First Draft

First Draft- The Change In The Representation Of Women In Disney  

Sebastian Maggs

First Draft- The Change In The Representation Of Woman In Disney

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Over the years Disney have realised many animated films, in most of these films the man character has been a woman, I will be talking about how the representation of these woman have changed over the years, how they are shown and seen, too and by the audience. The three Disney films I will be using as examples are; Snow White And the seven dwarfs, Brave and Frozen.  I will be using quotes from Laura Mulvey’s Male Gaze Theory and The Patriarchal Gaze. I will also be using primary data, which I have collected from questionnaires.

In visual Pleasure and Narrative cinema Laura Mulvey states that

" In their traditional exhibitionist role women are simultaneously looked at and displayed, with their appearance coded from strong visual and erotic impact so that they can be said to connote to-be-looked-at-ness".

From Disneys wiki Snow White is described as, 

Snow White is a beautiful 14-year old girl, often described as the "fairest in the land." The phrase "lips red as a rose, hair black as ebony, and skin white as snow"

She is described as 'Fairest in the land', she is a 14 year old girl and from this it basically says that she is the most desired by the male characters, they describe her as basically perfect this confirms Laura Mulvey's theory in that she has a 'strong visual and erotic impact' , "to-be-looked-at-ness" she has been designed to be the perfect woman in the film, as we only have a few other female characters to compare her against, the witch/queen whos is described as evil. 

From my primary information, i showed picture of Snow White and asked them to describe her in three words form this i got, womanly, domestic, traditional, pretty, docile (easily managed and handled)  and typical woman these were all male opinions.  This again supports the male gaze theory as she is seen as pretty the male audience see her as pretty, basically the perfect woman, domestic and  traditional a stay at home woman its  a old basic description. 

Even in Brave and Frozen the female characters may look and act different but they still have this basic slim figure and described as pretty, again supporting laura mulvey's theory of "to-be-looked-at-ness" they are there to be looked at by the audience both male and female. men seeing them as a perfect definition and woman seeing them as something to strive to be like.