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Undergraduate Research at UMass Dartmouth
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demeaning physical descriptions of the princesses
also serves to weaken their characters and perpetuate
sexist ideals for women. These perceptions, it
seems, can lead to internal biases when examining
the films and even could be a contributing factor to
the disagreements regarding whether or not princesses
are negative influences for young girls.
I applied the methodology of discourse analysis
and coding method to the film and merchandise
reviews. Discourse analysis examines how language
is used to construct “ways of being in the
world.” Coding categorizes language to make sense
of dominant trends. Using the coding method, I
categorized the rhetoric of film and merchandise
reviews into categories associated with racism/
racial terms, gender ambiguity, sexual innuendos,
and stereotypically feminine/masculine terms. To
categorize and code the films and merchandise, for
example, I documented the typical masculine traits
such as athleticism, bravery, or independence, as
well as the feminine rhetoric such as any action or
trait relating to showing emotion, physical features
(pretty, beautiful, gorgeous), or being submissive.
After studying the merchandise and film reviews
of the Disney princesses, the reviews, and thus the
films, I found the merchandise and reviews reinforce
traditional gender roles for the princesses, and the
negative portrayals of Disney princesses in reviews
have the potential to impact the creation of positive
role models for young girls by misrepresenting the
characters that children often admire and emulate.
This research on the princesses could be extended
to analyze the portrayal of other female characters
in Disney movies, therefore contributing to the ongoing
research on gender in media and the discourse
between merchandise and films.