Interpretation and Ideology

 ”Bambi”

Our assignment this week was to read the two essays “Bambi: A boy’s story” by Russell banks and “Rapunzel across Time and Space” by Connie Porter. Both of these essays examine the impact that children’s stories, and other mediums, have on the behaviour of our culture and the innocence of our children.

During the essay, Banks explains how many movies and texts altered his view of the world when he was in his late teens and twenties. As a child growing up in the twentieth century, Banks was affected by movies way before he even began to read books and experience everything that adolescence has to offer. He then goes on to explain how the movie “Bambi”, which he first viewed at the age of four, changed and influenced his childhood unknowingly. While viewing the movie later in life with his granddaughter, Sarah, he began to see the subtle undertones that the movie expressed about the gender roles of our society. Although he didn’t realized it yet, this movie changed his life, almost instantaneously. The movie “Bambi” was taken from Felix Salten’s book “A Life in the Woods”, which examines the territory of a male life from life to death. Both the book and the movie are moral stories that represent the dominant cultural stereotypes that evident in every type of medium today. 

When Bambi is born in the movie all the animals gather around and a bird says “The prince is born!”. This is obviously a reference to Jesus, which can be thought of as an ideological figure. Banks also showed, through lines from Bambi, the specific gender roles implied in the movie. The kids that watch these movies are at a crucial point in their lives where they start to be more individualistic and are influenced by many of the things that  they see. If this is so then won’t these movies just push children into these stereotypes that we as adults are trying to rid from society?

After reading Russell Bank’s essay I couldn’t help but wonder what movies influenced me as a child. I remember watching some Disney movies, most of which I can’t remember. I think that the biggest influence on a kid is his parents. In some ways I guess I have been influenced, but I can’t say how or even when I made the transition from a child to a adolescent. In a way, I don’t even remember who I was or what kind of mindset I had as a child.

“Rapunzel”

Connie Porter’s essay “Rapunzel across Space and Time” was another story that examined the effects of gender roles in children’s stories and how they influence children. The essay tells of a lunch meeting where Connie is talking to a little girl and she uses the word “baldheaded”. Baldheaded refers to a black female with very short, especially kinky, hair. The little  girl asks ” Why was the character Sarah in your children’s book baldheaded?” Connie goes on to recall the heroines of her day like Pippi Longstockings and the Strawberry Girl, girls that had long and straight hair. As a child she was convinced that she only had “nice” hair, not “good” hair because it wasn’t naturally straight or curly. I think that this kind of stereotype would lead to a lack of self confidence in a girl who was “baldheaded”. Being baldheaded meant you were ugly, unlovable, and deserved to be humiliated. Instead of being happy about who they were these little girls were told they were ugly by society and they would struggle to change themselves throughout their lives.

One thing that Connie points out is that in the story of Rapunzel, the prince is attracted to Rapunzel’s voice, not her hair. Like in the Bambi essay, Connie’s life was changed without her even knowing it. The stereotype was just planted in her brain as a child through books with a lack of positive black female characters.

Connie then goes  on to say that she likes to go “baldheaded” every once in a while, when she’s tired of straightening her hair. I think that this story has removed the stereotype that she believed in as a child and has taught her that she is really beautiful, even if she is baldheaded.