Disney Older Adults Movies

The representation of older adults in Disney films ranges, but ultimately they seem to be the same: an obstacle for the main character or characters, depending on the film, “The portrayal of older characters in Disney animated films” written by Tom Robinson, Mark Callister, Dawn Magoffin, and Jennifer Moore shows this. This article looks into how there are both positive and negative representations of older adults. To determine this, the researchers looked at the following items: “gender, race, appearance, role, personality, and physical characteristics” (Robinson et al. p.203). There were a few RQs (Research Questions) that were asked during the analysis such as: RQ1: How many older characters appear in Disney animated movies? RQ2: How
(Robinson et al. p.205). As the study progressed the researchers noticed that the negative impressions that showed were more on the subconscious level, automatic. This may be due to the fact that television and/or movies have such as short time to tell a story. Most animated children’s movies roughly run about 80-85 minutes since children have short attention spans. The study took a content analysis of thirty-four Disney films, the oldest film being Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) and the most recent being Home on the Range (2004). Throughout this study it has been proven that stereotypes, since the Disney animated films have such a short time to tell their story, direct children’s experience from the media. There were several films that were excluded from this study due to several reasons. For example, films such as Toy Story and Finding Nemo were excluded due to involvement of other companies in the making of the films. There are also films excluded due to being short and/or having no plot, Winnie the Pooh and Fantasia are examples of this. Then the final determiner of excluding films was sequels or spin-offs, examples of this are The Rescuers Down Under and Bambi
p 205).
These characteristics were looked closely at as the study progressed on, along with an age determiner being age fifty-five and older. They were also identified in two different categories of human and non-human. Characters that were non-human such as an animal were coded if they had human characteristics, such as talking. There were also the question of major or minor, did the older character have a major role or a minor role in the movie. Some of the results of the research questions were the following.
The first question focused on the number of older adults that appeared in the census of thirty-four Disney films. The total of older adults that were reported was ninety-three. Twenty-four or 25.8% were classified under the non-human category. The second question focused on gender and ethnicity, 67% of the older adult population were male and the other 33% were female. Caucasians represent highest number of ethnicity, 83%, Asians, 6% and African Americans represented 1% of the older adults ethnic