Last week I went to a seminar my sister and another teacher did at Governor's School West. It was about Disney and the family values communicated to us through Disney.
Bethany and Carrie seemed to focus on the absence of a mother figure in Disney movies, which I found interesting. But even more intriguing was the lack of other types of families, these two for example:
-same sex parents
-interracial parents
What Disney is doing by leaving these families out of movies is normalizing heterogeneous, all white relationships. Anything else is not even portrayed as weird: it isn't portrayed at all. This implies that it doesn't even exist as a true family.
Another point of the seminar was how prevalent Disney is. Kids learn by processing information, and the omnipresent Disney is teaching them through popular movies. It might not be explicit, but it is there: Disney is telling the next generation what to think about families, and same sex and interracial marriage aren't included. Kids who aren't exposed to this idea as OK won't think it is OK. It isn't "normal" to them.
Maybe this is a bit extreme, but pay attention to what Disney is putting in their movies. Disney might not be explicitly teaching kids that same sex and interracial families are wrong, but they certainly aren't putting in a word for it. The rest can be put together through implication - a powerful tool for children.
All I'm saying is, make sure what you put into your children's heads matches what you want them to learn. If Disney isn't teaching your kids the morals you want them to learn, be wary.
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5 comments:
well this certainly is an extreme position, not that i entirely disagree with it. nonetheless, it can be equally harmful to disregard positive messages these films can send not only to children but to parents as well.
there have only really been so many disney movies released since the big push for marriage equality got kicked into high gear this past decade, and with same-sex parenting still a rarity and in some states still illegal in certain ways, it's only so fair to expect the media industry to keep up all the time. plus about half of the disney movies in the last decade are pixar movies that deal with bugs, toys, robots, rats, and monsters that a child's mind likely is incapable of linking to racial images of family structure (and frankly, i can't always see the links that some critics might point out).
but the bottom line is this - don't blame disney for parents not stepping up to the plate. they provide good, sometimes excellent movies that occasionally have some questionable representations of gender roles, but almost universally present the claim that unconditional love within a family structure (despite how that structure is portrayed) is an ultimate good, which seems to me like the only family value almost all people are arguing for these days.
if parents want to make sure their children understand variety of family structures, that responsibility is on them, not mass media. mass media is designed to reach the most people most effectively. sometimes things fall in the cracks. parents are more than capable of filling them in if they want to. that doesn't mean we dismiss everything with a good message just because it has a few flaws if you really look for them. (and all that besides, parents are going to screw their kids up with or without disney's help)
Ben, glad it stuck with you.
Slater, just a few more observations. In some of the older films, love is not unconditional.
Peter Pan: the father is the source of conflict, the children are only reconciled after the father changes his mind. He's never depicted grappling with the wrong he did by yelling at his children and intensely mocking his wife, he just "never means" it when he goes off like that.
Mary Poppins: the family requires the external work of a nanny to reconcile themselves. The children genuinely believe that their father doesn't love them. He only begins to appreciate their imagination after he's fired.
Princess and the Frog: first potentially interracial couple, but Disney's first African American princess spends 90% of the film as a frog. ?!?!?!
Food for thought.
Parents are not off the hook.
Disney is not off the hook.
Children need to be taught to become responsible consumers of information. As long as we can think about these things, Disney serves a purpose. When the conversation stops, that's when we're in trouble.
I totally agree that parents aren't off the hook, Slater. Part of the point of this is that parents need to step up to fill the void that Disney is leaving. Disney and mass media are behind on this stuff because people don't want to change their opinions on it - and that's the self-perpetuating danger. Just because same sex marriages are still illegal in most states doesn't mean the media can't comment on it. Maybe The Fox & The Hound should be redone with them as lovers - that could be good!
For real though, I hope this wasn't too reductionist. Cause and effect is very complex, and I didn't mean to place the entire onus on Disney. Just thinking about some flaws in their productions.
Just for clarification, The Fox & The Hound (as lovers) would be interracial marriage. I know most of that paragraph referred to same sex marriage.
I totally agree about the older films, which are of course reflective of their cultures. (But it can sometimes also be a mistake to give into an idea of cultural "progress" - many media theorists consider this idea to be a myth created by retroactive viewings and nostalgia as a way of justifying out current cultural features.)
Mary Poppins, fair point, though one might point out that many families today require the outside help of a therapist to reconcile issues. and Peter Pan, fair points as well (though don't hate too hard on Peter Pan, it might be my favorite book of all time haha).
I personally think the argument about Princess and the Frog, which i read about during its release, is utter hogwash deliberately stirred up by mass media trolls posing as journalists to cause trouble instead of contribute anything substantial to the debate.
and yes, we're all on the same page here, just fyi. i'm also merely pointing out that it is far more complicated than "Disney doesn't recognize other families!" Disney has also seldom portrayed men as any more than bumbling idiots, stern fathers, or prince charming (no pressure on us, right?), but people choose instead to focus on the portrayals of submissive females. Rapunzel was also the first white disney princess in 19 years...
so yeah, it's just more complicated. and it's fun. which is why i study it :)
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