In Deborah Ross’s
passage she goes in very deep detail about several Disney movies and how it
portrays the female imagination and in the second essay by Noah Berlatsky he
has a mini debate about the characters in The
Hunger Games and in the movie Twilight.
For Ross she begins to almost annotate the Disney characters in certain movies,
primarily the ones about females princesses who dream and wish of life other
than their own, for example Ariel The Little
Mermaid is about a mermaid who lives under the sea and some how falls in
love with a human on land and now its her sole destiny to become a human now
and leave her whole life behind? Or even Beauty
and the Beast, a female prisoner falls in love with a huge hairy, ugly,
bear looking beast thing and decides that she wants to be with him now. From
reading Ross’s passage it kind of opened my eyes about kind of foolish these
movies we praise are… but we for the most part watched them when we were younger
and honestly had no idea what was going on. As for Berlatsky’s article, I personally
didn’t like it at all. He is comparing two movie/book CHARACTERS, not real
people, they will never cross paths or ever be in the same story. They are
playing a role, why the hell does it matter who will win in a fight? To me this
passage was stupid, However one of his strengths in this paper is he does actually
have some parts where he is talking about something significant, the part where
he analyzes how people favor masculine over feminine, so in that case he is
considering opposing points of view while contrasting and comparing them the
whole. But other than that I didn’t enjoy this passage. Both authors were
talking and comparing feminine characters and parts from movies and both were
contrasting different ones and how they act and differed from each other. I
much more enjoyed Ross’s passage, she has much more examples and makes her
reading a hell lot more interested and actually made good clear point which
made me think and Berlatsky’s on the other hand bored me and was happy that
this passage was fairly short.
My reading experience a little opposite from yours, I feel. I felt that Berlatsky’s article’s purpose wasn’t to compare two characters, but to open reader’s eyes to the fact that society views female roles that show their ‘true femininity” as weak and helpless, while simultaneously viewing “tough” and “tom-boy” female roles as the stronger ideal female. He used Bella and Katniss as an example, for most people say “duh, obviously Katniss”, when they read the question of who would win in a fight, which shows how biased media is when portraying a female for a romance film compared to an action film. It’s almost as if the media wants the woman to fill the shoes of a male protagonist, which is why they make her though and almost emotionless. However, while reading Ross’s passage, I couldn’t help but find myself becoming upset with the way she judged and over analyzed some of these stories. For example, when she stated that beauty in the beast is basically telling young girls to “settle” for the man who gives her attention and material goods rather than keep looking for “the man of her dreams”, I had to disagree. Beauty and the Beast is about Bell showing a cold, beastly man true love and compassion, and her love turns him into a prince. It is in no way a story of her “settling”, or basically “marrying a part of herself” because the beast is so much like her in the end, as Ross states. Overall, I did enjoy the point-of-views depicted by both of these authors, though simply disagreed more with the last one on a couple stances.
ReplyDeletePersonally I would have to disagree with some of your statements. I feel that Ariel’s almost obsession to be on land was a bit much. However, it was not from nowhere. Everyone wants to do something interesting, to get away, and to fall madly in love. This seems only natural, not because of Disney has implanted this emotion, but because it is only human nature. Belle on the other hand falls in love with a beast. She cares for him because she realizes that he cares for her. Her compassion is what turns him back into a human, this was not just her settling. For the comment about comparing and contrasting two characters this happened in both pieces of work. Belle V. Ariel, and Katniss V. Bella. Of course these characters would never meet, and that’s the point. The contrast is not between the characters themselves, but what they symbolize. Ariel meets a man, and transforms herself to be better for him. Belle changes her man to be better for her. Katniss represents masculinity while Bella represents femininity. Berlatsky’s essay explains that Katniss has power because she does not have desire. Belle, on the other hand, has desire because she does not have power. These two make a drastic change towards the end of both of their stories. The two flip positions by realizing that they wanted something different. Bella becomes a vampire which could easily overcome Katniss. While Katniss gives it all up to be with Peta. However, I do agree with you that the longer of the passages was more interesting.
