A Feminist Reading Of The Princess Motif In Disney Movies And Its Cultural Impact On Chinese University Students

Up to now, Disney has released thirteen princess fairy tale films, varying from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in1937 to newest released Cinderella in 2015. Disney exceedingly roots for princess motif and its adaptations of classics are in a league of its own. Moreover, it is universally acknowledged that Disney Princess films are seemingly wholesome and innocent for family entertainment. Unfortunately, Disney offers fewer options for women images. To varying degrees, it may fetter a girl’s potential to be the best person they can be by portraying limited gendered roles. However, a close study will reveal its phallocentrism or pseudo-feminism.Fictional princesses have long been models for emulation among Chinese young girls, delivering a hint or guidance to the development of female psychology. The thesis attempts to unveil the disparagement and limitation on females in Disney’s design on princesses’ characteristics, physical features and the stereotyped ending of happy marriage in the milieu of main theories proposed by French feminist Simon de Beauvoir in The Second Sex.Methodologies of questionnaire and focus group discussion,additionally, have been tenanted to conduct a study on Disney princess films from the perspective of texts and audience. Exploring the assorted roles of women in Disney princess films helps us understand how Disney princess collections influence Chinese college students’ perception and life attitudes.To show pseudo-feminism in Disney princess series and how it has influenced Chinese college students in this or that way, this paper will present the followings:in this thesis five chapters are divided and the first chapter will mainly introduce the study background and the organization of the thesis. In chapter two, I will, in retrospect, review the research tradition and discuss assorted studies on Disney princess films at home and abroad and the development and limitations of the study. Chapter three interprets general pseudo-feminism features in Disney princess series in the light of Simon de Beauvoir theories on feminism. In chapter four, audience-based reception studies will be introduced and respondents’ statistics will be discussed with resort to questionnaires and focus group discussion in order to unravel Disney princesses’ influence on Chinese college students comprehensively. Finally, in the conclusion part, I will summarize the major findings in my paper and give suggestions and proposals for future studies.