Disney – Supporting the Patriarchy since 1936

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On November 24th, 2010 Walt Disney Pictures will be releasing its 50th animated feature film. The latest release, Tangled, is based on the German fairy tale Rapunzel by the Brothers Grimm.

Wikipedia:

Once upon a time, a king and queen found that they were expecting a child. Unfortunately, the queen grew very ill during her pregnancy, leaving the life of her unborn child and herself in the balance. Desperate, a servant ventures to steal a magical healing plant from the garden of an evil witch named Gothel who used it to frequently rejeuvenate herself in order to avoid death. This restored the queen to her former health and gives the baby princess, Rapunzel, healing powers. As revenge for having her plant stolen, and still coveting its power, Gothel kidnaps Rapunzel to retake the youth-restoring power for herself. Rapunzel grows up locked in a tower, with only the nasty Mother Gothel for company. The witch constantly puts her down and forbids her from ever leaving the tower. Every year on Rapunzel’s birthday, the kingdom has a festival of lights in remembrance of their lost princess. Rapunzel sees the lights from her window and longs to visit the kingdom. One day, a thief named Flynn Rider breaks into her tower. Rapunzel takes his satchel containing the stolen crown jewels. She promises to return it if he will help her out of the tower and take her to the light festival, and Flynn agrees. They escape along with Rapunzel’s pet chameleon Pascal, and Maximus, a horse who takes it upon himself to capture Flynn and return him to the royal guards. Together with a band of colorful brigands, Rapunzel and Flynn must avoid the guards and a vengeful Mother Gothel to reach the kingdom in time for the festival.

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Every few years Disney cranks out another entertaining blockbuster animated feature that teaches a whole new generation of young girls their proper role in the patriarchy.

True, they have gotten somewhat more enlightened since a very passive Snow White sang “Someday My Prince Will Come,” but Disney heroines are always impossibly beautiful, heterosexual and virginal until they meet a man, then they fall instantly in love and are soon happily married and monogamous ever after.

That’s why they call them fairy tales.

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Why Alpha Males Rule Our World – and How We Can Begin to Erode their Dominance

Readers: Please Note that this is an extremely long post broken into several parts which includes numerous links to background information.  I’ve chosen to post it in its entirety to allow the reader the option of reading it in total, or ‘nibbling’ on the parts.  If you’d like to read it in parts, I suggest you bookmark the page and come and go at your leisure.  All references to “culture,” with the exception of those specifically identified in the section on the baboon studies of Sapolsky, refer to human culture as a whole.

Your comments, feedback, and ideas on this important topic are welcomed and encouraged.  I especially recommend perusal of Part 5 which discusses the findings of Dr. R. M. Sapolsky.

Part 1.   Social Dominance Theory – the Basics^[1]

Social dominance theory posits that once a group establishes dominance within a culture they will create and use institutions and legitimizing myths to maintain their dominance and control over the resources of the society.  There are  three basic categories where social dominance is exercised: age, gender, and arbitrary.  The dominant group uses its dominance to control access to the culture’s resources while subordinate groups have those resources meted out to them by virtue of rules established by the dominant group.

This dominance is supported by both those in the dominant group and those who are in the subordinate group(s) by indoctrination through ideologies and legitimizing myths.  (Some of you may have heard me refer to these legitimizing myths in the past as “patriarchal educational materials.”)  This indoctrination is effected through the establishment of institutions that are run by the dominant group such as governments and religious institutions.  Anyone who rejects or tries to change the legitimizing myths or challenge the ideologies are attacked and rejected by society as deviant and destructive or dismissed as odd and undesirable; however, the tendency for counter-movements to arise from out of the subordinate groups has been noted and the success of these counter-movement is directly related to the subordinate group’s ability to fend off attacks from those who wish to destroy them or takeover by those who are in or support the dominant group’s cultural status.