Putnam's "Mean Ladies"

Amanda Putnam’s essay, “Mean Ladies: Transgendered Villains in Disney Films”, is a compelling piece on gender portrayal in Disney films. Putnam opens the essay with a personal anecdote about her daughter. Her daughter wanted a Disney movie without a “mean lady” in it, as in most Disney films the villains are scary, evil women. The real life evidence strengthened her claim that children are noticing the characterization of female villains in Disney films. The anecdote was brought full circle when she referred back to her daughter in the final paragraphs of her essay. Putnam explains that when her daughter asks questions about gender norms (boys having long hair, etc...), she knows that this is because of influences like Disney that establish and reestablish ‘correct’ gender standards in many of their films.

I disagree with Putnam’s idea of homosexuality, heterosexuality and feminism throughout the essay. She explains that some heroines/princesses are considered heterosexual because they are beautiful and wear “form-fitting clothes”. I think that those points reaffirm the princesses’ femininity, but I do not see how they relate to their heterosexuality. Homosexual women can be ‘sexy’ and wear revealing clothes, just as much as heterosexual women can. She also wrote about Disney royalty being characterized as hyper-heterosexual and provided the example of Mufasa’s family: his wife, Sarabi and son, Simba. To me, that does not seem hyper-heterosexual; It seems like a regular heterosexual relationship, and therefore I do not see the justification for picking on The Lion King when talking about hyper-heterosexuality.

I liked the way that Putnam put detail into each example that she wrote about. In other essays we have read, some authors write one line about a character and provide little textual/film evidence. Putnam goes into depth and provides several different examples from each character in her essay.

I love the sentence, “This allows my daughter, one of Disney’s intended audience, to recognize more easily who is “good” in these films – and who is not.” She is referring to appearance as an indicator of good and evil in Disney movies. This sentence brings the idea of prejudice back to real life and shows the potential consequences of showing these movies to children. Certain movies have the potential to cause children to believe that homosexual or transgendered people are innately bad or ‘evil’ because of their villain-status in movies, which is completely unfair for people identifying as anything other than heterosexual.  Putnam is able to both bring in textual evidence and personal evidence to make her essay both informative and thought-provoking!