Gender Roles in Disney and Pixar Essay

Cinderella / Brave

Do films for children reflect a change in gender roles over the past half century or so? It is a truism that gender roles have changed in that time period: the feminine mystique of the 1950s has gradually yielded to greater egalitarianism, such that we now live in a moment when a female presidential candidate is plausible in a way that would not have been possible in the Eisenhower era. I propose to examine the change in gender roles by examining two animated films with central female leads -- Walt Disney's 1950 "Cinderella" and Pixar's 2012 "Brave." I hope to demonstrate that, while each film expresses certain aspects of gender roles that are common to the decade in which it was made, there are elements which make the story slightly more complicated. "Cinderella" may seem like it is more retrograde in terms of gender roles, but my conclusion will demonstrate that there are certain aspects of "Cinderella" which might actually render it more progressive, in a sense, than "Brave" for young female viewers.

We must first examine each film in turn. "Cinderella" dates from 1950, and is essentially one of Walt Disney's earliest productions -- due to the hand-drawn animation style of the era, Disney's level of productivity in the studio was much slower than present-day standards. To a certain degree, the gender roles in "Cinderella" seem retrograde because of the nature of the film's plot. Cinderella, as a character, is beautiful but reduced to a subservient status by her wicked stepmother, who exalts Cinderella's hideous stepsisters above the virtuous pretty heroine. The title of the film, "Cinderella," originally refers to the fact that Cinderella is meant to clean the house and scrub the fireplace, and thus is smudged with ashes. In some sense Cinderella is a story about appearances: the Fairy Godmother who appears to give Cinderella a chance to attend the Prince's ball -- which her ugly stepsisters are attending -- essentially uses magic to perform the equivalent of a cosmetic makeover.Cinderella is outfitted with fashionable clothing, luxury goods, and glass slippers. What is interesting about reviews of Disney's "Cinderella" is that this aspect of the film, in the judgment of critics, seems to have dated over time. Bosley Crowther in his 1950 review for The New York Times found Cinderella's look to be "glamorous" and "voluptuous":

To be sure, the creators of the picture have leaned rather heavily toward a glamorous style of illustration in retailing the conventional romance -- and toward this the more esthetic may take some degree of offense. Out of the pens and the paintpots of Mr. Disney and his boys have emerged a trio of star performers that might be characters from the comic strips. The beautiful Cinderella has a voluptuous face and form -- not to mention an eager disposition -- to compare with Al Capp's Daisy Mae... When Mr. Disney tries to make them behave like human beings, they're banal. (Crowther 1950)

What is interesting is that Crowther in 1950 not only praises Disney's artists for the "glamorous" style, but praises them for allowing the heroine to remain as much like a two-dimensional stock character in a comic strip -- any attempt at depth in characterization seems "banal" to the contemporary New York Times reviewer. Whereas Roger Ebert, reviewing the film in 1987, actually found the style praised by Crowther to be the "banal" part of the film: "Cinderella' seems to come right out of its time, the bland postwar 1950s. Cinderella looks like the Draw Me girl, Prince Charming has all of the charm of a department store dummy and even the wicked stepsisters seem petulant rather than evil." (Ebert 1987). For….....