thinking about boys.

okay, first of all, i am late as all hell in posting this because i had my wisdom teeth out on wednesday. this half-done post has just sort of been languishing in 'drafts' since monday night.

anyway, i would be remiss if i didn't remind everyone that international AIDS convention in mexico city, which is pretty important, happened last week. i highlight it because an HIV-positive thirteen-year-old gave the keynote, and because the cdc recently said, "oops, the rate of new HIV infections in the US is actually about 40% higher than we thought." anyway, our adolescents our hurting. young people account for 40% of new infections. there's plenty of coverage of it at RH reality check, and there's a good piece up at the guttmacher institute about integrating HIV prevention into regular primary care. common sense stuff, but it's good to hear about someone trying to get it done.

BUT, this is all secondary [since i can in no way cover it as thoroughly as other places can] to something that piqued my interest as i was scanning through my google reader last week. i'm pretty sure the video was originally posted on feministing, and it's also here in case you can't watch it embedded below.



so, disney is destroying not only our girls, but also our boys, by putting forth an unattainable ideal of masculinity that our boys will aspire to forever and ever.

full disclosure: in answer to the questions the author poses at the beginning of his video, i watched a lot of disney movies as a kid and i know all of the 80s and 90s "golden era" soundtracks by heart. however, having taken a great many sociology and women's studies courses, i have seen these films picked apart and spliced back together to show how racist or sexist they are. many of them are compelling. his isn't.

first of all, i don't think the movies he chose made his point at all well. the male characters the author rails against are mainly villains - gaston and scar, most notably. beyond that, mr incredible and the emperor are supposed to be assholes before their respective transformative experiences. why does it even make sense for boys to emulate their behaviors when they get them in trouble? gaston is disgusting; scar is a fucking murderer. the last thing any 6 or 7-year-old boy wants is to get in trouble [talk about emasculating]. the only one that really works is hercules, and i mean - it's a babyfied greek myth that had one really good line ["somebody call IX-I-I!"]. i guess demeaning it doesn't make my point any stronger, but it does show how far the author is reaching with this stuff.

and obviously i am no apologist for disney and the eisners, but i don't think the blame for the ills of my generation and the generation coming of age now can be placed so squarely at their feet as it often is. much is made of what disney movies "teach" our children, which is kind of a horrifying concept in and of itself. movies? teaching? doesn't what we learn have to do with more than animated song and dance? i'm willing to bet that the way you see your parents interact [or not interact] has more to do with shaping your ideas about the way men should interact with women. if you want to argue for disney as a reinforcer of traditional gender roles, hegemonic masculinity, and what have you, then fine. but don't pretend like this analysis is getting us anywhere.

i actually think the disney movies of my childhood are worth keeping and/or reclaiming [i.e. proper contextualization, discussing generalizations, and remembering that these are fairy tales] mostly because of our boys. the author of this video focuses on men, but the whole point of this decade of movies was that the princesses were the main characters. sure, they did their damsel-in-distress thing and had their heterosexually-ever-after ending, but that doesn't discount their value, at least not to me. belle was the shit. which is why i'm convinced that a boy identifying with a female heroine, even if she's two-dimensional in places, seems like a valuable exercise, doesn't it? rather than bitching about the villains no one cares about in the end ANYWAY, why not discuss that? talk about ways to encourage boys to aspire to character traits rather than getting bogged down in gender on this issue. there's so much potential for positivity here - imagination, storytelling, song and dance. is it nitpicking through something you love only to make yourself feel guilty? i'd much rather think about my prospective male children learning all the words to "under the sea" the same way i did [gleefully.] and comfort myself with the notion that i do not, in fact, take my feminist cues from disney.