Disney’s attempt to diversify gender and race in creating its princess

Disney has long been embroiled in scandals of unrealistically portraying femininity in princesses to serve a society's penchant for heterosexual men. From 2012, Disney has breakthrough its old path when conveying a new identity for women by changing character costume. Noticably, Disney seems to operate neo-orientalism when giving Asian women powerful image. In this essay, I would go through the process of eliminating the male gaze in Disney films and figure out how Disney seems to favor the heroization of Asian women over Western women through customizing princess outfit.

Feminist film criticism states a political and aesthetic response to visual culture. Shally Cobb (2015) pointed out that film should be criticized from women perspective in multiple ways—in detail, in outline, through engagement with history or writing about the contemporary moment. It was encouraged by the sense of that women are marginalized and an awareness of inequality and an interest in cinema. The situation is rooted in that women are eroticized in the media, aimed at serving gratification from a male perspective, or male gaze. According to Laura Mulvey, male gaze is where women in the media are objectified by the heterosexual man’s eyes. In other words, ‘that women character’ become passive objects to satisfy male sexual desire. Since patriarchy dominates the world in most aspects, male gaze is applied to mass media to attract men consumers. Audiences are forced to view women from the point of view of a heterosexual male even though many of audiences are heterosexual women or homosexual men. People engage exclusively with forms of visual information on media that shaps their identities. Walt Disney, a content production company, targets children who are curious and would imitate what they see. Hence Disney content could shape identity of these children. Therefore, deconstructing the status quo of women marginalization is a necessary revolution in gender neutralizing visual culture.

The level of male gaze that Disney shows has changed over time and is on a strong downward trend in which costume design partially contributes to. Stella Bruzzi wrote in Undressing Cinema: Clothing and Identity in the Movies that “costume or clothes are no longer merely forms of consolidation and social communication, but also testaments to fantasy and desire”.

Before fourth wave feminism, Disney has already criticized by princess’s outfit which somewhat satisfy the heterosexual men’s eyes. The highlight case to be mentioned is Jasmine (on the left), the Disney princess in Aladdin. Disney features her costume with a small, tight crop top revealing her chest and stomach. Besides, her waist is painted in the same width with her neck. All of these features construct unrealistic model of an Asian beautiful girl. The evidence is that in the cinema remake version of Alladin in 2019, Jasmine is (on the right) intentional or not less show her body than the cartoon version since the previous costume could be a little bit ‘too much’ for kid if a real woman actually wears it. Additionally, cinema version Jasmine could not achieve the imaginary model that Disney used to idealize this character.

The common feature of Disney, as same as Jasmine princess, other female protagonists like Cinderella, Snow White, Belle (Beauty and The Beast), Aurora (Sleeping Beauty) is that they all seems naïve, gentle, non-violence in lovely dress with bright color, along with it is her long hair which contributes to her girly beauty. These standards of beauty are a man's desire that Disney wanted to ensure to please its spectators. For that reason, Disney’s plot commonly ends up with happy ending if a princess had the prince’s heart and married him. It connotates that men are root to women’s happy life and luck.

Along with the fourth feminism wave since 2012, audiences have recognized the shift of movies like Frozen (2013) and the nearest is Raya and the last dragon in which encourages women’s independence and empowerment, breaking its common plot from the Male Gaze.

Raya and the last dragon is a typical expression of Disney's gender break. The film was released in early 2021 and resonated greatly in Vietnam. Southeast Asian girls seem to have the lowest power in general which results from religious ideology. However, Disney depicts SEA women with new roles/new gender order as a leader portraying via character's costume. Viewers were strongly impressed by the way the costumes of the two princesses Namaari and Raya were created. The image of the two princesses is depicted as two warriors, in the style of 'masculine, 'aggressive', 'leading', 'brave' and steely aura. Character Raya (left) wears a warrior outfit with a slit-like leaf. The outfit is comfortable to showcase her life of traveling, ready to do nimble action. The hat and cloak seem to hide her identity and be aware of everything around, not 'easy going'. Raya holds a sharp sword in her hand, her steely eyes standing proudly in the rain. All of them show a character who is in control of the situation, ready to fight alone and not afraid of anything.

