How old are you and what is your dream job, based on your ideal Disney princess?

This quiz is unbelievably accurate besides the fact that it guessed me to be a 37 year old, potential reality TV show star. Fortunately, I'm still 18 and will never be on a reality TV show.

To see your results follow the link: https://www.buzzfeed.com/jennaguillaume/diy-disney-princess?utm_term=.llPb9dJGRO#.nc3Q0ZaPpx

Disney built a room that can charge your phone!!!

The title really says most of what needs to be said, but how crazy is that? A room that can charge my phone would change everything. Phones will never die ever again. Also since when is Disney a tech company?

For full article follow this link: http://6abc.com/science/disney-builds-room-that-can-wirelessly-charge-your-phone/1772768/

Sexuality and Gender in The Lion King

Knowing what I know now, I am going to take a deeper look into The Lion King and its statement on sexuality and gender through analysis of this article. http://www.academia.edu/4893757/The_Representations_of_Gender_Sexuality_and_Race_in_Disney_s_The_Lion_King

The article first starts off by addressing the role that a patriarchal society has on its members. It talks about how the lionesses are seen as inferior and secondary to the men. The men lead the pride and hold the important positions, while the females just hunt, gather, and care for the cubs. Further, once Scar become king of Pride Rock, there were many lionesses that could have easily defeated Scar and claimed back Pride Rock. The fact that the lionesses don’t rise up shows the weakness and passivity of the females. While this is all true within the movie, there is a very obvious reason: this is how nature works. This isn’t a westernized human civilization, it’s a pride of wild lions. In nearly all aspects of nature, the male tends to be the dominant figure. If the female lionesses had more power and authority, it would lead children to have a false perception of the reality of nature. The only way I could get behind these arguments would be if the characters from the movie were human, not animals.

The next point that this article makes is that Scar is a homosexual figure in the movie.

As a child, this would've been one of the last thoughts that went through my head. Scar defeats a king and takes over a pride of lions, which is usually indicative of very masculine figures. So what is it that makes Scar come off as a homosexual character? For starters, there are a few physical indications of Scar’s sexuality. Scar is significantly weaker than Mufasa, which proves to be the case with grownup Simba, as well. Next, Scar kind of struts across the screen in a relatively feminine way, flipping his head and looking all sassy. Scar’s unique walk can be seen during one of his songs, “Be Prepared.”

Outside of physical indicators, there are a few more ways that Disney portrays Scar as a homosexual character. In nature, the king or leader of a group will almost always try to have offspring so that one day they can pass the thrown down to their kin. However, Scar makes absolutely no effort to mate with any lionesses and reproduce. Virtually, the main reason why this would be the case is because Scar isn’t attracted to lionesses and therefore cannot reproduce with them. Moreover, he actually appears to detest heterosexual relationships. This can be seen when Scar is disgusted by Mufasa and Sarabi’s relationship and by their offspring Simba. The article actually says that one of the reasons that Scar didn’t show up to the presentation of Simba after his birth was because Scar is against heterosexual mating and the byproduct of it (offspring). While this last point may be a bit of a stretch, I do believe most of their reasoning behind Scar’s apparent sexuality.

A Little Art Project

No coasters for those icy drinks? No problem! Make some Disney coasters super easily:

https://style.disney.com/living/2016/07/01/diy-minimalist-character-coasters/

If you have some extra time

If you find yourself bored, see if you can guess which Disney character's browser history these are:
https://www.buzzfeed.com/anjalipatel/can-you-guess-the-disney-princess-based-on-their-b?utm_term=.tlR2mrzAXR#.tu3ZoBN8DX

The Beauty and the Beast

Unlike Cinderella and Ariel, Belle is a far more progressive character. First off, Belle is an avid reader, which is quite surprising because of how few Disney princesses display signs of academic intelligence. Belle also has real hopes and aspirations aside from finding a man and marrying him happily ever after. One of my favorite parts is that Belle’s father actually supports her endeavors to read and learn. There are still many fathers in the world today who don’t think women need to go to college or get as good of an education as men. Belle combats those beliefs. She also, unlike so many other Disney princesses, sees through people’s appearances. Gaston is strong, handsome, and available, but Belle recognizes that he is not a good person and doesn’t have a good personality.

To address the most obvious concern with this movie – yeah that’s totally bestiality. I’m kind of shocked that as a kid I wasn’t at all concerned that this woman is falling in love with a gigantic beast. Watching the movie now its pretty weird watching the intimate scenes. It kinda gives me the heebie jeebies.

There are a few stereotypes that I definitely missed as a kid because when I saw a talking candlestick or a talking clock I didn’t look much farther into it. First, Lumiere, the candlestick has a thick French accent and fills the role as well. He is a romantic who loves cooking and dating, which tends to be a typical Frenchman. Cogsworth the clock is portrayed as a strict rule follower. This kind of makes me think of those British people that stand motionless outside Buckingham Palace in the red uniforms. I’ve always wanted to go mess with one of them (I digress).

As a big fan of action movies, I love the Gaston versus Beast final fight scene. The Beast shows off how much he really cares for Belle, calling out her name multiple times throughout the fight. He starts off dejected and then rallies to defeat that sun of a gun Gaston. After he beats him and is up on the rooftop with Belle I actually felt so content and happy for them.

