Lecture Outline

Walt Disney Background Information

Disney’s Role in WWII and post-WWII America

Sexism in Disney Princess Films

What stereotypical gender roles are being emphasized?
Snow White
- Femininity: Snow White’s versus Rosie the Riveter
Lack of Disney Production during WWII
Cinderella
- Cinderella as a turning point
- Subservient role of women
- Return of femininity
Sleeping Beauty
- Dependence on men
- Public criticism from gender equality activists
Gap in Disney Princess Movies
- Walt Disney’s Death
- The Feminine Mystique
The Little Mermaid
- Silence of the Female Voice
- Sacrificing everything for men
The ironic nature of the princesses having no power

Race in Disney Films

Song of the South
- Insinuation of slavery
- Disney’s recognition of the racism-not being taken out of the vault
- “Zip-a-dee-doo-dah”
- African Americans’ role in WWII and post WWII America
- White Suburban Americans’ superiority complex
- GI Bill Discrimination
Fantasia
- Black beauty racial stereotypes
- African Americans being inherently inferior
- White beauty seen as superior to black beauty: hiding the fro and using skin bleachers
- Social discrimination for black women
Racial tensions being created from such a young age
- Hard for children to accept desegregation

Class Distinctions in Disney Films

Returning from War in Princess Films

Sleeping Beauty
- Idealized analogy of returning World War II veterans and their wives.
- Wives at home versus soldiers abroad
- Sword and shield symbolism
- Expectations for return to normalcy

Anti-Establishment in the 60s and 70s