The character Namaari (right) is also in neat clothes, surrounding her belly are weapons. Unlike Raya, Namaari cut an extremely short hairstyle to show her genderless personality. Compatible with this hairstyle, perhaps Disney deliberately drew Namaari's chest quite small, so that when the spectator looks at the above frame, he will not be sexually attracted to this part, but fully focus on the eyes – figure represents the highest determination part of the message. Namaari is the figure that stands out the most in the frame because of the background blur effect. Viewers can still easily see the people behind are the entourage and are waiting for orders from Namaari. Thanks to all of that, the film could give a new identity to Southeast Asian women in the movie despite the discrepancy in reality.

(Merida, Brave) (Elsa, Frozen)

Disney seems to focus on this type of costume to portray Asian women more than white women. Obviously, the princess's outfits in Raya And The Last Dragon are completely different from the previous princesses of this company, so this is not the first time Disney has built a female warrior character. First, Merida (Brave, 2012) stands out with her ruffled hair, fierce eyes with the accessory of a bow and arrow - a combat weapon that is prescribed for men. Second, Elsa has boundless strength to wear a breast-hugging dress, tight thigh splits, flexible in long golden hair - the perfect beauty for a white American girl. However, the breakthrough in costumes of Raya and Nammari goes beyond the framework that Disney has done before: not wearing skirts/dresses (commonly attire for women) but instead in warrior costumes. The difference in Namaari's undercut hairstyle is remarkable. The hairstyle is popular with many women today, but no animator has depicted such a woman in works.

In fact, Mulan (1998) was the exception before 2000, having been designed by Disney for the armor (pictured left), but she only enjoyed it when she pretended to be a man. Disney's Warrior Girls of 2021 don't have to pretend to be anyone to connect with the warrior costumes. The outfits tell their own identities. Surprisingly, Mulan, Raya, and Namaari are all protagonists inspired by Asian, yellow-skinned women. Why does Disney keep an image of 'girl in dress' for white princesses? According to Judy Tzu Chun Wu (2021) in The Rising Tide Of Color, neo-orientalism is a post-colonial perspective, a modern Western perspective on the Eastern world. In this perspective, Eastern women are seen as having strength and willpower in the sisterhood supporting system. Asian women are seen as able to inspire Western women to stand up for themselves. I don't have enough evidence to say whether Disney embraced this idea. However, neo-orientalism is a hypothesis that I put forward to explain the difference in costumes of princesses in the feminist movement that I mentioned above.

Disney is creating female characters in a way closer to reality, somehow a bit exploring potential possibility in any woman who is subconsciously restrained in the patriarchal world. Besides, Disney is making a long way to embrace a whole culture out of Western globe without misconduct it, especially in term of exaggerating Asian women power via costume over women from the other side of globe.

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Reference

Cobb, Shelley, and Yvonne Tasker. “Feminist Film Criticism in the 21st Century.” Film Criticism 40, no. 1 (2015). https://doi.org/10.3998/fc.13761232.0040.107.

Gibson, P. C. Stella Bruzzi, “Undressing Cinema: Clothing and Identity in the Movies.” Screen, vol. 40, no. 4, 1999, pp. 472–74. Crossref, doi:10.1093/screen/40.4.472.

Jung, Moon-Ho. “Hypervisibility and Invisibility Asian/American Women, Radical Orientalism, and the Revisioning of Global Feminism.” The Rising Tide of Color: Race, State Violence, and Radical Movements across the Pacific (Emil and Kathleen Sick Book Series in Western History and Biography), Reprint, University of Washington Press, 2015, pp. 238–65.

Mulvey. Visual and Other Pleasures (Language, Discourse, Society). 2nd ed., Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.

Munro, Ealasaid. “Feminism: A Fourth Wave?” Political Insight, vol. 4, no. 2, 2013, pp. 22–25. Crossref, doi:10.1111/2041-9066.12021.