Illustrate Stereotypical Gender Roles

Starting from the 1930’s with the Walt Disney Company’s first animated feature film, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Disney has begun to illustrate stereotypical gender roles. Fast-forward to 2013, almost eighty years later, Disney still continues to shape the mold of depicting their main characters as one-dimensional and cliché symbols of their gender. By being a household go-to of movies the whole family can enjoy, some people tend to overlook the questionable gender roles because of the old-fashioned beliefs performed during the release of the movies.

When Frozen, Disney’s 53rd animated feature film, opened, some people were quick to claim it a revolutionary feminist movie because it had what no other Disney movie had before it: two female leading heroines and a focus on the love between two sisters. People were also quick to point out that Frozen is a reformer of past Disney animations because it passes the Bechdel test.

The Bechdel test is a general indicator used by some to determine if a movie is a feminist one by its gender inclusivity.

The rules of the Bechdel test are simple: “[the movie] has to contain at least two women in it, who talk to each other, about something besides a man”. While Frozen does indeed pass the Bechdel test, so does Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Disney’s arguably most sexist film. But passing a mere test, that doesn’t represent the number of female characters or their role in the movie, does not excuse the characterization of prejudiced gender roles in Frozen or even Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

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According to a Washington Post article, while Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs has a two to ten female-male character ratio, Frozen, despite having less male main characters, still gives less than 50 percent of words spoken in the entire movie to its female roles. The article then continues to explain that the problem with newer Disney films is that there are more male side characters with spoken lines than female characters in total, main or not. Even with one or two lines of spoken dialogue, these small roles are mostly drawn as symbols of the male gender.

Even if Disney movies gave an equal amount of lines to each gender, there is still an active imbalance of the number of female to male characters. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs has a staggering 10 male characters to two females. Although Frozen, as previously stated, has less male leads than Snow White, there are still only two female main roles. In the original story that Frozen is based off, The Snow Queen by Hans Christian Andersen, most of the central characters are women. The Walt Disney Company leaned over backward to change the gender of the characters, but for what reason? If the main focus of the movie is supposedly the relationship between the two sisters, why include a male love interest for Anna? Arguing that the inclusion of the character Hans to give the movie a necessary antagonist doesn’t explain the unnecessary addition of Anna’s second male love interest, Kristoff into the story. Likewise, the portrayal of Olaf, a snowman, or Sven, the reindeer, as male characters can be argued as irrelevant and redundant additions to the plot.

One of the biggest concerns of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs are the characteristics of their two female characters; Snow White and the Queen. Having only two female roles featured in the film, with one of the two being a villain who supply gets a title for a name, says a great deal on Disney’s belief about women who resemble the characters, not just in looks but in personalities too. The representation of the villainess as self-reliant, powerful, and strong is Disney’s way of saying that these traits shouldn’t be valued or desired in women or in society. Disney is essentially saying if you embody independence and power, you’re not the beautiful and loving princess, you’re the evil witch.

Snow White embodies the classic gender stereotype by doing the only things she knows best; cooking and cleaning. Disney’s adaptation of Snow White follows the belief of the cult of domesticity. This belief describes that is it their innate emotionality that requires women, more than men, to perform this type of unpaid work. The relationship between Snow White and the dwarfs displays the stereotypical roles of both genders; the portrayal of women as mothers in their domesticated fate, and the need for men to be reduced to workers who can’t take care of themselves but must serve as a protector of women. The dwarfs depend on Snow White to keep their cottage and themselves clean, in exchange for her dependence on them for protection.