Eighth Blogpost

The source is called “The Disney Influence on Kindergarten girls” by Tanawan Asawarachan. This source is on an article by Asawarachan about an experiment she did using kindergarten age girls to see if Disney Princess movies had any effect on how the girls viewed themselves. The results of this is after seeing the films eighty percent of the girls felt that they were fat, while thirty six percent of the girls felt that they were too slim. Next the girls were interviewed, and asked questions about how they felt about their bodies. Most of the girls said that they were too fat, or their friends had called them fat. One of the little girls responses that I felt was particularly upsetting was one little girl named June who said, “I want to lose weight. My friend told me I can be a princess if I am slimmer because Cinderella is slim and beautiful. I want to be a beautiful girl so I cannot be a fat girl.” She felt that in order to be a princess like Cinderella that she needed to be smaller. A little girl felt that she had to lose weight in order to be beautiful, from that young age little girls are already feeling that they have to be thin in order to be pretty. I feel like this source is very important to my research paper because it only supports even more that Disney princesses are not helping young girls with their self-views, its harming them. These are the same little girls who later on may develop eating disorders because the princess that they idolized as a little girl was unnaturally slim.  

Seventh Blog Post

My source is called “Disney Princesses have mixed effects on children”. It is on a speech given by Sarah Coyne. Coyne decided to research if Disney princesses effect children. Three hundred seven children from three schools were tested to see if they identified with a Disney character, how often they watched Disney movies and played with the Disney toys. This was done to see how much exposure the children had to Disney princesses. Coyne found out through her research that while the movies helped the children to have better body image and have higher “pro-social behavior”, at the same time they caused children to have gender stereotypes. In conclusion, Coyne decided while it was okay for children to be exposed to the Disney princesses, it shouldn’t be frequently, no more than once a week. This article helps with my research paper because it supports the ideas that Disney princess films aren’t all good for children. It enforces the idea that there are gender stereotypes inside these films. This source is not as helpful as my other sources because it does not really have a lot of information inside it. On the other hand the information that the source does provide is quick and straight to the point, preventing me from reading a lot of useless information. I feel that this is a reliable source. It has not really changed my opinion on how I feel about Disney Princesses; I still feel that the princesses movies are not the best thing for children to be watching, even with the two benefits that Coyne mentions.

Sixth Blog Post

The name of my source is called “Disney Princess ‘2.0’: A feminist critique of Disney’s newest generation of princesses”. This article was written by Jennifer Rome. This article focus on how Disney is re-imagining its traditional ideals of the Disney princess. This is seen in the more recent Disney princesses: Tiana, Merida, and Rapunzel they are referred to as the “2.0” Disney princesses in this article. These modern princesses are “celebrating agency, empowerment, and disruption of the patriarchy through their performances”. The author saw how helpful the newer movies were firsthand with her own daughter. She decided not to expose her daughter to the Disney Princess franchise. But, her husband let her daughter watch Tangled, Princess Rapunzel’s movie. She saw that Rapunzel made her daughter feel empowered. Her daughter wanted to be like Rapunzel, going on adventures and “rescuing” her stuffed animals. Throughout the movie her daughter kept commenting on how strong and brave Rapunzel was. They are not like the past princesses who were seen as weak, and even though some of them were a bit more progressive they still adhered to the strict gender roles of the first princesses. I feel like this source is helpful to my essay because it supports both sides of the argument of whether or not Disney princesses are helping or harming their young viewers. The only problems with the article is that it is over two hundred pages long, and does go a bit too in depth into certain issues.

