The Misrepresentation Of Women In Walt Disney's Film Wall-E

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Cinema has long misrepresented women as the classic damsel in distress in need of Prince Charming’s rescuing. As women’s rights movements currently fight centuries of inequality, and break free from gendered expectations; films are beginning to reflect these changes in femininity. This change in gender ideology can be noted in the development of Walt Disney’s classic female leads, and most prominently in Walt Disney’s recent film Wall-E (2008). The co-star of this animated film is a robot named Eve that challenges the outdated archetype that women must be fragile and presents the dichotomy that women can be strong heroes. With films like Wall-E young children will no longer be subject to entertainment that markets women as vulnerable, rather …show more content…
In Wall-E this commonly used gender role is entirely reversed when Wall-E becomes the bearer of life that decides to, against all knowledge, harvest a plant that is the one symbol of human life on earth, and in a more literal sense hold it inside of his own body to protect it from malicious harm. Eve takes on the role of the savior of society when she comes down to earth to find this signal of life that can help return humans to earth. In Judith Butler’s book, “Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity,” she notes that there is no longer a universally shared conception of what it is to be a woman or the concept of womanliness (Butler 4-7). Butler’s argument is important in understanding Eve’s character traits because although she is a portrayed as a woman this does not entitle her to have all the common womanly characteristics. Eve’s ultimate purpose is not to nurture life, but to return civilization down to earth. Butler points out that gender constructs are not set by biology, but by culture (Butler 8). This mission to save the human race that is traditionally held by a man in film, is now being given to a woman as is the case in “Wall-E.” This change in female plot is reflecting the changes in women’s societal roles, and is encouraging the idea that women are not limited to the role of a
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