I think this post will be shorter than you'd think it would be.
I watched the documentary, and all the while I was kind of annoyed at it. Honestly I do respect it's statements, the questions and concepts they're looking into, but there's something about it that bothers me.
Here are my thoughts on it:
What bothers me most about the documentary is the way that they use little bits and pieces of the Disney movies as 'evidence' to show the subtle and yet wrong influence the Disney movies have on children. Feminist, elitist, racist concepts are presented as if they were these subliminal messages that have been programming children. The trope of the defenseless princess that needs rescuing, the lack of color variety in the princess's skins ( or characters at all), the racism in the secondary and shadow characters that are portrayed as stereotypical races. The Chihuahua as the mexicans, the siamese cats as the asians, the hyenas as the blacks, it's all intricate and a little too sensible for my taste.
Here's why:
They're cartoons.
The purpose of a cartoon is the use of exaggeration to convey a simple message, like fables. It is non-realistic, and guess what> Stereotypes ARE exaggerations. They're not meant to be taken to heart, they're just there to be identifiers. Latinos are the womanizers ( as are the french), Chinese are cunning. Arab are calculating and greedy, whatever way it's interpreted they're traits that everyone is familiar with and I don't think there's anything wrong with that. I think the way History has been told, the way Literature has been written are what's to blame.
The thing is that children don't pay attention to these little intricacies. That's the beauty of it. They pay attention to the innocent and general sense of these movies. What does Aladdin teach us? Not that an Arab Merchant will cut off your hand is you steal from them ( which in the documentary they say their law states that the punishment for stealing a couple of times actually is the cutting of the hand, he was offended however that in the cartoon they jumped right into it from the start, which brings me back to the " exaggeration" medium that cartoon use.) but to convey the value of being yourself no matter what anyone says. That specific scene where the merchant was going to cut off Jarmin's hand wasn't focusing on the Merchant's cruelty but on Jasmin's naivety. Any kid will tell you that.
That's the play on exaggerated circumstances in the world of cartoons, the atmosphere around the characters are what set off certain actions and reactions.
Exaggeration.
Now, we know that when we study a book from a certain genre and certain era we have to study it's context, the author's life and goals, to fully understand the text's purpose. If we read The Quixote out of context we won't understand squat about it. Same thing we have with the bible, we read it now, from the context of our times, our customs, our ideals and social rules and expectations, we are appalled at most of the things written there.
Because we don't understand
Code-word: context.
This is what happens with movies like Cinderella, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty. These old classics show of a very extreme case of a stepford-y perfect princess. The docile wide eye doe that likes to clean and be taken cared off.
Snow-white was released in 1937, Cinderella 1950, Sleeping beauty, 1959. What happens during these years? What were women like during those years? They were stepford-y, looked forward to finding good husbands and having children and being good housewives. Don't like it? too bad. It happened and lots of women enjoyed it, found it endearing, honored to be a housewife.
Nowadays, however there's some sort of taboo with women that decide to be housewives. Women that enjoy a clean house, that are happy to cook, and take care of their children. Feminists pity them as if it were some shameful job.
I find that wrong.
There's nothing wrong with the fact that Snow-white enjoyed cleaning. What happened in the movie? ( this is what i mean about context) she was brought up to be almost a janitor, always cleaning. Then she runs away find a house she can stay at and, in her kindness she decides to clean the house. There's nothing bad about that statement.
Then there is the statement of what they said about Beauty and the Beast ( I just get angry when people take things out of context) yes, it was a horrible experience. Almost Stockholm Syndrome.
But again these people are overlooking the thesis statement that children get right away. the importance of not judging a book by it's cover.
Here they depict belle, passive aggressively stating that she is shown with some sort of power as she is a woman that reads, but then she subjects herself to the beast's abuse.
Context people! Important!
Of course when you take bits and pieces like this Belle will look dumb to subject herself to abuse. But they're overlooking the love she had for her father, the sacrifice she did to save him. She knew what she was getting herself into.
And then something changes.
She Get's to know the beast, the man inside.
