The Representation Of Gender In Disneys Films Film Studies Essay

In the golden age of animation, 1928 – 1960s, Walt Disney was one of the famous animators in the industry who founded The Walt Disney Corporation. He was an American film director, producer, screenwriter, entertainer and entrepreneur. The book, From Mouse to Mermaid, described that “Disney ethos both reflects and promotes particular elements of the dominant ideology of United State culture” (Murphy, p.127). Most of Disney’s work represents characters that embody racial, ethnic, and gender stereotypes. As well as middle-class perspective and royalist ideology while focusing on themes like innocence, friendship, magic and fairytale. The old Disney works such as Bambi (1942), Snow White (1937), Cinderella (1950), and Sleeping Beauty (1959) are misleading in the image that they portray to young children whose mind is still impressionable. Disney also created subtle messages of stereotypical of social construct of men and women.

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs released in 1937, it was well-known as the first to use Technicolor cel animation, about 250,000 celluloid frames for each animated film. Each frame is repeated from frame to frame, as layers upon layers of retelling, and in particular, a retelling of woman’s body. They also used live-action models for the characters and cinematic conventions of representing women. Each individual “cel” of film was hand-painted by women who created indelible images of the feminine. Elizabeth Bell’s said in her essay “the women in these films are not bifurcated into good and bad, but represent a continuum of cultural representations of women’s power and performance” (Bell, p. 121). Eventhough I agree with her that Disney’s work represents steriotypical role of female in our society, but I do not agree with her at this point because in Snow White and Cinderrella, we can see a clear distinction between a good characters and a bad characters that womens. A good characters fullfill a typical role of the ideal woman. The ideological woman is supposed to be skinny, beautiful, acquiescent, and perform duties of a housewife. She will not disobey direct orders and does not hold a job on her own. Whereas the bad woman is independent, strong willed and does not perform duties of a house care taker.

During that time, the standards of contemporary beauty in Hollywood were young, pretty, white, graceful and slender. Disney’s heroine character moved along with these standards except for the old Femmes Fatales. According to Middle-aged women represented as femme fatales are dark, independent, and treacherous; they are dressed on extravagant costumes. The example of this can be seen in Snow White, with the Evil Stepmother. As Bell rightly point out “Disney transforms the vain, active and wicked woman of folktales into the Femme Fatale, the “deadly woman” od silent film and of Hollywood classic film”. They usually played the roles of an evil stepmother who envied the younger heroine for her looks and ended up being defeated or killed. The old crone from Snow White represents the old female character which is depicted as gray and wrinkled, clumsy, and frumpily dressed. Disney’s representation of women is the treatments of the feminine life-cycle in hegemonic social disclose and stereotypes about women’s bodies.

Another notable film technique is use by Disney film Bambi. Released during World War II, the film still used Technicolor cel animation but the goal was to obtain a highly realistic look than the previous productions. Bambi is a story about the birth and maturation of a young male; the son of the stag who rules the forest and his mother who was killed by “man.” Walt Disney attempted to achieve realistic detail by lecture the animators, so they could study movement of animals. Los Angeles Zoo was shipped a pair of fawns to showed animators, therefore the artist could draw nature look and realistic movement of Bambi and Faline. Each individual shows detail of nature; for instance, in the open scene we saw the shadow of sunlight which represents the morning hours. But because of the realism that they tried to created, multiples of cel made color of the film faded.

Bambi used “Anthropomorphism” to represent gender of male and female stereotypes by using non-human characteristics to display an object or abstract concepts. Even though the film does not ascribe to the typical view of physical appearance but it still portray ideological of gender through “Anthropomorphism”. Anthropomorphism ascribes human motivation, characteristics or behavior to things not human, such as inanimate objects, animals or natural phenomena. Bambi also represent royalist ideology because the title character is a son of the “Great Prince of the Forest” and he became the “Prince of the forest”. The male stereotypes are represented through Bambi, Ronno and Bambi’s father, while female stereotypes are represented through Bambi’s mother and Faline. Beginning with male stereotypes, the father is labeled as the “Great Prince of the Forest” during the film, which represents his authority amongst the forest community which shows that only a male can lead the society and be a protector of family or community because males are perceived to be smarter that females. In the scene, Bambi’s father told everyone in the forest to escape from the hunter it shows how he tried to protect everyone in the forest because he would stay back to ensure that everyone is safe. The mother is represented as the natural stereotype of typical mom who always loves and cares about the children. One of the scenes that showed the way that mothers would do everything for their children is when they ran away from hunter, she preferred to give up her life in order to save her child’s life. Another stereotype of young men represent in Bambi and Ronno, when they fight for Faline because young males always fight for a women. We also see the stereotype of young female Disney character in Faline which describe as young, pretty and slender stereotype that depends on a male. She was falling in love with the prince and ended up with the happy ending.

The ideology of fairy tales is showed in a female character in Disney’s film which is the inherent expectation to falling in love and getting married to the prince so they can have happiness in life. An example of this is in Snow White character that allows girls to have fairy-tales to dream of and hope for. As Murphy point out in his essay “the Disney ethos both reflects and promotes particular elements of the dominant ideology of United States culture” (p. 127), where the young girls are waiting for prince charming and dreaming of being princesses.

They set the standards and ideology for girls on how to grow up. Contemporary society believes that women need to be more independent through the film because it has a huge impact on young audience on how they see the world. They want Disney to show that women can take care of themselves, more independent, be leaders, have jobs and do not rely on men. They also want Disney to transform into equality of gender because most of their films show a male dominated outlook. Feminists concerned about perception of the world and values about the point of view on young children especially girls to watch for unhealthy look of the physical attributes along with the values supporting male dominance. Disney production films showed the ideals of nature conflict through their female protagonists where women are fully dependent on men and female characters are often shown as happy housewives. This is due to the personal belief and attitude Walt Disney has towards how the family life is shaped and what roles women should play in society.

The narratives of media associated between genders offer patterns of proper and improper behavior, messages, and ideological conditioning with pleasurable of popular entertainment being show on television. Even though there have been changes over years, we can see appropriate societal roles for men and women. By analyzing and interpreting animation films through history, one is able to understand the representation of gender which entails the inequalities that rest amongst sex, gender, nature, and ethnicity.