Once, at a place not so far away, a man called Walt Disney fantastically and groundbreakingly changed the way of fairy tales. Disney has been part of millions of lives for over 80 years, from fairy tales to love stories. A man and a mouse began the company and became the leader in animated films. As a major part of the entertainment industry, they are compared to the culture and ideas surrounding them.
For many years Disney has fought against the public and their public for having been accused of stereotypically portraying their characters, especially women. Gender roles and their connotations are an important component of society and can affect the way people compare with others. The media already has a substantial influence and shows what society and social standards are expected to do.
Disney was chosen because the roles played by men and women throughout its history reflect the cultural outlook and beliefs of social standards and gender identity expectations. Therefore, Disney becomes a major illustration and representation of cultural developments and trends. Disney is also an excellent way to track the effect of views and expectations of conduct standards linked to men and women.
Disney has existed for several decades and still appears to be a leading entertainment company. Disney's culture is constantly changing and faces various challenges in every era. Do your values and depictions change in order to appease viewers if they are to please audiences from decade to decade? The influences of the media and gender roles generally must be investigated and described in order to determine the significance of the Disney change. In addition, if Disney changes to adapt to the culture surrounding it, certain movies or timescales must show a shift and a change. What are these cultural changes, and do they help adapt and portray the Disney themes in their princesses? What are they?
Disney's representation of women, especially their princesses, has changed over the years to reflect the times and societal values. Although it is known now that Disney is a pioneer in the film industry, it is unclear if and how Disney has adapted its ideals and principles in social expectations and gender roles. Therefore, in previously written essays and newspapers, I suggest literary analyses, while still studying cultural patterns and improvements all the time from the publication of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in 1937 to Frozen in 2013.
One means of defining gender roles is through a perceived collection of interpersonal "standards" which are commonly associated with men and women in a social community or structure. Certain beliefs and habits are linked to a particular stereotype or identity. Our culture tries to describe what it is to be male or female and then to determine what representations and features of normal behavior. These representations and characteristics are then strengthened by brands, clothes, and even media that are deemed suitable.
Gender roles built for men and women appear very early in the development of an infant. These standards and societal conventions in society are impactful and influential for children. Today, girls in colors, robes, dolls, and tea parties are portrayed in society. Boys can, on the other hand, play with equipment, sports, and video games. When children leave these frontiers, the aspirations of societal standards will have repercussions. These children can be bullied, discriminated against, and even assaulted by their colleagues and adults.
The role of both men and women in gender is common in Disney's films. In the representation of female characters, this was the big shift in Disney's culture. At least one of three approaches to explain the representation of women and their gender roles. One, Disney princesses' original portrait is the stereotypical and household-like mother figure. Snow White, Cinderella, Beauty, and the Beast can be seen in this case. A second portrait of the female character was created and shifted to defiant and ambitious.
The characters of Ariel, Bella, and Rapunzel make this pattern more visible. Finally, there has been a final change and the female figures are shown as strong and free-spirited. This form of the image is visible through Merida, Anna, and Elsa. These diverse styles of depictions of women in different films can be used in line with the socioeconomic dimensions of the events at the same period. Social requirements and norms have varied and changed over time regarding women's gender roles. The media thereby become a visual depiction of the universal standards desired in the cultural and social setting.
It is a film that show how gender and class relations demonstrated in the plots of the film, and the domestic values of marriage and filial belief, as well as the concept of self in the character of the Beast (Michigan Academician 2019), such as Belle’s sacrifices for the rescue of her father to meet the Beast, and the growing love between her and the Beast as they live together. In the story, as Belle first meets with the Beast, she is terrified by his appearance. But she finds that under the horrible outlook lies a warm and kind heart, and then she falls in love with him. The value of the marriage in Belle’s heart is to devoted to the one she loves and be the support and companion for the rest of her life, no matter how the pattern turns out to be. This is also the belief in the mind of women in 18th century. They all values too much about marriage and filial piety.
