Limitations on Imagination

Stereotypes of women have existed since the beginning of time. The creation of movies and television has increased the likelihood of more women encountering such stereotypes in media, which limits their imagination. Deborah Ross, the author of “Escape from Wonderland: Disney and the Female Imagination,” is an English Professor who teaches writing, literature, and humanities, but her primary focus of study is popular culture and more specifically the views of gender in popular culture. “Escape from Wonderland: Disney and the Female Imagination” portrays how Disney movies are limiting women’s imagination by only showing one option for the heroine in Disney movies: the helpless maiden.

Disney movies are creating an environment for women that gives them the idea that they will never be happy unless they give into gender stereotypes. Forming this idea in a young girl’s head is limiting their imagination because they only see one path to the future. As Ross points out, “The fact that many Disney movies implant seeds of guilt and fear to spring up along with children’s developing imaginations is a serious problem” (61). This is the main reason why Ross created this article: she wanted to address and fix the problem of limits to the female imagination. Ross wants girls to know that they have more than just marriage to look forward to in life, that there is “more than one girl’s story out there” (58). The sooner girls realize they can be whatever they put their minds to, the better lives they will create for themselves.

Ross builds on her argument that Disney movies are limiting female imagination by applying logic, credibility/ethics, and emotion; these strategies are the rhetorical appeals known as logos, ethos, and pathos. Ross builds upon logos by supporting her argument with the specific examples of three different Disney movies: “Alice in Wonderland (1951), The Little Mermaid (1989), and Beauty and the Beast (1991, re-released 2001)” (54). She compares these films to an old novel created in 1759 called The Female Quixote, by comparing how women act in these Disney films to how the woman in The Female Quixote acts. Ross also deploys logos by analyzing well-chosen examples from the different movies she discusses. In one such example, Ross uses the logic of analogy to explain that “[Ariel] fantasizes about becoming human partly because… she is curious about a world she has only glimpsed… But that world interests her mainly because in it dwells a man who resembles a handsome statue she already adores” ( 57). This analysis of The Little Mermaid strengthens Ross’s argument by showing why Ariel wants to have legs: for a man, not for herself. This line of reasoning is not only logical, but it also emphasizes Ross’s overall argument that Disney movies problematically depict women as only living for men, not for themselves.

Ross’s article has a strong impact on her readers because of her background; she specializes in popular culture and more commonly from the perspective of gender (53). Ross’s experience with this topic shows her readers she knows what she is talking about, which displays credibility. Ross develops ethos not only through her scholarly expertise on the subject, but also in the way she uses quotes and information from the movies to acknowledge  the opposing side of the argument. For instance, Ross points out how in the Disney version of this classic fairy tale “instead of making [Ariel] love the human because she loves a human, the movie has Ariel love a human mainly because she is already curious enough about his world to have collected a cave full of human souvenirs” (57). While this may sound like it gives more agency to Ariel than the non-Disney version, the ending is the same. Ariel is still trapped in a marriage with a man instead of free to explore the human world. Yet again, Ross’s argument proves how gender stereotypes in Disney films limit young girls’ imaginations.

While Ross builds her argument on both logos and ethos, she emphasizes pathos more than the other rhetorical appeals by making the reader feel frightened in some ways, but also happy in others. Ross uses words like “attack,” “burst,” “lavish,” and “dwindle” to create more emotional impact for the reader. Using the word “attack” in the sentence “Giroux’s attack on Disney…” creates a more aggressive feeling for the reader than writing “Giroux confronts Disney…” which would have created a different tone for the audience (Ross 54). Another example of emotionally powerful diction is when Ross uses “lavish” in the sentence, “He provides lavish descriptions of the shore as well as the sea” (58).  By using the word “lavish” she is creating a more exaggerated sense of beauty in the world, rather than putting “pretty descriptions,” which does not create that sense of beauty the author wants to portray (Ross 58). Ross also uses imagery to create more emotion in the reader. For example, she writes,“[Ariel] is willing to spend all she has: her voice, her health, and eventually her life. She buys her new legs, from which blood oozes with every agonizing step, by letting the sea witch cut out her tongue” (Ross 57). This gruesome description of body horror creates an unpleasant feeling in her readers. Ross uses imagery not just to inspire fear and displeasure in the reader but also to provoke feelings of happiness. For instance, Ross uses florid description with more positive feelings when she describes how “Belle waltzes with her Prince around that gorgeous marble hall, the title tune welling up around them, one may see as well as feel that she’s getting not just a husband, but more books than she can read in a lifetime, and a home as big and beautiful as her imagination” (61). Ross’s appeal to pathos strengthens her argument because she was able to connect with her readers on an emotional level to persuade them to believe her side.

For all the strengths of her argument, there are also some weaknesses in Ross’s rhetoric here. Ross makes the argument that Disney is taking away female imagination, but she is also assuming that all girls who grew up watching Disney feel the same way because of how she feels now. She argues that “Neither age, divorce, nor parenthood has yet made me cynical enough to see the ending of [Beauty and the Beast] without a sob of satisfaction. But then Disney did begin training me to react in just that way from a very early age” (Ross 61). With this claim, Ross seems to be assuming all girls are experiencing the same outcome as her. However, this might not be the case. Ross’s article also includes a few different logical fallacies, such as faulty causality, hasty generalization, and slippery slope. For instance, Ross uses hasty generalization when she states, “I have chosen to examine the way various elements of image, story, and dialogue interact to influence the valuation of imagination in three of Disney’s girls’ movies” (54). This is a hasty generalization because Ross is arguing that all Disney movies are bad even though she is only evaluating three Disney movies in her article. Readers are asked to generalize Ross’s claim about these three films to the rest of the Disney catalog. An example of faulty causality would be Ross assuming that every girl feels the same way as her. Ross uses a slippery slope by implying that children watching Disney movies today will inevitably be led to believe they have one path in life in the future. While it’s clear there are some problematic gender stereotypes in the Disney films, Ross’s argument might be overstating the problems.

Even though there are some weaknesses to her argument, it is clear that Ross successfully builds upon ethos, pathos, and logos. Within those appeals, she uses diction, syntax, imagery, and facts to get her point across to the audience. She could have made this article more appealing to the reader by applying more imagery, so the reader would have been more engaged, but it’s possible the constraints of the academic journal limited the length of her article. To strengthen her argument even more she could have included more examples of different Disney movies and how those specific movies affect female imagination. However, there are only so many examples that could be discussed in a ten page academic article. With all that said, Ross wrote an article that holds its own and accomplishes her goal of analyzing how gender stereotypes in Disney movies can limit the imagination of young girls.

Works Cited

Ross, Deborah. “Escape from Wonderland: Disney and the Female Imagination.” Marvels & Tales: Journal of Fairy-Tale Studies, vol. 18, no. 1, 2004, pp. 53–63. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/41388684.