The Deeper Meaning

Deborah Ross writes in her essay Escape from wonderland just how important a role the movies that children watch or the ideas shown to them in Disney movies is. It talks through Alice in wonderland, the Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast, which is the story she favors to be the most satisfying. She informs us of her opinion of the roles these play in subliminal messaging into children’s minds and in particular little girls viewing these movies. I don’t believe she wrote this piece to slam Disney but it does puzzle me how after all the movies Disney has made and all the success they have why does she find it necessary to criticize the plot lines and analyze deeper than I think it is meant to be. Disney has done more than its fair share of movies and many of them we find entertaining and fun to watch regardless of what meanings they give. Strength of her points is how it is relatable evidence because looking deeper into it everything she states can be defended to be true, but its limitations are forgetting to mention in detail that these movies follow the stigmas of societies in which the time they were written, even in the new movie Frozen Disney tries something new in an attempt to keep the plot line dynamic but eventually these stereotypical plot lines have to occur in order to keep the movies enjoyable for people of all ages. Where as in Noah Berlatsky’s essay over twilight and the hunger games he explains the subtext rather than necessarily criticizing it. He does a good job in the article of showing how most modern women would obviously prefer Katniss and her spirit then Bella and her emotions. But he also explains that traditionally relationships follow the “opposites attract” theory so although we side with one character more closely we still might look for something different in significant others. Which could also be seen as a lesson to kids growing up watching these movies alongside with Disney ones, getting both the ideas of women discovering themselves and finding yourself is a big part of finding the perfect balance. The expected audience to both of these pieces is adults and teenagers to show some sort of hidden meaning so that we too may be able to share it with others.

No More Living In Fantasies

Escape from Wonderland: Disney and the Female Imagination by Deborah Ross had some very intriguing points about femininity and women in general. The first Disney story, Ross discusses is the infamous Alice in Wonderland. Ross breaks down how Alice and her various adventurous correlate with many women without us even realizing it. As little girls we would this interesting and crazy movie and get the thought into our head that it’s okay to daydream and fantasize about an unknown world. Little did we know that, those fantasies would carry into our lives as women and how we saw men. By constantly watching Disney movies women have expected that romantic type of man to come literally out of nowhere to sweep us off our feet. We’re living in a fantasy and admiring a world that we really think exist all because of movies with animated objects and animals. That crooked way of thinking has lead women down the wrong path that we need to try to come back from and soon. Women need to wake up and realize that this is not a fantasy that we are living in, we are living in the real world, this is reality and we need to treat our expectations as such. However as Deborah Ross, mentioned in Escape from Wonderland, living in fantasies is not the only problem with women today. Women also seem to think it’s quite alright to give up what makes us individuals just for some man who can’t offer us too much of anything, just as Ariel from the Little Mermaid did for Eric. Talking from experience I’ve seen many women give up their jobs, and such high standards all for a man, who most likely wouldn’t do the same for them. When I think about that I truly feel sorry for those women who feel that they absolutely have to do such a thing to make another human being happy. It’s quite shameful a bit sickening to be completely honest. If I had to personally choose a Disney story I would want any women to look up to and imitate themselves I think I would choose Beauty and the Beast. If we’re being honest I wouldn’t want any women to look up to imitate any movie but this Disney movie would have to be the one. In this story the man is actually chasing the women for once, while the women is able to sustain her standards and morals about her for once.

and to think we thought we knew these characters?

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.

masuclinity and feminism- alex adame

I found the “Terry Crews: Manhood, Feminism and the mindset that leads to rape” to be very intriguing. Terry Crews talks about how feminism and masculinity have standards. He explains how many guys are afraid to show basically any kind of weakness, including him. He says how children are affected by this as well as adults. In his mind he sees masculinity as someone who shows strength and who is above others. This makes men think that it’s okay to make women feel like property. It gives the idea that men can disrespect women with abuse, rape, or other things because that makes men feel superior to women when in reality it just makes women want to feel like men aren’t need. Terry crews talks about “man code” which means he shouldn’t be putting out what he thinks in his book about how men are afraid to admit they are afraid. Terry Crews knows “man code” isn’t going to make anything right for example, rape. In the end he feels that men and women are both needed and it’s up to them to show the younger generation what it means to be a man or a woman.  I really enjoyed this video because you could tell how passionate Terry Crews felt about this subject. The reading kind of went hand in hand with the video. Paul Theroux talks about how masculinity is defined. Paul shows his hatred towards it because it personally effected his life. Paul Theroux was also afraid to come out and be a writer because it was seen as unmanly. He talks about how much he hates being a man because of the standards society hold for them.  I enjoyed this article as well because he also shows how much passion he has towards masculinity and how he’d wish for something different.

I felt that the “Terry Crews: Manhood, Feminism, and the mindset that leads to rape” video and “The Male Myth” article by Paul Theroux both go with how society is effecting how people think of feminism and masculinity. The “they say” they are referring to is how society defines a man and a woman.

Crews & Theroux

    Terry Crews who is a former football player and also an actor steps up and talks about the touchy subject of feminism, men’s expectation, rape and the “man code”. He says that these gender norms brought upon us are set by society and over time they become more drastic. He even gives examples of his own son and his shame of being scared and how he actually explained to his son that being scared from something in a movie isn’t a bad thing, that its okay to be scared and honest with your self. There is no shame and it doesn’t make you any less of a man or even any more of a woman just because you are scared. He claimed that this situation was a wake up call and how he needs to explain that to him self from time to time as well because society gets you so caught up in how you’re suppose to act and how men and woman are suppose to live. His main points are that being a feminist isn’t saying that woman are more important or powerful than men. He is saying that feminists are promoting gender EQUALITY and nothing less.

