Psychoanalytical Approach To Disney Films

psychoanalytic Approach To Disney FilmsThis essay will visualize how Disney bucks toilet be regarded as projecting a range of separates in movie which realisek to throttle what is chemical formula and congenital in federation. I hope to reveal that these images in reality ar consciously constructed to adhere to and reinforce dominant ideological value and atomic number 18 a grammatical constituent of the Disneyfication carry through where ein truththing is homogenized and turned into a product (See Bryman 2004). This entails the repetition of embosss from project to mental picture in the atomic number 18na of gender, sex activity and race, and while these affairs vary slightly throughout the days, they remain largely accordant between 1923 when Disney was founded and 2010 when their most recent film Tangled (Greno Howard, 2011) was released. The accompaniment that these stereotypes ar so conservative has prompted a range of writers to criticise the squeez e Disney has had on Ameri plenty and until nowtide global society. Giroux stated in The Mo purpose That Ro bed Disney and the curiosity of Innocence (1999) that There atomic number 18 few social icons in the fall in States that dope match the signifying prop wholenessnt of the Disney Company (2001 123). He is non just in his criticism of Disney writers bid Wasko (2001) and Bell (1999) have joined the ranks of those getking to elucidate how pervasive Disneys decide has become. I will consider the impact these films potentially have on children, especially in the expressive style their introduction views argon formed.MethodologyI will consider several Disney films in come overking to explore these stereotypes Tangled, The Princess and the Frog (Clements Musker, 2009)The king of beasts King (Allers Rob Minkoff, 1994), Aladdin (Clements Musker, 1992) and The blottie Mermaid (Clements John Musker, 1989) as I turn over these all muckle be seen as precise reflec tive of the societies in which they were enhanced and reveal Disneys humanness view. I will beg how the fact that these films argon aimed at spring chicken peck make them even much than powerful. The Disney film seeks to essentialize these stereotypes, presenting them as single out of the natural order, when in fact they argon nothing of the sort. The being that Disney has constructed has historicalally tended to be findd and largely populated by white heterosexual person guinea pigs, even when the annalss reside in the animal world. I will certify how whatever of these more contemporary texts offer crack upial challenges to these norms while concurrently reinforcing the predominantly hegemonic world view. I intend to access the films from a semiotic, sociological and psychoanalytical perspective in an attempt to deconstruct the role these films period of play in society. In doing so I have attempted to tactile sensation at the texts in as objective a manner as possible and read them as artistic artefacts to suggest what they say roughly the time and the culture in which they ar made. I would argue that films are the most powerful of all artistic texts with a tremendous king to move and motivate people in routes they a lot cannot generalise or even register. Governments have regularly put the cinema to use in mobilising the public to support their governmental ideas, twain in an unadorned fashion (see the Soviet propaganda films made by Eisenstein and Pudovkin during the aftermath of the revolution in Russia in 1917) and in more implicit ways (for this we could consider how Hollywood films have continued to promote a variety of versions of the American intake especially in the 1930s and 1940s). A lot has been pen just about Disney, especially in the fields of race and gender and these texts have been actually useful in informing my critical approach to Disney as a company and a signifying entity.The Central QuestionHow do Disney films and opposite Disney products influence childly people and their lives? I would argue that off the beaten track(predicate) from being a graciousant and inoffensive relationship the connection between Disney and its consumers, as that is what they are, is a powerful one which starts at a very former(a) age. Children are exposed to Disney images almost from birth on Disneys tv set channels and thusly at the cinema, consequently on home DVD. I suggest that this sneakily informs their world view in quite significant ways. This is especially treacherous because these texts are deliberately targeted at the three-year-old and impressionable who lack the defences and reason out skills adults have developed which enable them to resist such strong images. The world view that Disney normalises for them is one in which original behaviours are depicted as being the norm and even certain races, sexualities and gender roles are assign with positive and negative attri d ummy upes. A key prognosis of these process is the way in which Disney films market themselves as safe, innocent and even morally educational, suggesting to the parents that to invest their children to Disney is to embrace salutarylything that is more than a company solely something akin to a family. I hope to show in this essay that this is just some other(prenominal) cynical marketing ploy that Disney employs to engender support for the company, and ultimately find more revenue for the corporation.SexismSince 1923 Disney has become an almost unrivalled multi