Analysis Of Disney Company And Its Impact On The World Of...

Despite nearly all forms of modern media readily available at all times in the pockets of our jeans and hoodies, influences from media on how people perceive gender and its surrounding issues is often overlooked or ignored under the premise of normalization. One of the top contributors of media is The Walt Disney Company and its affiliated companies such as ABC, Pixar, Touchstone Pictures, Lucasfilm, and Marvel Entertainment, and from a young age many children grow up on the films, characters, books, and television series that are produced by the Walt Disney Company. In the long history of media produced by The Walt Disney Company, beginning with its early groundbreaking animated shorts all the way to the recent Moana, Disney has been the subject of much debate, criticism, and praise regarding its portrayal of male and female characters. All forms of media has portrayed both genders in stereotypical ways (Lindsey, 2015, p. 414), and because Disney is a media giant, there is a lot of material that is directed to children that influences how they perceive gender from an early age on up, and Disney is no stranger to portraying men and women in stereotypical ways, even in its most recent films and television series. Disney has usually depicted women as princesses, queens, homemakers (Yerby, Baron, Lee, p. 4) and villains that pursue the goal of usurping far younger protagonists’ goals of â€Å"happily ever after.† Men are nearly always portrayed as either the hero or the villain.