Theroux is a writer that goes into depth about how the expectations of a man and how they should act are instilled into young boys growing up all over the world. Boys young and older are constantly told to man up and be a man when they do something that isn’t “manly” and is girly.

I believe both Crews and Theroux are addressing the same problem and go about it in the same kind of manner. They both are giving examples of how men should act are being drilled into boys heads at a very young age. The “they say” that they are talking about is how society is changing up and making stereotypes for how a man should be and to change every ones views, and if you are a man and act differently than that then you are a pussy or a female.

Society's Distortion of Manliness

Terry Crews and Paul Theroux are both addressing the same conversation, though they each go about it in a different manner. The “They say” that they are responding to is society’s hijacking of the concept of being a man and the twisting of it to manipulate people to think and act in certain ways. Terry Crews goes about this in his interview by explaining that the way manliness is currently portrayed in society has resulted in many men believing that they need to assert force and aggression in order to prove that they are men instead of showing respecting to others. Examples that he uses are men who will beat women in to order to assert control or rape a woman because he views her as nothing more than an object to be owned. He traces the cause of this to the society convincing people that the only way they can prove themselves as men is to show that they are dominant, which ends up happening at the expense of others. He then talks about a time when his son was scared during a movie theater, but was comforted and told that he didn't have to watch the movie until he was ready in order to show that people should be respected when facing a problem instead of being forced to conform to certain standards, such as society’s interpretation of manliness.

Meanwhile, Paul Theroux explains in his article that he strongly dislikes being a man, and has always disliked it. He views it as something that is both pitiful and insulting to him when he hears somebody tell another person to be a man. The reason why he feels this way is because it pushes the idea that being masculine is something restricted solely to men, resulting in men feeling socially separated from women and viewing them differently than they do men because of what they were taught about the meaning of manliness. He also believes that the promoting of this mindset encourages men to view women as inferior.

Terry Crews and Paul Theroux are responding to the feminist movement and the belief maintained by some that it is a threat to their status as a man. They argue that they fear it because of the belief that the movement seeks to make women dominant instead of men. They make it clear that feminism is about promoting equality between men and women, which Crews emphasizes by saying that being a man isn't about seeking dominance over others. Theroux encourages men to fight for feminism right alongside women, and argues that they have just as much to benefit from it as women do by breaking the notion that men have to behave a certain way just to be considered socially acceptable. 

My Rant

Please forgive run-ons; This is my blog, so my style.

Terry crew; a actor and former professional football star talks about feminist, men’s expectations of other men, and Man Code.

He goes into how men have ‘Man code’ is implemented into society; if you want something, get it Period. This is what Crews describes as ‘Chasing wind’ if you probably or, better yet realistically cannot achieve something, do it anyways, ‘BE a MAN’. With this he breaks into how men and women are equals and how this ideology is subconsciously leading men to be either abusive, controlling, or even irrationally breaking the equality barrier most feminist want just to make things more fair and level for both sexes in a respond to men shutting themselves off from feminism. When he tries to makes points as men just doing their part and doing it right. [Please hold this thought]

Theroux is a writer talking about how the Ideology of being a man is instilled into every boy growing up in the US and possibly the world. He goes on (similarly to Crews) on how this ideology is harmful to developing minds. Minds that are trained to belittle women in sense of man being superior. Minds that are taught to ‘Man Up!’, ‘don’t be such a pussy’, also that money, lots of ‘toys’ and girls make a man; even on how he must “prove his masculinity” to be a writer. The article is a response to men thinking they are superior, shoving there ideology into every one’s head, and not giving feminist there time of day. [Keep this thought in your brain]

This is now where I rant.               Terry Crews takes a break from making cameos in movies, tv shows, video games, and soap advertisements to talk about how men are “too scared” to listen to what feminist have to say. He also rings up how men are incline to assert dominance on women, Hitting on them when they want to be alone, beating or even rapping women because the man probably views her as his “property” (Never mind I left out info i didn't feel like summarizing the entire bit, mainly what I felt would be a higher button topic) First off if I ever disagree with a feminist, it’s because I disagree with her points. That means I listen to what she has to say, I won’t simply ignore her and go on “I a man fuck her what does she know, Right!?” No I listen like a normal human being and proceed to debate like one. When it comes to men rapping, or abusing women because they may Be “property”, get the fuck outta here. Here is another rant on how men don’t know there place, mainly while Inspecting the lowest common denominator, Men who do this shouldn’t even be compared to the rest of us. If a man Raps or beat a women, his ass belongs in prison where he’ll be rapped and beaten on a daily basis. If you don’t do or think like that your not applicable to that group. Now with Theroux or however you say that name, He goes on how men are always pushed to be Manly aren't really appertained on personality as much as they’d like. First off this guy writes like a femboy but not because of his approach to being mainly but because of how much he denounces him being a man. Yeah men are pushed to never cry or be nice or anything else he put down. But his overall whininess throughout the paper; “Sport are a drug worse than Marijuana”, [ High school Sports] “ teaches you how to be a poor loser, the manly attitude toward sports seems to be little more than a recipe for creating bad marriages, social misfits, moral degenerates, sadists, latent rapists and just plain louts.” Like I said earlier he tailors to the Lowest common denominator, sure men are pushed to win, but it’s always and quote me if I’m wrong, but it’s the dumbest dick heads who always act and talk like this, I haven’t met but like 20 people who actually act like this and criticizing men as a whole is just as ignorant as what those losers have to say. As a side note I would like to say man up, the scenarios he dealt were bad but to denounce his man hood is completely whiney and incompetent of being proud of who he is rather than ashamed of his Sex.