Friday, June 19, 2009

Disney, oh the things I have learned: Part 1

I went to the Magic Kingdom for my birthday. I had not been in years and quickly came to the realization that a lot didnt register. I went back, watched some old movies and some of the new shows.
Let me share with you what I, and likely many children, have learned from Mickey:

Lets start out with a favorite:
Snow White

Snow White has very soft, feminine facial features. Her jaw line is soft, her eyebrows up high, and her nose small. She is the 'good girl' in the story.










The evil queen on the other hand has very masculine facial features. She has a defined jawline and cheekbones and her eyebrows are lower, thicker. She is obviously the 'bad girl' in the story.




What I learned: Masculine women are not as attractive as feminine women. Masculine women hate feminine women and want more than anything to be considered conventionally 'pretty', not to mention the fact that the masculine female is the evil character.






Jack Sparrow is cool, right?
Pirates are awesome, no lie. Apparently, so is the objectification of women.
Look, a wench auction! You can just buy women! And the one in red seems ok with it.
Now, dont get me wrong, I understand that historically pirates and the rape/kidnapping of women go hand in hand. But just like portraying smoking in childrens movies is a no no, in a children's theme park you might want to avoid this imagry. And yes, young children around the age of 5 do enjoy this ride. They were sitting infront of us looking adorable.

The Disney Channel rocks my socks:
In just under one hour of watching the Disney channel these are some things that zipped by me:

From the Suite Life of Zac and Cody:

Women are obsessed with precious stones – the episode begins with a character counting her stones and throwing out gold. Gold is so cheap, eww.

Women are complete idiots and they are not expected to work- “Oh no, daddy is going to fire me!” “You don’t work here…” “He’s already done it?!?” “Calm down, you never did work and you never have to work” “Yay me!”

When women have the voice of an infant they are more likable.

Hungarian women are overweight, have unibrows, manly voices, and its humorous to make fun of them.

Men are clumsy – The plumber bumps his head, wrecks the lobby, injures the butler dispenses mail throughout the lobby and the crowd there-in, the boys ruin a painting/frame, the butler knocks over a precious vase…

Men are greedy “Mom, we want you to get that bonus so that you can spend it all on us”, the Butler holds the family hostage so that he can obtain a raise

Women and gay men cook, straight men eat and judge their food : there is a kitchen scene 5 women and 1 gay male are cooking, the straight male (the chef) does nothing but go around tasting everything and informing everyone of how terrible it is

Women are jealous of one another and fight over their appearances: Two girls fight because one has taken the ‘look’ of the other, they proceed to rip hair/clothes and break heels. Because that is how all girls fight.

Asian women don’t know how to drive: A character does not know what the gear shift is, then crashes the car into the hotel lobby.

All in one episode! Amazing!

Hannah Montana

Women wear makeup in the morning and when going to bed.

Men are filthy, spit, leave their filthy underwear in every place imaginable, eat someone elses week old sandwich

Only ugly women play chess. Also, its humorous to make fun of them.

I cant watch this any more.

Even Stevens:

Intelligent, studious girls are bitches that will step on anyone to get ahead.


All in under an hour. Now that is some Disney magic. :)

1 comment:

Kuku Kachuu said...

Yeah, I think tv (especially Disney channel) has gone downhill a lot lately... they just try to make everything fast and loud to attract attention, but the effect is that the messages and values conveyed become almost subliminal because they are throwing so much information at you at once. The characters are extremely shallow and one-dimensional, and most of the characters are represented almost exclusively by the images and stereotypes they are mimicking. As they say, "What you see is what you get". It seems as though Disney channel almost acknowledges this with shows about dual personalities like "Hannah Montana", but Hannah's image changes with her personality, so it's almost as if her image controls how she acts, who she associates with, and how much attention she recieves. That's a LOT of power in the image, and it's strange that this is how they choose to influence the masses to think, when they have so much power in their hands to do good with.