Tuesday, May 31, 2011

What do you think about Disney fairy tale?

In one of my class, I read traditional fairy tales and had a chance to look up for the information about Disney version of tale or animation. Of course I'm sure you all know about Disney animation. For better understanding for Disneyfication, I'll talk about the definition from Wiktionary "the act of process whereby something is disneyfied". Comparing the traditional fairy to Disney fairy tales, the first characcteristic of Disney's is lengthening the plot and making characters more interesting because of the time management. They mixed somd factors of 19th-century melodrama which arethe innocent heroin and the evil villian with the distinctive idiosyncrasies of sub-characters such as animals and dwars in comedy. So gags became the trademarks of a Disney fairy tale. Second characteristic is enhancing the romantic aspects of the story. While sex and marriage was mundane in the traditional folk tales, it was much more important to pursue of tru love with love-at-fist-sight. So in the stories like Sleeping Beauty, love's first kiss became the only thing for breaking curse. What they changed from the traditional aspect is that something irrational, inhumane and arbitrary changed into sweetened version of the tales. Moreover, ther are chase scenes instead of journey and request which are the important factor for the traditional fairy tales. It seems that all the aspects of Disneyfication are bad, but there are good perspecives of Disneyfication which is that they show some of the contemporary values and the change of beliefs. For example, 1959's Sleeping Beauty represents the Second World War.
However, the Walt Disney only took the features of typical characters from the original tales and changed into the visualized animation with friendly animals. By doing this they forgot the roots and purposes of the original tales. Everything in is revised into the amusement without any morals or lessons. What is more serious problem is that it can affect the children's thinking while they are watching this disneyfied animation. They might get confused by what is real and what is not because of too much visualized images aimed at making at unrealistic animal characters. Another problem is that there are no cultural diversities because of the Walt Disney's globalization and that leads into the one way of thinking which must be the Americanized way of thinking.
I've never thought that Disney's tales or animation had negative effects, but now I have a slightly different idea from before after gathering information about it and compare things.

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