The Psychosocial Implications of Disney Movies
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$€ social sciences £ ¥ The Psychosocial Implications of Disney Movies Edited by Lauren Dundes Printed Edition of the Special Issue Published in Social Sciences www.mdpi.com/journal/socsci The Psychosocial Implications of Disney Movies The Psychosocial Implications of Disney Movies Special Issue Editor Lauren Dundes MDPI • Basel • Beijing • Wuhan • Barcelona • Belgrade Special Issue Editor Lauren Dundes Department of Sociology, McDaniel College USA Editorial Office MDPI St. Alban-Anlage 66 4052 Basel, Switzerland This is a reprint of articles from the Special Issue published online in the open access journal Social Sciences (ISSN 2076-0760) from 2018 to 2019 (available at: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/ socsci/special issues/Disney Movies Psychosocial Implications) For citation purposes, cite each article independently as indicated on the article page online and as indicated below: LastName, A.A.; LastName, B.B.; LastName, C.C. Article Title. Journal Name Year, Article Number, Page Range. ISBN 978-3-03897-848-0 (Pbk) ISBN 978-3-03897-849-7 (PDF) Cover image courtesy of Hsun-yuan Hsu. c 2019 by the authors. Articles in this book are Open Access and distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license, which allows users to download, copy and build upon published articles, as long as the author and publisher are properly credited, which ensures maximum dissemination and a wider impact of our publications. The book as a whole is distributed by MDPI under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND. Contents About the Special Issue Editor ...................................... vii Preface to ”The Psychosocial Implications of Disney Movies” ................... ix Jessica D. Zurcher, Sarah M. Webb and Tom Robinson The Portrayal of Families across Generations in Disney Animated Films Reprinted from: Soc. Sci. 2018, 7, 47, doi:10.3390/socsci7030047 ................... 1 James A. Graham, Hope Yuhas and Jessica L. Roman Death and Coping Mechanisms in Animated Disney Movies: A Content Analysis of Disney Films (1937–2003) and Disney/Pixar Films (2003–2016) Reprinted from: Soc. Sci. 2018, 7, 199, doi:10.3390/socsci7100199 ................... 17 Katia Perea Touching Queerness in Disney Films Dumbo and Lilo & Stitch Reprinted from: Soc. Sci. 2018, 7, 225, doi:10.3390/socsci7110225 ................... 31 Heather E. Harris Queen Phiona and Princess Shuri—Alternative Africana “Royalty” in Disney’s Royal Realm: An Intersectional Analysis Reprinted from: Soc. Sci. 2018, 7, 206, doi:10.3390/socsci7100206 ................... 41 Charu Uppal Over Time and Beyond Disney—Visualizing Princesses through a Comparative Study in India, Fiji, and Sweden Reprinted from: Soc. Sci. 2019, 8, 105, doi:10.3390/socsci8040105 ................... 49 Benjamin Hine, Katarina Ivanovic and Dawn England From the Sleeping Princess to the World-Saving Daughter of the Chief: Examining Young Children’s Perceptions of ‘Old’ versus ‘New’ Disney Princess Characters Reprinted from: Soc. Sci. 2018, 7, 161, doi:10.3390/socsci7090161 ................... 73 Michelle Anya Anjirbag Mulan and Moana: Embedded Coloniality and the Search for Authenticity in Disney Animated Film Reprinted from: Soc. Sci. 2018, 7, 230, doi:10.3390/socsci7110230 ................... 88 Robin Armstrong Time to Face the Music: Musical Colonization and Appropriation in Disney’s Moana Reprinted from: Soc. Sci. 2018, 7, 113, doi:10.3390/socsci7070113 ...................103 Matthew Hodge Disney ‘World’: The Westernization of World Music in EPCOT’s “IllumiNations: Reflections of Earth” Reprinted from: Soc. Sci. 2018, 7, 136, doi:10.3390/socsci7080136 ...................112 Kailash Koushik and Abigail Reed Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Beauty and the Beast, and Disney’s Commodification of Feminism: A Political Economic Analysis Reprinted from: Soc. Sci. 2018, 7, 237, doi:10.3390/socsci7110237 ...................123 v Cassandra Primo Balancing Gender and Power: How Disney’s Hercules Fails to Go the Distance Reprinted from: Soc. Sci. 2018, 7, 240, doi:10.3390/socsci7110240 ...................144 Benjamin Hine, Dawn England, Katie Lopreore, Elizabeth Skora Horgan and Lisa Hartwell The Rise of the Androgynous Princess: Examining Representations of Gender in Prince and Princess Characters of Disney Movies Released 2009–2016 Reprinted from: Soc. Sci. 2018, 7, 245, doi:10.3390/socsci7120245 ...................157 Suzan G. Brydon “I’ve Got to Succeed, So She Can Succeed, So We Can Succeed”: Empowered Mothering, Role Fluidity, and Competition in Incredible Parenting Reprinted from: Soc. Sci. 2018, 7, 215, doi:10.3390/socsci7110215 ...................180 Michael Macaluso Postfeminist Masculinity: The New Disney Norm? Reprinted