For this blog post, I decided to write a think piece for Christensen, Unlearning the Myths That Bind Us. As children, we grow up watching Disney movies, I am sure we all know what most of the movies are about. We start to picture a perfect future for ourselves at a young age, then as we get older we realize that perfect future doesn't exist. These movies are setting children up to think their life is not "perfect," when in all reality, it is the movies that are not perfect. One aspect that is mostly in ever fairytale is "magic." Magic appears in each of these stories in different forms, such as: talking animals, pumpkin carriages, mermaids etc. As we all know, these ideas do not exist in real life, so why give children this false hope. Most writer's use it for entertainment purposes, some find educational values behind it, but I think it is plain out silly. Children's stories should hold truth to them and real world situations. Another aspect that is common in most children stories is, prince charming. Young girls are taught that they are happiest when they have a guy, like Cinderella. We should be teaching girls that instead of adjusting yourself with pretty clothes and makeup to attract your "prince charming," that your true prince will love you just the way you are. And even with that, we should be teaching girls to love themselves before they want a guy to love them. Another issue I have with these fairytales is how each one has a romance between a guy and a girl. You would think that after all these years, Disney would make a movie about LGBT's. This opens the gateway for change at a young age, which I think is so important. The media has a way of influencing your opinion and your way of life. This is how it is with everything, and this is why if society wants to see a change in the acceptance of LGBT's then they should allow the media to reach out to all ages about it, including kids.
A video I found on YouTube tells you about after the ever after in these fairytales. Although these ideas may not be true, it is interesting to see the see what other's think would happen. These "after ever after" scenarios can sometimes be more realistic or prove how "make believe" and foolish Disney's stories actually are. Also the artist of this video, Paint, provides the more important issues in the world that would relate.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=mIQr_TrFTUk
I agree with your post and you did a very good job explaining it. I wish Disney would come out with something along the lines with LGBT because its not always just a man and a girl
ReplyDeleteI just wanted to let you know I mentioned your post in my blog but I also have to disagree with what you say about children movies. I think they give more positive than negative roles to the young viewers. These are the characters and stories that we all grew up with and I don't think they've influenced us in terribly negative ways.
ReplyDeleteI love the pictures that you chose because it's funny to see others poke fun at the movies as we get older. We don't realize it when we are young.
ReplyDeleteInteresting post! I agree that children are fed this material at a young age and will unconsciously fall into certain roles. Also the prince comic is really funny, I didn't even realize they were all so similar.
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