Analyzing the Disney’s stories: Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs

At the beginning of the twentieth century, “fairy tales reinforced the patriarchal symbolical order primarily based on rigid notions of sexuality and gender so did then all of Disney’s productions”. (Bálint, web) These provide patterns as to how 1 should behave and view one’s location in society. They are aimed at both boys and girls, with the male finding out to be wealthy and active while the female learns to obey. I’ll firstly analyze the Walt Disney’s 1st animated princess film, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, created in 1937, from a structuralist point of view.

“For structuralism, the planet as we know it consists of two basic levels— one particular visible, the other invisible. The visible globe consists of what may possibly be known as surface phenomena: all the countless objects, activities, and behaviors we observe, participate in, and interact with every single day. The invisible world consists of the structures that underlie and organize all of these phenomena so that we can make sense of them.” (Tyson, 210) You are not engaged in a structuralist activity if you describe, for example, the structure of a novel to interpret what the operate implies or evaluate it as excellent or negative literature . You are engaged in a structuralist activity if you examine the structure of a big quantity of novels to find out “the underlying principles that govern their composition” for example, principles of characterization like the functions of every character in relation to the narrative as a single piece. (Tyson, 209)

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs illustrates the characteristics of a larger genre, namely the fairy tale. It consists of a lot of of the genre’s most recognisable traits: the stunning princess who has to endure during the story, the wicked stepmother, the woodland setting with cute talking animals, the generous helpers (the huntsman, the dwarfs), the higher occurence of number three:, there are 3 queens: Snow White’s mother, her stepmother, Snow White herself, then there are 3 drops of blood that drip from the very first queen’s hand, the wicked stepmother has to come up with 3 plans to murder the girl at the dwarfs” cottage, and the dwarfs mourn Snow White’s death for 3 days just before burying her. Of course, a quite typical function of all the fairy tales, which is to be observed right here, is the happy ending as we all know that the opponent will die or will be defeated. We usually talk about a excellent ending in all the animated films in the type of the stereotypical Disney scene which appears when the prince need to kiss the princess in order to break the spell and that is when they live happily forever and ever.

According to structuralism, one particular important notion is represented by the binary oppositions, idea utilised to describe theidea that the human mind perceives difference in reality most readily in terms of opposites: “two ideas, directly opposed, each of which we understand by implies of its opposition to the other.” (Tyson, 213) . For example, we percive light as the opposite of dark, female as the opposite of male, good as the opposite of evil, black as the opposite of white, and other individuals.

In Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs the 1st binary opposition that comes to our thoughts is the a single of the victim and the villain, far more specifically the pure princess contrasted with the villainous queen. “The Snow White character is sweet, innocent, passive and domestic, while the evil stepmother is narcissistic, evil and unrepentant” (Walsh, 190). Then, we can determine two kinds of motherhood: an older, jealous, selfish sort, contrasted with the young, sweet purity of Snow White. To say that the evil queen is a bad mother figure is beyond understatement. Snow White, on the other hand, regardless of being a young girl appropriate away becomes a mother figure to the seven dwarfs, earning her place by cooking and cleaning, telling them to go and wash, and typically being the best image of passive domesticity. As a result, Snow White gets her dream prince, and the undesirable queen dies.

Analyzing the narrative pattern we can recognize a religious theme in the episode when the Snow White eats an apple and dies. It tends to make a sturdy comparison to Eve who ate the fruit from the tree of Understanding, and causing Adam and herself to be banished from the Garden of Eden. As is the message in Christianity, so is the message in Disney’s film: curiosity, information and energy in a woman is wrongful and fearful. (Savanna, net). This is also reflected by the wicked mothers and female villains in other fairy tales.

With regards to the idea of gender roles, based on the reality that patriarchal societies dictate how 1 need to act, feel and speak, keeping that biological sex and gender are a single, Disney conforms to these norms in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs film (Course handouts)

Walt Disney produced the story for the duration of the 1930s, a time when ladies have been still related with the domestic sphere and for the most component trapped in classic gender roles. Therefore, due in portion to societal conventions, Disney’s initial princess was characterized as a passive innocent heroine. She is naïve as she gets tricked by her stepmother twice, and even though she is a princess and a child, she is nonetheless taught that in order to be a good girl she must obey what she is told to do. This contains the cooking and cleaning what the dwarfs ask. The other component of becoming a excellent woman is hunting presentable at all instances and hunting better than everybody. This is exactly where the queen in the story fits in. She has become so obsessed by the image in the mirror and being the ideal that she becomes evil. “The story is providing girls mixed messages saying not to obsess about appears but be lovely, and portraying a woman as the heroine, but still saying disobedience of the women’s roles will lead to punishment.” (Andersen, net) As a man of these occasions, the prince who comes in at the final minute to save his future wife, is only attracted by her physical look.

Modern fairy tales are now trying to give a voice to the previously marginalised women of the conventional tales. The silent females of the classic tales have found a voice in modern fairy tales. This can be viewed as a deconstructive technique, and offers new perspectives into how the ideologies governing women these days have changed, and also into how modern fairy tales treat their classic counterparts” ideologies. (Walsh, five)