from: Soc. Sci. 2018, 7, 221, doi:10.3390/socsci7110221 ...................192 Lauren Dundes, Madeline Streiff and Zachary Streiff Storm Power, an Icy Tower and Elsa’s Bower: The Winds of Change in Disney’s Frozen Reprinted from: Soc. Sci. 2018, 7, 86, doi:10.3390/socsci7060086 ...................202 vi About the Special Issue Editor Lauren Dundes received her undergraduate degree from Stanford University and her doctoral degree from Johns Hopkins University. She has been a professor of sociology at McDaniel College in Westminster, Maryland, USA, since 1996. She has published more than 60 articles, including eight about Disney movies. In the fall of 2018, she taught a seminar called Decoding Disney. vii Preface to ”The Psychosocial Implications of Disney Movies” With its widespread and sustained influence, the Walt Disney Company has achieved iconic status. Its products are a mainstay of popular culture, salient in the everyday lives of people in many countries around the globe. In fact, MDPI data documenting the countries in which readers have accessed the articles in this volume attest to the cross-cultural interest in the Disney megabrand (see these articles below, mentioned parenthetically by author name). The power of the Disney brand has heightened the need for academics to question whether Disney films and music function as a tool of the Western elite that shapes the views of those less empowered (Anjirbag; Armstrong; Hodge). Given its global reach, how the Walt Disney Company handles the role of race, gender, and sexuality in social structural inequality merits serious reflection according to a number of the articles in this volume (Harris; Hine, Ivanovic, and England; Perea; Uppal). On the other hand, some academics argue that Disney productions can help individuals cope with difficult situations or embrace progressive thinking (Brydon; Graham, Yuhas, and Roman; Hine, England, Lopreore, Horgan, and Hartwell; Zurcher, Webb, and Robinson). The different approaches to the assessment of Disney films as cultural artifacts also vary according to the theoretical perspectives guiding the interpretation of both overt and latent symbolic meaning in the movies (Dundes, Streiff Buitelaar, and Streiff; Koushik and Reed; Macaluso; Primo). Regardless of discrepant views about the significance of Disney fare, its films simultaneously mirror societal trends and reshape them. Yet, audience buy-in also governs this interplay. For example, in late summer 2018, a pre-release image from Disney’s Ralph Breaks the Internet: Wreck-It Ralph 2 depicted Disney “princesses” assembled in a group, showcasing their new, updated look. Although most were still recognizable, Princess Tiana, Disney’s only Black princess, was not. Her new biracial appearance provoked an outcry, prompting Disney to revise the animation to make Princess Tiana more closely resemble her original appearance in the Princess and the Frog (2009). Disney’s decision to incur the extra expense necessary to make the changes indicates the power of public reactions in the production of media fare. The increasingly dynamic creation of entertainment media has both expanded the opportunity for audience input and galvanized academics from a variety of disciplines. The 15 studies of Disney films comprising this volume were written by authors from a number of different fields, including the following: education, schooling, and society; sociology; psychology; communications; music; musical theater; business communication; children’s literature; human development and family studies; and geography, media, and communication. The multidisciplinary perspectives presented in this volume are based on a range of methodologies, such as content analysis, interview data, census data tallies, children’s drawings, and Reddit data. The Collection of 15 Articles in the Special Issue In the first article in this volume, Zurcher et al. use a census analysis of 85 Disney animated films from 1937–2018 to examine the portrayal of family dynamics. The authors studied this topic in light of children’s ability to gain insight into their own conflicts by bonding with fictional characters (through so-called parasocial relationships). The authors laud the opportunity for children in single-parent families, disproportionately represented in Disney movies, to model the resiliency of characters facing ix familial challenges they themselves experience. The second article in the volume also discusses how Disney films can model healthy responses to challenging life circumstances and events. In an extension of previous work on the same topic, Graham et al. assess death depictions in Disney films by comparing concepts of death in 23 death scenes from 10 Disney animated films from 1937 to 2003 with 10 death scenes from eight full-length Disney and Pixar animated films from 2003 to