Give disney a break, he's just another copy-cat

This week's discussion reminded me a lot of an article I read last year. Written in the mid 30's, Henry Blumer performed a socio and psycho-analysis on the effects of movies on children's actions. While Disney hadn't yet created his lovely pieces of political incorrectness, the movies of the 30's were very much similar to the genre movies we discussed.

In terms of cops and robber/cowboy indian movies, children seemed EXTREMELY susceptible to the ideas about good and evil conveyed in this week's western genre movies section. This good vs. evil binary seemed to imbed itself on children's play while costumes were also very much so copied by its underaged audience. 

The study was mostly conducted by first-hand interviews of college students at the time, reflecting on their habits as children. 

One student identified herself as "a ardent Romeo caressing an kissing my Juliet as often or perhaps oftener than the movie required." Others commentated on their surprising insensitivity to violent acts as a game "Spanish whip fighting" and "death row"  were conducted as simple activities, even when "bruises and bumps began to appear."

There was also an entire influence of mannerism created by actors, or should I say characters, of these movies. In more "romantic pictures" students admitted their attempts to impersonate their female heroines conduct with "sitting at the table...carrying on a conversation, and how they danced."  Boys admitted their attempts to copy the suave, and debonaire-like ways of there heros of the movies. One girls comments that "shyness promotes respect and adoration on the part of the opposite sex." 

So I see that this idea of genre movies giving unrealistic ideas of proper social life has existed perhaps BEFORE the invention of the cinema. Disney, and his massive corporation, certainly exploited and refused to challenge such roles (and make a hefty profit). But perhaps we shouldn't be so concerned with that one specific corporation and more concerned with the medium. WITH ENTERTAINMENT COMES SOCIAL SIMPLIFICATION, and we're just as addicted now as they were then, and we were as kids watching the disney "classics". So parents please, stop letting kids watch so much darned TV!