The new Beauty and the beast song

Listen it here.

Mulan song

Find it here.

Final blog

        So this is the final blog. There is a lot we have done this semester in Decoding Disney. Villainy and heroism, gender and racial equality are the major topics in the Disney Academia. Starting from the beginning of the semester, I enjoyed readings of Giroux and Haasen which presented unseen aspects of Disney for most of its consumers. Although I expected certain criticism of Disney, but the depth of research and the magnitude of Disney’s impact were out of my expectation.

        Disney is a power empire and it is getting stronger as we speak. It provides children entertainment which seems so pure and impeccable, but under close examination it is full of culture heritage that can be either beneficial or create prejudice in their opinions, claimed by majority of critics of Disney.

                                      

      Consumerism was also discussed in class. Being a major result of capitalistic society, critics argues that Disney is turning future generations of American into product of consumerism. This statement was interesting to me because it is hard to imagine any other life-styles besides consuming through money purchasing in society nowadays.

      We watched a series of Disney animation films ranging from the Beauty and the Beast to Frozen. The time lapse between these movies shows not only progression of Disney animation skills, but also of the ideologies that lie behind the movies. Racial equality, gender equality and ambiguity of villainy are certainly improvements presented in recent Disney films. It is hard to believe how much Disney improved in the past decades, and how much American society has been looking forward into diversity and equality.

       Disney is an enterprise that focuses on the interests of the majority. It is to their interest to maximize revenue by creating films that reinforces public opinions. As time passes, it is clear to see through Disney’s films that they follow the trend of society instead of breaking it. Its first South African princess film Moana, is a result of gradual equalization between races in US. Disney produces entertainment by creating a world of perfection and magic, will it gain as much success by challenging the currents of society? Definitely not. Disney is not the representation of righteousness, because neither is society. Everything in society is a mixed production of nature that consist unique characteristics.

        Equality is pursued by our society because we deem it a desirable quality; however, under different social structures people might have completely different opinions about equality. Some might argue that our democratic society is the best in the world, statistically speaking it certainly earns a lot of its fame; that is not saying it come without its own flaws.

                                  

           Disney has massive cultural power considering its impact toward children, and our course provided me with many information of it. Disney as a childhood memory might not seem so pure after all, but with a new layer of capitalism and social injustice. I appreciate all the scholars’ efforts in claiming their opinions on Disney which can result in positive progress in society and raise awareness of the existence of this film giant, that seems to become part of our identity long ago.
         Some of the Giroux article can be find here.

Let it go

Relax yourself before the final, everything is going to be fine. 

Some daily Disney Bazinga: Disney seeks new patent for soft robots playing characters

More information can be view here.
                                

Frozen movie review

Information about the movie can be viewed here.

Frozen was the first princess Disney movie that is memorized in my brain. I did not understand reasons behind its popularity and still remembered it had something to do with the ice bucket challenge.

                      

The visual effects in the movie is incredible, the scenery of the kingdom, princess Elsa's dress and ice castle are all stunning showcase in the movie. The music is gorgeous and brings a fresh taste of Disney's pursue of freedom. 

One thing I remembered clearly is that I could not identify the villain in Frozen the first time I watched the film. I can feel the villainy in prince Hans but not a significant one. He seemed like a decent guy who tries to rise in power but ultimately failed.  He has the intent to kill but princess Elsa also has such power when she used the ice magic in front of the public forming blades of ice that nearly hurt the guests. 

The movie is inconsistent sometimes. The development of side characters did not leave an impression to me or made much a difference in the film. The movie consists a lot of sub plots and takes a long time for them to converge.

The movie is unlike many other Disney’s princess movie, there are two princesses in the first place. The movie tries to make audience pay more attention toward Anna whose story is not very interesting, sometimes I find her childish arrogance does not actually accomplish what directors wished.

Interestingly there is also not much love relationship going on with Frozen’s male and female characters. There is no true chemical love, to say the least, besides the sister love between Elsa and Anna. It is an atypical Disney princess film that might invoke controversy.

