Stereotypical Images and Gender Roles in Fairytale Movies by Walt Disney

Corporation

Amira Essmat Shalaby

Children’s Literature

Department of English Language and Literature

Cairo University

Professor Hala Sami

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Some of the most well-known fairytales are those that were turned into
animated movies by Walt Disney Corporation. “The Walt Disney Company is
founded on October 16, 1923, by Walt and Roy Disney as the Disney Brothers
Cartoon Studio, Walt Disney Productions established itself as a leader in the
American animation industry before diversifying into live-action film production,
television, and travel.” (Disney Wiki) Over the past couple of years, Disney
released new versions of the classical fairytales. Recently, in 2017, they
produced a new version of the classical fairytale “Beauty and the Beast” that
made a “profit over 1.146 billion USD”. (Box Office/IMDb) In the New York Times
review by A.O. Scott, he praises the movie saying “there may be something there
that wasn’t there before.” (Scott, N.Y.T) Consequently, one expects a new
version of the fairytale the suits our feminist age and indeed what re-enforced the
expectation is the central character Belle, that is performed by an activist feminist
Emma Watson as “the Beauty”. In 2015, Watson was “named on the Time
100 list of world’s most influential people”. (Barber, the Guardian) In an interview
with the Guardian magazine, Watson mentions her views of the role stating:

I rejected the part of Cinderella, because the passive character didn’t

“resonate” with me. But Belle is a more Hermione-ish heroine. In the
original 1991 cartoon, I wasn’t content to do the housework with the help
of some chirruping bluebirds: I strolled through town with my nose in a
book. I had pushed the character even further from the traditional Disney
doormat, so as to ensure that she is “the kind of woman I would want to
embody as a role model”. (Barber, the Guardian)

So even Emma Watson admits that Disney do create a “doormat”. What is a

doormat? According to Cambridge dictionary, a doormat is “a piece of thick
material which is put on the floor by a door, used to clean your shoes on when
you go into a building.” (Puri 150) Whereas Sherry Argov, the American writer
and the author of a number of bestsellers, identifies a doormat as a “woman who
doesn’t have a presence of mind, a woman who circles her whole life around the
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idea of marriage, a woman who thinks life, joy and happiness start and end with
a man.” (Aragov 5) So does Disney really create this type of women? If yes, then
how? In the light of the feminist approach, this paper will reveal the stereotypical
images and gender roles in the animated versions of the classical fairytales by
Walt Disney and the implications for the young audience as well as the effects of
such movies on children nowadays.

From the depiction of the central characters and their descriptions, Disney
creates a myth. A myth that influences young children and corrupts their
behavior. According Marcia K. Lieberman,

Children are socialized or culturally conditioned by movies,

television programs, and the stories they read or hear, and we must
wonder at the influence of that children’s stories and entertainments
had upon us. (Zipes 186)

Children adopt social cues from their favorite animations. They learn to act and
imitate the princess or the prince in their favorite movie. The tales introduce
sexual roles to children. A girl cannot and will not be anything but a “beauty”
while the boy cannot be anything but “handsome beast”. In the 2017 version of
“Beauty and the Beast” the movie revolves around two central characters, “a
handsome, young prince.” and “a beauty”, in other words, a boy and a girl, like
always. The girl is portrayed slightly different from the previous “obvious”
doormats created by Disney through the years. This girl actually reads and is
introduced as a bookworm. However, after a deeper look, one figures out that
she is seemingly smart but not really. She reads because she is bored with her
own life and she wants more. She reads those kinds of books that separate her
from reality and takes her on adventures. Her favorite part of the book is when
the girl “meets prince charming.” (Condon 2017) Predictably, Belle’s adventure
came in the form of a prince disguised not for too long as a beast. Belle is
portrayed as a beauty hence she’s different from other girls who are depicted as
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ugly and jealous. She is mostly chosen because “she is the most beautiful girl in
the village” so “that makes her the best” (Condon 2017). She is “argumentative
but beautiful” (Condon 2017) and that is the addition of Disney to the modern
feminist version of a fairytale. The prince is portrayed as “cute and dreamy”
(Condon 2017), riding his horse proudly. He is a “strong and handsome” not to
mention completely idiotic man who treats other girls in a dehumanizing manner
just because they are “ugly”. (Condon 2017) Sleeping beauty and Cinderella are
no different. Disney portrayed Rose in “Sleeping Beauty” as a girl who waits
around for a prince to validate her existence. Her first gift as a baby by the fairy
was “beauty” (Geronimi 1959) while Cinderella’s biggest dream is to go to the
prince’s gala and dance with him, and of course Cinderella’s unmatched beauty
made her so different that he searches the whole village to find her. The
handsome, elegant prince, once again behaved in a demeaning attitude towards
Cinderella’s ugly sisters. (Branagh 2015)

The implications for the young audience are evident. The girl must be
beautiful to be unique. It is like a continuous beauty contest and being beautiful is
a girl’s only valuable asset, without it, a girl is treated as garbage. So what’s the
message for young girls and boys? A socially constructed behavior by Walt
Disney’s movies, is objectification. Almost always, the prince treats girls as
objects. He wants to own the girl like a possession. He treats other ugly girls as
objects as well, dismissing them when they speak to him. The not-so-beautiful
girls are always ignored. Mostly, the prince focuses on the beauty of the girl and
her body. So Rose in Sleeping Beauty, Belle in Beauty and the Beast, and
Cinderella wear makeup and the focus on beautifying them with dresses and
accessories is enormous.

