An interlude in Disney-land.
Mar. 5th, 2009 08:16 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
catsidheI get home last night to discover that the girls are still watching Disney's Sleeping Beauty.
I've not seen it before myself, but it does look cute, especially in the remastered widescreen version.
When it finished,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
mimdancer looked slightly disgusted and pointed out that Sleeping Beauty (she is given a name, but no-one remembers what it is) doesn't do anything. I pointed out that she is not the protagonist, she's the prize... her purpose is to be fought over, and given to the winner. This is, of course, not a new observation, but still, we wondered about the message soaking into our daughters' brains.
I shouldn't have worried. Miss S came up to me immediately afterwards and stood with her face inches from mine and said very solemnly, but with an underlying thrill of excitement, that “Daddy: I fought a dragon and I killed a dragon. In the park. Mummy took me to a park today and I killed a dragon.”
Fairy Tales don't teach girls to be passive and submissive, they get enough of that from prime-time TV.
And Fairy Tales don't teach children that monsters exist: this is already well understood.
Fairy Tales teach children that monsters can be fought, and monsters can be defeated.
The biggest problem that I can see is that they also teach children that you will always know a monster when you see one...
I've not seen it before myself, but it does look cute, especially in the remastered widescreen version.
When it finished,
mimdancer looked slightly disgusted and pointed out that Sleeping Beauty (she is given a name, but no-one remembers what it is) doesn't do anything. I pointed out that she is not the protagonist, she's the prize... her purpose is to be fought over, and given to the winner. This is, of course, not a new observation, but still, we wondered about the message soaking into our daughters' brains.I shouldn't have worried. Miss S came up to me immediately afterwards and stood with her face inches from mine and said very solemnly, but with an underlying thrill of excitement, that “Daddy: I fought a dragon and I killed a dragon. In the park. Mummy took me to a park today and I killed a dragon.”
Fairy Tales don't teach girls to be passive and submissive, they get enough of that from prime-time TV.
And Fairy Tales don't teach children that monsters exist: this is already well understood.
Fairy Tales teach children that monsters can be fought, and monsters can be defeated.
The biggest problem that I can see is that they also teach children that you will always know a monster when you see one...