A Reflection - My Disney Collection

My collection as a whole comprises 10 fairy tales that have been altered by Disney in some way during their conversion into movie format. The 10 fairy tales I chose were Pocahontas, Sleeping Beauty, Little Mermaid, Rapunzel, Cinderella, The Princess and the Frog, Snow White, Beauty and the Beast, Mulan, and Frozen. I found that of all the Disney movies, these were the ones that had the most romanticisation of concept, story, relationships, and general abuse of the characters.

To expose their truths I had to find the real story that the movie was based on, who wrote it, and what the actual messages of these stories were. However, stories like Pocahontas and Mulan were ones I had to be very careful about because they were real people, not fictional, and they both did suffer terrible fates that have been hidden from the world. Frozen, though based on the Snow Queen, was a very tenuous link as there is no actual connection between the original story and the Disney tale except Elsa’s power and the consequences of that power. However, I was able to bring it back to my main idea – that the stories we know and love are based off terrible and violent tales, and therefore we believe in lies.

I found summarizing both the stories and then comparing them in a short amount of words incredibly difficult. I kept having to go back and forth, editing everything that I was doing so that I could make a point about the differences of both formats and then relate it back to my main purpose. Though I think I did a decent job, my main point could have clearer and emphasized more effectively through each item. I also wish that I could have made them relate to one another more and talked more about the Disney movies themselves, rather than allowing the reader to make many of the connections themselves as they (presumably) have seen the movies.

However, I did achieve my main goal of exposing how truly painful these tales are and the ways in which Disney romanticizes the suffering that the men and women in them go through. The idea that we have believed in lies while not knowing these key facts is extremely evident in my summary of the original story, as we have all seen the corresponding movie and can make enough comparisons to be shocked at the reality of the tales we base our childhood years off of.