DISNEY RESEARCH ESSAY YEAR 2

1. This essay will look at and address the psychological and emotional effect Disney has on the
development of young children; to do this I will be covering 3 key topics. Firstly, ‘relationships', in
this category I will talk about several of the issues that Disney portray when conveying relationships
such as romantic and family connections. This will cover the psychological part of the research. The
second topic I will discuss is ‘Behavioural’; under this subheading I will look at and address the
actions and behaviour of young children, focusing specifically on the different genders and how a
male's perception may differ to that of a female. To do this I will refer to a study that addresses and
identifies differences between reactions to the toys that were chosen by different genders.
Furthermore, I will look at a variety of Disney characters focusing on behaviour and morals that are
portrayed in the films. The final subheading is ‘Physical’ and for this I will address the way in which
Disney portrays female and male characters and how this could influence young children and the
issues that may arise from these portrayals, for example, body image and gender stereotypes.
In support of the points that will be mentioned there are several differing theories that I will relate
back to, Reception Theory, Audience Theory and the Uses and Gratifications Theory. Furthermore, I
will also be referencing the key theorist Jean Baudrillard who was a French sociologist, best known
for his analysis of media, contemporary culture and technological communications and in particular
his formulation of concepts such as simulation and hyperreality. I will be looking at the book
‘Simulacra and Simulation’ by Baudrillard because this has information that I can tie back into my
topic.
The first topic I am going to explore is relationships. What I want to focus on is how Disney portrays
relationships and in particular family relationships, I will be discussing the negative and positive
portrayals and look at how this could affect young children. During my research I came across a book
called ‘The Psychological Implications of Disney movies’ (Dundes 2019) this book discusses death
and the process of grieving and how Disney makes it easier for children to cope with grieving. It
mentions how Disney makes death more realistic for example it portrays characters dying of illnesses
or old age which is more realistic than character’s dying by a sword fight. This allows children to get
an insight into the concept of death and by having a character die from realistic causes it helps
children understand the process of grieving. Not only does this book support the idea of Disney
portraying death in a realistic way it also mentions how Disney shows the two main coping strategies
in children: support seeking and escapism. This means that when children are faced with death, they
would have seen similar situations already portrayed and therefore could provide them with some sort
of comfort. The next relationship I am going to discuss is the relationship between a character and
their stepmother, in particular the princess characters and their relationship to their stepmothers.
Starting with Cinderella her stepmother Lady Tremaine forced her to live in the attic and do every
household chore, the first half of the Cinderella (1950) film focuses on us seeing Cinderella do
everything she can to get approval from her stepmother. I came across a research study that
investigated the media and how it can affect young children; ‘The Portrayal of Families across
Generations in Disney Animated Films’ (Zurcher 2018) One part that stood out to me was when they
mentioned how children often get portrayed reality mixed up with reality. Often children associate
qualities of television families with real life families and I thought this was interesting because if I go
back to Cinderella and the relationship between her and her stepmother it creates a stigma surrounding
stepmothers. Using the same research study it mentions how when lead characters suffered the loss of
a parent this often featured the absence of the mother rather than the father; ‘63% of Disney
Princesses had fathers compared to 25% who only had mothers.’(Hecht 2011) It’s suggested that
through Disney’s portrayal of marginalized women and elevated men within the nuclear family that
the need for a princess to find love and a marriage for herself surfaced. This study also mentions that
Garlen and Sandlin (2017) declared that audiences might create unrealistic expectations of family,
love, marriage that are socially harmful to women through the repetitive consumption of Disney
princess films. Garlen and Sandlin further stated that a consistent emphasis on true love, marriage and
the romantic ideal prolongs the belief that happiness can only be achieved by finding one’s “true
love”. This ties back to my statement because these ideas can be impressionable to young children and
as a result it could distort their perception on reality as I mentioned earlier that children can get

2. portrayed reality and reality mixed up. This relates to the Uses and Gratifications Theory (Blumler
and Katz 1974) where reasons why audience members might consume a media text is outlined. The
one that I am focusing on is the ‘personal relationships’ point where they mention that consumers use
the media for emotional and other interactions; this is relevant to the relationship part because it could
apply to young children as they might use Disney families as a substitute to their own, which also fits
into another factor in this theory ‘escapism’ where the consumers go to escape from everyday
problems and this is the same for young children, which could result in anti-social behaviours later in
life.
