Disney and Women in Advertising

After watching this video I felt, for the most part, like it was completely ridiculous. Although I understood some of the points that the people being interviewed made about Disney, that does not mean that I agree with the fact that they were trying to make the Disney corporation look like a greedy company that is only mindful of the profit that they make.

            A lot of things about Disney have changed since it looks like this video was made. The biggest thing to me is the racism part about Disney. They recently have added a movie with a black princess. This helped Disney put out a lot of flame about them being racists. Although these things have changed, I do understand where the people being interviewed are coming from. When evaluated as a whole, all of Disney’s movies at the time were made up of predominantly white characters. I find this fact extremely interesting because, for myself, growing up as a white female, I never noticed anything out of place until I was older and could understand. These people are claiming that Disney is trying to shape children’s imaginations based on what they think is right. I do not find this statement right because although Disney did not prove to be diverse until the past 10 years, I do not believe that they could be trying to corrupt young children at such a high level as the people in the video seem to think.

            I do not believe that Disney is only a greedy company out to make money. They may have showed those in quotes at the end a person viewing it may never know if the statement is legitimate or not.

            After watching Disney I watched a second video on women in advertising and how degrading and sexist it can be. The video proved to have a lot of good points in it; however, I feel that some of the speaker’s arguments were too strong. I agree with all of her facts and thoughts on how the image of tiny models and skinny women have corrupted the minds of young girls into thinking that they need to be more like this. Once this image has been noticed by girls, it is hard to make them understand that that image is not the only form of beautiful, and that most men do not find that attractive anyway. All girls can understand the feeling she is talking about. We all still feel that way at every age.

            I feel that the speaker took the arguments too far when she began to compare all of this to violence and dehumanizing.  I feel that violence is really one of the last things modeling is when looked at as a whole. If she was specifically talking about eating disorders I would be able to understand more; however, she seemed to be discussing modeling as a whole and made it all sound violent, which I do not agree with. Also, after seeing the fake pictures that this speaker tried to use, I feel that she is no different than the people promoting these photos because she edited them herself anyways. The speaker seems to be taking some of the things to extreme levels because she seems to be trying to connect with women and young girls on a deeper level that she can only seem to do by making matters in the media seem worse than they actually are in some cases.

            I think that these two videos have a lot in common based on the fact that they are trying to make things in the media look a lot worse than they are in reality. Although both of these large corporations have some issues to sort out, they should not be defamed on such extrme levels. We pay for the Disney movies and watch them, and we also pay for the magazines that carry these ads. So how much worse are we than the people that produce them? We, as the audience, control what is put out for us to view because if we don’t like it, we will not buy it. So I feel that instead of all of these people complaining about how children’s imaginations and the appropriate image a woman is being destroyed, they need to find a way to do something about it for themselves.