I didn't know Life Could Get This Good - Disney Villian SpellBlock Tango

Okay so. Some people are just brilliantly creative and fabulous. One of those people is Toddrick Hall (American Idol Contestant, Dancer, Singer, All-Around Creative Genius).

Here is His rendition of the "Cell Block Tango" from the musical Chicago. His version features Disney Villains and is called the SpellBlock Tango. This video just increased my quality of life tenfold so watch it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GAUZIw95ueM#t=430 - Toddrick Hall "SpellBlock Tango"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrrz54UtkCc - Original CellBlock Tango from the Movie Chicago

How he managed to make a video with almost the same quality as a multi-million dollar film I do not know. Creative. Genius.

"But it's not a real place" It Never Is: Agrabah and Other Very Real Make Believe Places. Response to "Saving Other Women from Other Men: Disney's Aladdin" by Erin Addison

I couldn't help but notice in class how specific we were when discussing the amalgamation of different "Parisian" sites in Hunchback in comparison with out discussion on the amalgamation of Middle Eastern cultures in Aladdin. I don't know if it's because Paris is more familiar or I was more alert, but it seemed as if we were much more attune to/irritated by the mixing of Paris than of the Middle East. I distinctly remember during our "Agrabah" discussion we said "well it's not really a mixing, it's just not a real place. The author's being sensitive".  Not even addressing the fact that it was meant to be a "real" place in the Middle East, that conversation led me to think about whether there are any "real" places in Disney films or media in general. I don't think television can ever depict what is real, especially when it's a different culture. Rather than portraying the culture as it is, they portray it as the viewers believe it to be. It's kind of like "Chinese food" in America. It's not the food you would find in China, it's a representation of "Chinese food" made for Americans. Similarly, Aladdin was depicted to be Western friendly, to fit in with our perceptions of the Middle East, rather than to be accurate. Im not sure how I feel about this media practice, but I feel very strongly that we should recognize this and have a discussion about whether this is acceptable. It's important because little kids don't know that this isn't real. I would bet money that there is some child out there who believes Agrabah is a real place or that there are Taj Mahal like palaces in the Middle East.

But why is this a bad thing? Who cares?

Well, when it's not your culture it seems negligible, sensitive even. But when it's you, it can lead to some uncomfortable misrepresentations and misconceptions of who you are based on where you come from. I can give a personal example coming from Baltimore City. As a black woman from Baltimore City, I can tell that many of the people I speak too are conflated Baltimore and every other urban inner city. People consistently draw a picture of drugs and violence and I see these things when they say "oh like the Wire? Damn, how do you make it?" or when I saw come visit and they respond with "I would but I don't want to get killed..."only half jokingly. While Baltimore does have its issues with violence, it is not the same as every urban center. It has a unique history, culture, food, and unique problems. For example, the Bronx, NY has a serious problem with police community relations due to stop and frisk and this is not too big an issue in Baltimore even though they are both urban centers. You cannot conflate all similar areas into one. And my city is not the only one with this problem, I know before I came to Duke I considered North Carolina "the South" and expected lots of bar-b-que and deer and country drawls. I know now that NC is its own unique place and that bar-b-que is more of a Texas thing (so I've been told). All this is to say that though places may share a similar geography or characteristics we have to recognize the differences. We should not and cannot make any more Agrabahs.

At the most, we should try and get to know other places, and at the very least recognize that this media is just a movie or a show. This is incredibly important because though we recognize that something is a movie, many people still believe on some level that this is what the place portrayed is really like. And these people can and do base their thoughts and actions on these portrayals. When we don't respect the cultures of areas that are not similar to us and simply lump everything together into "the Middle East, "the South", or "an urban center", we doom ourselves to a very deep pit of ignorance. We miss out on "a whole new world".

