Displaying Color

The Disney article we read for class touched on how Disney's messages effect children and influence their thoughts and behavior. Looking back on my own experiences with Disney movies I can see that it really did have a profound effect on my self esteem. Disney's movies bombarded me with a very particular notion of beauty that I just did not fit. When I watched Disney princess movies as a young girl it was difficult not to compare myself, a brown little tomboy with a head full of dark curly hair, with the dainty fair skinned princesses. But it wasn't just Disney. Dolls, cartoons, TV shows all featured cute white girls or women and it made me feel that to be anything but white just wasn't pretty.
I don't know if I would have felt any more secure if The Princess and the Frog had come out when I was a child, but for me it is too late for Disney to make up for their racist portrayals and glamorized white world. I know that I am already approaching this movie with bias, but seriously:



I have a hard time believing that Disney will ever understand how to portray people of color appropriately. Anyone else super offended by that hillbilly bug's accent? Jeesh.

It's only natural for a woman to desire a man...or is it?

My favorite Disney movie was Lady and the Tramp. Although this was the most replayed movie in my household, I still remember all of my toys growing up from princess Barbie dolls to princess collectibles. I will always remember my 5^th birthday when Belle came to my house in the form of a giant Belle cake. I have always lived within a reasonable distance of Disneyland and so visited multiple times as I was growing up. I could easily relate to all of the princesses as I did have the same coloring as many of them. The idea that other little girls could not relate to the princesses never crossed my mind until I studied abroad last semester. There was one holiday in Spain where everyone would dress up in costumes and most of the little girls chose to be Ariel, Cinderella, Belle, or some kind of princess. I thought how amazing this was- that Disney is an American company which can still appeal to so many little girls all over the world. That these girls in Spain and Portugal could relate to Snow White and Sleeping Beauty.

But after we spoke in class I realize that I was most likely wrong. Maybe these girls did dress up as their favorite Disney princess but underneath all of the costumes they truly could never see themselves being a princess because they don’t look the same. I can’t believe it took me this long to realize but I see now how I was stuck viewing the world from my own perspective and never really put myself in any of their shoes. And just like I had the realization that Disney wasn’t entirely fair in their portrayal of women (thin, beautiful, light-skinned princesses), I also realized Disney embodies and reflects the same issues which exist in our society- the main one being that a woman needs a man in order to be respected, successful and overall happy.

It traces back to distant origins, but one place in American history I see the parallel to this societal issue is the Salem Witch Trials. Most of the women burned, drowned or beaten were women who had no mean in their lives- whether they were old maids or women who had been promiscuous without a husband. The witch-hunt turned into a hunt for women who never settled down with a man or were unordinary in their society. Just because they were different allowed for them to become scapegoats to an entire mass murder. Although these practices no longer exist, our societal media reflects the idea of how a woman should behave, should act, or what a woman should want.

Television shows like Sex and the City illustrate the idea that women need men in order to be happy in their lives. Instead of focusing on work or other relationships, the entire foundation of the show is based on finding men. While one can argue this is only a natural desire, others argue that maybe women like these shows so much because they grew up with the idea that they need a man- tracing all the way back to their childhood, all the way back to Disney. I wonder what would happen if Disney had been reversed- if all of the women held the power and it was always the men chasing the women. If the women in the movies didn’t have to sacrifice their voice or their pride, if it was actually the men who had to do these things. Maybe the way women view relationships and men would be entirely different. Or maybe it really is a natural instinct to want these things and those reversed movies would have never been popular with young girls because they don’t appeal to our natural desires (of chasing and wanting men). It seems silly but with all of the outside influence from movies and culture, it is hard to know natural desire opposed to implemented societal values. Maybe we’ll never know…unless Disney makes yet another movie.

It Goes Way Beyond Disney

In class this week we discussed Disney films and how they portray very sexist themes. Ariel gives up her voice for a man, Jasmine has no control or power for her life, and Belle is kidnapped by a man but falls in love with him in the end. I decided that it is not just Disney films but society in general that have decided women’s lives are not complete without a man. I thought it would be interesting to compare films that are centered around men versus ones centered around women and see how their outcomes differ.
In the film Clueless, the main character Cher spends almost the entire film trying to find the right man to make her life complete, and in the end after getting with Josh the film ends, almost dropping every other storyline because her life is complete with this man. However, in the film Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, while the main character Ferris does have a girlfriend, the ending has nothing to do with his relationship status, but instead his success of skipping the day of school. While the Charlie’s Angels films are themed around strong women who do not need men to succeed in battle, in the end of the first film all three women end up with a man, and a lot of their issues in the films center around men, especially in the sequel when Drew Barrymore’s main plot is how she cannot overcome her ex boyfriend. However, in almost all of the Bond Films, the women are replaceable characters that are just there for eye candy and in every film Bond has a new love interest, implying that even though he spends an entire film attempting to save this girl’s life, by the next film he will already have moved on to another woman.
There are many more examples that I could go in to but I think it is pretty clear that while most female movies center around men or have men somehow important in the finale, films centered around men seem to completely ignore the importance of women in men’s lives or give them little importance in the films plot besides being a helpless victim. So clearly, sexist themes in Disney are continued throughout many other mediums as well.

