Many of these flaws come from representing race, culture, and gender in Disney. When analyzing the villains, it is important to recognize when these villains have transgender or racial qualities. What I mean by this is that by creating villains who have different races than the characters or more confusing gender identities, viewers are taught that these kind of people are the evil ones in this world. Personally, I think this is the biggest problem with Disney, but a close second comes from how women are represented as girls just wanting to find love. This is changing, as Elsa, Anna, Merida, and Moana, some of our third wave Disney princesses do not end up in love or choosing between men. That being said, the princesses in the older movies rely on men to save them or end up with them in the end. Clearly, us women know we do not need that in our lives, but that is why this is all changing so I give Disney props for that.
Villains have changed drastically overtime as well, however it is still common that we have female villains. The male villain made an appearance in The Lion King, Aladdin, and Mulan era, but now we are back to mothers as villains such as in Tangled and Brave. Maybe in the new movie Moana, the villain will be drastically different.
This course has also helped me develop my writing. Through writing essays focusing on the purpose of an introduction, conclusion, and how to structure a body paragraph, I feel that my writing has improved and become more organized in my head. Similarly, the way we structure how we incorporate quotes into our essays gives me confidence in how I was originally taught to write and in my past writing.
Overall, I would recommend this class to a friend, but definitely warn them that just because it is a Disney class does not mean the class is easy, as their are challenging assignments and a lot of push.