Dozy, grumpy, inefficient - some of Disney's fairytales about old age

Published on Thursday 31 May 2007 01:06

THE Walt Disney company is used to having its much-loved classics lacerated by critics, who see sexism in Cinderella, racism in Aladdin and fascist overtones in The Lion King.

But the latest assault on Disney family values comes from an unexpected quarter. Experts at a leading US university, in the Mormon heartland of Utah, have detected an unpleasant strain of ageism.

Films from Snow White to Cinderella may be fostering a negative image of old people among their child audiences by portraying the elderly as evil villains or toothless hags, according to a medical study at Brigham Young University.

Even the beloved characters of the Seven Dwarfs, such as Grumpy, Dopey and Doc, could leave children with the impression that old people are bad-tempered, dozy or inefficient, it added.

Researchers investigated 93 older characters - those who looked 55 or above - in 34 Disney films stretching back 70 years for the Journal of Aging Studies.

Most of the old characters, such as Maurice in Beauty and the Beast or Rafiki in The Lion King, were positively portrayed as wise or kind, like Pinocchio's father, Geppetto.

But a significant minority were shown as stupid, nasty, bad-tempered or useless - and children could form a negative impression of old people as a result.

Apart from films set in other cultures, such as the Chinese-based cartoon Mulan or the Hawaiian-based Lilo and Stich, the elderly characters were also stereotyped in terms of race and gender, it said.

Two-thirds of old characters - excluding animals - from films ranging from Dumbo to The Aristocats were male and 83 per cent were white.

But the study added: "Twenty-five per cent were shown as grumpy, 12 per cent evil or sinister, 8 per cent helpless, 3 per cent senile or crazy and 2 per cent the object of ridicule."

AGE OF ANIMATION

THE Wicked Queen in 1937's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was the first portrayal of an evil old woman in the films of Walt Disney, and remains one of the cruellest. The jealous stepmother who becomes an ugly old woman and tries to poison Snow White so she can remain "the fairest in the land" was a key character in the first animated film in history.

Seven years later Disney would create an utterly different vision of age in the character of the inventor Geppetto. Creator and father of the wooden puppet Pinocchio, he prays for his son to become a real boy.