I want to look at the behavioural aspects of young children and how Disney affects this, whether it’s
positive or negative. I’m going to be looking at a study that took place by Brigham Young University,
Texas Tech University and Linfield College in the US, which was funded by the Women's Research
Initiative (Bazian 2016). This longitudinal study looked at how Disney princess media might affect
young children’s gender specific behavior, investigating whether there was any link between the
amount of exposure to Disney and gender specific behavior over the course of a year. The researchers
started by taking baseline measurements of a child’s gender related behavior, and tracked their
exposure to Disney princess material and tested them again over the year to see if there were any
changes. They had the parents fill in a questionnaire to establish their children’s exposure to Disney.
As expected, girls had a lot more princess exposure than boys in terms of watching more princess
media and identifying with princesses, for example more than 61% of girls played with Disney
princess related toys at least once a week compared to only 4% of boys. Watching more princess
media, identifying with princesses and playing with princess toys over the course of a year predicted
stronger female gender-stereotypical behaviour at the end of the study, irrespective of the starting
level. What I thought was interesting regarding the results of this study is that they found that high
exposure to princesses predicted higher body esteem in boys and more social behaviour, nevertheless
engagement with princesses was not associated with poor body esteem in girls. This is a positive side
of Disney because it promoted higher body esteem in boys and still wasn’t related to low self esteem
in girls, however in relation to behaviour it states that there was stronger gender stereotypical
behaviour which could be seen as a negative depending on which Disney films were watched. For
example if they watched classic films such as ‘Cinderella’ (1950) or ‘Snow White’ (1938) some of the
behaviours exhibited in these films could be seen as ‘old fashioned’ for example Snow White is only
content when she is cleaning up after other people which enforces gender stereotypes and could leave
an impression on young children. Furthermore the dwarfs are expected to go out and work which
emphasises gender stereotypical behaviour, however it is seen to be enjoyable, this ties back into a
book that I found whilst researching ‘Disney, Pixar, and the Hidden Messages of Children's Films’
(Booker 2010). Booker includes a short list of the structural assumptions of Disney films, as an
example they portray physical labour however it is often shown as enjoyable and rewarding, and this
is something that is going to leave a positive impression on young children. Compared to if they
watched more modern films such as ‘Moana’ (2016) it would promote the idea of a strong identity
and it also challenges those gender stereotypes. A similar study took place (Wolfe N/A) where they
found that the majority of boys aged 5-13 preferred playing with ‘girl toys’ however this was as a
result of being placed in a room alone and being reassured no one else would find out, and some of
the boys answered saying “that their dad would find it bad if they found out”. This ties into audience
theory (Laswell 1920) and in particular the hypodermic syringe model where the concept is the media
injects ideas and beliefs into the audience, and this relates to the stereotypical view that boys
shouldn’t be interested in girls toys and vice versa. Even though this is an out-dated model and these
views are changing there is still that stereotypical view and this leaves a negative impression on
young children, which results in where children are forced to play within a rigid binary based on their
perceived gender. Further research that I have carried out looks into the bechdel test, this test is an
analysis of how women are portrayed in popular culture, I will specifically be looking at Disney films.
To pass the test the film must meet three requirements: It must have at least two named female

3. characters, the second requirement is that they must talk to each other, then the last requirement is that
they have to talk about something other than a man. I have looked into this test because I think it plays
a key part in terms of gender behaviour and stereotypes, for example if I refer to ‘The Little Mermaid’
(1989) it does pass the first requirement however when Ursula and Ariel have a conversation the
majority of it is about Ariel becoming a human so she can be with Eric. This links into my statement
because it portrays the lead female character discussing changing herself to be with a man, which
sends the wrong message to young children and not just girls it also affects boys because this could
teach them to expect women to change for them. Nevertheless this is an older film so if I look at a
newer film such as ‘Moana (2016)’ this does pass the test because there are at least two female
characters that are named and they do talk about something other than men when they talk to each
other, especially in ‘Moana’ as Moana talks a lot about going places and exploring, and there is no
mention of marriage in the film. This is a good example of how Disney are changing to fit with the
modern views on gender, it also sends a positive message to young girls in particular as it conveys a
strong female identity.
The final subheading will be to discuss the physical aspects of Disney films, focusing on body image.
