Disney

 In her chapter, “Unlearning the Myths that Bind Us,” Christiansen’s metaphor of popular culture colonizing people’s minds, especially young people, is really powerful and enlightening. She writes, “Our society’s culture industry colonizes their minds and teaches them how to act, live, and dream.” I, too, watched Cinderella and other famous Disney fairy tales like The Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast and romanticized the idea of women carrying out traditional female gender roles in the home (or under the sea) and waiting to be “saved” or “chosen” by prince charming. In undergrad, I took a literary analysis class on Fairy Tales through URI. This was genuinely the first time (at 20 years old) when my mind was floored by how the original fairy tales written by the Grimm Brothers were altered by Disney to fit American stereotypes and gender roles and “American Dream” unrealistic societal expectations of beauty, romance, and heterosexual relationships. The original story of Snow White, for example, written by the Grimm Brothers, two German writers, was an eerie story that included dissecting Snow White’s body parts after the huntsman killed her. Similarly, in the original story of Repunzal written by the Grimm Brothers, Repunzal’s eyes are gouged out by thorns when she falls out of the tower (or the stepmother’s eyes are gouged out- I can’t remember). The following year at URI, I took a literature course where we read classic texts and analyzed them through a racial and gender lens. Through this class, (at 21 years old), I was exposed to racial oppression and colonization references in classic texts and couldn’t help but think of the classic fairy tales and specifically the lack of racial representation or the racist representation of the racial other in classic texts and in fairy tales. 

This is the first time I am critiquing these familiar fairy tales through a Disney lens, specifically. This “secret education” as Christiansen references is also eye opening, as I had never considered Disney in this way before- with ulterior motives to endocrine children. While I do not have a relationship with Disney besides watching the popular princess movies growing up and going, unwillingly, to Disney World one time with an ex-boyfriend's family, I have had a naive perception of Disney, thinking that the industry was harmless and nothing really but a way for kids to get together with their families and take pictures with their favorite princess. After going 5 years ago, I do remember watching the staff, especially the restaurant staff in Epcot, and questioning if labor laws applied in Epcot.