Profs & Pints Online presents: “How Disney Keeps Princesses Down,” a critical look at Disney’s depiction of race, gender, and heroines who were a lot stronger in the original tales, with Anne E. Duggan,  a Wayne State University professor who teaches about fairy tales across history, media forms, and cultures.

[ Tickets: $12. This talk will remain available in recorded form at the link given here for tickets and access. ]

The popularity of Disney fairy-tale films gives them a huge cultural influence, as evident by countless young girls who love to dress up as Ariel, Beauty, Jasmin, or Tiana. That’s reason to pay attention to the messages about race and gender that such films communicate. And upon closer examination, they are not just “innocent” entertainment for children, but clearly send political messages regarding women and members of various racial and ethnic groups.

Join Anne Duggan, a scholar of fairy tales and author or editor of several books about them, for a talk examining how Disney deals with gender, race, and ethnicity and how its heroines compare to those in classic fairy tales that it retells. Touching on films such as Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, Mulan, and The Princess and the Frog, she’ll show you how Disney has a “glass ceiling” for princesses of color, and she’ll leave you seeing Disney movies in an entirely new light.

She’ll discuss how Disney Princess films promote stereotypes about—and impose limitations upon--Arab and Black female characters, and she’ll point to the many instances of Disney’s implicit and explicit bias with respect to Middle Eastern and African American cultures. Whether you are a current or former Disney film fan or someone who seeks to be aware of the messages that films send to children, you’ll find this talk thought-provoking.

Image: Part of an illustration from Walter Crane’s Beauty and the Beast. London/New York: George Routledge & Sons, 1901.

Profs & Pints Online: How Disney Keeps Princesses Down