In my paper, I discuss the purpose that motivates how antagonists in Disney movies are portrayed visually and behaviourally, and how these portrayals are intended to engage and assist the audience’s perception of such characters. Many Disney productions are adaptations of traditional fables and fairy tales which can often be traced back to Victorian times. In particular, stories from “Kinder -und Hausmärchen” written by Jacob and Wilheim Grimm are commonly employed in producing Disney films which adapt and elongate their storylines for the big screen. Consequently, much of the original storylines are altered for theatrical and practical purposes when adopted by the Walt Disney Company, and creative liberties often distort the intended portrayals of the characters that were determined in the original stories. For instance, in Walt Disney’s film “Cinderella” (1950), Cinderella’s stepsisters are portrayed as unattractive, with boyish figures and rectangular frames as well as facial features which may be considered ‘manly’. The discrepancy between the physical traits of the stepsisters featured in Disney’s film versus Grimms’ original description, which characterized them as having “beautiful features but proud, nasty and …show more content…
However, Putnam does not explore the reasoning behind this commonality present in many Disney antagonists, which begs the question, why does Disney only employ these characteristics when portraying an antagonist? In relation, Li-Vollmer and LaPointe of “Gender Transgression and Villainy in Animated Film” argue that Disney protagonists are portrayed