Learning About Being a Girl from the Disney Exotic Princesses

• In Event: Scholar to Scholar I
  In Paper Session: Discourses of Stability and Change: Gendered Identities and Children’s Television

Abstract

Cartoons depicting exotic lands and focusing on the princesses of those lands – such as Aladdin (1992), Pocahontas (1995) and Mulan (1998) – have become Disney classics. These cartoons are broadcast several times every year in the United States and around the world through Disney Channel and its global affiliates, as well as through numerous other networks that purchase distribution rights. Although certain scholars have critiqued these cartoons for appropriating and stereotyping Nonwestern locations and characters, such practices of representation have had and continue to have a wide array of consequences. This presentation will examine what girls in Western and Nonwestern settings learn about girlhood from princesses Jasmine, Pocahontas and Mulan. The researchers draw data from interviews with children in India, children of Indian decent in the United States, and children of Indian and Fijian descent in Fiji, children in China and children of Chinese decent in the United States, as well as children of Native American descent and children of European decent in the United States. The data collection for the study was accomplished through a combined interviewing and focus group discussion format. The study inquires whether children from different racial, ethnic and cultural backgrounds view Western representations of Nonwestern girls similarly or differently. The study brings a significant contribution to understanding how diverse children formulate, interpret and perform gendered identities by emulating media materials situated at the intersection of the local and the global.

Authors

• Charu Uppal, University of South Pacific

• Diana Nastasia, University of North Dakota