Roles of mothers in Disney media

The heroes and heroines of most Disney movies come from unstable family backgrounds;[1] most are either orphaned or have no mothers.[2] Few, if any, have only single-parent mothers. In other instances, mothers are presented as "bad surrogates" eventually "punished for their misdeeds."[3] There is much debate about the reasoning behind this phenomenon.[4] Some feminists (such as Amy Richards) believe it is to create dramatic interest in the main characters; if mothers were present to guide them, they argue, there would not be much of a plot.[5] Some entertainment journalists (such as G. Shearer) believe that it is to show that a happy family does not have to consist of a mother, father and a child and that a family can be one parent and one child, or one parent and many siblings.[6] Below is a list of some notable examples of this aspect of Disney movies and television series.[7]

Categories of mothers

No (or 'absent') parents

Wicked stepmother

Mother killed and/or captured

Biological mothers

Adoptive mothers

See also

References

  1. Henry A. Giroux, Fugitive Cultures: Race, Violence, and Youth (Routledge Taylor & Francis Group, 1996).
  2. Lynn H. Collins, Joan C. Chrisler, and Michelle R. Dunlap, Charting a New Course for Feminist Psychology (Greenwood Publishing Group, 2002), 94.
  3. Stephen M. Fjellman, Vinyl Leaves: Walt Disney World and America (Westview Press, 1992), 263.
  4. Snopes.com, Disney Movie Mothers - Walt Disney - My Mother The Scar.
  5. Ask Amy
  6. Geoff Shearer, "Disney keeps killing movie mothers: DISNEY is continuing its tradition of being G-rated entertainment's biggest mother flickers," Courier Mail (March 07, 2008).
  7. Paul Loukides and Linda K. Fuller, Beyond the Stars: Themes and Ideologies in American Popular Film (Popular Press, 1993), 8.
  8. 1 2 3 4 Sara Munson Deats and Lagretta Tallent Lenker, Aging and Identity: A Humanities Perspective (Greenwood Publishing Group), 210.
  9. Geronimi, Clyde; Jackson, Wilfred; Luske, Hamilton; Kinney, Jack (1953-02-05), Peter Pan, retrieved 2016-04-05
  10. Stock, Lorraine K. (2015-01-01). "Reinventing an Iconic Arthurian Moment: The Sword in the Stone in Films and Television". Arthuriana. 25 (4): 66–83. ISSN 1934-1539. doi:10.1353/art.2015.0047.
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