Kim Ernst

Hdev 25-KELLIE BLISS

March 17, 2012

Children's Film Critique

 

101 Dalmatians was directed by Wolfgang Reitherman, Hamilton Luske, and Clyde Geronimi.  The movie was released in 1992.  The movie is about a wicked old lady named Crudella  Vil and henchmen kidnap the Dalmatians puppies from their parents Pongo and Perdita.  Crudella wants the Dalmatians fur for her newest jacket.

  

She will stop at nothing to get what the wants.  Pongo and Perdita realized that their puppies were missing they went out to find them.  It is a very cute story.  I watched it several times when I was younger and then of course with my own children.  Now that I am taking this class I watched it again and noticed the stereotypes and gender roles.

 We have all watched and grown up with the Disney movies of the 101 Dalmatians.  Walt Disney said, “Our heritage and ideals, our codes and standards-the things we live by and teach our children – are preserved or diminished by how freely we exchange ideas and feelings.” (Disney)  Walt Disney had the best intentions in all of his movies to support the best values and expose the children to the best values. In reality though this is not true, instead it has exposed our children to more bad values than good values.

One stereotype in the 101 Dalmatians is the villain is portrayed as an ugly super skinny old woman.  She smokes cigarettes throughout the whole movie.  Not all villains need to be made out to be old.  Just because they are old doesn’t mean they need to a villain.

 It shows the children that if smoke and have crazy hair then you are a villain.  The evil stereotype is written about Crudella  Vil.  Also in the movie they focus on all the fancy things  and how you need to have everything that everyone else.   

In the movie Perdita, the mother of the dog is written to be weak and shows that women need to be weak in the movies.  We should be having the women be strong and powerful women.

Older women are usually the villain of the stories.  The children need to see less of this.  There needs to more mural and good things portrayed throughout the videos.  The children need to be taught that women of any age can be the winner.  There needs to be some villains that are pretty.  We need to be able to teach our children that they don’t need materialistic things to make them happy.  It is what inside that makes you so cool. 

 The little girls need to be seeing women in powerful roles and not just doing housework or sewing.  Women are business people too. 

Disney movies have a lot of influence on our children.  The Disney movies influence them by exposing them to subliminal messages.  The also influence our children with racist values, and sexists thoughts.  The Disney movies have a lot of bad morals that they are advertising to our children.  The children are the future for us.  We should be influencing them with messages that are showing them that can be whoever they want to be.  We need to send the message that it doesn’t matter what you are wearing or how you look.  It matters how you portray yourself and how you think of yourself.  The children need to see movies that are showing more successful and more achieving goals.  That way when they get older they will understand about having goals and achieving them.  There is not better feeling that achieving a goal and getting to set a new and even better goal to achieve.  The movie industry needs to think about what kinds of stereotypes they are portraying in the movies and who it will affect and have influence upon.  The movie industry needs to be aware of the racist values that they have hidden in their movies.  They also need to be aware that they are putting bad morals in the movies for the little innocent eyes of our children.  They need to be putting good morals and showing more of that instead in the movies for the children to be watching.  The children go around acting out these movies all the time and it’s all fun and games for now.