Here's where the importance of compassion is depicted. Belle is compassionate towards the beast, when everyone else dismissed him as hopeless and/ or too bitter to deal with. And with her patience, her compassion, her kindness she brought out something beautiful in him. Something that is shown in the end of the movie, when the beast shows mercy to Gaston when he was attacking the beast.
The change is there.
The beast saved her life. The beast listened to her, identified himself with her, paid attention to her passion, and he was able to show her all of this because she gave him a chance.
You think in a relationship people don't get rough, say things angrily and don't mean? what does it say about a children's movie that teaches children to quit the moment things get tough?
This documentary called Belle an abuse victim, but I always saw ( and still see) her as a hero.
The Hero of this movie is Belle, not the beast.
There's a lot of playing with the intentions of the Disney movies. Something about conditioning children to have certain racist and misogynist mindsets.
Girls are defenseless
and can only be useful when using their bodies to seduce and whatnot
boys have to save them
yadda yadda yadda
But these statements are mostly wide interpretations based on this harsh judgement of what is moral and what is not.
Esmeralda is a very strong female character, very able ans self sufficient. but there's something about her being saved by Quasimodo that irks these people.
That's another thing.
There is nothing wrong with being vulnerable.
There is nothing wrong with asking for help when you need it.
Esmeralda was tied to a burning post, I think that was a good time to ask for help. And yet she never did.
There's thing big deal on asking for help, this huge fear of being vulnerable, being tolerant for the sake of love, that makes people nowadays run away when they don't like things, when things get rough, that shortens the average of successful marriages to the point of asking " Wow, what's that like?" when someone says " My parents are still together."
Disney movies, taught me the value of kindness, courage, cunning, friendship, compassion, honesty and tolerance.
Again, I respect the research presented in this documentary but I don't agree with it. I stick to the magical innocence of Disney movies because that's how I enjoyed my childhood. And I'm going to enjoy watching them all over again with my son because they brightened my childhood and colored my imagination.
that's all I have to say about that.
I guess this wasn't as shot as I thought it would be.
I watched the documentary, and all the while I was kind of annoyed at it. Honestly I do respect it's statements, the questions and concepts they're looking into, but there's something about it that bothers me.
Here are my thoughts on it:
What bothers me most about the documentary is the way that they use little bits and pieces of the Disney movies as 'evidence' to show the subtle and yet wrong influence the Disney movies have on children. Feminist, elitist, racist concepts are presented as if they were these subliminal messages that have been programming children. The trope of the defenseless princess that needs rescuing, the lack of color variety in the princess's skins ( or characters at all), the racism in the secondary and shadow characters that are portrayed as stereotypical races. The Chihuahua as the mexicans, the siamese cats as the asians, the hyenas as the blacks, it's all intricate and a little too sensible for my taste.
Here's why:
They're cartoons.
The purpose of a cartoon is the use of exaggeration to convey a simple message, like fables. It is non-realistic, and guess what> Stereotypes ARE exaggerations. They're not meant to be taken to heart, they're just there to be identifiers. Latinos are the womanizers ( as are the french), Chinese are cunning. Arab are calculating and greedy, whatever way it's interpreted they're traits that everyone is familiar with and I don't think there's anything wrong with that. I think the way History has been told, the way Literature has been written are what's to blame.
The thing is that children don't pay attention to these little intricacies. That's the beauty of it. They pay attention to the innocent and general sense of these movies. What does Aladdin teach us? Not that an Arab Merchant will cut off your hand is you steal from them ( which in the documentary they say their law states that the punishment for stealing a couple of times actually is the cutting of the hand, he was offended however that in the cartoon they jumped right into it from the start, which brings me back to the " exaggeration" medium that cartoon use.) but to convey the value of being yourself no matter what anyone says. That specific scene where the merchant was going to cut off Jarmin's hand wasn't focusing on the Merchant's cruelty but on Jasmin's naivety. Any kid will tell you that.
That's the play on exaggerated circumstances in the world of cartoons, the atmosphere around the characters are what set off certain actions and reactions.