media empire. all the same, Walt Disney did not reckon his films were culturally influential, he suggested they were just entertainment (qtd in Wasko 2001 3). Critics identical hospital ward disagree and assert that such films aimed at raw people can shape the way children think about who they are and who they should be (2002 5). Disney films can be considered to promote sexist or even misogynist determine to young women as the roles women are afforded are very limited and the narratives purpose men in positions of power. hither it is kick the bucket that Disney fits into stereotypes that reach across the bigness of Hollywood into all of its genres. Laura Mulvey argued that Hollywood reproduces the hegemonic and patriarchal society by presenting certain roles and images as the norm. In her analysis women are portrayed in a very reductive manner and presented as scopophilic objects for the purpose of being looked at by males and in the process dominated. In Mulveys lowstanding Hollywood is part of the systematic process which reinforces the patriarchal ideology and we can see this at work from early Hollywood until now. Her works poses a lot of questions for earreachs? wherefore do women get so few leading roles? why are they relegated in films and cast as sex objects for the male oriented narratives? Why are women that transgress the natural order punished in Hollywood cinema? We can ob serve that this process works on ii levels the films both recreate and perpetuate dominant ideological set. Mulvey commented, There is no way in which we can produce an alternative to the conservative values that Hollywood reproduces out of the blue, simply we can begin to make a break by examining patriarchy with the tools it provides, of which psychoanalysis is not the only but an valuable one (Mulvey 1989 15). I would argue that Disney films are an effective conformation of many an(prenominal) aspects of Mulveys central thesis.In the hi narrative of Disney films women have largely tended to be defined as either perfectly pure princesses (to be valued, idealize and cherished and ultimately married), villains (who transgress unspoken laws of society by being corpulent, unattractive or refusing to submit to patriarchal dominance), gives (who give up their independence, sexual activity and individuality to be subsumed into the male defined family unit), or variations of the se archetypes. Despite often being the protagonist (and having the film named after them), they are relegated to subservient positions in the narrative or rely on men for their ultimate salvation. drawing card is a key feature in Disney and it has been since even before Cinderella (1950) and quiescency Beauty (1959). Women are categorized by whether they are attractive or not and beauty becomes a key to their moral status and their happiness. The endeavor for a cleaning lady in Disney films is often love, not a move or intellectual growth, and these visions of womanhood are presented as something every woman should aspire to, without exception. If a woman departs from this stereotype she is shunned within the diegesis and presented as a corruption. Bell suggested there were only three predefined roles for females in Disney texts 1) stunning young heroines, 2) cruel start out figures and 3) inoffensive, asexualised elderly women. (See Bell 1995) Here we see the imaging and id eology young girls are exposed to before they are mature enough to understand and be critical of it. They are informed that to be a whole and happy person they essential be bonny, define themselves through relationships with the opposite sex and be submissive to their fathers and then their husbands. For me this is far from a healthy ideology to promote to young girls and offers up a disturbing and unbalanced gender relationship at a very important period in a young persons life.We can see examples of this paradigm in the majority of Disney texts produced over the years. In Snow whiteness and the Seven Dwarves we have Snow White as the beautiful heroine and The f right(a)ening Stepmother as the cruel mother archetype. Cinderella contains the eponymous grapheme as the beautiful heroine, the sisters as cruel figures and the pouf godmother as asexualized elderly woman. If we consider some more advanced examples we can see how far things have changed, or discern whether they hav e not changes at all. The Little Mermaid (1989) features the heroine Ariel, a beautiful young woman and mermaid at the centre of the narrative, she is slightly more case-by-case than the antecedents that came before her, but she too is defined by her pursuit of love. She challenges her father, Triton, at the beginning of the narrative, eager to not be a part of a show being performed for him. Near the end of the film Ariel even gives up her identity for the sake of her true love. So despite minor changes, she is nevertheless forced to make sacrifices that men in Disney films are not asked to make. It is no coincidence that the heroine of the film is beautiful and young and the villain of the film is the old, laborious and unattractive Ursula, who seeks to steal identity and power and by going remote of the norm can only be thought of as a corruption. This implicitly connotes that if a woman is not young, attractive and compliant she is then a threat to society. Supporters of Dis ney will suggest that these texts are just films, harm little entertainment for young people, but what moral lessons