Disney Diversity: Gender Roles

Disney isn't exactly known for its most diverse range of characters. With a grand total of 24 non-white main characters in its major feature films, not including animals of which there were 61 and 59 white main characters. Of the 144 characters I counted, 16% were non-white. With a total of 4 main characters with mental illnesses, no main characters with a physical disability, you start to wonder are Disney changing or sticking to their formula of Blonde blue eyed girl gets saved by the man?

Disney certainly started off in the Male saving the Female formula, with the 5 of the first 6 being a man saving the woman, with the exception of Beauty and the Beast; Technically Belle saves Adam by loving him but he trapped her and whatnot, not the best female empowerment. Their lives appeared to revolve around some sort of suffering they did nothing to change about and then get out of the suffering by finding and marrying a man of some sort.  But after these 6, we have Pocahontas and Mulan. These Women are interesting for two reasons. Both are People of Colour and women who save their 'man'.  Pocahontas, released in 1995, follows Pocahontas who was going to have to marry Kocoum from her Native American tribe but then falls in love with the Englishman John Smith.  Kocoum gets mad and gets killed which starts a war between the Natives and the English, and Pocahontas saves John Smith from execution. It's a shame that Pocahontas is underrated as a Disney film, she decides she doesn't want to marry this man, falls in love of her own accord and then saves her love. Not only is she strong and independent, she is smart and teaches John Smith about the important things in life. She goes against her Father and her tribe to love this English man, who the Native Americans hate. It was a great stepping stone for reversing gender roles in children's media.

Skip forward 3 years, and we have the iconic Mulan. Plot of Mulan, Mulan gets sent to matchmakers, messes up matchmaking, and brings dishonour on family. Father gets called to imperial army to fight against Huns, he's too old. She takes his place in the dead of night, joins the army. After a period of failing at being a solider, she figures it out with her own intelligence.  She almost single-handedly defeats the Hun army but is discovered as a girl and is left in the mountains in disgrace. Goes to capital and defeats Huns again and saves the whole of China. And after all that the general follows her home to apologise and gets invited for dinner. There is no kiss, not a hug, but a simple invitation to dinner.  She doesn’t gain a husband, captured a suitor by being herself, a woman who doesn’t take no passes, a woman who fought for her country and family’s honour and a woman who broke a patriarchal law to save her elderly father. Mulan is the Woman who didn’t have the attitude to fit into the perfect bride formula, the soldier that didn’t have the body shape to fit the perfect soldier formula. So she created her own criteria for herself. A person with the body of a female, the attitude of a man and the aspirations of a human being. She broke the female gender role in a society where superstition and discrimination occurred against women every single day of their lives. Their role was to bear sons. This film came out in 1998, the turn of the century, things were getting better for Women, but this film was a little late to the party, with the equal pay act starting in the early 70s. But this was one of the first great representations of strong women in the media and is still an amazing representation of women, especially with the recent win for the sexual discrimination of women in china.

Lilo and stitch was a strange film in the Disney formula with the idea of a dog like alien coming to earth learning the power of family love it certainly wasn’t the princess romance film they had shown before then.  But Lilo and Stitch showed something different, it showed that a young female with an older female as a parental figure could carry a whole film without a male human main character to accompany them along their journey. The whole film was about the bonds of family, with a slight side of romance from Nani and David, but the whole film wasn’t centred on them. It was centred on little Lilo. The girl who fed peanut butter sandwiches to a fish that control the weather, when the weather killed her parents, the little girl who was called a freak, but she remains strong throughout thanks to Stitch. He helps her as she helps him. She teaches him the rules of living on earth while he doesn’t want to know about it, he wants to get away from this island to go destroy cities. But Lilo with her quirky attitude and strange insight into life sees the good in him and helps him adjust to life on the island with her. She doesn’t change to suit him; she changes him to suit her, making him a better being than he was before.

Another example of the woman changing the man to make him better, although this man isn’t the blank slate stitch is. Tiana is a strong and hard working woman, who gives up all her time to get her restaurant and what is she met by racism and sexism when she clearly can achieve what she strives to. And she holds strong in the face of that racism, she doesn’t hate the racists, the people who said she couldn’t, she just bounces back with 10 times the force and strive so they can’t deny her offer for the restaurant, which does coincidentally involve an alligator but that’s here nor there. She knows what she wants and sacrifices everything to get it. While Prince Naveen is a spoilt, pampered who doesn’t know how to keep it in his pants. She doesn’t simply compromise with his nasty attitude and love him nonetheless, she falls in love with him, because he is what she isn’t and he is willing to fix his flaws to get her and keep her. He was willing to get a job to help her. He can do nothing while she does absolutely everything. He starts to do more for her, like he should, and he learns. He is in the passive royalty position in this relationship, while she has the male centred drive and determination in the relationship, while still being herself the beautiful confident Tiana. The princess and the frog have the gender roles from earlier films completely reversed and that especially for their first African American princess, it was the perfect time to completely flip the roles.

Disney has certainly improved throughout the year, with their Princess growing from weak passive women of royalty to a diverse range of active strong women of all classes. They’ve taken a big leap over the years and it shows. With Frozen, the latest set of Disney princesses and Queen, the strength of these two women really shows, with Women and Men identifying more and more with these women than with Snow white or Cinderella whose lives seemed to revolve around getting married or just finding a man. So in this sense, Disney has really diversified its range of gender roles for both women and men.

Disney Diversity: Mental illness

With frozen in cinemas, it has received its fair amount of criticism from the internet. With it being so loosely based on ‘the Snow Queen’, people are asking how is it really an adaptation, especially after losing all the strong female characters that the story had and seeming to replace them with male characters instead. It seems to some that Disney has a lot to answer for.

