Childhood Movies: Detrimental Effects On Young Kids

How Childhood Movies Have A Detrimental Effect on Young Kids
Growing up many young children watch disney movies that helped mold how they grew up. Many of these disney movies flash sparkly dresses and magic wands at the young kids and that is all they see. In retrospect these movies show how horribly many of the characters were treated. An example of which is Cinderella. She is horribly treated by members, of whom were supposed to be, of her family. It also tells young women that can’t be independent, and that they need a man to protect and save them. Disney princess movies show young children how they should look and many girls feel like they can’t be a princess because of how they look and boys feel that they won’t be able to achieve the strength of their heros. The single story of disney movies shows how as young children we are only seeing what disney wants us to see, rather than the history and cruelty behind it.

A very widely known example is how many of the movies display a sense of white privilege. There wasn’t a non white princess until 1992, in Aladin. Another example that shows racial discrimination to young children is Dumbo, where the have the crows in the movie representing the Jim Crow Laws. Some other less subtle examples are that girls need a prince to rescue them. Girls are being taught to be dependent on men and that they must be fragile and weak and they must wait to be saved. The idea that girls are weak is going to penetrate any child’s mind that that is the only way they will see them. Like Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche said “Show people as one thing and only one thing they will become,” in the speech The Danger of a Single