Disney

All week, for our group project, my group and I have been looking through a lot of clips, songs, and pictures from popular Disney films. Seeing so many clips from these popular movies recently, I’ve realized that there is actually a lot of rhetoric in play within the movies, especially within the songs! One of the songs that I kept coming across was from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, one of the movies I watch a lot growing up.

When first watched, it seems as though it is just another innocent Disney love song. In reality, the video is filled with a lot of gender stereotyping! For one, Snow White’s song is about finding a Prince one day. (This seems to be the main topic of every Disney film I’ve ever seen growing up!) It’s not that I don’t like cute love songs, don’t get me wrong, but this song is all about how she will be happy as soon as her Prince finds her again. Why can’t she just be happy even without him there?

Although the lyrics in the song just hint at slight gendered ideas, what makes this clip more evidently sexist is that she is singing about her Prince returning to her to make her happy while she is cooking, a typical female stereotype. For years, cooking, cleaning, sewing, taking care of others, and many other domestic practices have been associated with women. In this video, Snow White is not only cooking, taking care of the Seven Dwarfs (also men), but she is singing about how a man coming I to her life will make her happy. Even though it is not directly evident that this clip is gender stereotyping women, there are still seixist tones within.

However, the context in which this video was produced must be considered when looking at the way Snow White is portrayed. At this time, many women were housewives and took care of their families and other people. So during this time, it was not really a big deal to show women in this way.

So, even though this video segment has sexist undertones according to today’s standards, but when the movie was first produced, it really was the norm.