Children Literature [ ]

Who is Walt Disney?

Walter Elias Disney is an American business magnate, animator, cartoonist, producer, director, screenwriter, entrepreneur, and voice actor who was born on the 5th of December 1901 and died in 1966 due to lung cancer. He received during his life 7 Emmy awards, 22 academy awards and Cecil B. DeMille award.

The ladder of Disney’s success

The spark of Disney Empire is the childhood’s admiration of drawing. Disney used to draw with Doc. Sherwood and sell his paintings. Later on he met Walter Pfeiffer at Benton Grammar School who introduced him to the world of vaudeville and motion pictures. He studied and attended Saturday courses at the Kansas City Art Institute.

During the World War, Disney dropped out of the high school to join the army but he was rejected because he was under age. Then he joined the Red Cross and was sent to France to drive an ambulance. When he came back from France he worked as a newspaper artist, drawing political caricatures and comic strips.

Disney faced problems finding a job with his elementary certificate so he went back to his drawing by forming a short-lived company with his friend Iwerks called “Iwerk-Disney commercial Artist.” The company didn’t succeed so he left to Hollowed and became the co-founder of Laugh-O-Gram Studio that he owned it later.

In October 16, 1923 Disney opened with his brother Roy “Disney’s brother Studio” and that day is considered the day of Disney Empire birth. “Alice Comedies” was the first series created. Then it was followed by “Lucky Rabbit” (1927), “Mickey Mouse” (1928), “Flowers and Trees” (1932), “The Wise Little Hen” (1934) and “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” (1937).

The company faced Burbank in December 1939. But Disney and his brother didn’t give up and they came back with stronger movies like ‘Cinderella’(1950), ‘Alice in Wonderland’ (1951) ‘Peter Pan’ (1953), ‘Lady and the Tramp’ (1955) ‘Sleeping Beauty’ (1959) ‘Zorro and Davy Crockett’ ‘The Mickey Mouse Club’ and a live-action film called ‘Treasure Island’ (1950).

All Disney work is based on fairy tales, fables and Shakespeare’s plays. Recently some changes are added to these movies to adapt with the changes in children’s world.

Disney land

After the success of the company, Disney came up with the idea of building a park as he was inspired with the electronic park he used to visit with his sister as children. The idea grew up to become a huge land called ‘Disney Land”. The construction started in 1945 and took only four years. The main land is in Florida but after the great success of the project, nowadays there are four more Disney lands one in California, Tokyo, France, Hong Kong and there is a plan for a new one in Dubai.

Disney land and his company were the first in family entertainment field. Disney said "Disneyland is a work of love. We didn't go into Disneyland just with the idea of making money." But today there are Disney stores with different products for all ages, phone applications, and online websites ,selling movies and offering trips to Disney Lands.

1 Done by: Marwa Al Naabi. Nouf Al Gafri

Children Literature [ ]

Disney movies' positive and negative impact on children

Disney movies’ audience is both adults and children but we focused in our presentation on Children as they are our concern in the course.

Positive impact

Equality: Disney movies are for both males and females. Be yourself: teaches the child to be himself and never imitate others. Adventure and making decisions: Teaches the child to explore the world around him and to

take his own decisions and be responsible. Ex: Alice in Wonderland: when she decided to follow the white rabbit Pinocchio: leaves his father and becomes lost and kidnapped

Happy endings: encourage the child to believe and hope.

Negative impact

Importance of Social Status: The main characters almost always high in the social hierarchy.

Ugliness is immoral and beauty is moral: Teaches the child to associate ugliness with immorality and beauty with morality and happiness as if they are synonymous.

The portrayal of love: love is the domain theme in almost all Disney movies. Racial Stereotypes: teaches the child how to discriminate between races.

Ex: The crows in “Dumbo” movie. The representations of villains: villains are the opposite of the heroes in Disney movies.

They are ugly and dangerous. Extreme Thinness: images of extremely thin characters have inspired anorexia and eating

disorders in young women.Ex: the impossibly lean waist of Megara from “Hercules”

Everything is Fluffy: plays with the sad and horrible events like death and makes them look good in the eyes of the child.

Historical Inaccuracies: in some movies the historical events are different than what has really happened in real life.Ex: “Pocahontas” wrong events about the relationship between the Native Americans and the Settlers.

Reflection

Two questions were raised during the discussion:

1. Why movies are changing?

The movies are based on fairy tales and fables in which they have carried within them the perception people had towards children in the era they were written. But the movies are changing due to the changes of the perceptions of childhood and children. The civil right, enlightenment, feminisms and children's rights movements has a great role in the changes.

2 Done by: Marwa Al Naabi. Nouf Al Gafri

Children Literature [ ]

2. Is Disney’s statement "Disneyland is a work of love. We didn't go into Disneyland just with the idea of making money." true?

Disney is a noble person but his company has fallen in the hand of people who are possessive about the idea of gaining money so things went out of control. This has changes children to be consumers. There are even companies that produce Disney's products illegally to profit from it.

References:

4th March/2014

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walt_Disney 3:15pm

15th May/2014

http://listverse.com/2012/11/22/top-10-ways-disney-corrupts-children/ 3:48pm

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/12/the-real-story-behind-eve_n_4239730.html 8:25pm

http://www.disneystore.com 3:15pm

http://disney.wikia.com/wiki/Disney_Adventurers 3:02pm

http://disney.wikia.com/wiki/List_of_Disney_villains 3:10pm

3 Done by: Marwa Al Naabi. Nouf Al Gafri