Friday, February 22, 2013
Another overweight Disney Villian
Thanks to Jessie Lyons for remembering the Queen of Hearts from Alice in Wonderland. She is another character where being overweight is linked with negative character traits. I'm also noticing a pattern that, oftentimes, the overweight and "evil" characters are women. Anyone else?
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I was thinking about this a little more in terms of male villains and find it interesting that most of the ones I thought of don't fit into the stereotypes/are anthropomorphized characters. Many of them also had a deformity of some kind.
ReplyDeleteI'm thinking specifically of Jafar from Aladdin (really skinny), Captain Hook (skinny and has a hook for a hand), Skar from Lion King (a lion, who has a major facial scar), Sir Lots'O from Toy Story 3 (uses a cane).
The only overweight male Disney villain that I can think of is Governor Ratcliffe from Pocahontas. In the movie, he is incredibly power hungry as well as extremely greedy. However, he is different from other Disney villains in the sense that he is somewhat insecure and confesses his lack of popularity.
ReplyDeleteThe following examples may not be Disney movies; however, they involve characters that fit the Disney villain mold:
After looking back at some of my favorite childhood movies, I recall that the Boogeyman from Nightmare Before Christmas fits the overweight Disney villain stereotype. He is very overweight and has little definition in his body shape aside from his big black eyes and mouth.
In Casper, there were three evil ghosts who kept causing trouble; however, I remember that the overweight evil ghost scared me much more than the two that were skinnier. It would be interesting to see how 4 year old children would react to this movie compared to a 10 year old in order to find out if they were scared and, if so, what made them scared.
i agree with how the villains always appear to be overweight and very unappealing to the audience. This definitely sends a bad message to children in judging certain characters off of their physical traits, but in another perspective, it could help indirectly relay the message that obesity is a problem in the US and that being overweight could be a "bad" thing to strive for. This also could cause a great deal of identity/self esteem problems with weight which could lead to eating disorders.
ReplyDelete-Janet Tela
I'm also remembering the villain from "The Lorax." He was very short and very wide and very evil.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjEvCK0MICM
I think it is important for children to realize that being overweight isnt a good thing, but Disney could show the reasons for why this character is overweight instead of just associating it with bad things. There could be a way for them to associate overweight characters with unhealthy eating instead of bad personalities.
ReplyDelete-Stephanie Jones
To go off of what Janet has said above, I agree that the villain being overweight can call attention to how that is unhealthy and a negative thing for children. However, on the other hand, the opposite 'good' character to look at is Alice who is on the complete other end of the spectrum by being unnaturally skinny. Children don't realize that a body type in real life is nowhere near comparable to a Disney princess character and this could potentially affect them negatively as they get older. On top of this, one thing that struck me about the Queen of Hearts in particular is that she not only looks unattractive, but she has very masculine features...almost ape-like. They are very dominant, dark features and when you compare that to a beautiful blonde girl in a light blue dress, children will never be unable to pick a favorite.
ReplyDelete-Taylor Rooney
I wonder if Disney is aware of all of the overweight villains that are in their movies? If they aren't, they need to be. If ids continuously see overweight individuals in the movies, they will assume that all overweight people in real life may have villain tendencies.
ReplyDelete