Social Norms In Cinderella And Frozen

Society as a whole has always pushed social norms on everyone, including mainstream movies aimed towards children, the messages of which can have profound effects on younger society. Disney princess movies have major themes that affect generations of children, and take care to promote positivity. However, some underlying messages in the older movies partially show gender and social norms, and are not necessarily true. Both Cinderella in Cinderella (1950) and Elsa in Frozen (2013) have end goals and strong character development in order to get across differing gender and social messages on love and life to Disney’s audience, with Frozen having the more powerful message. Both Cinderella and Elsa have overall goals that they accomplish over the

There is nothing inherently wrong with the old princesses, it’s just that they lack the individualism that makes up the princesses today. As one can see in the princesses’ goals, Cinderella marries a prince to escape her torment, while Elsa ultimately regains the love of herself and her sister. The older one teaches the audience that one should not have to live in awful conditions, encouraging getting away from the problem. However, while that is a plausible solution, often times in life you have to face those problems instead of running away from them. The newer one teaches just that, when Elsa is forced to put aside her own conflict to ultimately save her sister and herself. This solving of one’s own problems, albeit with help, is lacking in the older movies, allowing the newer movies to feature better messages about social values, as well as prominent gender role messages, also tying into the concept of individualism, fighting off the offensive stereotype that women need men in order to do anything. While it is mostly herself and her fairy godmother that get her to the Royal Ball, Cinderella is shown to almost need the prince to escape her own torment at the hand of her step-family. Taking such a view upon it, of course, shows only a partial meaning and is ultimately much more complex than that. Elsa, on the other hand, does not require a prince at all. While Elsa’s sister does find unexpected love, it is the true love of a sister that thaws Anna’s heart, not the love of a man. This definitely shows a progression of ideas from the older movies. Despite that, it is not always wrong to have romantic love help you out from a situation, but neither should it be the only solution. Even though neither message is wrong, the social and gender messages being taught in the newer movies are more realistic, reflect life