are they to draw from the ideologies presented? In my opinion they are far from innocent texts devoid of cultural meaning, they are immensely powerful artefacts that structure how young people look at the world.The Little Mermaid was in same manner accused of racism on its release, the character of Sebastian the subsurface crab was felt by many to be a stereotype of a Jamaican man who enjoys a lazy life under the sea which he prefers to the surface. The stock he sings is suggestive of this Up on the shore they work all day, Out in the sun they knuckle down away, While we devotin, Full time to floatin, Under the sea This is just another(prenominal) example of how Disney chooses to frame certain characteristics in distinctly racial terms. The filling to have the character a black man embody this aspect perpetuates the racist stereotype that has remained pervasive in the society and here it is project at children.Disneys newest film, Tangled, makes an interesting addition to the Disney oeuvre as it both subverts and reinforces some of these archetypes. It concerns the familiar king tale story Rapunzel, but care many modern adaptations (See Dreamworks Shrek, 2001) it deconstructs its tropes and its codes and conventions. Bruno Betelheim in his influential The Uses of Enchantment The Meaning and Importance of cigarette Tales suggested that stories uniform this imparted powerful notions of ideology to generations through the ages and reflect what a society arbitrarily decides is moral and just. We can see this approach very much apparent in the work of Disney who often draw on these king tales in their films and see they role as some sort of unauthorized moral educator for generations of children, whether they state this or not. The protagonist of the Tangled, Rapunzel, is a young woman who is, as per usual blonde, white and trim. One cou ld ask what winning of messages this sends to young women? They suggest that the way for happiness and success is through youthfulness and beauty. That being young and looking a certain way makes you normal and fit into society. If you do not fit this paradigm then you are relegated from the narrative or cast as the villain. The way Disney promotes these messages is so conceal that the youths watching may never regard the issue so explicitly, but it is so deeply ingrained in our culture that it is enceinte to usher out. In this way films and the way people identify with the cinema screen can be associated with French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacans idea of the reverberate stage. Lacan suggested that the child at the age of between six and eighteen months see themselves in the mirror and believe it not to be a reflection but the egotism in its entirety. Thus the way a spectator identifies and subsumes itself into the characters it sees projected on the cinema screen is just as il lusory as the process the baby goes through. This is only one example of how a psychological approach to Disney is useful in coming to understand the film as texts with cultural resonance. Whether one holds with this theory or not it is clear that these images of princesses hold a distinct fascination for young girls which can be seen in the come in of merchandise that is sold across the world focusing on characters wish Snow White, Cinderella and Ariel. Disney presents these figures as iconic characters that girls of the world should aspire to be like instead of doctors, authors, scientists and politicians.Rapunzel is more independent than Disneys usual heroines she is not averse to satisfy and combat, in fact when she first comes across Flynn, the dashing hero of the film she knocks him out. Rapunzel is overly intelligent, quick witted and humorous, attributes that are not always connected to women in Disney films. Here we see evidence of Disneys ability to move somewhat with the clock and identify that the needs of their audiences have changed since the 1950s, but I would argue that this is performed in a cynical fashion, seeking to anticipate what would sell to an audience rather than a desire to present more balanced role models for young women. The antagonist of the film is much more predictable, a cruel mother figure called Gothel who has kidnapped Rapunzel and imprisoned her in a tower, leaving Rapunzel unaware of the fact that she is a princess. Gothel uses Rapunzels powers to keep herself young. By being ignorant of her royal gunstock the film places Rapunzel resolutely within the fantasy of young women discovering they are princesses, an abiding trope particularly relevant in the last few years given media fascination with the courtship and eventual marriage between Prince William and a commoner Kate Middleton. Not only is Rapunzel a princess, but she secretly has magical powers and later we discover her tears can heal wounds and even rent the dead back to life.The character of Flynn embodies many archetypes familiar to the Disney canon, his swaggering durability denotes that is the handsome and dashing rogue with a heart of gold. It is worth pausing to consider that, while males are given more variety of characterization in Disney films than women, they still are forced into certain stereotypes of attractiveness, bravery and what constitutes masculinity. Disney makes one or two concessions to new millennial masculinity in portrait that underneath Flynns brash exterior he is sensitive. In a sequence where they both believe they are about to die