The Evolution of Disney Films
About The Project
On this page, I will share my process of creating the podcast/microsite. Through this assignment, I became more curious about different paths to approach the course question. My group decided to focus on Disney characters’ progression and the gender values they represent, also touching upon the topic of masculinity portrayed by the Avengers. With this experience, I learned how to work effectively with my team and also take into account my personal responsibility.
Pre-Production
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This assignment was from week 2, when I watched Kilbourne’s lecture and analyzed it. I find that annotating while paying attention to the lecture helped me become a more engaged learner. This lecture also played an important role in shaping my ideas about women’s values and worth, which ties closely to Disney films’ lessons in the later weeks. I notice that Disney princesses possess disproportionate bodies, and these proportions have not changed as we progress into the new eras.
Here is my annotation of “Disney’s Magic Mirror” by Haas and Trapedo. I practiced making connections with the ideas being discussed and saw how they relate to the course topic. Gender roles have changed over time to catch up with societal trends, and examples can be seen through newer princesses such as Tiana and Elsa. Furthermore, annotating and writing a small summary down for these excerpts not only helped me pinpoint the main idea of the reading, but these techniques also strengthened my comprehension skills.
In week 3, I explored the movie Beauty and the Beast and learned how the characters portrayed masculinity. This screenshot is my annotation of Gaston’s actions and how they reinforce the idea of toxic masculinity. Gradually, I saw an improvement in my written literacy through watching and producing these small annotations.
Production
These are parts of the lines I contributed to the discussion. I was one of the co-hosts of this podcast, so learning to make good transitions between segments was very interesting to me. Through the creation of the podcast script, I practiced collaboration as well as communication skills, which adhere to our course objectives. Also, I was responsible for editing the master script. Although I struggled at times to put together everyone’s ideas and keep the tone sounds like a conversation, everything works out nicely at the end.
Here are the images I contributed to our microsite. I think that images are a great addition to any site. They help to deliver the messages in a more direct way and give a visual example of ideas I mention in the script. Searching for related images allowed me to become more creative and also to understand the importance of engagement in working as a team.
In the process of drafting ideas for the script, I organized an outline for topics I wanted to talk about. Furthermore, I utilized sources and annotations from the previous weeks to expand the content. By preparing ideas to talk about, I developed effective habits for my own writing process, which is a useful skill from the course objectives. These small steps are crucial to creating a nice product at the end, which is our microsite.
Interested in seeing what we have to present? Check out our microsite now !
Looking Ahead
The most challenging part of this project was to make sure that our podcast sounds lively, as if we’re having a conversation. I believe it would have been much easier if we actually had the chance to meet in person, but we made it through anyway. Although I did become quite nervous saying my lines, I was excited at the same time to hear the final result, so I tried my best. As a team, we did not encounter any significant issues as everyone was supportive and responsible for their roles. From this experience, I learned to be more open and encouraging towards differences in opinions so that we could achieve a good performance together.
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The collaboration allowed me to learn many skills that are useful for future classes and also the workplace. I was aware that in order to reach a common goal, I need to finish my part on deadlines so that everyone has time to revise any problematic part.
I also learned to become an active listener to fully engage with my team and understand diverse perspectives. For instance, not everyone was interested in talking about Disney princesses for the entire podcast, so we implemented toxic masculinity in Avengers and made it work in a balanced way. I think good interaction with peers was the most important aspect of this project.
As we created the script, we analyzed various Disney characters and how the gender roles have been changing over time to accommodate the new trends. I plan to take a more in-depth look into the prince and princess romance of Disney fairytales because this part stood out to me. I find that love definitions are different in each movie, especially if we compare the relationships in early and later princess films. I choose these two main characters for my essay: Cinderella and Tiana from The Princess and the Frog. I think that Tiana is a well-rounded princess that represents a drastic improvement over Cinderella, in terms of the lessons Tiana conveys.