Another recurring theme I’ve seen in Disney movies is the villain’s final blow in the climax. After Simba defeated Scar, he acted cocky like he had already won and then Scar pounced and almost came back and beat Simba. The same thing happens in the final fight scene of The Beauty and the Beast. Beast thought he had already won and he climbs up to Belle, paying no attention to the still alive Gaston behind him. Gaston sneaks up and stabs him in his side almost making the Beast nearly fall off the roof. Of course, there is a happy ending so Gaston falls off and Beast doesn’t, but damn that was a little close for comfort.

My Take on Cinderella

Just to start off, I never realized how crappy of an animation Cinderella is. The opening scene looked so old I was taken aback. The features on the characters aren’t particularly defined well. For example, whenever you see Cinderella’s feet, she doesn’t actually have toes. Just a foot. Also the movement of the characters’ mouths is far from perfect and hardly matches the words they’re saying sometimes.

Just like so many other Disney movies there is gender discrimination ever so present in Cinderella. For starters it is made pretty clear that women are meant to be in the house cleaning, cooking, and doing other housewife tasks. Cinderella is actually made into a servant, which emphasizes how some men actually treat women even to this day. By far the most egregious form of gender prejudice is the women’s idea of happiness. Every woman has one goal and one goal only find a man to marry. Women aren’t encouraged to get jobs or follow their dreams; they are wired to find the man who will take care of them. Moreover, in Cinderella’s case, the only way that it seems possible for her to escape her terrible life is for a man to come and save the day. Cinderella couldn’t just leave the house to be an independent woman because that would be ludicrous.

In my opinion, the worst lesson that this movie teaches is that beauty is only on the outside. When the prince sees Cinderella, he falls in love immediately. For all he knows, Cinderella is just as evil as her stepmother, but he is only concerned about her looks. This teaches the young audience that watches this movie that they don’t need be kind or sweet like Cinderella, all that matters is that they’re as pretty as Cinderella.

In all fairness, the Disney version of Cinderella is based off of Perrault’s version from 1697. As you might imagine, women were treated far worse in the seventeenth century than they are today. Further, the Disney version was made in 1950. There was still an excessive amount of gender discrimination in the 50’s that certainly played a roll in the movie’s prejudices.

Enough of me being so critical. What do I like about Cinderella? Despite how it might seem based on what I’ve said so far I do still enjoy the movie. Some of my favorite characters are the mice and the birds. I absolutely love the scene where Jaq and Gus have to steal the key and deliver it all the way upstairs. It also shows how amazing Cinderella is. In a way she is a great role model. She is tortured, enslaved, and abused by her stepmother and stepsisters, but not for a single second does she take that anger out on anyone or lose her caring nature. I know that if I was in her position, I would definitely be grumpy and rude towards people with all that bottled up anger.

Finally, the best part of the movie is seeing the look on that stupid stepmother’s face when Cinderella pulls out the second shoe. Every time I see that I want to jump into the movie and scream “YOU LOSE,” right at her smirking face.

The Little Mermaid

Almost nothing reminds me of my childhood quite like The Little Mermaid. I used to put the VCR in and watch it with my cousins 2 times through before we decided to switch to a different movie. One of my favorite parts about this is that many of the times I watched the movie it was in Spanish. My father and cousins are from Argentina so they preferred the Spanish version. I didn’t know a single word of Spanish, but I would watch completely attentively time and time again. That’s one of the beauties of this movie. I didn’t need to know what they were saying to feel empathy for Ariel or to feel that hatred towards Ursula; I got the content of the movie just by watching body language and actions.

Now that I got that out of the way, time for my take on the ENGLISH version of the movie. For starters, “Under the Sea” is still one of my favorite Disney songs to this day. Its got the upbeat melody and I love Sebastian’s Jamaican accent. The song has an extremely “beachy” feel that makes me think I am chilling outside by a pool.

One of the things that I definitely didn’t notice as a kid were the glaring stereotypes present in the film. There is a very misogynistic nature to how Ariel tries to gain Eric’s love. For starters, it is just assumed that she should ditch her entire life and family to go live with him. Not for a second was it an option that Eric would come live “Under the Sea.” This is the case in many male-dominated societies, but proves to be blatantly unfair towards the woman. Another huge problem is that Ariel is forced to change her body so that it works best for the man. This reminds me a lot of the end of Grease (1978), where Sandy does a full transformation so she can be the perfect girl for Danny. So many women in today’s society are pressured into conforming to society’s idea of the perfect body. Even further, Ariel is forced to give up her greatest talent for the man she wants, while he sacrifices absolutely nothing. This is just like how so many women have to give up their passions and dreams to fit the role of a normal house wife. So basically Ariel is giving up her home, her body, and her greatest talent for a dude who isn’t giving up anything… sounds like a bunch of bull**** to me. Another stereotype is that can be seen is Sebastian. Sebastian is the typical laid back Jamaican who just wants to relax and chill. He tries to convince Ariel to stay and not become human because everything is good and easy.

Watching this film again definitely changed how I view. Its always going to be hard not to notice the relatively obvious prejudices and stereotypes, but in the end its always a fun movie to watch.