Flynn reveals his real name is the advantageously less dashing Eugene Fitzherbert.Yet despite these progressive aspects to Rapunzels character the film also has her life given meaning through her love for Flynn. Flynn proves the particle accelerator for her self-discovery and she is rarely a casual narrative agent of her own. She is the latest in a long line of Disney hero ines that require a man to merely her and teach her what true love is. The film ends with Gothel being killed by move outside of what is regarded as normal and moral behavior for women she must be punished. Rapunzel then marries Flynn and in doing so she has achieved the ultimate goal, in Disneys eyes, of what young girls must aspire to. At the beginning of the new millennium Disney believes that it is appropriate and right to suggest to young women that what they should dream of above all else, above a career, education, excitement, travel or adventure, is marriage with a young man.RacismThe other prominent arena that Disney has been criticised for is its depiction of racial stereotypes in its films. From its very early days Disney films were permeated with racist characterisations which were delivered in the same way as harmless depictions of how things really were and in no way a moral education at all. One could point to how the crows in Dumbo (1941) or the Arabs in Aladdin a re framed in distinctly racial and pejorative terms. It wasnt until 2010 that Disney produced a film with a black princess, The Princess and the Frog and the film emerges as a very interesting and ambiguous text. The film is set in New siege of Orleans in 1912 and it too is a reinterpretation of a familiar fairytale updated for modern audiences. The princess is Tiana and, on the outside, she seems like a fairly modern construction. When her mother reads her the fairy story The Frog Princess at the start of the film unlike her whizz Charlotte La Bouff, she rejects it, stating that she would never kiss a frog. This is one of many ways the film ironically comments on its own status as a fairytale text and allows the film-makers to make gestures towards contemporary attitudes and values. When the narrative moves to 1926, Tiana is far from what mogul be considered an ivory tower princess, as she works two jobs in an effort to save money and receptive her own restaurant. By portraying her as an industrious young business woman the film seems to be suggesting that there is more in life for young girls to aspire to than turn a princess, wife or mother.However despite this the film relies on the old fashioned stereotypes that have permeated Disney since the very beginning with regards to how women should look. Tiana is black, yet she is beautiful, slim and pale skinned and thus contributes to the inculcation of a certain stereotype that Princesses must look a certain way. Again we must ask, how would young girls who do not look this way respond? When a prince is changed into a frog she agrees to kiss him in exchange for enough money to open her restaurant, but is surprised when she too turns into a frog. So while Tiana spends a large section of the film asserting her individuality through her hard work and feisty attitude she finds herself completed by the love of a man. The film does offer some variations on the stereotype of the male hero, in more or less the sam e way as Tangled, near the end of the film it is the sensitive prince Naveen who states that he is willing to give up his dreams for her, an act that is usually given to the woman to perform. When they are initially ineffectual to change back to human form, they proclaim their love for one another and state that they will be happy to live as frogs as long as they are together. However, when they kiss Tiana becomes a princess and thus breaks the bend turning them both back into humans.Like Tangled, the film offers both improvements to Disneys traditionally conservative portrayals and also it perpetuates some of the same old stereotypes. I would argue that the film uses racial stereotypes in a diametrical way to the way Disney has historically. By dwelling on voodoo, in particular in the character of the voodoo master Dr. Facilier, it relegates African identity to a crudely pigeonhole Other. He is a malicious and evil characterization who, by transgressing the natural order, must b e punished at the end of the narrative.The film Aladdin was also accused of perpetuating racial stereotypes on its release in 1992. As Disney go into depicting an Arab culture in one of its films many predicted it would conjure up similar antiquated and racist characters. It too takes a familiar fairy tale and deconstructs it as became the trend in the 1990s and into the new millennium. The story follows a young boy, Aladdin, and his relationship with an evil wizard, Jafar, as they battle for the powers of a magic lamp which contains a genie. Critics felt that the film dwelled on images of barbarism and pitilessness by Arabs which audiences would equate with the contemporary Muslim world. A particular song in the film was targeted by the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee as being an chassis of the attitude of the film towards the Middle East, its lyrics went Where they cut off your ear if they dont like your face/Its barbaric, but, hey, its home. In subsequent releases o n video and DVD they were changed to Where its direct and immense and the heat is intense/Its barbaric, but, hey, its home. It