This is an extremely interesting video about masculinity in Disney films.
Essentially, the video argues that masculinity in Disney movies has three primary elements:
- Viewing women as objects of pleasure or servants to please them;
- Possessing a muscled body and physical prowess;
- Being willing to fight to maintain dominance.
I think the video suffers from one fatal flaw: it does not adequately distinguish between “good guy masculinity” and “bad guy masculinity.” For instance, the video is right that pacifism rarely comes off well in Disney. However, good guys in Disney films rarely choose to fight; they are driven by the villain’s evil to fight. In fact, Disney Villain Death exists just so the heroes don’t have to have blood on their hands. Good guys, according to the Disney idea of masculinity, are classic “I didn’t start the fight, but I’m sure as hell gonna end it” people.
The objectification section is particularly problematic. Gaston is, very clearly, not a hero and his view of Belle as an object to be possessed because she’s beautiful is a foil to Belle learning to love the Beast for what he is on the inside. A Girl Worth Fighting For from Mulan is supposed to be sexist. That’s literally the whole joke of the song. See the bit where Mulan was all “how ’bout a girl who’s got a brain, who always speaks her mind” and everyone else was like “nah”? That is because they have sexist views of what women are good for, which proves exactly how badass Mulan is by defying her gender roles to kick ass and take names.
Which is not to say that good-guy masculinity in Disney movies isn’t objectifying; it is just not “women as objects for pleasure” objectifying. Instead, good-guy masculinity is pedestalizing. Good men in Disney movies treat women like, well, princesses. They see that they’re beautiful and then are willing to suffer any pain, endure any torment, do any deed, in order to earn her love.
But pedestalization is not magically unsexist. For one thing, it denies women agency: why can’t they go about earning men’s love? Besides, women– even beautiful women– are often assholes who don’t deserve to have someone go through the Twelve Labors of Hercules to earn their love; pedestalization denies women the agency to be less than perfect. It also creates a toxic view of love. Love is not something you earn. You do not deserve love because you buy flowers or pay for dinners or write poems or give compliments or open car doors or treat women like (revealing phrase!) princesses.
Love is a relationship, not a reward. People of all genders get love when they find someone whose company they enjoy, whose presence makes their stomachs flip over, who makes them a better person, who shares their values, whom they want to share a life with. You don’t have to be Prince Charming to find love; you just have to be a person. And Disney movies don’t really depict that kind of love. Maybe it makes bad movies.
Despite my disagreements with the video, I do think it’s vitally important that we continue to examine the gender politics of Disney movies from all sides, masculinity as well as femininity. Childhood popular culture is an important source of ideas about how the world works that continue to influence us for the rest of our lives– and, in terms of gender and relationships, those ideas can fuck us up pretty damn bad.
Disney movies are especially important as sources of childhood socialization, because of how popular they are. Nearly everyone saw at least one Disney movie as a child; most of us have seen most of the Disney oeuvre. As a college student, I regularly participate in spontaneous The Lion King or Mulan singalongs. Disney is a tremendously important part of our collective culture, so we can’t ignore the places where it fucks up.
Therefore, it’s important for us social justice types to criticize Disney movies when they fail. They depict thin characters as attractive and heroic and fat characters as jokes at best and nonexistent at worst. They are astonishingly heteronormative: my sociology professor, out of sheer irritation with people saying Heather Has Two Mommies was inappropriately putting sexuality in children’s media, once wrote a paper analyzing every reference to heterosexuality in a Disney movie. There are a lot. And Disney presents unrealistic and stereotyped ideas of femininity and masculinity, reinforcing inaccurate ideas of the Prince Charming and the Beautiful Princess.
I don’t want to say that Disney has never been progressive. Mulan could not be more feminist if it dropped an anvil on the viewer’s head with WOMEN CAN DO ANYTHING MEN CAN DO written on it; the movie also has Harvey Fierstein in it and seems to be arguing that crossdressing can solve every problem ever, both of which as a queer feminist I must appreciate. The Princess and the Frog has some very interesting class and race commentary: in fact, in parts, it almost seems to be a critique of the American Dream. Both Prince Naveen and Tiana are refreshingly non-stereotypical. Progress has been made, in part because people keep calling them out on their shit. Let’s keep up the good work.
About ozyfrantz
There is one major Disney male character that everyone wants to be: Captain Jack Sparrow.
@Amphigorey: Hey, who said I want to be a fey, oddly dressed, perpetually broke, perpetually drunk womanizer?
…fuck.
@Amphigorey: Muppets count as Disney, right? Because I’d love to be Kermit.
Actually, funny you should mention Jack Sparrow, because back in the day it was the live action Disney movies that I really loved. Pete’s Dragon, even the old Zorro….
Well… yeah. Of course. But he’s not animated. I mean, he’s not 2-dimensional. I mean he’s not a cartoon. You know what I mean.
