Revisiting Disney: Maybe it is time for an update, but the classic is so iconic

Wednesday, April 1, 2015

Maybe it is time for an update, but the classic is so iconic

http://www.disneydining.com/cinderellas-castle-to-be-renamed-for-elsa/

Apparently, Disney is considering renaming Cindarella's Castle to Elsa's which is a welcome update, I'm sure young girls now would so much rather meet the magic Queen Elsa than Cindarella (supported by the fact that Elsa outsold Barbie this Christmas), but Cindarella's castle is just so classic. I don't know, maybe it's just that when I think Disney, I think Cindarella: it's as if she is the Queen of the princesses and that the others are all just additional. She wasn't even the first princess, though, so I don't know how she became so significant in my mind. By seniority, Snow White should be the most significant princess yet somehow Cindarella has dominated little-girl-culture. And now it's Elsa's turn. Maybe I'm just hankering for a throwback because Old Duke is right around the corner, but I wax nostalgic thinking about Cindarella's Castle which is something I wouldn't do if they changed the name to Elsa's Castle.

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Disney's as a Boys' Toy Too

I rarely remember that little boys, as well as little girls, watch Disney movies and look up to some of the characters. In many of the earlier films, the men/princes aren't really a significant piece of the story, but more recently males are playing a greater and greater role in Disney and Pixar movies. Males like Chang, Sebastian, and Wasabi serve as role models for young boys just as the princesses do for little girls. Because of this, it's just as important that little boys of all appearances and personality types appear in animated films. The Feminist community has been more outspoken about female representation than the male community, perhaps because women tended to be placed in a subservient position to the men of the stories in earlier Disney movies. However, if you try to closely examine the character of the men or male characters in the early Disney movies, they tend to just be place holders that allow the princess to achieve their happily ever after. In later films they are hyper masculine and tough, even sometimes emotionless, if they want to be attractive to the females in the story. The non-human characters like Sebastion, Timone, and the like can be more sensitive because they aren't the male protagonist trying to win the girl and save the world. If we're going to work to build up strong, independent girls, we should work equally hard to help develop sensitive, thoughtful boys. This begins with providing more complex characters for them to look up to and more representation in the male characters in Disney films.

Identity and Disney

Disney Characters' Race Breakdown

Although Disney is often criticized for its lack of diversity in the characters in its animated and live action films, the statistics are fairly close to those of the US census. Although in Disney, about 75% of the characters are White, and so minorities are somewhat underrepresented, the statistics are fairly close to the true proportions. In America, about 62% of the population identifies as White, while 17% of the population is Hispanic, 13.2% is Black, 5% is Asian, and 3.8% of the population identify as multiracial, Native American, or Native Hawaiian. While more diversity would be nice, especially regarding Latinos considering they are 17% of the US population and only one single Disney character is identified as Latino, the statistic is less drastic that I would have anticipated.