After our discussion on Wednesday about how much children absorb from films became extremely clear to me when I went to babysit on Thursday afternoon. The two boys (ages 5 and 7) had sat down to watch cartoons, (I have no idea what the name of the show was) the general premise of the show was a boy who planned to have the perfect saturday only to have it interrupted by his neighbor. The young girl came over and wanted to play video games with this boy, when he replied "no" the girl began to pretend to cry at which a parent entered the room. The father said to his son (paraphrasing) "son, you have to let her play with you don't you know that girls get whatever they want when they cry, it the law!". Upon hearing this, I was surprised at the blatant stereotyping that was being used and minutes late when the mom of the two boys I work for came home her son asked her "is it true that girls get whatever they want when they cry." Clearly these kids had picked up on the stereotype from the show and were able to analysis it and were trying to understand why it was true.
Aside from distasteful gender and race stereotypes that are so widespread in Disney movies. There is also a surprising amount of violence. Guns are so commonplace that children become desensitized them at an early age. There are numerous occasions of hitting, biting, scratching and attacking in disney movies. A few years ago I did a project for developmental psychology about acts of violence in these movies. I counted 15 acts of violence in The Sword and the Stone, 19 in the Fox and the Hound and 20 in the Great Mouse Detective. Not only are children seeing over a dozen acts of violence portrayed in these movies in a 90 minute film but most children watch Disney movies at least 4 times per week over many years. Children as well as their parents are completely desensitized to the violence being shown in these films and it is unclear to me why Disney finds them necessary to include in their films at all.
Here is an interesting video I found about masculinity and disney films
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