(Hatheway N/A). This website has multiple subheadings and under the ‘Deconstruction of Disney
princesses’ there is a discussion about the affect Disney has on body image. It mentions that 94% of
Disney princess films discuss physical appearance and within each film the discussion happens 13.6
times. It ranges from 0-114 for the female appearance compared to 0-35 times in relation to the male
appearance, it wouldn’t be obvious to young children about how many times body image is
mentioned. However, if this is related to audience theory the idea that someone has to look a certain
way is being ‘injected’ into society from a young age. Another point to mention is that it’s important
to understand the relation of physical beauty compared to other qualities, in 31% of the stories beauty
and goodness are associated with each other and most often referring to the princess as being chaste
and innocent, whereas ugliness and evil are related in 17% of the stories. For example Snow White’s
stepmother is seen as independent and is sure of what she wants. However, this is ridiculed and she is
labelled as the antagonist, which contrasts with Snow White who is compliant and naïve especially in
the 1938 film. Throughout the majority of the films the antagonist is depicted as less attractive than
the protagonist commonly representing them as ugly and evil, and putting the positive personality
attributes such as intelligence and independence onto the unattractive antagonistic character leads
young girls, in particular, to want to associate with the personality tributes of the princess. This ties
into Jean Baudrillard who was a French sociologist who focused on hyper-reality; in particular I am
going to look at the book ‘Simulacra and Simulation’ (Baudrillard 1994). Baudrillard references
Disney multiple times in this book, he mentions that Disney is concealing something ‘real’ and he
mentions that Disney is ‘hyper real’ and this is defined as an image or simulation that either, distorts
the reality it purports to depict or does not depict anything with a real existence at all, but which
nonetheless comes to constitute reality. From this I can infer that what he means is that Disney is
distorting the idea of reality, primarily mentioned in my earlier topic ‘relationships’, where it ties into
family relationships being distorted in the film. This is similar with body image, and how Disney
distorts the portrayal of body image, which doesn’t reflect reality at all. I came across an article (June
2016) where it discusses how self-esteem and body image differ between the genders; Sarah Coyne
who is a researcher at Brigham Young University says “Disney Princesses represent some of the first
examples of exposure to the thin ideal. As women, we get it our whole lives, and it really does start at
the Disney princess level, at age three and four.” What I thought was interesting about this article is
that it states another compelling find where Disney princess culture has what would consider to be a
positive effect on boys, even though the gendered stereotypes were seen across both genders and
when it came down to body image the boys had a higher sense of self-esteem. Coyne then goes on to
mention “These beneficial effects suggest that princesses provide a needed counterbalance to the
hyper masculine superhero media that boys usually encounter.” I found this interesting because it
links into the study where they found the boys had a better self esteem compared to the girls. I think
reception theory (Stuart Hall 1973) is relevant to this because it’s how the spectator views the film
and there are three types of spectators; the first one is the dominant reader who take in the work as

4. given by the director with no extra notes attached, the second is the negotiated reader who thought
they know and are aware of the acts made in the film are wrong but accept it because there is a reason
behind it. Therefore accepting the author’s message even though it goes against the audiences’
personal convictions. The last one is the oppositional reader who has no acceptance for the author’s
takes on the concept of the film or the subject it handled. It can be morally wrong, emotionally
disturbing, contents of violence, religious belief, political outlooks etc., which will make the audience,
reject the idea. All this ties into the previous point about Disney’s affect on body image within
different genders, because it could be suggested that depending on the gender they could watch the
film differently and therefore get different interpretations of the film resulting in opposing ideals.
After summarising the research regarding emotional, behavioural and physical influences and their
impact on child development, I have found that Disney can have an effect on young children. For
example, positive effects include how Disney may help children in the process of grieving, in that
they see it happen to a character in which they relate to thus finding it less of a lonely process. What
was notable was the promotion of self-esteem and positive outlook in young males. Furthermore the
research suggests that there was no lasting impact in relation to young females and body image.
However, the evidence also suggests a negative impact such as how young males thought it would be
bad if their dad found that they were playing with princess toys so there does seem to be some
conflicting points. In my opinion from the research I have summarized Disney does seem to be having
a positive impact on the development of young children, particularly in the recent films where they
are starting to change the stereotypical interpretation regarding gender.
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