Simão Castro

Mestrado em Ensino de Inglês no 1ºCEB

Língua e Cultura Inglesa

Ano Letivo 2021/2022

Disney, Pixar, Dreamworks, etc: How are they

responding (or not) to social changes?

In this task I will address how children's movie industries are acting to
meet social changes of nowadays, the things that have changed or what they
could have done to improve in this aspect and the evolution of it.
It is common sense that when we refer to the classic films of our
childhood there is always a kind of pattern in almost all movies, these classic
and old-fashioned patterns gradually began to change by the biggest children's
movie industries, such as Disney, Pixar and Dreamworks. Even though there’s
still a long way to go, when it comes to inclusion and diversity in children's
animated films, the truth is that we have started to see big changes over the
years in these movies’ standards and stereotypes.

Talking a little bit about the first animated movies, we could see that in
general there was always an overlap of the male character over the female
character. Despite the female character being the main character, it would
always end up being the male character saving the day and, consequently,
being the hero of the story. As an example of this we have the first Disney
princess films like “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs”, “Cinderella” and
“Sleeping Beauty”. The truth is that the storyline of the prince in these films is
poorly constructed and with a very mediocre character arc because the story
focuses on the princess, however in all of these the same happens every time
ending with the prince saving the day. With this, we have here the stigma of the
“damsel in distress” that is a big stereotype of classic princess movies.
The three movies that I mentioned before are from 1937, 1950 and
1959, respectively, and by the time they were released we are able to
understand why, since at that time the role of women in everyday life was still
very much overlapped by men in general, man’s role was always seen as him
being the head of the household and the person who had to take care of his
entire family, especially financially.
Furthermore, the main characters were almost always white, which made
the inclusion in children's animations very poor and not all children were able to
identify themselves with the characters.
The first two POC princesses were only released in 1992 and 1995, the
first being princess “Jasmine” in the movie “Aladdin” (film that was set in Arabia
and with all Arab characters, for the first time in a Disney movie) and princess
“Pocahontas” in the movie of the same name, which was native-American and
in my opinion despite being a big step in the representation of the native
American people it was a poor adaptation of the story of the real Pocahontas,
very romanticized and with very little further development of her character and
of her real principles.
In these two films we can also see that the role of men, in princess films,
begins to change a little bit and although in both it is still very important
(especially in Aladdin), we begin to see some inclusion of ethnicities and even a
smaller role of the male character (John Smith in Pocahontas for example),
which at the time would be a giant step forward for how films would be made in
the future.

After the first Disney princesses that step out of the classic stereotype
(white and delicate) were finally released, here comes a new character that tries
not only to change the cliché looks of the female character, as a princess, but
also her role throughout the movie and how she is seen by the public. I'm
talking about the 1998 Disney movie named "Mulan", that brings us the first
main character of a classic with Chinese ethnicity, and not only that, Mulan
goes against all the stigmas that were created as criteria for being a Disney
princess, she is the warrior of the movie and the heroine.
In the movie, not only is her beauty and tenderness shown, she also is
exhibited as a person who cares about her family and does everything to
protect the ones she loves, leading her to pretending to be a man to fight in the
Chinese army so that her father (who is sick and fragile) doesn’t. Here we can
make a parallel with our reality, the fact that Mulan has to disguise herself as a
man to fight in the Chinese army goes against the mentality of the time when
the man should be the one who would have the role of fighting and being a
warrior, barriers are broken with this film because it is seen for the first time in a
Disney movie, men following the woman as a leader, even after they discover
her lie. The movie tries to show children that if the army trusted Mulan as a man
(Ping, the name she invented for herself) why wouldn't they trust her as a
woman and there is an attempt to overcome Disney’s mentalities and show
children that their gender does not define them.
Also, in the same film, there is a small allusion to the LGBTQ+
community, when they imply that the male main character, General Li Shang,
begins to develop feelings for Mulan when he thought she was a man, however
this idea was not very developed in the film and it was a bit covered up, in my
opinion, because the company felt that their public was not ready yet to
introduce this community into children's animated films. Nonetheless, what is
certain is that the original film is really like that and really implies that General Li
Shang's character is in fact bisexual.
At the time this was quite controversial and as a result in the live action
remake of the same film, in 2020, we all thought Disney would take the
opportunity to give the LGBTQ+ community the representation they deserved,
with Li Shang's character better developed, as well as the his sexuality,
however that didn't happen. Instead they just cut out the character entirely from
the live action and replaced him with another love interest for Mulan, it was in
fact a missed opportunity from Disney to develop the inclusion of this minority in
their children's industry. As we can see in the industry, even though we are in
completely different times now, not always do we see progress being made, we
can see that in the case of the original film made 22 years earlier, it has much
more inclusion and representation than the live action released in 2020, when
there is already different mindsets and more open-minded people related to this
topic.

