The Culture Insights section of the September/October issue of Psychology Today has an article about Disney cartoons and mental illness. (At this time, this issue is not yet online.)
From dim-witte Dopey in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs to the "psycho" in Aladdin, Disney classics may be teaching children to laugh at and fear the mentally ill, according to a study in the Canadian Journal of Psychiatry.
The Results section of the study says, "For example, in Beauty and the Beast, the townspeople frequently refer to the intellectuals Belle and her father, Maurice as mentally ill. Mental illness words are used to set apart and denigrate these characters, implying that to be mentally ill is to be different in a negative and inferior way."
They watched the movies, but did they actually see them? Even a child watching Beauty and the Beast can tell that it is the people who are mocking Belle and her father who have a problem. While it's obvious that Belle and Maurice are different from others in the town, it's not in a negative way.
This emotional association may result in increased fear of persons with a mental illness, increased worries of possible harm, and an increase in distancing and avoidance of contact.
All of the little girls who have dressed up as Belle for Halloween must have missed this message in the film. Maybe the message they got was that you need to look at who a person really is (Belle, her father, the Beast) instead of relying on what you hear about them.
The author of the study, Andrea Lawson, "concedes that fairy tales lack subtlety and that children don't necessarily take them to heart."
"Bambi, notes Lawson, was one of the only Disney films free of negative references toward mental illness." The message that guns are bad and hunters will kill your mother wasn't mentioned.
Posted by marybeth at September 8, 2004 09:24 AM Other Stuff