- Part 1, "Of Iconic Mice and a Global Corporation of Men"
- Part 2, "He's Rather Tasty"
- Part 3, "Can Your Friends Do This?"
“The Curves”
Despite their cunning and strength in battle, the area in which no Disney hero boasts experience is that of romance. The heroes take turns bumbling through pitiful gestures and stuttering inarticulate compliments to win over the film’s heroine. The three women remain cool and collected when faced with the hero’s awkward advances, suggesting to the audience that in matters of love, women have the upper hand over men. Women are presented as a mystery that men are not expected to understand; “There are no trails through a woman’s heart,” Clayton tells Tarzan, “Women – you’d be lost even if you weren’t raised a savage” (Arnold, 1999). In the end, the three heroines respond to the hero with attraction, suggesting that women appreciate innocence and vulnerability in men – a confusing message that contradicts earlier emphases on male independence and power (Nelson, 2010: 99).
Disney proposes that attractive women are characterized by three qualities: fragility, in need of protection, and in the possession of men. The women are miniscule in size, with waists no larger than their necks. Jane is an intellectual who romps around the dangerous jungle, but it is her father’s research she is supporting, not her own, and she has hired a robust gunman for protection. Jasmine proves to be without need of Aladdin’s assistance on the rooftops by vaulting over chasms instead of using the planks he set down for her, but this is depicted as a surprising action – nothing suggests that Aladdin was wrong to assume she was in need of his help. Megara is the most wilful of the heroines, but she is also the most directly subjected to male dominance, as she is enslaved to the god Hades who is quite literally in possession of her soul.
An ideal of love is portrayed in which men are the women’s saviours, rescuing them from unfortunate situations. It may seem that the men are freeing the women from patriarchal control, but instead, they are perpetuating it. The women escape their misery only in marriage, by trading their bonds to one man to another. Tarzan does not free Jane of her need for protection in jungle, but merely replaces the protective role previously occupied by Clayton. The sultan alters the law so that Jasmine may be free to marry whomever she chooses, freeing her from a dreaded obligation of marrying a suitor she does not love, but if the sultan possessed the power to change the law all along, then he could have just as easily created a law long go freeing Jasmine of having to marry at all. These images have the potential to socialize boys toward a patriarchal idea of love that does not include two independent agents joining together into a union of equality, but one in which the man takes over the role as the woman’s benefactor with the object of taking better care of her than her previous owner did.
The definition of Disney romance is also exclusively Western conservative in nature. Each relationship consists of a monogamous, heterosexual union, despite cultural contexts in which such unions would be unlikely to occur. Aladdin’s Agraba is likely situated in a medieval Middle Eastern Islamic region, and Hercules is set in ancient Greece. Marriage practices in both cultures were habitually political arrangements and were often polygamous. Nonetheless, the Western convention of monogamous romantic marriage has been appropriated to the cultures in the films, sacrificing accuracy and cultural sensitivity in favour of Western appeal. Greek mythology attributes not only numerous female wives and extramarital lovers to Hercules, but an extensive number of male lovers as well (Lahanas, “Herakles”).
This conspicuously limited picture of Hercules’ sexuality promotes a very narrow image of sexual normality for its young male viewers to internalize. Without being offered evidence of sexual or romantic practices outside the Christian Western-European norm, viewers will be socialized to consider alternate practices and sexualities as deviant, unnatural, or non-existent (Hagin, 2011). This risks the creation of men at odds with their own culture and sexuality as well as with those of others, limiting their ability to embrace individual identity and perpetuating social ills such as homophobia and racial intolerance.
Sources
Tarzan. Dir. Chris Buck and Kevin Lima. Perf. Tony Goldwyn, Minnie Driver, and Brian Blessed. 1999. Walt Disney. DVD.
Hagin, Fern M. “Lectures; Soc 212.” University of Regina, 2011.
Halanas, Michael. “Herakles.” Hellenica: Information About Greece and Cyprus. Web. <http://www.mlahanas.de/Greeks/Mythology/Heracles.html>
Nelson, Adie. Gender in Canada. Toronto: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2010. Print.
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