The Positive And Negative Effects Of Cartoons In Disney

Growing up in different households contribute to how a child is formed as they grow up. Factors such as daily events, experiences, struggles and even scolding affect how a child will be formed mentally and emotionally. Although for young girls and boys, there is one common factor that contributes to their upbringing that most parents do not take big notice of, which are the cartoons they watch. Studies have proven that an average child with TV access at home watches approximately 18,000 hours of television from the age of kindergarten up till high school (Habib & Soliman, 2015). There are many studies on the positive and negative effects of generally watching television to toddlers however; I wish to focus on the values seen in the cartoons

However, some cartoons have bad connotations on how men and women should act once they reach adulthood. Focusing on Disney or what is also known as The Walt Disney Company, their founder. Walt Disney arrived in California on the summer of 1923. He made his first cartoon in Kansas City entitled, “Alice’s Wonderland” and ever since the pilot of that he made a series of these “Alice Comedies” to sell to a distributer. Following the Alice Comedies was the birth of “Oswald the Lucky Rabbit”. Succeeding him was the famous and still seen today cartoon character named Mickey Mouse. Drawing closer to the main focus of this analysis, in 1934 Walt Disney proposed to his team of animators to create an animated feature film of the story of “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs”. In 1937, it was first released to the public instantly becoming the highest grossing film of all time until it was outshined by the film “Gone With The Wind”. Since the 1930’s was a turbulent era in world history, there were a lot of patriarchal gender roles that were instilled in society and thus lead to the gender roles seen in the film. A dominant value seen in the film that could also be seen in societal culture at the time would be the fact that a woman’s place is in the home. There is a scene wherein we see Snow White doing chores as she was forced to do so by her stepmother who is also the Queen. When she also finds the house of the dwarves she was astounded by the mess thus begins cleaning up. Once the dwarves return, Snow White takes the initiative to come to an agreement with the dwarves telling them she will “keep the house” for them as long as they allow her to stay. During the Great Depression, a similar value was seen as women traded food for their domestic help and their performing duties in the household. It is clearly seen that Snow White took the stereotypical position of a woman who is to