ReplyDeleteI would have to disagree with some of your ideas. Yes, Disney is always trying to portray a positive aspect to young girls and sometimes exaggerates, but they try to make it seem to where it connotes with a real emotion in real life. From the stories that Debroah Ross talked about, you can conclude that the main theme in all of them was about love. Love comes as a natural feeling, which allows people to connect with the Disney stories. Therefore, this shows how hard it can be to find natural love. The story of The Little Mermaid tries to show how difficult and how much of a challenge it can be for a female to find natural love, without having to change themselves. Ariel is trying to change herself to show her love for whatever the captain guy’s name is, but then the story shows how Ariel never had to change in order to find natural love. Now I also have to disagree with you on your thoughts about Noah Berlatsky’s article. In my opinion Berlatsky wasn’t trying to focus on comparing Katniss to Bella. The bigger idea of his article was to compare masculinity and feminism. Berlatsky is just trying to make his article interesting by making the reader think about action, rather than to think about the motions of the two female characters. Readers would rather picture Katniss and Bella fighting in action then to compare them naturally. What I just said also relates to Berlatsky’s point as to saying that people would rather pick a masculine type female rather than a feminine type female.
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ReplyDeleteIn both of these articles the authors bring up interesting points in their works, but we first have to consider that these authors are talking about two types of genres (Ross with Adventure/Fairy Tales and Berlatsky with more of an action/suspense genre).
Ross tries to bring up that imagination and adventure is not something young girls should take part of, even from a place that is located in “the most magical place on earth”. I do want to say that one of Ross’ strengths in her article is that she brings up pieces of work that span hundreds of years to support her statement. Back to my point, Ross brings up that in Disney Movies, imagination and adventure is something that young girls shouldn’t take part of and that its a bad thing, and with her point I think that’s right. She brings this up in her Alice in Wonderland example, “she has rejected all this ‘nonsense’ and is anxious to get home to write a book about it. Writing a story, she has decided, is much safer than living one.” This has to change, especially when in a time where we can go to Europe or any part of the world in a matter of hours, and adventure is everywhere. Once we start looking at this I think that the message of adventure being bad will start to become obsolete in the coming years.
I really liked Berlatsky’s article a lot. His article really got down to the point and surprised me at the very end. I think that this article does have a lot of shortcomings as well, one being the bias and complete support of Katniss (but then when you read the article, who wouldn't be?), plus I think that he also blocks the opinions of the people who enjoy Twilight more than the Hunger Games. Maybe they know something they could add to the conversation, or not (I haven’t read Twilight, and don’t plan on to), but we just don’t know.
In the end they both explain relationships differently. In Ross’ article she thinks that in the end when there’s a marriage it somewhat devalues the character into an object or prize, whether it’s Ariel and Eric or the Beast and Beauty. On the other hand, Berlatsky talks about relationships in a way where one person helps complete and balances out the other person, somewhat like an equilibrium.
I disagree with you saying that the Disney movies are foolish. I feel that Ariel’s desire to be on land was because she wanted something she couldn't have and had to strive for it. She did it for romance which seems to be something every girl wants. This is something that is represented by every girl in a movie, whether they are tough and masculine or girly and feminine. From the movie Beauty and the Beast, Belle falls in love with a beast but no because she's settling. It once again falls along the line of romance. She sees beyond looks and finds that he truly loves her but feels he doesn't have a chance with her. Their love for each other is what turns him into a man. There are problems with both articles, just like there are problems with every character in a movie. The problem goes further than just their characters. It's what they show younger girls and who they represent. Ariel finds love and has to fight for it, belle looks beyond looks and finds the man of her dreams, Katniss show manliness but what the fink nine side. Bella shows girliness and wants to be stronger. These two characters see their own weaknesses. Katniss and Bella in the end wanted something different. They want the strengths the other one has. Bella becoming a vampire gives her power and strength like katniss. Katniss finds romance and cares for a man more than fighting. I Didn't like this article that much either because it was unrealistic but I could see Noah Berlatsky’s point. I found parts of you blog that I also agreed with too.
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