That sounds fine to me. The state it is then, I guess! Alyosha, you can set up the topic next Wednesday, stating your position, then I'll respond early the next morning.
That sounds fine to me. The state it is then, I guess! Alyosha, you can set up the topic next Wednesday, stating your position, then I'll respond early the next morning.
Mister D (10-30-2014)
I honestly wouldn't know. I've never watched The Mickey Mouse Club before. I was referring to animated motion pictures mainly. The essence of my commentary in defense of Disney in this sense would be as follows: That, even in the olden days (1930s-'50s), Walt Disney Pictures was doing something almost revolutionary just in making movies for girls at all. Their competition almost never did so, enabling Disney to pretty much corner that market...and thus become disproportionately susceptible to feminist scrutiny and critiques only because girls actually watched a lot of their movies! Think: If it hadn't been for Disney, film-watching would've been thought of the same way video games have been thought of for decades, pretty much until recently: as a hobby meant for boys and men. In fact, Disney still makes more movies (and TV shows also today, for that matter) for girls today than most of their competition even today, and pretty much corners the preteen girls market.
Now certainly Disney does deserve the criticisms they get from feminists generally, but I'm just arguing that the lopsided focus on critiquing Disney specifically is excessive when you place these things back in their historical context and in perspective, relative to how their competition portrayed/portrays girls and women in as far as those others even bother to. Walt Disney Pictures (which I'm notably distinguishing from Pixar, Disney Princess, and other Disney subsidiaries) has also evolved a lot over the last 25 years in terms of how they represent women on-screen. 25 years ago, we were at The Little Mermaid, which presents young girls with the message that if you're determined enough, look really, really good, and learn to shut up, one day the dashing rich guy of your dreams will solve all your problems by marrying you (or at least that was the message I got from it when I saw it in theaters and on videocassette; it was the first movie I saw in theaters). That, mind you, was the first animated motion picture Disney had made for girls in 30 years. After that though, the company discovered it had a gold mine on its hands and decided to resume its long-neglected princess movie pattern. Their messages started getting more progressive over the next decade, and by 1998 we had arrived at Mulan: the first, and so far only, Disney animated motion picture to star a female action hero (and my favorite Disney cartoon movie to date)! These days, Walt Disney Pictures makes a new movie a year or so and rotates out whether the main target audience will be boys or girls annually. Frozen is their latest movie for girls. I think when I highlight movies like Mulan, Lilo and Stitch, Wreck-It Ralph, and Frozen, you can easily see progress in the way the company portrays the female sex compared against say Snow White, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, 101 Dalmations (which I count as the most openly sexist Disney movie ever), and The Little Mermaid...or even compared against most of their competition (again, save perhaps for Lion's Gate). Walt Disney Pictures typically portrays girls and women as independent these days and tends to refrain from overtly sexualizing their female characters. The most recent Disney cartoon film for girls, Frozen, also has extensive interactions between multiple female characters that don't revolve around boys and men (a rare feat for Hollywood movies) and (in another rare feat for Hollywood) was co-directed by a woman. It was 2013's only top-10-grossing film to have a female director!
While Pixar still sucks when it comes to matters of gender and the Disney Princess line fails to capture the progressive spirit of modern Disney films (e.g. why are girls sold Mulan's traditional Chinese dress that she hated in the movie instead of her armor, which she liked the most, finding it the most comfortable?), Walt Disney Pictures itself has reached a place of near-gender-parity in the way it represents girls and women on-screen. Now faults remain (e.g. why are the Frozen princess's eyes still bigger than their wrists?), but these criticisms seem secondary when compared to what we could say about most of Walt Disney Pictures' competition, which still rarely bothers to even make movies for girls at all!
Last edited by IMPress Polly; 11-01-2014 at 08:52 AM.
You never watched The Mickey Mouse Club?
ΜOΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ
I've heard the theme song and watched like a couple of random sequences at different times (the contents of which I can't even remember now), but that's all. Now my mom says that she watched it all the time and loved it as a kid, but she predates me by 35 years.
Peter1469 (11-01-2014)
oh me. I remember Annette Funicello before she gave up her Mouse ears for a bikini & a beach blanket...
IMPress Polly (11-01-2014),Peter1469 (11-01-2014)
It is a slaughter and a horror still. It was never good and won't get better. Many Inuk are against the commercial mass killing of baby seals still. I thought this was done and never going to be brought back in this way.
Look up the Commercial Seal Hunt 2011 - IFAW videos.
Last edited by Minotaur; 11-02-2014 at 03:26 PM.
That film is $#@!ing disgusting. I got infracted for showing one like it. Maybe the same one! It's still $#@!ing disgusting.
It is quite simple Chloe, you were correct with information you brought to the table. The reason this issue is so discouraging is it is one of the few hunts that involves mass killing of baby seals in a brutal way and baby "anything" as a target are as relatable to humans as puppies.
Our genetic makeup is programmed with some emotional limits so the argument for bashing baby seals just doesn't fly even for many Inuit.