Cover Photo: Screenshot taken by author of blog

10 Different Ways of Depicting Disney Princesses Developed by Various Art Students

http://www.redesignrevolution.com/top-10-artist-recreations-disney-princesses/

Her Campus: Where the Disney Princesses Should Go to College and What They Would Be Like (Cute!)

http://www.hercampus.com/high-school/applying-college/where-disney-princesses-should-apply-college -> Where They Should Go 

http://www.hercampus.com/life/campus-living/what-disney-princesses-would-be-college -> What They Would Be Like 

The Disney Princess Costume- More than A Costume, More like a Prediction.

http://www.upworthy.com/see-the-5-kick-ass-women-this-mom-dressed-her-daughter-as-instead-of-a-disney-princess?c=ufb1

How Disney Defines Childhood (Response to Celeste Lacroix's "Images of Animated Others: The Orientalization of Disney's Cartoon Heroines from The Little Mermaid to The Hunchback of Notre Dame)

In the abstract of her article "Images of Animated Others: The Orientalization of Disney's Cartoon Heroines from The Little Mermaid to The Hunchback of Notre Dame, LaCroix writes "Disney’s consumerist framework...provides 'dreams and products through forms of popular culture
in which kids are willing to materially and emotionally invest'. It is this idea of children's emotional investment in Disney's "worlds" that I wish to explore. Disney media is incredibly powerful as it is often a child's first representations of a different world. For example, I'm half Nigerian and one of the questions I often got when I was younger was "Oh. Africa...that's like Lion King right? Have you seen a lion?" Now, this is a harmless question, but it does show the pervasiveness of Disney and many children's tendency to conflate the "Disney World" with the real world. Like LaCroix said, kids "emotionally invest"in Disney's products, one of which is media. My personal experience with this phenomenon is vast. For a while, I thought Mulan was a 100% accurate depiction of the Hun Invasion. I wondered if John Smith ever came back to America to meet Pocahantas (I think I once asked a teacher if her tribe was the one the pilgrims ate with during the first Thanksgiving) and I most definitely thought Agrabah was a real place. I had little to no experience with Asian culture, no experience with Native American culture, and no experience with Middle Eastern culture. Disney filled a cultural void that was left by a very white American based media. Disney was all I had to connect to other cultures, but Disney was not really portraying any other culture-it was simply promoting the Disney version of other places, the version that fit into their movies, intrigued, but did not alienate, their viewers, and would make them the most money.

This problem with accurate representation is not Disney specific. Many TV shows and movies portray stereotypes of different people and cultures as the whole truth, in fact I question whether it is even possible to make a very 3D culture or people 2D 100% accurately. But, very view media outlets have the power and scope of Disney and this is where the main issue lies. How do we move past stereotypes and misrepresentations of other people and cultures if we literally grow up on them? This is an essential question because these misrepresentations prevent us both internally and externally. Externally, they can alienate us from other members of this culture because we approach them with stereotypes and internally they prevent us from learning.

While LaCroix focused on Disney's stereotyping and sexualization of ethnic women, I believe the broader issue is with Disney's stereotyping and misrepresentation of various groups and how these misrepresentations stick with children as they become adults and (hopefully) interact with people of different backgrounds. I think it's essential that we teach kids to separate the Lion King from Africa and Aladdin from the Middle East. While they're great movies, parents should remind their children that they're just movies. This is the first step to being able to fully embrace Disney movies and fully embrace other cultures.

Disney Princess Movies: The Original Mean Girls (A Response to The Subversion of The Little Mermaid)

I'm actually too excited to write this post. The LaCroix article was  HUGE "a-ha" moment for me. I can't even organize all the things I want to discuss. Ok, I'm just going to flow these ideas. The overall category is WOMAN TO WOMAN CONFLICT AND DISNEY'S OBSESSION WITH IT or DISNEY WAS MEAN GIRLS BEFORE MEAN GIRLS WAS MEAN GIRLS. LaCroix's point that Disney movies promote woman to woman conflict is incredibly important. I would like to extend this point to say that many Disney movies are actually subtly centered on this conflict and speculate about some of the effects of this focus.