is quite obvious that those with lighter skins are placed on the side of good and those with darker skins are evil. Giroux states that the bad Arabs in the film are determined by their thick, foreign accents and the good Arabs like Jasmine and Aladdin speak in standard American side. (1999 105) The film was criticized for something Disney has historically make with many of its non white characters throughout the years, that is anglicize their features. We can see this in the case of not only Aladdin and Jasmine in Aladdin but Pocahontas and Mulan. Disney takes non-white characters and makes them appear more white in appearance than they actually are and thereby less threatening for the audience who they presume susceptibility be offended by watching an non-white character as a protagonist. The case of Aladdin and Jasmine is quite clear as they are changed from looking like Arabs to almost twentieth deoxycytidine monophosphate American who happen to have healthy tans. It is no coincidence that the character was Aladdin seems to have been modeled on perhaps the all American image of the 1980s and 1990s, Tom Cruise. Such Manichean and racist accounts of morality can be found across the whole of Disney where the idea of evil is encapsulated by the dark skinned and simply Arabic wizard Jafar.One of Disneys superior critical and commercial successes in the modern era is undoubtedly The Lion King. It too is an example of a film which, arguably, embodies both the sexism and racism in inherent in the Disney world. It is an original rites of passage drama about a young cub Simba, who sees his father the King Mufasa killed. Scar tricks Simba into thinking he was responsible for his fathers death causing Simba to flee the kingdom in shame. The hatful is claimed by Simbas cruel uncle Scar who had orchestrated the kings death. Throughout the course of the narrative women are almost entirely marginalized from the film and the realms of power and responsibility are only occupied by men. This is another way that female roles are constructed in Disney films, by legitimizing gender power relations and naturalising such imbalances. Here one might ask whether Disney are being sexist or just reflecting existing social structures in the real world? However this process of legitimization results in further exacerbation of such existing structures by reinforcing them. Like other Disney films this process is deemed as normal and part of the natural order, attention is not drawn to it within the plot and it is depicted as historically inherent and normal. The only female characters of note are Simbas mother who is relegated to the sidelines and the young cub which Simba grows to marry. Her only function is to act as a catalyst to prompt Simba to return to do his masculine duty and naturalize the throne. At the end of the film she has another role and that is to provide a son and heir for Simba when he becomes King.The villain of the film, Scar, has conspicuously darker skin than his biologic relatives in the film and he is distanced from them by the fact that he speaks with an English accent. The creation of such a racial Other has been a historic strategy by Disney throughout the companys history. In modern films their racism is not so obvious as it once was but there is still an assumption that a villain must deviate from what society regards as normal, that is he or she must be non-white, overweight or old. maybe the films most racist element is the army of hyenas which Scar commands are also depicted as distinctly part of a racial minority in the way they speak inner city, jive talk. When finding a group of characters supposed to represent menace and evil, Disney falls back on the same hackneyed stereotype it has used for more than fifty years. Critics of the film charged that The Lion King made racis m and sexism acceptable and part of the natural order. Ward stated when racism and sexism becomes the norm that appears to represent reality, then Disney has doomed its moral high ground (2002 32). In recent times outside of Disney films directors like George Lucas and Michael Bay have been criticised for using the same stereotypes in their films. In The Phantom Menace (1997) the character of Jar Jar Binks was criticised by being a bumbling and foolish character who happened to speak with a Jamaican accent. In Transformers 2 (2009) the characters of Mudflaps and Skids were regarded as racist for the same reason. galore(postnominal) Disney films have come under a lot of criticism for including unperceivable messages in their films in particular hidden erotic images like a phallus from The Little Mermiad, the word sex across the sky written in the clouds in The Lion King, and nudity in The Rescuers and Who Framed Roger Rabbit. after(prenominal) these criticisms Disney often removed the offending images from the video and DVD release of the films. They were more often than not done by disenfranchised animators during the long and laborious process of stir a film which can last for several years. The powers of subliminal messages are well documented and it might be argued that this is another reason why Disney films should not be handed over to children to be watched without care and attention. Techniques like this have been used in advertising for ten-spots to sell products and here in films targeted at families and children it is hard to tell what the effects may be. These stories of images in Disney films inspire