Not to mention, Disney’s influence on children’s expectations. Disney’s

movies associate beauty to goodness while evil is associated with ugliness. The
witch is ugly, the evil step-sisters are ugly. The wicked step-mother is ugly.
Basically, any girl who is not a princess is ugly, and any ugly girl is evil. The boy
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must be handsome and strong. He must fight bravely even dragons to get the
beautiful girl. Moreover, beauty and handsomeness are related to good temper,
docility and gentleness while ugliness is related to ill-tempered, cruelty and
wrongdoing. Disney movies are destroying children’s value systems. Any person
who is not as handsome or as beautiful as children expect him to be, will
automatically be treated as wicked or weak. This pattern also evokes jealousy
and hatred between young kids. Children at school mock the chubby kid and the
girl with curly hair because they do not meet their expectations. The central
characters’ physical appearance as extremely beautiful and thin ruins reality for
children.

If a child identifies with the beauty, then she learns to behave like a beauty, to
put exaggerated value on her physical appearance and to pity ugly girls for their
ill-fortunate. While the boy identifies with the beasty prince so he learns to
behave like one. He possess women like objects and dehumanize ugly girls. He
mocks his imperfect friends and assumes a superior role over them because he
is “handsome”. As for the little girl who is not blonde, thin or fair, she will definitely
identify with the wicked sister or maybe the witch hence naturally she will see
herself as misfit and evil. The boy with a high IQ but cannot ride a horse will see
himself as weak and powerless.

With the kind of reviews written about 2017 Beauty and the Beast, that
describes Belle as “insisting on the heroism and competence of its heroine, Belle,
a bookish and ingenious young woman” (Scott N.Y.T) one would think that
stereotypical gender roles are deconstructed, however, they are still very much
evident. Gender roles as defined in Oxford Dictionary are “the roles or behaviors
learned by a person as appropriate to their gender, determined by the prevailing
cultural norms.” (Oxford 186) The audience are introduced to Belle going to the
library to get a new book while later, her beast mocks her for only reading
“romantic books” (Condon 2017) and as a result, he introduces her to the biggest
library in the town which he owns. Belle like Rose and Cinderella, is almost
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always doing chores, cleaning, doing the laundry but she is doing it in a creative
way that saves her effort. (Condon 2017) On the other hand, the Beast is always
reading and we see the other princes also training, fighting, riding horses, and
ruling kingdoms while the princesses are doing chores or most probably
sleeping, crying, and waiting for the princes to come and save them from their
miserable lives.

Needless to say, the result of such images, is that almost every young man
thinks of young ladies as helpless, needy creatures and for some reason he must
take care of his sister or female friend because she cannot take care of herself.
Such images are the reason for young girls’ passivity because they think it is
their right to depend on someone else. A girl does not need to be resourceful,
smart and active because if she is beautiful then she is chosen. She doesn’t
have to do anything, she is existing till her prince comes and saves her and then
she will continue existing passively. It is a girl’s idea of a happy ending. Marriage
is the ultimate reward for a good girl’s behavior and in this case, submission. In
every fairytale, the girl is part of a deal, and the prince wins the full package of a
princess and a kingdom. In the case of poor but beautiful girls, the princess is
sold like a commodity but she gets rich by marrying a rich prince which makes it
easy for young girls to associate marriage to wealth. Beauty leads to wealth
since she is beautiful and she’s chosen, she doesn’t need to do anything but to
get married.

A system of binaries is carried out in most of Disney’s movies, forcing young

girls to be powerless and young princes to be powerful which creates a
dominant/submissive relationship between male and female children. Usually,
young boys assumes power because they are boys. The prince is rich, the girl is
poor. He is a rescuer, she is rescued. Male characters are independent,
assertive, responsible, intelligent, athletic, competent, confident, and stronger
than female characters. He rules kingdoms, she cleans the house. He chooses
her but she is not allowed to choose. He compares her to other women while she
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sees only him. He has a horse, she walks. He has a sword, he fights but she
cannot fight. He gives her the permission to stay or go while she happily
complies. So the prince has power while the girl has nothing but submission. She
is literary incapable of helping herself.

Consequently, part of being submissive is to have no voice. In Sleeping

Beauty, Rose barely speaks and when she does, she either calls for her prince or
utter insignificant words that sound like a song. While, in Beauty and the Beast,
the outspoken girl is always outsmarted by the beast. In Cinderella, they just
dance, no need for words, I guess. Disney’s fairytale movies deprive young girls
from their voices, turning them into completely docile characters. Young girls will
turn into mere shadows with no identity of their own.

Disney in the twenty first century, is trying to fake the image of the outspoken
and brave princess, for example, the princesses in movies like Frozen, Tangled
and Brave, although they are courageous and powerful, their lives still revolve
around wanting to get married or refusing to get married. They usually embark on
their journeys with a male friend that helps them to reach their goal. Gender roles
still exist even in the most recent Disney movies. The typical biased portrayals of
the central female and male characters in Disney fairytale movies will continue as
long as the young audience are not advised against watching them. Children’s
conception of reality will always be formed by movies and stories they hear.
Disney movies are like the training manual for the young audience and the
implications for children in such movies are disastrous.
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Work Cited

Argov, Sherry. From Doormat to Dreamgirl: A Woman's Guide to Holding Her

Own in a Relationship. Avon, MA: Adams Media, 2002. Print.

Barber, Nicholas. "Emma Watson: The Feminist and the Fairytale." The
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