I was never a devoted fan into Disney’s Princess movie, but I found the controversial discussion on Disney’s films interesting. The Han’s twist in the movie certainly confused a lot of audiences who are expecting Han to be the typical prince in a Disney film.

I appreciate Disney challenging its traditional love story and still manage to attract audiences and make the film a global phenomenon. Maybe that is the power of Disney magic.

                            

At this point I am still not quite sure the reason behind the feverish crowd. Maybe Disney has never made a snow princess before? But certainly parents were going to take some time to explain to their kids the reason behind Han’s betrayal.

While many claims Frozen to be the best animated movie of 2013. I have seen more enjoyable films for myself such as How to train your dragon. What is certain is that Disney really took different approaches in the film that is different from Disney Classic: there is no love interest, but has diversified story lines.

                        

One fundamental reason behind the controversy is that villainy in Frozen is not convincing and undesired by parents. There is no clear separation between good and evil but I have to give credit to Frozen for this confusion because it does represents the ambiguity of morality in real life even though the prince was condemned at the end of the story. 
(ps: Sorry this is not the best movie review, quite busy this weekend with 5000 words due, while that is college right :D)

TRON reboot expectation

I loved the tron movie when I watched it years ago with its amazing visuals, but now I am more excited for the reboot. Speculations can be viewed here.                                                                                                               

News on Avatar parks opening speculation

The park might open early, more be viewed Here!

Response on Hastings' article

 More information about the film can be viewed here.
 This week we had the pleasure of reading and discussing an interesting conference article written by Waller Hastings on Disney’s movie Pocahontas. The movie was under controversial criticism by many critics arguing it being a positive or negative portrayal of American history and Native American.

                                     

 Hasting argues in the article that although Disney claimed Pocahontas is its first historically accurate film, there exists a lot of transformation and distortion that contradict Disney’s claims. It is important for audiences to understand these differences and the power of Disney.

  

  Hastings is able to create strong arguments in his writing, including finding contradictions in Disney’s claims. For example, the exaggeration in visual scenery and changes in main characters’ ages are the opposite of Disney’s “research” of Virginia and characters’ in the history.

     

    In fact, Hasting believes that the story of Pocahontas has become a legendary tale that has multiple versions of story instead of factual depictions of historical events. Disney’s effort in portraying the event as “correctly” as possible is itself an inefficient approach. Furthermore, Disney emphasis on their effort of truthfulness, though genuine, is laughable for many critics.                                                                                                              

   

   When the motivation of a company is to create entertainment and make money, accuracy is not part of audiences’ expectation and that is why Disney was able to escape many criticism by setting the background story of a movie to “ a kingdom far away”. However, Disney entered a dangerous realm when it tried to create extra attraction for consumers who care for history. In that case it will be the parents who want their children to get educational benefit.

   The motives behind Disney for the creation of Pocahontas can be diverse: make the movie more educational, create racial equality…etc In the end, children will not remember the history but only the Pocahontas Disney presented to them. As many critics claims, Disney has the responsibility to be educational and accurate, I doubt it will ever be part of the standard in film industry. Externality, or side-effects, created by Disney’s films on children can be influential but in the current system there is no way of quantifying the influence nor judging the minor mistakes Disney has made in its movie.

After all, Disney is doing its best to attract customers to buy its product. Although the majority of consumers in late 20^th century might be white population, as the income gap decreases Disney will concern more for critics’ claim and others raising ethical group consumers. It is a sad way to put it, but in the business world, the so called “moral high ground’ is not always advantageous.

     Thus, Disney, critics and consumers all play roles in social progression. Folks in Disney are part of society and if the society is racially biased, how can people in them not be? To ask Disney to change is to ask society to change. The problem is that younger children who are watching Disney movies might not understand the underlying messages in them, and the traditional biased trend can carry for a while in media and it is our job to correct the trends and create progress.