Gender And Gender Stereotypes In The Princess Merida

Disney and Pixar created this movie in 2012, which portrayed a young princess Merida who was coming to the age of marriage. This teenage girl did not want to get married though! She was more interested in riding through the forest shooting her bow and arrows at targets. The princess is not your typical “pretty girl.” Merida is a red head girl who likes to do things with her hands and be in the outdoors. Then one day, in order to change her mother’s mind about having her be wedded, she gives her mother a cake that contains a curse. The cake then turns her mother into a bear instead of changing her mind like it should have. The rest of the story unfolds as they are working to release her mother of the spell and over time princess Merida matures to realize what her mother is working towards and her mother realizes what her daughter is working toward. In a round- about way, the spell does work but they must release the spell before the second sunrise or …show more content…
At first, I thought it would be difficult to evaluate a computer-generated film, with imaginary characters and such but as you can tell from the length of my paper, it was a success. I was surprised at all of the gender stereotypes that the movie contained. As stated previously, I could talk all night about these gender stereotypes. I think this movie did challenge some of the concepts and structures that we mentioned in class because the parents could be a mix of two different parenting styles and princess Merida could be a mixture of two different identity statuses. It is difficult to choose just one because of the overlapping of characteristics in each. As a teacher though, it helps me in determining what I am working with in terms of the parents and the student’s home lives. It is hard to determine these things sometimes but this allows me to not only differentiate among the students, but also differentiate among the parents without them ever knowing it. I feel slightly