Feminism+and+Disney

= =
 * Feminism and Disney **
 * A Few Resources Not Just for ALA Conference-Goers **

// Disney is everywhere in Anaheim, California, site of the 2012 American Library Association Annual Conference. Disneyland is a short walk from the Convention Center and discount tickets are available through the conference registration site. Meetings will be held in rooms with names such as "Castle" and the "Magic Kingdom Ballroom". Hungry conference-goers can eat at the Storyteller Cafe or Goofy's Kitchen. What will it mean for feminists to be immersed in the culture of Princesses and the mass-marketing of beauty? Resources and commentary of Disney and feminism abound, going back at least to the early sixties, but WiL has selected a few recent, interesting, and open access sources for pre-Anaheim consideration. //


 * [[image:feminist disney.jpg width="420" height="77" align="left"]]A good starting place is Feminist Disney, a tumblr site with the goal of** examining and documenting the intersection of Disney and social issues. States the site owner " I do not believe in killing Disney; I believe in changing it." The July 2011 entry on the Disney princess identity is a good example of the content, which is sassy and articulate: "I actually like Disney movies (Jasmine is my favorite Princess!), but one can separate pleasure of the narrative from critique of the message. I don’t always agree with the criticism of Disney creating a “princess ideal” for girls and that this in itself is bad, because I don’t think there’s anything wrong with wanting/pretending to be a princess. The thing I see as being wrong is the way Disney (at least for most of their earlier films) defined princesses as not doing anything/being practically mannequin people for dresses, whose single greatest desire was to “get married” and marriage was a device that pretty much resolved all conflict within the plots/their character. And although their current princesses are more diverse and complex, they still market their multi-million dollar princess franchise as largely being about what the princesses wear and look like." In addition to topical posts, the site includes a Feminist Disney Image Collection and a Movie Critique Roundup. Reading/viewing the site is open to all, but requires a tumblr account to submit a question.


 * Vanessa Matyas's 2010 McMaster University graduate research paper, Tale As Old As Time: A Textual Analysis of Race and Gender in Disney Princess Films** considers the gender roles being fulfilled in the films, mainly by the heroines, through an examination of the dynamics of the heterosexual relationship in nine princess films. Matyas also considers how each film constructs racial differences. Not surprisingly, Matyas found that Disney continues to favor racial and gender stereotyping within their films; that Disney’s wholesome image masks the presence of anti-feminist messages, telling females to rely on a man for their happiness. More troubling, Matyas found, is that //The Princess and the Frog//, considered to be a groundbreaking addition to the Disney Princess franchise with its addition of an African American princess, contains that same racist depiction of its characters present in some of the Walt Disney Company’s earliest films. Not only does Tiana follow the princess mould that was first established in 1937 for //Snow White// - that the heroine be submissive and reliant on the men around her - but the blackness of the villain Dr. Facilier rivals the whiteness of hero Prince Naveen, which invokes a racist and sexist notion that black women need white men to save them from black men. Matyas concludes, "Clearly, Disney has yet to make any real progress in the concept of equality in their films, and by their continuous reinforcement and creation of both racial and gender stereotypes it does not seem like they are planning to change their overarching themes within the Disney Princess franchise."


 * Nicole Sawyer's James Madison University undergraduate research paper, [|Feminist Outlooks at Disney Princesses]**looks at gender identity and gender roles through Disney movies. Sawyer includes a topically-organized literature review, including sources on the impact of media, Disney, and feminism as an introduction to her research, for which she employs a serpentine. (Sawyer describes the serpentine as looking at "the logic of interaction between both of the parties and flips back and forth at the various viewpoints each hold. The logic of interaction starts a series of transactions which influence the next transaction in a row and so forth.") She poses the questions "How do the dynamics of the movies produced by the Walt Disney Company affect feminist viewpoints?" and "How do the heroines in the Disney Princess films influence gender ideologies and roles over time?" Sawyer concludes that the fundamental conflict between Disney and feminism is the Disney definition of "happily ever after": "In order to make the feminist population happy there has to a successful woman that makes it on her own without a partner. This means that there may not be a happily ever after, seeing as the main part of Disney films are the happy ending with true love."[[image:cinderella.jpg width="279" height="265" align="right" caption="from Feminist Disney"]]


