That's hot....
I was raised by Disney, there’s no doubt about that. I watched it obsessively in that time of my youth when things don’t get boring even after the seventeenth viewing. My first enemy was Cruella DeVil; my first friend was Aladdin’s genie; I harbored this semi-crush on Hades, who cracked me up every single time his fiery hair ‘went out’—I loved Disney, my friends and I still sing Disney, I want to show Disney to my kids.
And yet…I’m no longer deluded my Disney. I don’t fault them for supposedly implanting “sex” in the shape of leaves anymore than I fault them for killing Bambi’s mother (though I admit, that was one Disney movie I never liked, I mean, there’s no talking????) But I can’t deny the fact that the Disney animated movies I grew up with were sexist and racist, praising supposedly ‘masculine’ qualities and encouraging a comparison of minorities to animals in a way I thought hadn’t existed since people first started believing in social Darwinism (though, I suppose, certain events in history prove that there are people who still ascribe to this belief). I don’t care how catchy Mulan‘s “I’ll Make A Man Out of You” is, it perpetuates the idea that strength and manliness is something more valuable than say, a woman, who must either be beautiful or cook well to be “A Girl Worth Fighting For”:
I want her paler than the moon with eyes that shine like stars My girl will marvel at my strength, adore my battle scars I couldn't care less what she'll wear or what she looks like It all depends on what she cooks like
The Princess and the Frog
But, what can I do? And how can I know if these subliminal messages had an effect on me? After all, I don’t think I’ve been disillusioned into believing that women should only cook, or that minorities are barbaric. Besides, doesn’t Mulan herself prove that women can be badass warriors? Isn’t Disney going to release a movie with a black woman in it? But at the end of Mulan, she gets married, wears that little pink flower in her hair, and everything suddenly reverts to the traditional standards of husband and wife and happily ever after. And that little black princess in The Princess and the Frog? Well, she’s a frog for nearly the entire time, so let’s talk about racial equality.
And yet….I feel I’m being unfair. The Princess in the Frog is one more of the fairy tale adaptations we expect of Disney, and Mulan does plenty of role reversing when she wields that sword and even saves her guy from peril a few times. Sure Hercules was machismo defined, but he also chose love over being powerful. I find it to be a waste of time to over analyze Disney movies because I think that overall they were good, overall they enforced good values. But, for your own viewing sake, here’s the article that got me thinking on the subject, and one of the videos from said article that led me to question the values of Disney:
Gotta say, pretty disappointed with this post. Disney’s real sexist narratives — the Little Mermaid, Snow White, Aladdin — have been the bane of the corporation’s existence. That’s why almost all of the more recent Disney princesses — Pocahontas, Mulan, and the Princess of the frog looks to be a prime example — are super-strong, super-empowered women that fight their own fights and live their own lives and often end up saving their boys from peril. (Pathetically overstated in Enchanted, with the evil Queen cooing heavy-handed lines like, “So I guess he’s the damsel in distress?”) At this point, they seem somewhat comfortable in their gender relations, and are able to have the Frog Prince be a bit of a dick, and have a bit more of a personality than the absurdly generic princes of yore.
Disney is still much clumsier about issues of race, partially because their history with race is far worse than their history with gender. They may be seen as imparting ridiculous standards of beauty (on men as well as women), or emphasizing beautiful women as inherently superior to ugly women, or submissive women as superior to active women — but it pales in comparison to the long, tortured history with race, from the ridiculous (“What makes the red man red?”: Disney pondering the great questions of Peter Pan) to the insidious (“I wanna be like you”: Disney pondering the secret desires of Black America, as characterized by a jazz-playing ape), and they really can’t seem to clean up their act (the clumsy Chinese accents and hulking mongols of Mulan; the shrieking hispanic hyenas of the Lion King; and holy shit, Aladdin, just… just all of Aladdin, really). Hopefully Disney will manage not to screw the pooch on what could be the most important attempt to exorcise their most malignant demon.