Gender Stereotypes in Disney Films
The Walt Disney Company is an international entertainment corporation whose films are watched by children around the world. The songs, characters and life lessons portrayed in the films help shape how children view the world and children incorporate what they see in movies into how they are. In many of these movies the gender roles of men and women reinforce the stereotypes of women being delicate, passive, thin, and accepting while the men are shown to be muscular, tall, confident, and competitive. It is clear to me that these films are a fantasy that show acts of bravery and girls that often have a lesser role in story plot that never happens in real life. Many Disney films such as Milan, The beauty and the Beast, and Snow White are films that …show more content…
In this film Mulan does not portray the gender stereotype that is seen in many other Disney films, but the elements of the film do. Mulan joins the Chinese army to take her fathers place so he doesn’t have to because he’s elderly and is the only man in the family. In order for her to join, she had to disguise herself as a man because as a girl she wouldn’t be allowed to. This entire film is about war, so it changes from the typical fairytale storyline but still constantly enforces male and female stereotypes. When Mulan is discovered to be a girl, Chi Fu shames her saying “I knew there was something wrong with you! A woman!” (Mulan), and then captain Li Shang walks over with a sword in hand as if to execute her, but stop and tells her “a life for a life”(Coats, Mulan), so had she not previously saved their whole group from the Huns, bing a girl that wanted to help save the country in the army would’ve gotten her killed. The film promotes the idea that women and men are not equal and that women cannot be heroes even though she only just saved their whole group from being
The Walt Disney Company is an international entertainment corporation whose films are watched by children around the world. The songs, characters and life lessons portrayed in the films help shape how children view the world and children incorporate what they see in movies into how they are. In many of these movies the gender roles of men and women reinforce the stereotypes of women being delicate, passive, thin, and accepting while the men are shown to be muscular, tall, confident, and competitive. It is clear to me that these films are a fantasy that show acts of bravery and girls that often have a lesser role in story plot that never happens in real life. Many Disney films such as Milan, The beauty and the Beast, and Snow White are films that …show more content…
In this film Mulan does not portray the gender stereotype that is seen in many other Disney films, but the elements of the film do. Mulan joins the Chinese army to take her fathers place so he doesn’t have to because he’s elderly and is the only man in the family. In order for her to join, she had to disguise herself as a man because as a girl she wouldn’t be allowed to. This entire film is about war, so it changes from the typical fairytale storyline but still constantly enforces male and female stereotypes. When Mulan is discovered to be a girl, Chi Fu shames her saying “I knew there was something wrong with you! A woman!” (Mulan), and then captain Li Shang walks over with a sword in hand as if to execute her, but stop and tells her “a life for a life”(Coats, Mulan), so had she not previously saved their whole group from the Huns, bing a girl that wanted to help save the country in the army would’ve gotten her killed. The film promotes the idea that women and men are not equal and that women cannot be heroes even though she only just saved their whole group from being