Response to "Disney Movies: Good? Bad?"

This is a response to Stratis's "Disney Movies: Good? Bad?"

Here is the original post: http://stratisthesundayschooldrop-out.blogspot.ca/2012/03/disney-movies-good-bad.html

Stratis, I agree with your point that “what Towbin et al.’s lacks is any sort of research on what effects this form of media actually has”, and its pretty interesting how you found a video that literally describes everything about the article.  I agree with the video in the way that Disney movies seem to inject certain gender stereotype in children. I have to admit that I was also a “victim” of Disney just like Jenna. I humiliated myself in public because I thought it was okay to sing or act like my favorite Disney characters, and like Jenna I was not allowed to wear two-piece swimsuit until pretty recently, it was my ultimate wish to own a two-piece swimsuit, why? Because that’s what Ariel wears! Everytime I went to the beach, I beg my parents to bury me in the sand and build me a sand fish tail. Disney does have certain influence in my childhood, but as I got older, I kind of grew out of my princess-wannabe-phase, and of course eventually I did realize that Disney princesses are just fairy tales. Perhaps, like you mention that Disney does not have any permanent negative effect on children. 

Disney's view of culture diversity

From my personal experience, I do believe that it has some sort on influence on me when I was little, but the effect seems insignificant as I got older. I think education, family background would affect the influence Disney have on children, like I haven’t notice so much negativity Disney films contain before college, and now that I do, I am more aware of it. As for the problem of racism in Disney films, I tend to look at it in a good way. Like I mentioned, I never really realize the negativity Disney films have, I don’t know how other children watch television but for myself, I was more of a visual kid. I like cartoons, anything colorful, cute and pretty,  and to be honest, I don’t think I listened to conversations in cartoons at all. I grew up in a place with not much cultural diversity and to me, it was only through Disney films that I learned about all kinds of different races and cultures, that could be partly the reason why I never found it unusual when I saw different cultures/races in reality. Funny, but I think Disney actually taught me cultural diversity. 

Princess wannabes: A phase that most of us went through

Though many scholars like Towbin et al. argue about the negativity in Disney films on children, but perhaps we should consider the possibility that children may see films differently than we do, since we interpret details of the films such as conversations, appearance and etc, but children usually are only drawn to animations or pictures, and by showing them different races and culture may help them to recognize racial and cultural diversity. It is difficult to fully figure if media has direct influence on children, and through my own experience and the small sample of children the original post asked, Disney may not be as harmful as we think it is to children. We only see its negativity because we have the ability to interpret its message. As for Towbin et al.’s research, I think its weakness lies on their assumption that children are completely vulnerable, and that they would take all information in, they omit the possibility that children may be less interpretative on Disney films than we are (since we only see the negativity through detail analysis of the different aspects of Disney characters), and as result they don’t generally absorb all the deep messages in films. 

How we generally see Disney, but does that mean children see it the same way?

Disney's hidden message: Princes VS Princesses.

Towbin, Mia Adessa et al. “Images of Gender, Race, Age, and Sexual Orientation in Disney Feature-Length Animated Films.” Journal of Feminist Family Therapy 15.4 (2004): 19-44