To articulate her point about Disney's promotion of female conflict LaCroix uses Snow White, Cinderella, and Sleeping Beauty as examples. I will use the same examples to flesh out my argument that woman to woman conflict is actually the center of these movies and not romantic love, even though the prince is often portrayed as the focus. In Snow White, the prince is on screen for all of four minutes. The movie really focuses on Snow White's escape from Wicked Step-Mother. The prince in Cinderella gets much more screen time, but overall the story is about Cinderella escaping the horrible life caused by her wicked step-sisters and step mother. Sleeping Beauty is similar in that the tension is between Sleeping Beauty, the heroine, and the villain, the evil Malificent. While the prince is part of the "happy ending, he is not the central focus of the film. Ok, now that we've established that the focus is on women to women conflict, let's explore what this conflict suggests.

Disney's apparent love for woman to woman conflict seems to send this concise message - "If another woman is "prettier" than you than she is your enemy. Especially if there's a guy involved". Snow White's stepmother literally tried to kill her when it was revealed that Snow White was prettier than her. In the movie, it is after Snow White blows a kiss at the prince that the Queen turns to the mirror and decides that Snow White must die. In Cinderella, the step-mother treats Cinderella awfully because she is prettier and nicer than her children and she wants one of her daughters to marry the prince instead of Cinderella. Sleeping Beauty is a bit more complicated as Malificent curses Sleeping Beauty because she was not invited to her first birthday party, but even this story follows the same line of an older, less attractive woman taking a pretty young princess out of the game when she reaches maturity (16). Disney repeatedly paints younger and prettier woman as competition and this idea extends into the real world.

I had a similar revelation about woman to woman interactions being masked by male-female interactions and a slight competitiveness between women while getting ready for a school dance. I remember my mom teasing me about putting all this effort into getting ready for some boy and repeatedly asking me what boy I'm trying to impress. I repeatedly told her no one. I was not being facetious or a "typical teenager" hiding things from her parents, there was legitimately no guy at the dance I really cared about impressing, but there where people there I did want to astound. Those people were my close female friends and other girls at my school. While a guy telling me that I was pretty was definitely nice, compliments from my female classmates simply meant more. t's like being a professional diver and getting a compliment from a spectator, some who appreciates the sport definitely but has no idea the intricacies that go into it, versus getting a compliment from another diver.  In case it's not clear (some) men (definitely not all) are the spectators and other women (many but not all) are the divers.

I believe that there is a desire in many woman (on some level) to be the "princess of the ball" and that acknowledgement of "you look great" from other women is what provides that "princess" feeling. A big reason for this is that beauty has historically been associated with a woman's "value". Thankfully, we live in an age that realizes that this association is nonsense but we still play into it. We still obsess over the beautiful to an almost obscene level. Look at the amount of girls gearing up for the up-coming Victoria's Secret Fashion Show. I promise you it will trend on Twitter (it did last year) and (like last year) the majority of tweets will be from other women praising the gorgeousness of angel after Victoria's Secret Angel. While attractive people get more societal benefits for both genders, there is a bigger emphasis on female beauty. A friend said it best during a conversation about gender "with guys, if they're not cute it's ok. They can be athletic or funny or powerful or whatever and still be "acceptable". But with girls, you can be athletic or funny or powerful, hell, you can be athletic and powerful AND funny and people will still hit you with the "aww Honey, do you wana try something different with your hair? Have you been to Sephora? It's like if you're not "pretty" everything else you are doesn't matter". This desire or competition to be the "prettiest" has clear age lines because America's standard of beauty, in my perspective, has a necessary component of youth. So when a young, pretty girl starts maturing, she becomes competition to older women and, according to Disney, the competition must be destroyed.

LaCroix's article really impacted me because this is a competition I believe I see often and it is one that does not need to exist. Women are still a marginalized group and a strong sense of sisterhood, in other terms a shared womanhood, is necessary to push against modern day gender discrimination.  While Disney movies may play a role in the instigation of this "pretty" competition, many many media outlets are involved. There are countless studies that describe the media's effect on female self-image and the overarching message is "You're not pretty enough, our product will make you prettier and pretty is a necessity". Media presents this goal that so many cannot reach and stirs some small sense of resentment or jealousy for those who can. Let us be careful not to turn into Snow White's mother continuously asking "who's the prettiest". Let us not see other women as potential enemies, but always as potential allies.