But with one of its main characters having serious depression and anxiety, it seems Disney is finally realising that people aren't all the same. But if you look back it becomes more obvious about their changing stance on mental illness. Starting with Wreck it Ralph, with Vanellope Von schweetz, Calhoun and Wreck it Ralph himself having some sort of mental illness or metaphor for it. Ralph has depression from the 30 years of neglect, with his light being Vanellope in the film he starts his journey to recovery. Calhoun has a more interesting and rarely seen mental illness. She experiences a trigger from the words 'Dynamite gal' causing her to relive those traumatic memories from her past, it was amazing to see post traumatic stress disorder being shown in such a strong female character. But Vanellope is the most interesting mental disorder. While it's half a metaphor and half a character trait, her 'glitching' extremely resembles a mental disorder in the tourettes scale. It's uncontrollable and random, but the greatest thing about Vanellope is how relatable she is. She is absolutely loved by the public, with children to fully grown adults identifying with her, because of her experience of her disorder and the bullying it caused.

And Frozen with Queen Elsa, the girl who was told by her parents to hide her skills and fear them, not to nurture them. She developed anxiety by the pain she caused Anna and became depressed because of the shut in life for Anna’s protection. Elsa is not a typical Disney princess, she is scared and hurt. Even in her main song she sings about herself letting go, but really she is running away from her problems and shutting everyone one out even more than she is. By embracing her Ice powers, she decided to shut the doors again. Elsa isn’t perfect, anything but, she almost kills three people in the course of the movie and lets not count the people stuck in Arendelle, who would of died if the winter had not of thawed. Her face becomes strained in anger at points, and is all about self-preservation for a section,  creating a giant snowman fuelled by her anger to protect her from everything. Elsa is incredibly flawed, with the majority of her flaws being in her mental illnesses. But she is loved for these flaws. Elsa gets angry, Elsa gets anxious, Elsa is powerful and amazing and people want to be like Elsa, able to realise that she needs to take responsibility for what she has done and that she can no longer hide in her head full of worries and depression.

And so maybe Disney is behind other animation companies on diversity, but they are taking baby steps, with such a loved and powerful character being loved. They’ve come a way since snow white, but Disney have still a way to go till they catch up with their competition.

Dangan Ronpa; It is what it says on the tin.

So my first thoughts about Dangan Ronpa were, why is there pink blood?  Why is there a bear running a school?  What the hell is going on?!?

Well that's the thing about this anime, I can tell you nothing will make sense till you get to the last episode, where everything will be explained, and you end up face palming due to the pure stupidity and how you didn't see that earlier.

Following the adventures of 15 students, who are the best in their respective field for their age, that attend Hope's peak Academy. It is set from the point of view of Naegi Makoto, the super high school luck, who won a draw to attend the school. The students are trapped in Hope's peak academy, with cameras watching their every move, windows bolted shut that not even the super high school fighter can't open with her insane strength. Then the headmaster appears, and tells them if they want to graduate, they must kill another pupil and move the blame to another pupil, which will result in all non guilty pupils to be executed. But if the murderer is revealed and voted guilty, only they will be executed.

You watch him and yourself, develop attachment to these characters and then watch them die, in growingly dramatic and gruesome deaths.  You'll find your anger soar at these characters who murdered your baby, and rejoice for a spilt second when everyone votes for the murderer, but then have your heart pulled by them as they show their humanity, and their reasons, and you find yourself torn between screaming at them for killing your baby and cuddling them saying it'll be okay as they get pulled to their execution.

This anime is skilled in character development, with each and every character having a redeemable quality and they all have a defined reason for everything they do. And while the anime does not explore all of the characters as far as they did in the game of due to it's short season, you can still see how well developed they are and the relationships they gain through out the events.

Dangan Ronpa is gruesome and murderous, with a hidden agenda and amazing characters, it is incredibly short but beautifully adapted from game to anime. It is easily one of my favourite animes ever and I will never forget my favourite little baby's death and his strength in it. It's a beautiful anime, that I recommend to anyone.

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//FASHION// Everything5pounds.com

I won't lie, I am a cheapskate. I prefer something cheaper over expensive, unless I get great reviews. Actually they have to be amazing reviews before I consider it. So after reading about Everything5pounds.com from A little bit unique, decided to check it out, and honestly they have a beautiful collection of clothing.

While a lot of it's quite basic, and the occasional piece tacky, but you find so many little gems. Those stitch shoes, I will buy the moment they have them in my size. And the lip dress, I think is so lovely and strange.

I ordered those green shoes, which are beautiful, and really nice. They dont look or feel cheap at all, dispite their price, I was amazed! Their dispatch is great, I order them Friday, arrived by wednesday. All around recommendations!

//GAMING// Frog Fractions

I won't lie, this is one of my favourite games of this year. Simply amazing, such a simple context of teaching children fractions is blown away by this game. I won't spoil anything, but wow.

Trust me you won't regret playing this free little game.

http://twinbeard.com/frog-fractions

Replacing Old Favourites- Black Boots

So 4 years ago, I bought these boots, a simple pair of black combat boots. They were my go to shoe. I would only wear these out. They've been re-heeled twice and resoled once. I loved them, but unfortunately, some times you have to move on. I'm getting way too emotional over these boots, but they were £15 from new look in 2009, and they have been with me through my style development, from a chubby girl who only liked t-shirts and jeans, to a teen who prefers a good hat to a cute dress. Hats are the best.

But now I have these 'faux' Doc Martin boots, which are so comfy, they are lined with padding. The shiny material takes a long time to wear in, but less that actual doc martins. I really like them to be honest, the studs just look awesome to me and fit perfectly with my style. They aren't quite the level of the old favourites yet.With the old favourites still in my shoe drawer, 'cause I don't have the heart to throw them out yet.

I think with the next few months you'll see a lot more of them.