We may now ask for a children's film showing a female lead who is being taken by a male person under house arrest. In the representation of male characters, they are always the dominate roles with power and strong figures by means of they are hard and the best, which is toxic masculinity at some point (Salam 2019). Belle encounters the Beast and, because of a sacrifice she has made to rescue her father, is forced to remain in his castle as long as it wants to hold her. This special situation reveals how he is insensitive, overpowering, ruthless, and represents the beast as a traditional Alpha male. And when Belle rejects dinner, he says, "When she doesn't eat with me, she doesn't eat something," so he goes to his castle wing. The princess was in love with a man who probably victimized her in Beauty and the Beast. Disney hardly places sexist messages in their film, so we can start by shifting the symbolic relationships that we face while we are growing up if we want our societies to change.
Similarly, Cinderella's plot was not typically gender media-building stereotypes as obvious as other toxic sex ideas. The stresses of women who had to tidy up and cook at home while satisfying others were more the result of culture-built genre roles. While she always found ways of seeing the happiness in traditional household products, such as baking, washing, and tiding, Cinderella was always happily dreaming of her. Cinderella is an image of the traditional damsel in distress and only Cinderella can be saved by the prince. For the remainder of her life, Cinderella remained in her involuntary servitude until she was able to avoid marriage. This corresponds to the social views of women in the idealized marriage period and the role of making babies at home and taking care of the husband.
When the festival at the palace invites all girls to take part in, Cinderella is asked to work at home by her stepmother under the unreasonable requests. But with the help of her friends, she is able to go to the ball with beautiful and magnificent dress and shoes. When the prince searches for Cinderella who escaped from the dancing with the prince, her stepmother and stepsisters once again step out to obstruct Cinderella to wear the shoe she left. In the whole plot, the message is clearly demonstrated that women must suffer first if they want to get rewarded. The readers can get the picture that sufferer or victim is a representation of glamour (Lieberman 1986: 194). Cinderella has to do all the housework in the family. She must be tired and suffered in her daily life, before she can live happily forever with the prince. Besides that, women are depicted in two divisions as the good one and the evil ones which is actually controversial portrayal among feminist readers (Parsons, 2014: 137). Cinderella and her stepmother and stepsisters are the two dividing groups in the stories.
For many young girls, Disney has been an important figure for many years creating role models and characters that children always love and replicate. The bigger picture is that there are an illusion and societal trend that people should match or be considered to be outcasts across the media and various factors of our culture. But what Disney film also delivers is the underlying implication that the films depict an unrealistic and misleading concept of beauty in the way of their alluring heroines for praising sexual maturity (Haas and Trapedo 2018:15), such as the message in the character of miserable Cinderella turning into the loved princess.
Over the years Disney, through its various features and particularly princesses, has embodied these social expectations and values. Over the passage of time, Disney shifted much as popular society evolved. Disney's positive transition in its past is more important than a cheerful conclusion, which is more modeling for audiences. Disney keeps growing and making more films. The concept of princesses who are more multicultural and multilateral is now being developed and developed. Disney would also shed light on the gender role of its viewers and the wider principle that men and women cannot fit into a mark.
References
Haas, Lynda, and Shaina Trapedo. “Looking into the Magic Mirror: Disney's Impact on the Fairy Tale Genre.” The Routledge Companion to Media and Fairy-Tale Cultures, edited by Paula Greenhill, Routledge Ltd., 2018, pp.119.https://docs.google.com/document/d/1R3xlFjFWwxVagMsLw-BhgY2jHAPl7_WmoXbv5W6rLrE/edit
"Gender Roles and Hierarchy in The Beauty and The Beast as Adapted by Jean Cocteau and Christophe Gans." Michigan Academician, vol. 46, no. 1, 2019, p. 62+. Gale Literature Resource Center, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A605249198/LitRC?u=gdufs&sid=LitRC&xid=699abcd7. Accessed 17 Mar. 2021.
Lieberman, M. K., “‘Some day my prince will come’: Female acculturation through the fairy tale,” in Don’t Bet on the Prince: Contemporary Feminist Fairy Tales in North America and England, Jack Zipes, ed., pp. 185–200. New York: Routledge, 1986.
Parsons, L.T. Ella Evolving: Cinderella Stories and the Construction of Gender-Appropriate Behavior. Children's Literature in Education 35, 135–154 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1023/B:CLID.0000030223.88357.e8
Salam, Maya. “What Is Toxic Masculinity?” The New York Times, 22 Jan. 2019, www.nytimes.com/2019/01/22/us/toxic-masculinity.html
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