Mickey Mouse Monopoly
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Cody Basford
Multicultural Issues
Deeb Kitchen
12/3/12
Mickey Mouse Monopoly
The film Mickey Mouse Monopoly is an overview of how sociological ideas presented in Disney films effects the cultural development of children. The idea of using “cookie cutter” stereotypes of gender and age to influence how children perceive those of not only different gender, but race, and how they should act and perceive themselves. The film also deals with the idea of how these controlling images of Disneys are unescapable.
The film first touches on the sociological idea of gender, and how Disney implements gender roles in the minds of children at an early age based on stereotypical controlling images in their films. The idea of women being “sirens of seduction” is a common theme in Disney movies. A particular instance of this is found in the example of “The Jungle Book.” Mogeley — the seven or eight year-old main character, blatantly states he wants to live in the jungle with the animals not the humans. At the end of the film, Mogeley is lead out of the jungle by a siren, a young temptress girl of seven or eight who seductively shakes her hips and sings entrancing him and making him choose sex over his true desire to stay in the jungle. The idea of women as seductresses can even be seen in movies where women are portrayed in animal form such as “Fantasia.” These stereotypes are so influential that when performing the “mirror test,” young girls were dancing and caressing their bodies as the girls from the films had done.
Another stereotype of gender is found in Snow White. The princess is perceived as a beautiful, faire, young lady who is nothing like the typical woman you would find in America, living in the woods in solitude who loves to cook and clean up after the dwarves. This idea is similar to that of women having to stay in the house and clean up and cook for the family, and not being able to have a life outside of the home as anything but a caretaker. This idea of women having to stay in the house goes hand in hand with the idea of a women having to be saved by a male character, no matter how strong willed and heated they are.
Secondly the film discusses Disneys failure to identify race, and the identities they associate with race. For example, in the newest Tarzan film, there is not a single human character of color. For a movie that is based in Africa, there should never be a white Tarzan, and gorillas and apes who sound like black people and act as blacks with soul or jazz movements and speech. These gorillas and apes that stand in for the blacks in Disney films often wish they were real men, which is a representation of slavery and the civil rights movements with African Americans