Exaggeration.
Now, we know that when we study a book from a certain genre and certain era we have to study it's context, the author's life and goals, to fully understand the text's purpose. If we read The Quixote out of context we won't understand squat about it. Same thing we have with the bible, we read it now, from the context of our times, our customs, our ideals and social rules and expectations, we are appalled at most of the things written there.
Because we don't understand
Code-word: context.
This is what happens with movies like Cinderella, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty. These old classics show of a very extreme case of a stepford-y perfect princess. The docile wide eye doe that likes to clean and be taken cared off.
Snow-white was released in 1937, Cinderella 1950, Sleeping beauty, 1959. What happens during these years? What were women like during those years? They were stepford-y, looked forward to finding good husbands and having children and being good housewives. Don't like it? too bad. It happened and lots of women enjoyed it, found it endearing, honored to be a housewife.
Nowadays, however there's some sort of taboo with women that decide to be housewives. Women that enjoy a clean house, that are happy to cook, and take care of their children. Feminists pity them as if it were some shameful job.
I find that wrong.
There's nothing wrong with the fact that Snow-white enjoyed cleaning. What happened in the movie? ( this is what i mean about context) she was brought up to be almost a janitor, always cleaning. Then she runs away find a house she can stay at and, in her kindness she decides to clean the house. There's nothing bad about that statement.
Then there is the statement of what they said about Beauty and the Beast ( I just get angry when people take things out of context) yes, it was a horrible experience. Almost Stockholm Syndrome.
But again these people are overlooking the thesis statement that children get right away. the importance of not judging a book by it's cover.
Here they depict belle, passive aggressively stating that she is shown with some sort of power as she is a woman that reads, but then she subjects herself to the beast's abuse.
Context people! Important!
Of course when you take bits and pieces like this Belle will look dumb to subject herself to abuse. But they're overlooking the love she had for her father, the sacrifice she did to save him. She knew what she was getting herself into.
And then something changes.
She Get's to know the beast, the man inside.
Here's where the importance of compassion is depicted. Belle is compassionate towards the beast, when everyone else dismissed him as hopeless and/ or too bitter to deal with. And with her patience, her compassion, her kindness she brought out something beautiful in him. Something that is shown in the end of the movie, when the beast shows mercy to Gaston when he was attacking the beast.
The change is there.
The beast saved her life. The beast listened to her, identified himself with her, paid attention to her passion, and he was able to show her all of this because she gave him a chance.
You think in a relationship people don't get rough, say things angrily and don't mean? what does it say about a children's movie that teaches children to quit the moment things get tough?
This documentary called Belle an abuse victim, but I always saw ( and still see) her as a hero.
The Hero of this movie is Belle, not the beast.
There's a lot of playing with the intentions of the Disney movies. Something about conditioning children to have certain racist and misogynist mindsets.
Girls are defenseless
and can only be useful when using their bodies to seduce and whatnot
boys have to save them
yadda yadda yadda
But these statements are mostly wide interpretations based on this harsh judgement of what is moral and what is not.
Esmeralda is a very strong female character, very able ans self sufficient. but there's something about her being saved by Quasimodo that irks these people.
That's another thing.
There is nothing wrong with being vulnerable.
There is nothing wrong with asking for help when you need it.
Esmeralda was tied to a burning post, I think that was a good time to ask for help. And yet she never did.
There's thing big deal on asking for help, this huge fear of being vulnerable, being tolerant for the sake of love, that makes people nowadays run away when they don't like things, when things get rough, that shortens the average of successful marriages to the point of asking " Wow, what's that like?" when someone says " My parents are still together."
Disney movies, taught me the value of kindness, courage, cunning, friendship, compassion, honesty and tolerance.
Again, I respect the research presented in this documentary but I don't agree with it. I stick to the magical innocence of Disney movies because that's how I enjoyed my childhood. And I'm going to enjoy watching them all over again with my son because they brightened my childhood and colored my imagination.
that's all I have to say about that.
I guess this wasn't as shot as I thought it would be.
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