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| Decked out in Disney from an early age |
I, like many my age, grew up on Disney. I played our VCR of The Little Mermaid until the film was rolling out of the tape. I wore a Sleeping Beauty princess dress until it was threadbare. I knew the words to "Reflection," "Tale as Old as Time," and "Part of Your World" before I could even form full sentences. For the first five years of my life, we lived in Los Angeles, and legend has it, one of my first outings as a newborn was to Disneyland. Later on, my eldest sister would work at the Disney parks as a "friend of Mary Poppins and Belle," as they refer to cast members. Disney has just always been an unconscious part of my life.
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| My favorite princess and me |
I don't watch the movies with such frequency today (though I still know the words to every song), my wardrobe is a bit more "evil stepmother" color palette than "princess," and trips to Disneyland aren't quite as fun when you have to pay for it all yourself. While my fanatic Disney days are over, there are some lingering effects. I haven't been able to shake the crippling insecurity around my body image, constant yearning to find my Prince Charming, or the current of anxiety I experience when I try to assert myself, because, according to the Disney code, I'm supposed to be thin, demure, and wedded by eighteen.
My exposure to Disney was, as put by Ariel Dorfman, a "secret education." I had deeply internalized the lessons I received on how I was meant to perform in the world. Disney princesses were placed on this unattainable pedestal that I could never summit. How could I? I was made of flesh and blood, not pen and paper, and my heart and mind weren't controlled by a narrative spun by the likes of Ron Clements and and John Musker. Nevertheless, the subconscious disappointment I felt in myself was--and has been--absolutely stunting, whether or not I've realized it over the years, because Disney has always been so fanatically glorified in modern pop culture.
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| Family trip to Disneyland |
Ultimately, it's not hard to be critical of the Disney I grew up on because Disney made me so critical of myself. I'm game to discuss the male savior complex the original princess movies reinforce, especially how--in some cases--the plot mirrors cases of abuse or violence with no regard for traumatic effect on the audience. I'll invest myself in a discussion of how the actual design and animation of the Disney princess physique contributes to an unrealistic bodily expectation for young women and men alike, and ultimately exacerbates insecurity in respect to physical appearance. I could go on hours-long tirades about the toxic reinforcement of antiquated ideologies through stereotyped performances of Disney characters. Christensen just put it a lot more eloquently than I ever could.
In viewing Moana through a critical lens, however, I had to take a step back. I had never seen the film before. When it came out in theaters, I was a junior in college, studying abroad in London, so it wasn't exactly top of my to-do list. The years went by and my interest in Disney continued to wane, but those unconscious lessons stayed steadfast in my psyche. Nevertheless, I was excited to have an excuse to watch a Disney movie for class.
I watched it twice in preparing for this assignment. The first time, I just sat back and watched. I bopped along to the songs and cried like a baby when Te Ka was revealed to Te Fiti in the absence of her heart (yet that entire sequence immediately brought up a large point of criticism for me--what is Disney doing by way of sustainability to curb CO2 emissions from their parks or other endeavors? How can they be a Te Fiti for the planet? I'll save that for another blog post). I was moved by the fact that at no point in the story is there pressure on Moana to settle down and get married. She was never subject to the "male gaze." I appreciated that her intelligence was never questioned outright. I considered it badass that she got herself and Maui out of many a sticky situations. I went to bed that night humming the songs and feeling the warmth of the Disney glow on my heart.
The second time, a couple of days later, I let my brain do what it does best: criticize. Moana was, in her design, the pinnacle of beauty, with her wide eyes, bowed lips, and flawless figure. Her beautiful curls tumbled down in an enviable manner, but when she'd go to fight, she'd pull it back, because her hair ultimately served as a vehicle of her femininity, and we couldn't have that interfere with her strength. She was chosen by the ocean as a baby for no discernable reason, which sets a precedent for an unattainable specialness or superiority. She had not one, but two loyal sidekicks whose endearing cluelessness only exacerbated Moana's superiority. And Maui--a complete caricature of a man (quite literally, as a demigod)--surely made Moana look smarter and more capable in his mystical buffoonery. I went to bed that night cursing the catchy refrains and damning Disney's charm over me.
Moana was praised as progressive by animation standards. It was one of the first animated blockbusters to feature a POC lead whose main motivation isn't just love. But the explicit messaging in The Little Mermaid isn't "you can charm a man with your looks alone," nor is the message in Moana that "if you are the chosen one, you are special." The "secret education" we receive is far more insidious than that. Instead, as Linda Christensen tells us in her article Unlearning the Myths That Bind Us, we are conditioned "to accept the world as it is portrayed in these social blueprints" (175) without any critical consideration.
If Disney was damaging to me--a white, cisgender, heterosexual, able-bodied young woman--how damaging must it have been for those not portrayed or, really, idealized by such a media giant? Disney has been so deeply woven as an imperative thread in the fabric of our society that we've been conditioned not to question its validity as some sort of mirror to reality. Nevermind the fact that the characters are literally cartoons; so many take those lessons to be sacred because we're exposed to them in such a fashion from an early, impressionable age: "Young people, unprotected by any intellectual armor, hear or watch these stories again and again, often from the warmth of their mothers’ or fathers' laps" (176).
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| Lifelong Disney consumers |
I was scared to criticize Disney, because it feels so deeply woven into the fabric of myself. But upon reflection, I think the issue around Disney's implicit messaging persists when we let it define our ideas of popular or canonical media. We need to fight for and expose youth to more inclusive narratives, because we don't realize how much we internalize of media at a young age. Media is a powerful tool. We need to make sure we know how to use it correctly to lay the foundation for a strong, equitable, supported structure of society.
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