Fifth Blog Post

My source is called “Disney’s modern heroine Pocahontas: revealing age-old gender stereotypes and role discontinuity under a facade of liberation”. This article was written by Lauren Dundes, in the Social Science Journal. This article is focused on one specific Disney Princess Pocahontas. In the article Lauren Dundes disputes the idea that Pocahontas was the start of a new generation of Disney princess.  That Pocahontas would break the race barrier, and gender stereotypes concerning Disney princess.  While Pocahontas does do these things, by being an independent princess. She makes a lot of her own decisions herself, but at the same time is still restricted by the same gender issues as the previous Disney princesses. Pocahontas is seen as Native American “savage” that needs to be “saved” and brought to the cultured world by John Smith. The article concludes that while Pocahontas does not act like the typical Disney Princess, and is more liberated than her predecessors she still is not a free woman. She still adheres to some of the previous Disney Princess bonds.  I feel like this source is very useful to my essay. This is because the essay directly, contributes to my essay question of if Disney princess movies are contributing to or harming their young viewers’ self-esteems, and self-views. This source helped me with the structure of my essay immensely. This is because it helped me figure out what I wanted to write my essay on. Before reading this article, I just had the broad topic of Disney princesses and the gender stereotypes that the princess movies contain.

Fourth Blogpost

My source is called “Gender Role Portrayal and the Disney Princesses”. This title may seem a little off, because my Research paper is supposed to be focused on James Cameron’s melodramatic film “Titanic”. However, while doing my research I came across this article, “Gender Role Portrayal and the Disney Princesses”, and decided to focus my paper on how female characters are portrayed in Disney movies. The main argument of this article is how male and female characters are portrayed in the various Disney princess films. The article uses various experiments, and outside information to compare and contrast the different Disney princesses, with their male counterparts. The “male” and “female” traits are categorized, and then the prince and princesses are each matched with whatever traits they exhibit in the films. This experiment helps support how Disney makes all of its’ princesses have “womanly” traits, and do things that a typical woman, according to Disney, would.  It also explains how the movies are also biased towards females. For example, according to the article Disney princess films are racist and sexualize the princesses with most of them appearing with, “extremely pale skin tones, small waists, delicate limbs, and full breasts”. A study was done the counted the number of female and male characteristics that males and females of each movie had. The male characters 495 female characteristics, while the females had more than twice that number with 1068. This source was very helpful to me, because it gave me a lot of information on how females are portrayed unfairly in Disney films.

Third Blogpost

I plan to write my research paper on the extremely melodramatic movie Titanic. I will be choosing this topic for a variety of reasons, the most important being it’s my favorite movie of all time. I saw the film for the first time when I was about 10 years old with my mother, and have seen it more times than I can even think about counting. Titanic is also a great topic for this research paper because it is the definition of melodramatic. It has “star-crossed” lovers who are from opposite backgrounds. The woman already has the person that she is supposed to be with, who just so happens to abuse her adding to the drama. Music is added throughout the film, to intensify emotions that are already intense. Then to add to all of the tension that is present already, it’s all set on the RMS Titanic which everyone knows is going to be a disastrous voyage.  

Second Blog Post

Peter Brooks in the Melodramatic Imagination talks about something he calls the "moral occult". On page 5 of the book Brooks says "We might say that the center of interest and the scene of underlying drama reside within the 'moral occult'." Brooks states that the whole point of a melodrama is finding this "moral occult". What makes the melodrama interesting is that we know things that others in the book, movie, play etc. don't know. So we are waiting in anticipation in seeing what the other characters reactions are to this "secret" that we the audience are aware of. This unknown is what is in the moral occult. An example of a secret in a melodramatic piece is in the 1945 film Leave Her to Heaven. In this movie Ellen Berent, who is mentally unstable, falls for writer Richard Harland because he reminds of her father; who she had an obsession with. The two get married and Ellen slowly makes sure that his attention and love can only be focused on her. She does this by first killing his brother. Then later on she goes so far as to kill their unborn child when she pushes herself down the stairs. What makes the movie interesting besides the fact that Ellen is a nutcase, is the anticipation of seeing how Richard and the others will react when they uncover the things that Ellen has done. These actions being something already known by the audience. This is how the moral occult works and is evident in a melodramatic piece.