 * Janet Wasko's article Challenging Disney Myths in the //Journal of Communication Inquiry//** (July 2001, 25:3, 237-257) considers five assumptions that are typically made about Disney: Walt Disney was a creative genius who was responsible for the company’s success; the Disney company is somehow special and unique, not like other corporations; Disney is only for kids; Disney’s products are harmless, safe, and unbiased; and everyone adores Disney. In challenging these myths, Wasko concludes that "the legacy of Walt Disney and the Disney company itself have been especially adept at representing what America has represented: business, progress, individual initiative. It has incorporated the American personality as fun loving, innocent, and optimistic, with a sense of fair play and what is right. In addition, the success of the Disney Company has come to represent American ingenuity and cleverness. The problem is that these attributes also form the basis of many American values that have either been mythologized or not necessarily even embraced by everyone. Indeed, Disney values also have been associated with All-American traits such as conservatism, homophobia, Manifest Destiny, ethnocentricity, cultural insensitivity, superficiality, lack of culture, and so on." Wasko continues: "Disney did not create these attributes, but it is possible to argue that the Disney empire helps to perpetuate them. Are they the only company that does so? Of course not. But they do it very well and (at least for many) in an appealing, seductive, and enjoyable way."


 * Beauty and the Belles: Discourses of Feminism and Femininity in Disneyland, Allison Craven's 2002 article in the European Journal of Women's Studies** (May 2002, 9:2, 123-142) presents a critical analysis of Disney’s animated film and stage production of //Beauty and the Beast//, especially of the heroine, Belle. The broader representation of femininity in Disney is also examined with reference, particularly, to //Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs//, and with reflections also on non-fictional characters from media with a relationship to Disney. These non-fictional characters include Ellen DeGeneres, star of //Ellen//, a show coproduced by ABC Entertainment and Touchstone Television, both part of the Walt Disney Company. Craven's depiction of DeGeneres as Disney princess echos the highly scholarly examination of the fictional characters: "An appearance by Ellen and her then (real-life) partner, Ann Heche, in //Woman’s Day// ... presented the partner of the Disney heroine again as a kind of mutant man: two women seen through glass (a camera lens). The story about ‘Hollywood’s hottest couple’ concerned, not surprisingly in a women’s magazine, their ‘legal’ marriage, and focused on the subjects’ roles in each other’s lives as ‘wives’. Pictured together ... they may have stepped straight from a Disney cartoon, shimmering and glistening in colourful evening wear, both blonde and lipsticked, fingers lovingly interlocked around a mutual handbag; who carries the handbag, appearing to be more significant than which of these two women ‘wears the trousers’."


 * April Callen's 2012 thesis Almost There, Indeed: Disney Misses the Mark on Modernizing Black Womanhood and Subverting the Princess Tradition in The Princess and the Frog**argues that framing The Princess and the Frogwithin the context of a “modern twist on a classic tale” has multiple meanings and is ultimately problematic due to the movie’s reliance on old hegemonic film characterizations of Black womanhood that promotes whiteness and assimilation, while simultaneously suppressing Blackness. Callen's thorough Introduction includes a literature review and overview of the Walt Disney Company as a cultural institution. In assessing //The Princes and the Frog//, given the historical relationship between Black women and popular culture, she says, the film shows some improvement in how the latter recognizes the former. Providing audiences with a Black princess could impact how young Black girls recognize their own beauty in the face of countless other images of whiteness and could also influence how the larger society understands and accepts diversified beauty. However, she also remarks that for marginalized groups in particular, recognition does not stand as a positive force when the message being sent suggests the inability to possess agency or power without endorsement from a man. The seeming disappointment many Black parents and cultural critics were faced with upon viewing //The Princess and the Frog//, she concludes, shows Disney’s complacency toward being sincerely or authentically invested in the lives of those who remain hopeful of its ability to offer a recognition of Blacks’ value beyond the South and beyond being the help can be revealed. "Disney has developed into a multibillion dollar business, not by specializing its narratives for the specific interests of niche groups, but by creating a grand, monolithic approach to life that can speak to all people, beyond race, beyond class, gender, and social politics. That disappointment from Black parents and cultural critics shows, in a number of ways, how much work Disney still has to do."