the episode in the satirical Fight Club where the protagonist Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt) splices images from filth into family films. The audiences do not ever know consciously what they have seen, but somewhere in their brain it registers, the scene ends with a shot of a little girl crying for a reason she doesnt understand.A theory which I feel has been largely neglected in most academic studies of Disney that I have read is the fact that children growing up in the Disney era being introduced to fairy tales through the Disney process rather than in one of their original forms. Of course this is a considerable shame for a variety of reasons 1) that the stories are distinctly Americanised and populated with white characters and lack the change which can be found in many of the original texts. 2) That children are being (and have been for many decades) effectively raised by the television and having these stereotypes inculcated into them from a very early age. 3) That these rich stories are being fabricate to act as devices through which to sell products to children which, I would argue, perverts the important role which fairy tales play in our society.One must consider Disneys power as a cultural signifier in this first decade of the twenty-first century. Disney now has television stations that are projected into peoples existing rooms everyday rather than once or twice a year when people take their children to see the latest Disney film at the cinema. This changes things in the sense that the company achieves an even greater intimacy with the consumer from an even earlier age. Fortunately this has coincided with what we might regard as greater sentience on issues of media culpability, although how much of this has filtered into the mainstream audience remains to be seen. I believe that the majority of parents regard the Disney brand as an example of safe and genuine entertainment that is automatically suitable for young people.Disney has branched out to produce hugely successful shows aimed at the wide spectrum of different demographics within the family audience from the very young, those dubbed tweens, into the early teenage years and beyond with shows like Hannah metric ton which fit into the mould established within Disneys animated films. These shows are vibrant and aspirational and on the surface have positive messages for young people. However, as we have seen with Disney films this fails to account for what they leaves out of these narratives. There are very few characters from ethnic minorities, or with disabilities, or those who have different sexualities, or children who look different from the bright, predominantly white, clean teens that occupy the central positions in these shows. One might ask how relevant these characterisations are around the world? Or to children support in America who do not come from so obviously affluent families? Disney might argue that these shows are inspirational, but for many they ignore the realities of a large part of their audience forced to identify with characters very different to themselves.There can be no doubt that Disney has changed, to a certain extent, with the times both on the cinema screen and in the home entertainment arena. Many of Disneys television shows and films pay lip expediency to issues of political cor rectness as we have observed in films like The Frog Princess and Mulan. But I think it is still clear to see that a fundamental shift in Disneys approach to the social and political realities of the world has yet to happen. Disney has continued to perpetuate many racial stereotypes even in recent films, when they must have been aware of the impact of these issues and how important they have become to many parts of their audience.ConclusionIt is clear to see that Disney are one of the most influential media companies in the entire world and to deny their influence on successive generations of youths is impossible. Once this influence is genuine one asks, what kind of influence is it? Peter and Rochelle Schweizer in Disney the Mouse Betrayed Greed, Corruption, and Children at Risk (1998) argue that Disneys image of wholesome and nostalgic Americana is a self-consciously created one that is only formed to generate income for the company. Disney films are not benign artefacts, but text s full of extremely potent symbols rife with meaning and arrive at to be decoded by people willing to look a bit deeper for these sorts of message in cultural texts. The images of gender and race we have seen in this essay seem harmless on the surface, but when considered closely one sees that the kind of ideals and norms they present to children they might not be as benign as they first appear and for this reason alone they are desirable of further study. These images have tended to be ignored in the mainstream media as Giroux comments The more liberal critiques often entirely ignore the racist, sexist and anti-democratic ethos that permeates Disney films (1999 85).Here we must identify something that often slips by parents in their relationship with Disney, the fact that it is a capitalist corporation designed to earn money for its shareholders. This is often lost in the fondly remembered nostalgia consumers have for the films of their childhood. This is perhaps one of the most effective marketing strategies in the history of modern America, how the company has sought to win over consumers that it does not real