My knitting blog is now located at the Needle Exchange!
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Not only does Disney marginalize black people, but it also hates the elderly.
By the time children enter elementary school, they already hold a negative view of older adults — and Disney films, along with TV cartoons, may influence these negative stereotypes, according to a team of Brigham Young University researchers.
Last year, the team analyzed depictions of older characters in cartoons from public TV and cable networks. They discovered many of the characters were angry, senile, crazy, wrinkled, ugly and/or overweight.
Their latest study, which has been accepted for publication in the Journal of Aging Studies, focuses solely on elderly characters in Disney animated feature films. It is the first study to do so.
Brigham Young University, Brigham Young University… Where have I heard the name Brigham Young before?
Oh right, now I remember.
From just the news report, it seems odd that they didn’t take the power dynamic into account. I’d think that one of the reasons old people are the villains in Disney movies is because old people tend to be more powerful than young people.
I find it amusing that they took note of older female women having “saggy breasts.” I don’t mean to offend here, but if you’re old and you haven’t had cosmetic surgery, they’s gonna dangle.
I also don’t think it’s likely that the elderly would be marginalized because of Disney films. Politicians have parents just like I do, so I don’t think they’d just take away funding for old folks homes because of scantily-toothed cartoon characters.
Steven Pinker on how learning about the brain changes the way he lives:
There isn’t any aspect of my daily life that isn’t affected by my interest in the mind. When I have to write down a number, I make it a point to say it to myself, to use the brain’s echo chamber as an auxiliary memory. If while playing with my 2-year-old nephew I say, “I’ll borrow your brother’s dinosaur,” and he replies, “And I’ll borrow my dinosaur,” it makes me ponder the semantics of the verb borrow—and which parts he has not yet learned. When I see a pretty face, I reflect on whether I am reacting to its signs of youth, health, femaleness, or a population composite (and whether the composite is increasingly multiracial). When I listen to music, I attend to the note-by-note transitions and how they help me segregate the instruments. And when I find myself taking umbrage at a critical remark, I try to distinguish actual unfairness from my own self-deception and self-serving biases. I can’t say that this awareness makes me a wiser or better person, but it does add to the richness of everyday experience.
So I’m workin’ on the ol’ thesis. I’m citing a paper about working memory, theory of mind and humour and I just now paid attention to the non-primary authors in the study. The surnames are Uekermann, Channon, Winkel, Schlebusch and Daum.
The Schlebusch is what got me. Such good ol’-fashioned German names. Schlebusch!
Anyhoo, my thesis is starting to take a DANGEROUSLY FEMINIST slant. Could it possibly be that the Superiority Theory of Humour grew out of patriarchy? With a name like Superiority Theory of Humour, I would have thought it grew out of flower beds and little babies’ belly buttons.
Fortunately, I ran it by my supervisor today, and he told me to elaborate even more on that particular paragraph. Yay! Hopefully I can stop myself before I hand in a slightly-charred WonderBra with my paper. Thank goodness for electronic submission.