Princess Jasmine

Today in class we had an interesting discussion about Disney. I was brought up watching Ariel, Jasmine, Pocahontas, and Mulan; and i cannot lie, I can still watch Disney princess on screen and be just as content as I was when I was a kid. But I took a closer look at the minority princesses in Disney, especially Princess Jasmine, and I noticed that she was not a minority at all. She looks like she is a white girl who has a really great tan. In fact, her skin tone is not so different than Cinderella's. But it obvious that Disney wanted to appeal to a larger sect of minorities, not just Arab girls. Anyone with a brown skin tone was supposed to identify with Jasmine. I know I did. I knew she was not Indian but she had "brown" skin, and acted like she was an Indian princess. In fact there was nothing specifically Arab about her. Her name, Jasmine, can exist in many different cultures. Her father is a Sultan, and there were many Sultans that existed throughout the Mughal Empire, which included India. And her tiger, Raja, has a traditionally Indian name. And yet she is an Arabian princess. What a neat little trick Disney. For their agenda, it makes sense for them to group the minorities together because it makes it much easier to reach their newly formed demographic than to go after the individual cultures. As Song mentioned in class, they did not even have correct Arab script when they showed the text. This ambiguity leaves it up to the viewers to fill in the unanswered questions. And as a little girl, why would I not want to be just like Princess Jasmine? She was beautiful, but apparently had a brain of her own (even though all she did was escape her palace to make her man happy). But this rebellious streak tricked the viewer into thinking that she was an independent woman. And when I saw all of these qualities in Jasmine, I immediately felt like she was one of my people. It didn’t matter if she was an Arab princess, she looked Indian enough, and frankly I could not tell the difference between Arab and Indian culture in that movie. And even in Disney's attempt to emulate an Arabian society, everyone had American or British accents. It is obvious that the right culture is white culture. In the mess of cultures and stereotypes, how is it that little girls throughout the world identify with this princess? Its just another success story of the American hegemonic agenda.

Is she REALLY that skinny?

Should Photographs come with a warning label???

see here!

Media Quality. Better in other Countries?

Touching on Wednesday’s topic about our media quality, and with Ryan’s blog to support my opinion; I strongly criticize U.S. media as well as our society for allowing the media to get away with the reporting of unimportant news. On one whole day, the media devoted time and space to “balloon boy” and everything that surrounded the controversial story. In reference to this week’s topic, how the media tends to focus on local news, this event supported mine and probably many others theory that, although other societies and cultures have adopted our system of news reporting, they seem to have a better quality of the news. For example, this day, while I turned to channels such as ABC, NBC, FOX and others, they were reporting on balloon boy, international channels from Spain and Colombia were reporting on the increase of the troops in Iraq. The topic of troops in Iraq is one who pushes certain buttons on people and because of the repetitive nature of this unknown reason why the war in the first place, will not produce as many ratings since people like to be entertained rather than concerned. Other significant issues I have noticed is that international news are much longer and thorough about news compare to the American news. This news shows last up to one hour and half, providing their audiences with a complete summary of news around the globe. American news, divide their reporting in different shows. When everything is in one show, this allows for fewer methods to avoid certain news, when the option to skip certain news because of the different showing times, can maybe make our society less cultured and informed, having said that American society rather be entertained; they will skip important global and national news, watch the local for their interest such as weather and traffic and skip to the entertainment channels afterwards.

The lack of demand of quality news from society may be the answer to the issue of why the resourcing of those interested on real news to the internet and perhaps the concern of the death of newspaper. After I saw the story on the international channels I specifically went and search for the news on the internet. This option allows for those who want to skip all the crap and get to the good stuff.

Media Censorship - Good or Bad?

In Wednesday's class, we touched upon the topic of censorship of the media by government, and how certain things, like bodies of dead soldiers, will never be seen on a television screen to protect America's image. Often, media institutions censor themselves to uphold the interests of the dominant political system at hand. This got me thinking about how there is so much we as citizens don't know about because of this tactic. Recently, there was controversy brewing because a terror plot against the United States was well under way, but the government intervened in enough time to stop it. I remember watching the news with Mayor Bloomberg saying that New York City mass transit was a highly potential target of these terrorists, and encouraged us as New Yorkers to be alert at all times. Not long after, taking the subway went along with seeing dozens of NYPD officers at some of the most popular stops. Censorship comes into play because it had me wondering, Just how serious and far along were these terror plots? Is there still a high risk of an attack happening so close to home? As an avid 24 watcher where every season Jack Bauer stops terror plots just in the nick of time, these questions naturally ran through my head (also proving the theory correct of how media can shape and influence or perceptions of how dangerous the world is). I know that the government and media chose to restrict the amount of information they gave us to make sure chaos did not ensure throughout all of New York. Censorship is good in a way because in some ways, it goes along with the concept of "ignorance is bliss." But, how much ignorance do I want as an American citizen? I'm sure if people knew just how serious some of these plots were, it could affect how some of them would travel. As for me, knowing that there isn't a real life Jack Bauer to save the day is unsettling; but then again, that could also be a secret that the government is censoring as well.