Revisiting Disney: Nani is the best, and probably my favorite Disney Princess

Sunday, April 12, 2015

Nani is the best, and probably my favorite Disney Princess

http://moviepilot.com/posts/2015/01/23/7-times-when-tumblr-users-proved-how-deep-their-disney-love-is-2607593?lt_source=external,manual,manual

I'm really on a feminist bender regarding Disney because of this final paper. When I was casually trolling Buzzfeed (as one should always do on a beautiful Sunday evening) I found this article about seven times tumblr users showed their love for Disney, but what I focused on within that was their love of specifically Nani, the big sister from Lilo and Stitch. Nani is a 19 year old who is essentially the surrogate mom to her boisterous little sister who constantly wreaks havoc on Nani's home and life. Yet, even when dealing with her sister, Nani is tender, loving, and supportive, and barely waivers in her supporting her sister's wild imagination and ideas even when aliens enter into her life and home. She has a totally realistic relationship with Paul, she lives within her means and even struggles to do so, she stands up for her little sister even when it causes her to lose her job, and she's just generally the toughest, most awesome Disney character. Even her appearance is more empowering than the average Disney princess. She has powerful, surfer legs that help her be the strong action hero she needs to be for Lilo and Stitch. She isn't some unachievably waif-life princess and she sure as hell is not the demure little "good-girl" of all the other Disney movies. I haven't seen Lilo and Stitch in years but after reading this article, I'll be watching this all the time with my little cousin Lindsey.

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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.