Continuing, it is only in 2009 that we finally have a Disney movie in

which the main character is black, “The Princess and the Frog”, 72 years after
the first Disney classic was released, it arrives to change mentalities and
stereotypes imposed by the culture of white-washing in children's animations. In
addition to the fact that all other minorities were very little explored or nothing at
all throughout the time, it was only in 2009 that the children's animated movie
industry had a huge twist and we start to have more representation of
minorities.
In addition to being Disney's first black princess, Tiana, also has a story a
little bit different from the others, the plot of her movie revolves around her
pursuing her dream of opening her own restaurant come true, the end of the
story is not just about the female character finding true love, but the fact that
she decides to choose her dream over the “love of her life”. In the end it’s the
male character that ends up making concessions and living Tiana’s dream with
her, this shows a change of mindset in the essence of Disney movies and
reveals the evolution of both the male and female characters, demonstrating
that both genders have to compromise and that it should not always be the
female gender to do so.

On the other hand, over the years the industry started to become aware
of the subject and things started to be done differently. We can make
comparisons, for example, of films that have several sequels namely in the films
of "Shrek" by Dreamworks, the first film that was released in 2001 is still quite
old-fashioned when it comes to the female role of the main character in the plot,
despite this film being quite avant-garde when it comes to the subject of inner
beauty versus outer beauty, in the first movie the woman still has a damsel in
distress stigma (even though in the end we can see that she was sick of waiting
for some man to save her), while in her sequels, more specifically, in the last
one released in 2010 we already see Fiona as the warrior of the story, it was
necessary four whole movies for Dreamworks to empower the female role and
place the woman as the warrior of the plot, thus going against the stereotypes
created previously and giving people who watch the movie the possibility to
identify even more with the character.

Still talking about movie sequels, in this case Pixar, we have a Boo Peep
character in the “Toy Story” movie franchise, for a long time her character only
existed to be Woody’s love interest and to give him confidence when he needed
it most. Bearing in mind that the first film was released in 1995, we can make
once again a parallel of the character Bo Peep with what people still thought of
what was the role of women in society back then, being good was equivalent to
meet the needs of husbands and to give him confidence and motivation when
he needed it most. Finally, in the fourth film of the franchise, Bo Peep receives
the recognition that she deserves throughout the sequels, besides being one of
the main characters of this sequel and having the whole storyline of the movie
revolving around her, it also comes with a totally different visual look, as well as
a totally reinvigorated personality that does justice to feminism.
The fourth movie was released in 2019, in this film we see that Bo Peep's
character got tired of waiting and decided to give her life a new direction,
becoming a lost toy. Bo Peep gains confidence in her and stops being the
“person” they expect her to be, thus beginning to be herself, and her own
heroine. Talking now about the character's visual look, in the first films we can
see her with a big skirt and pastel colors that emphasize Bo Peep's tenderness,
in addition to being always seen with her sheep and the stick she used to graze
them, however these clothes are no longer compatible with her new lifestyle
and in the fourth film the look changes completely. She starts trading her skirt
for her pantaloons, which will be much more practical for running, her skirt is
also used to make a cape that covers her back and gives her a heroine look,
and her look changes from pink and white to a more predominant blue with
some pink tones and accessories (like her head bow that remains despite the
full hat disappear) that still reflect Bo Peep's previous personality. The use for
her cane also changes a lot, because she used to use it to control her sheep or
as a prop, now it is more of a weapon or accessory that helps her in her new
every day, that and her skirt which, in addition to being transformed into a cape,
is now multipurpose and becomes whatever she needs it to be – like a
parachute, a backpack, a cape, etc.
With this, Pixar shows us the evolution of Bo Peep's character, her self-
discovery that she only managed to achieve after leaving her old life behind and
with no longer feeling the need to be who people needed her to be. In the film
we are also shown that the character of Bo Peep, unlike Woody, has a lot of
confidence in herself and doesn't always need to be reassured by someone
else. This is a great parallel with what happens in our times, more and more
women reach new achievements and new goals every day, something that was
unthinkable a few years ago, has become our new reality, Pixar tries to show
that our evolution depends only on ourselves and not on what society tries to
impose to us.

