Introduction
Hi! My name is Baiyu Wang.
I am a sophomore double major in Sociology and International Study.
Winter 2021
WR39A: Disney & Gender
About Writing 39A
This course is an introduction to writing and rhetoric. It focuses on improving students' writing ability, and help them to use "Habit in Mind" in the learning process.
We are going to discover and discuss how Disney films connect to social construction. Especially the question: "How do Disney films contribute to the construction of society's values and norms about gender roles? Have these values changed over time?"
Pre-Production
The process of making annotations cultivated my reading habits. Every homework of closing reading includes the steps of understanding the author, predicting the theme of the article, summarizing the content of the article, etc. Through these weeks of practice, I have successfully applied these reading skills to the reading of various texts.
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“Lips red as the rose. Hair black as ebony. Skin white as snow.” This is the description of Snow White's appearance in the film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. We can see that as an early Disney fairy tale film, Disney's image of the princess is still based on the idealization of female appearance.
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But when it comes to Dr.Strange, the Ancient One is seen as bald and wears a simple yellow robe. Disney did not highlight her female characteristics and beauty in appearance, which shows the change of Disney's description of female appearance and the change of beauty standard. Relating what I learn has improved my habits of openness and creativity. I can think about what I have learned from different perspectives and relate it to the articles I have read.
Production
Looking Ahead In Three Paragraph
Podcast Project
In WR39A, my group and I created a podcast based on the topic Disney Film & Social Gender Norms, which talks about how Disney films depict character’s gender roles.
Here is the process analysis of my personal creation and participation in podcast/microsite production, as well as the reflection of my development towards the course objectives from Week 1 to Week 7.
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It’s an annotation from Week 2 close reading: “What Is Toxic Masculinity?” This article mainly expounds on the characteristics of toxic masculinity and the negative impact of toxic masculinity on the development of men’s mental health development. This annotation defines toxic masculinity so that I can understand what characteristics of male characters are consistent with it.
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This is a screenshot from Jean Kilbourne's lecture Killing Us Softly 4, which illustrates that models show in magazines rely on computer photo processing technology. The idealized appearance that people pursue is actually unrealistic. Therefore, I began to pay attention to how Disney portrays female’s appearance and defines beauty in its movies.
It’s an excerpt from my script. As for the theme of segment 1, I suggest that in Disney movies, the heroine's attitude towards marriage has changed from passive to active. Marrying the prince freed Cinderella from the family ruled by her stepmother, but she had no choice. Bella can refuse Gaston's pursuit, which shows that she has her own criteria for choosing a mate. My views resonated with Ruihan and Cuiwen, and inspired them to further explore the relevant content and plot. Group discussion can help us enrich our own views and gain different perspectives from others on the same segment.
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These two pictures are what I contribute to our microsite editor, which shows the examples of the change of women’s dress and appearance. I share my opinion about women’s dress is no longer the stereotype of exquisite dress, what they wear began to more inclined to highlight their identity and for practical use in our podcast. The image of Rey and Jyn is consistent with the views I have described, and gives the audience a more intuitive feeling of these characters.
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Since I am the podcast director, I need to negotiate with my team about the time we will record with zoom and make sure that everyone completes their tasks before the deadline. This process exercised my ability of long-term planning and time management for a project, and also strengthened the communication between me and members of our team.
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The biggest mistake we made in recording the podcast was that although we determined the topics and segments to be discussed in the podcast, we did not further discuss our respective views before writing the scripts. Therefore, when we concatenate scripts, we find that we can’t connect with each other very well. Because our perspectives stand from different angles and the examples we use are from different sources. So we spent a lot of time negotiating our own content and modifying the script far exceeded the planned recording time. But this is necessary, this process makes our podcast in the content can be a good fusion of everyone's point of view.
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Based on the project’s collaboration, I learned that it’s important to assign everyone's opinion and keep in touch with team members. Maintaining communication with team members enables us to negotiate and adjust the content and production of the Podcast in time, which is very important for the completion of the project as a whole. Finish the task according to the set time, ensure that our group as a whole can finish all the tasks before the deadline, and let everyone have their own goals.
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Our group Podcast analyzes the transformation Disney made in portraying male and female gender roles. My team members mentioned that women are equal to or even better than men in ability, and I pay more attention to how women get rid of the image of being rescued. In my article, I will further associate this change with the Feminist Trend and the change of the social background, so as to reflect that Disney movies are the product of the social ideological trends.