Abbie Williamson

Course: Intro to Speech Communication, COMM-105
Professor: Siobhan Weight
Assignment Title: Disney Princesses – Role Models Reflecting Society

Assignment Details

My assignment was to create and give an informative presentation about a topic I either had some knowledge about or want to learn more about. Originally, I was going to do a short biography on Walt Disney, since I am such a fan of Disney but didn’t know much about the founder. Shortly into researching, I was running into a problem of having too much information and no real purpose for informing my classmates about Walt Disney. I had a meeting with Professor Wright who suggested doing an analysis of Disney movies. Deciding what movies to use as examples ended up being a much easier decision than I had expected it to be.

Application

The topic of my presentation was Disney and how their portrayal of female leads has changed over the years. This was a very special topic to me as I am a huge Disney fan. I enjoyed going through some of the movies I love and looking at them with a different view. By analyzing the three movies I used as examples: Cinderella, Mulan and Moana, I was worried it would affect how I feel about not just these three movies but all Disney movies. Thankfully, I can still enjoy these movies and others. I have noticed I am more critical of how the female characters are shown and spoken to. It is interesting how much this assignment has changed my whole mindset about some of these movies.

Results/Conclusions

This assignment helped me to learn just how much of an impact society has on the media produced. Thinking about it, it makes sense, but I had never put much thought into it. Now while I watch any movie or TV show I find myself paying extra close attention to things such as how they portray the women versus the men. I now have a much more critical eye but also have found myself being more understanding about certain things. For example, when I am watching an older show or movie, instead of questioning why the studio would allow something like that in their product, I remind myself that this is just how things were at that time.

Challenges and Successes

The biggest challenge I found was finding sources that had analyzed the movies I chose so that I could reference them to show that this wasn’t just my opinion. It took a good bit of careful Google searches, but I was able to eventually find some analyses I could use.