Fairy Tales For a New Generation: Does Disney portray age and disabilities in a negative manner, or is it a more positive, modern approach?

   When I read this week’s journal assignment about how media is portrayed in culture, I wondered if it had improved over time.  This journey begins with one of the oldest stories known to man: fairy tales and other children’s stories.  How people with aging or disabilities are portrayed in the media influence viewers that watch it (Safran 1998).  Media influences most people in today’s society, as it has in every era.  Like other media, fairy tales build people’s view of society.  Children learn about the world around them from stories, as do the caregivers that read the stories and, today, watch the movies with the children.  Some fairy tales, like Cinderella, are hundreds of years old.  The way the story is told reflects the times they are told. 

In Western literature, villains usually are portrayed as old and/or disabled; anything old or different is “evil”.  “In Western literature, the old woman is often depicted as an ‘old witch’, an ‘old bag’, and an ‘old biddy’, associated with the witches of fairytales such as Hansel and Gretel and Snow-White, in the stories of the Grimm brothers, and caricatured by Chaucer.  Old men are lampooned as ‘old geezers’, ‘old goats’, and ‘old codgers’.  Stereotypes of ageing view the old as ‘put out to pasture’, ‘over the hill’ and ‘all washed up’ (Osgood, 1995, quoted in Brogden 2000, 38).

In the newspaper The Daily Telegraph, Disney is said to “Foster Ageism” (Womack 2007).  The article goes on summarize an academic paper “The portrayal of older characters in Disney animated films,” the cartoons are “ageist” and against the elderly, depicting older people as evil or incompetent influences the children that watch them in a negative manner.  The study concludes, “Disney films may not be the primary source of children's negative perceptions of older people. However, there is evidence that the media do influence children's perceptions” (Robinson 2007).  

In 1950 when Disney finished finished making his version of “Cinderella”, the old are considered “evil”.  The old evil stepmother and her “strange” stepsisters are terrible to Cinderella.  The story starts by explaining how Cinderella came under the stepmother’s care, and a great deal of time is spent showing how terrible they are to her.  However, unlike older versions of the story where the fairy Godmother is young and beautiful, in Disney’s version the fairy Godmother is also old.  So while the main evil character is old, so is the fairy Godmother that saves the day.  Not as bad as on the classic Grimm Brothers story, but not great.     

See the fairy Godmother in this youtube clip:

But has Disney improved since the Robinson 2007 article quoted how terrible Disney is with ageism?  Two years later, Disney’s “The Princess and the Frog” is based on the Grimm Brother’s story, but with a twist.  The story goes Tiana kisses a prince who was changed into a frog by voodoo, and after the kiss Tiana also turns into a frog.  The two frogs then go on to a huge adventure trying to turn back into humans, and fall in love.  In this story, out in 2009, there are no old or disabled bad people.  In face, an old blind voodoo witch is the heroine, and helps them turn back from frogs into humans. 

Another Disney fairy tale made the following year, “Tangled”, is based on the fairy tale Rapunzel.  At the beginning it looks like it is going to be yet another story where age and disability are considered bad, but unlike the other fairy tales that children are raised with, the disabled or different “bad” guys become the heroes.  The story of Tangled begins with the young/old evil villain finding a magic flower that keeps her appearance young for centuries.  The magic flower is then taken from her to cure the queen in child labor.  The queen heals, and the princess Rapunzel develops magical powers from the flower.  When the evil villain finds out that Rapunzel’s hair can keep her from getting aging, she kidnaps baby Rapunzel and raises her as her own.  Rapunzel is never allowed to leave the tower.

Later, Rapunzel escapes with the handsome Flynn.  Rapunzel meets a bunch of men who initially frighten her that are in all sorts of shapes and sizes.  Some are old, some are young, and some are disabled.  When she talks about her dreams, she finds out that they all also have dreams; they are real people like her with real dreams.  For example, one man missing a hand wants to play the piano, another man with too many toes wants a girlfriend; each man has his a different dream.  This diverse group of “misfits”, who begin by stating they are going to turn Flynn to the authorities, turn out to help Rapunzel and Flynn escape, and help them later in the story as well.  Although disabled, old, or just different, they speak of their dreams, and end up being the heroes.

In real life, age and/or disability have nothing to do with whether a person is evil or not.  From my own experiences I have found that the “bad guys” of life are not always someone who is old or disabled.  I know a lot of older people and people with disabilities, and my experience is not like old Western stories and old Disney stories like Cinderella.  I have found like in Tangeled and The Princess and the Frog that being different is not “bad”; diversity in fact is a good thing.  I have found that most people are by nature good and people that I want to get to know.  For example, one of my best friends is 72 years old and may be going blind.  She is no evil witch.  Just because someone is old or different doesn’t make him or her evil. 

Disney’s Princess and the Frog and Tangled tries to have a more modern, excepting approach to diversity.  Is it modern to see aging as good, and more realistic to the truth?  It is possible there is a change in modern views.  According to Janelli and Sorge (2001), after analyzing 61 children’s storybooks that were published between 1991 and 1999, found that “most authors presented realistic stories” (Novak 2009, 13).  Unlike the classic Grimm Brothers traditional stories, and not as serious but still not very positive is Disney’s Cinderella made in the 1950s, modern children’s fairy tales such as the Princess and the Frog and Tangled makes diversity good, and makes everyone good the hero.  The last two years of Disney’s cartoons trying to have a better view of aging is not going to change the past. However, it is a movement in the right direction. Now we have to pick up the pieces of what is already out there to help improve attitudes toward older and disabled people today. 

References

Brogden, M., & Nijhar, P. (2000). Crime, abuse and the elderly.  Portland, OR: Willian Publishing.

Janelli, L. M., & Sorge, L. (2001). Portrayal of grandparents in children’s storybooks: A recent review. Gerontology and Geriatrics Education, 22(2), 69-88.

Robinson, T., Callister, M., Magoffin, D., Moore, J. (2007). The portrayal of older characters in Disney animated films. Journal of aging studies, 21(3), 203.

Novak, M. (2009). Issues in Aging, 2nd ed. Boston, MA: Pearson Education, Inc.

Safran, Stephen P (1998). Disability portrayal in film: reflecting the past, directing the future. Exceptional Children, 64.2, 227+. Academic OneFile. Web. 15 Sep. 2011.