L said:
I think Disney princessdom is problematic because it usually demands perfection from both girl and hero; neither are really allowed to make mistakes
Name me a Disney film where the plot doesn’t rely on the hero (or more often) heroine making a mistake.
Disney has been wildly successful because their formula (and it’s clearly a formula) taps into something basic in the human spirit, and sings to young people. As a result, young children watch, and so parents buy. Disney is a cash machine, based on a trope that resonates with basic human story lines.
While I’m sure that your Professor’s heteronormative paper is all very interesting, I’d think that a much more interesting analysis would be to compare the Disney formula with Joseph Campbell’s Hero With A Thousand Faces. You don’t have to go all evolutionary biological/plains of Africa to think that there’s been a selection for boys who are strong, smart, and determined, and for girls who are strong (in a different sense than boys), smart, and determined.
I have no problem with serious critiques of Disney’s approach. They’ll stand or fall commercially on getting not just little girls, but little boys to watch their flicks. As a father of two little boys (who grew up in a family where Mom didn’t have much patience for “princesses”), I can say that you can do a lot worse than the Disney story lines. Some of them (Alladin) don’t have strong heroines, but the video doesn’t help its case by picking Beauty and the Beast as an example of weak, princess-ish girls. Huh?
But interesting post.
@Borepatch:
“Name me a Disney film where the plot doesn’t rely on the hero (or more often) heroine making a mistake.”
Beauty and the Beast. Belle makes no mistakes of any real consequence. The Lion King. Simba is simply tricked into thinking he made a mistake. Pocahontas. While it was probably a mistake to get involved with Smith, the movie writes the situation as though the pros vastly outweighed the cons, so that in the end she and Smith were in the right and everyone else what in the wrong, negating the mistake. Cinderella. The entire story just “happens” to her, and the movie’s main plot device, the glass slipper, turned out to be nothing more than a happy accident. Peter Pan. Neither Pan or Wendy seem to do much wrong. Mulan. She doesn’t really mess up. I guess you could argue that her revealed identity would have been it, but the mistake wouldn’t have happened if not for the wound she sustained.
There are probably others, but I’ve got to get back to work for now.
Oops, and to add: yes, I understand that the entire purpose of stories in general is the protagonist struggling against something, but much of the time it seems like the mistakes aren’t actually due to the character’s agency and more just “right place, right time”, or something they did unwittingly, or bad circumstances that someone else put them into and no matter how they reacted it would have been lose-lose.
Simba does disobey his father when he visits the elephant graveyard the first time. He makes the mistake of taking Timon and Poomba’s slacker advise. When Rafiki and Nala show up in his life he resists their corrective advise at first, which is why they need to call up Mufasa’s ghost. That’s the mistake Simba’s already learned not to make and he won’t make it again.
Almost all protagonists make some mistakes. Most often they’re forgivable, are in fact the mistake of trust (Ariel-Ursula, Simba-Scar, Pinnochio-Fox, Aladdin-Jafar, Rapunzel-Mother Gothel) which places the blame on the liar. I think the D-males tend to be living with false philosophies more often than the D-females tho’. There’s a ‘if only you hadn’t been wrong this whole time, we could have been done with this much sooner,” trend.
The thing is though Disney don’t need to have the boy demographic watching their animated films any more, for one simple reason that everyone in this thread has overlooked, Disney now own Marvel which is instant boy bucks. Now I love Disney warts an all but this really has been the smarted move they ever made because not only do they finally get the converted young male demographic they have been craving for years they also get a budding young female demographic that’s into comics as well.It really is a win/win situation for Disney as they can abandone the antiquated Princess line for girls or at least strongly deemphasize it in favour of pushing the more gender neutral (in theory) world of Marvel.
I- I wouldn’t push Marvel as gender neutral tho’. It’s more juvie oriented stuff is blessedly less alienating that it’s mainstream comic line, but comics, and I love comics, are probably just as bad as the Disney Princess stuff about which sex it courts in sexist ways, if not worse.
You’re right that if anything might let Disney pull in more boy bucks it is that aquisition, (which is almost certainly why it happened.) However, I’ve wanted comics to get more inclusive for years now.
Of course you are right comics at the moment have a problem with the way they are written in regards to female characters but at least they show women being badass heroes, there is huge potential is what I’m saying and it doesn’t just have to be exclusive to comics Marvel have received allot of positive feedback from the cartoon show Avengers Earth’s Mightiest Heroes which has handled the cannon as well as its female characters very well especially the Wasp. Its not exactly Batman TAS (but then again what is,seriously was that show lightning in bottle or what?) but its proved to be a big hit and 3 more female heroes Ms Marvel, Black Widow and Mocking Bird are joining the cast in season 2. So I think there’s room for expansion beyond just the comics, not that they aren’t important mind you.
Or maybe I’m just seeing the world through rose coloured glasses again.
Avengers EMH has been pretty awesome, I agree. They did such a good job with Wasp that I’m dying to see what they do with Marvel.