The use of beauty in Disney movies
The Good in Beauty and Evil in Ugly in Disney Movies
Growing up nowadays most children in the US are brought up watching mostly Walt Disney movies. The Millennial generation was raised with the Disney renaissance film era, and the newer Generation Z is also being raised with the classic Disney films and the newer films like Tangled and The Princess and the Frog. As kids grow up, they begin to relate many of the stories and characters that they were so fond of to everyday things, whether it is their toys or Halloween costumes. Along with this is a clear placed biased view on behalf of the Disney corporation that most of the characters that are physically attractive or appealing to look at are going to be the “good guys”, while the less attractive characters are typically the “bad guys”. With this influence over children, it has led to greater stereotyping, body image problems, an ageism debate, and created greed to want to have Disney related memorabilia. These animated children/family based films have caused more controversy than ever expected. In the majority of the Disney films with the main exceptions of The Hunchback of Notre Dame and Beauty and the Beast, there is a clear and definite difference between good and evil within the characters simply by their appearances. In 2010, the University of North Carolina and Appalachian State University carried out a study analyzing twenty-one Disney films made since 1938, and asked the participants to rate 163 characters on a scale of one to ten in terms of “goodness”. They were asked to also score them on their attractiveness, intelligence, aggressiveness, romantic involvement, and their life outcome aka their “happily ever after” (Leach). In almost every movie, the “good” characters were the more attractive, more intelligent and less aggressive. Some of the characters that exemplified these ideals were Cinderella, Prince Charming, Princess Aurora, and the Blue Fairy from Pinocchio. This study appeared in
Growing up nowadays most children in the US are brought up watching mostly Walt Disney movies. The Millennial generation was raised with the Disney renaissance film era, and the newer Generation Z is also being raised with the classic Disney films and the newer films like Tangled and The Princess and the Frog. As kids grow up, they begin to relate many of the stories and characters that they were so fond of to everyday things, whether it is their toys or Halloween costumes. Along with this is a clear placed biased view on behalf of the Disney corporation that most of the characters that are physically attractive or appealing to look at are going to be the “good guys”, while the less attractive characters are typically the “bad guys”. With this influence over children, it has led to greater stereotyping, body image problems, an ageism debate, and created greed to want to have Disney related memorabilia. These animated children/family based films have caused more controversy than ever expected. In the majority of the Disney films with the main exceptions of The Hunchback of Notre Dame and Beauty and the Beast, there is a clear and definite difference between good and evil within the characters simply by their appearances. In 2010, the University of North Carolina and Appalachian State University carried out a study analyzing twenty-one Disney films made since 1938, and asked the participants to rate 163 characters on a scale of one to ten in terms of “goodness”. They were asked to also score them on their attractiveness, intelligence, aggressiveness, romantic involvement, and their life outcome aka their “happily ever after” (Leach). In almost every movie, the “good” characters were the more attractive, more intelligent and less aggressive. Some of the characters that exemplified these ideals were Cinderella, Prince Charming, Princess Aurora, and the Blue Fairy from Pinocchio. This study appeared in