Disney Love Damsels--- Girls in Distress

1. Damsels GIRLS in Distress
Notes in this lecture are taken from the following study:
Damsels in Discourse: Girls Consuming and Producing Identity Texts through
Disney Princess Play
Karen E. Wohlwend
Reading Research Quarterly , Vol. 44, No. 1 (Jan. - Mar., 2009), pp. 57-83
Published by: International Reading Association
Article Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20304573

2. Identity Messages
“Identity messages circulate through
merchandise that surrounds young consumers
as they dress in, sleep on, bathe in, eat from,
and play with commercials goods decorated
with popular culture images, print, and logos,
immersing children in products that invite
identification with familiar media characters and
communicate gendered expectations about
what children should buy, how they should play,
and who they should be”

3. Toys
“On one level, Disney Princess toys inspire
children to replay remembered plots and recite
memorized scripts, providing explicit narratives
that shape children’s play; on another level, the
film scripts and characterizations convey more
subtle narratives about identity and status that
relate to global markets and societal beliefs
about gender and childhood.

4. How do Girls look
at relationships through
Disney Doll Play?
“The dolls index identity texts from
damsel-in-distress fairy tales with
princess victims and princely rescuers, a
classic trope in children’s literature and
play that “prepares the ground for the
insertion of the little girl into romantic
heterosexuality”

5. “…Disney animated fairy
tales reduce heroines to
happy homemaker-inwaiting.”

6. How are Girls Displayed:
• …”often portrayed as dependent and innocent
(with sexual undertones) ingénues waiting for
a royal husband as life’s fulfillment”
• “Older women are either backgrounded as
loving (preferably deceased) mothers or, if
powerful and independent, vilified as evil
femme fatales or ugly hags”

7. Requirement For Love:
BEAUTY
“From classic books to
popular media, the
consistent requirements
for any princess is that she
must be beautiful.”

8. Relationship 411 Disney Style:
Gay is NOT OKAY
“Critical discourse analyses of play activity
showed that children regulated each other’s
gender performances through talk and actions
that demonstrated their ability to adhere to the
heterosexual matrix that ‘regulates gender and
gender relations so that heterosexuality
becomes the ‘normal’, right, and only way to be”

9. Princess Play
• “During Princess play, girls focused on
achieving beauty ideals and rejected play
scenarios that stretched stereotypical
male/female roles.
• “…the importance of being pretty and the role
it plays in creating femininities and
masculinities provide another opportunity for
locating the heterosexual matrix…”

10. “…Girls as well as boys
positioned male characters
as powerful and female
characters as weak, even
suicidal, victims.”

11. MARKETING GENDER ROLES
…”The Disney Princess films comprise five of the six
top revenue-generating Disney films of all time.”
Re-releasing and Opening the Disney Vault Create
Long Lasting Demand for Disney Products
“These marketing strategies build breadth and
depth in the market, creating widespread and longlasting demand for Disney Princess films and
related products”

12. So….
What is the idea of
Disney LOVE
that we are being sold?

13. Love At First Sight
Based on Appearances and
Abilities
Mostly White Love
Heterosexual Love
Based on Patriarchal Ideologies

14. Disney Love:
•
•
•
•
•
Women are Docile and Gentle
Men are Strong and Heroic
Women Need Saving
Men Rescue Damsels = Happily Ever After
A woman’s purpose is defined by her ability to
find true love- at all costs.

15. So……..
THIS is Love.