Another sequel, this time from Disney, and another evolution of the
woman's character that I will talk about now is the film Frozen, one of the most
popular films in Disney history. By itself, the film was already quite innovative in
the aspect in which the main character, Elsa, does not depend on the cliché of
true love to be saved, but on the love of her sister, Anna. In the first film we can
see that Elsa’s character is quite restrained and does everything she thinks she
should or is coerced to do, the song “Let it go”, which became a worldwide hit,
talks precisely about this and although at the end of the first film Elsa realizes
that her destiny is not to be queen of Arendelle, it is not very clear what she will
do in the future. That's where the second movie comes in and shows us
everything about the ice queen's destiny, she discovers her identity and on a
journey of self-knowledge she can finally understand who she is and with that
have a much happier and more harmonious life. Just by comparing not only the
personality but also the visual look of Elsa in the first and second films we can
see that this is reflected, in the first film in addition to a very ceremonial clothing,
she had hair tied and even wore gloves that were intended to contain her
powers, meanwhile in the second movie her entire look, from the white dress to
the long and loose hair suggest freedom, the character finally becomes totally
free from her past.
In more recent movies from 2021, such as “Raya and the Last Dragon”
and “Encanto” we can also see a great evolution of the female character. In the
first one, Raya, is the first princess to represent the people of Southeast Asia,
and it was even admitted the possibility of her being Disney's first LGBTQ+
princess. Although it is not yet official, it is almost certain that we will see one of
the princesses representing this community in the future and this is very
important in animated movies because they show and normalize different
sexualities to children. Once again, Raya's film is not based on the search for
true love and she is the heroine and the fighter of her own story.
 On the other hand the movie “Encanto” is quite peculiar because in
addition to the entire cast being all Mexican people, it is also almost entirely
formed with female characters, at least the most relevant ones in the plot. There
are still several particularities, such as the powers that are given to each
member of the family in which Disney did not base itself on the gender
stereotype to do so, we have the character Luisa who totally changes the
paradigm that exists today, in which men are strong and the women are weak.
Luisa's power is her super strength, this power could have been given to any
man in the family however they chose to give it to Luisa to show children that
it's not just men who are strong, women are too, and this movie totally
challenges the feminine paradigm that society imposes on us.

I would still like to talk a little bit about the inclusion of minorities that
children's films have made over the time, taking into account that we started
with a small base of movies in which the main characters were always white,
over time they evolved and included minorities that were very necessary. I will
just quote a few examples so that i can confirm what I just said: “The
Hunchback of Notre Dame” (1996) introduces for the first time a main character
with physical disabilities, Quasimodo, as well as the gypsy community and how
they are treated and excluded from society; Disney's “Lilo and Stich” (2002) is
the first film to include the people of Hawaii and their culture; the Disney
Channel series Andi Mack (2017-2019) is the first to have a fully open gay
character in the plot and show us his journey as he discovers himself;
Dreamworks' 1998 “The Prince of Egypt” is the first film to show the reality of
the Egyptian people and the slavery in which they lived; 2018's "Spider-Man:
Into the Spiderverse" that brings us the first black spider-man; 2016's "Moana",
a Disney princess once again representing a minority never represented
before, Moana represents the culture of Polynesian people.

And I will also, briefly, make an honorable mention to the 2019 Disney
movie “Coco” which not only brings us the representation of Mexican culture in
it, but also a very important and sometimes scary subject to children, death. The
film is intended to show death as “a life-affirming inevitability” without being
scary.
 So I end my task with the conclusion that, through the research I've
done, the movies I've seen, and the articles I've read, the children's film industry
still needs a lot of work and progress to get to a level where it can answer totally
to social changes, however I can also see that they try to adapt and that, over
time, through the examples I mentioned above, this is increasingly seen. It will
be a long way to get to a state where all children feel represented and all
minorities are included in animated movies, but with mindsets changing every
day, we are everyday one step closer to getting there and finally doing justice to
the changes in our society.
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