Portrayal of Gender Roles in Disney Films
Portrayal of Gender Roles in Disney Films
10058457
Kathleen Olejnik
Prof: Beamish
TA: Ben Bigio
SOCY 122
Gender roles are present in every Western society and culture today. One’s portrayal of gender roles begins at a young age, not only at home through parents, but also through the media. The media is one of the largest influential factors of gender role portrayal. There has been concern about the accuracy of the portrayals of men and women in media, which may not be proper depictions (England, Descartes and Collier-Meek 2011: 556). It is through these reinforced meanings of masculinity and femininity that children’s gender-role socialization is being distorted. Such distortion begins at quite a young age and this kind of exposure may be problematic (England et al. 2011: 557). A more specific medium of the media that is a powerful socializing agent in the lives of children is movies, and particularly movies by Disney. Disney is the worlds second largest media firm, and is one of the first factors that affect a child’s gender role portrayal (Martz, Bazzini, Curtin, Joslin, Regan 2010: 353). Even though children may be unaware that these views are being formed, the prince and princess characters in many Disney movies portray traditional masculine and feminine characteristics. These later on build the stereotypical gender images that are related to these traditional characteristics (Ross 2004: 55). Children start to associate certain attributes to men and women and this is how their portrayal is shaped. In many of the fairy-tale Disney movies, male and female characters are overrepresented and having such portrayals of gender roles may weaken children’s beliefs, expectations and aspirations because they cannot aspire to do something other than what is presented in the Disney films (England et al. 2011: 557). Gender role portrayals in Disney movies influence children’s beliefs and ideas
10058457
Kathleen Olejnik
Prof: Beamish
TA: Ben Bigio
SOCY 122
Gender roles are present in every Western society and culture today. One’s portrayal of gender roles begins at a young age, not only at home through parents, but also through the media. The media is one of the largest influential factors of gender role portrayal. There has been concern about the accuracy of the portrayals of men and women in media, which may not be proper depictions (England, Descartes and Collier-Meek 2011: 556). It is through these reinforced meanings of masculinity and femininity that children’s gender-role socialization is being distorted. Such distortion begins at quite a young age and this kind of exposure may be problematic (England et al. 2011: 557). A more specific medium of the media that is a powerful socializing agent in the lives of children is movies, and particularly movies by Disney. Disney is the worlds second largest media firm, and is one of the first factors that affect a child’s gender role portrayal (Martz, Bazzini, Curtin, Joslin, Regan 2010: 353). Even though children may be unaware that these views are being formed, the prince and princess characters in many Disney movies portray traditional masculine and feminine characteristics. These later on build the stereotypical gender images that are related to these traditional characteristics (Ross 2004: 55). Children start to associate certain attributes to men and women and this is how their portrayal is shaped. In many of the fairy-tale Disney movies, male and female characters are overrepresented and having such portrayals of gender roles may weaken children’s beliefs, expectations and aspirations because they cannot aspire to do something other than what is presented in the Disney films (England et al. 2011: 557). Gender role portrayals in Disney movies influence children’s beliefs and ideas
References: Dundes, Lauren. 2001. “Disney’s Modern Heroine Pocahontas: Revealing Age-Old Gender Stereotypes and Role Discontinuity Under a Façade of Liberation.” The Social Science Journal 38 (3): 353-365. Ross, Deborah. 2004. “Escape from Wonderland: Disney and the Female Imagination.” Marvels and Tales 18 (1): 53-66. England, Dawn Elizabeth, Lara Descartes, and Melissa A. Collier-Meek. 2011. “Gender Role Portrayal and the Disney Princesses.” Sex Roles 64 (7-8): 555-567. Granados, Amy, Katherine Pieper, Marc Choueiti, and Stacy Smith. 2010. “Assessing Gender-Related Portrayals in Top-Grossing G-Rated Films.” Sex Roles 62 (11-12): 774-786. Baker-Sperry, Lori. 2007. “The Production of Meaning through Peer Interaction: Children and Walt Disney’s Cinderella.” Sex Roles 56 (11-12): 717-727 Martz, Denise, Doris Bazzini, Lisa Curtin, Serena Joslin, and Shilpa Regan. 2010. “Do Animated Disney Characters portray and promote the Beauty-Goodness Stereotype?” Journal of Applied Social Psychology 40 (10): 2687-2709 Sun, Feng Chyng. 2010. “Mickey Mouse Monopoly”. Media Education Foundation