Disney och den postfeministiska prinsessan : En semiotisk undersökning av kvinnliga Disney-protagonister

The Walt Disney Company has been producing feature films for almost a decade, allowing children as well as grown ups to enter their world of fairytales. Along the years there have been different ways to portray the characters, this can be seen in results from previous research. The purpose with our essay is to examine five female main characters in modern princess-movies from Disney; The Princess and the Frog, Tangled, Brave, Frozen and finally Moana. With a base in the ideas of postfeminism, we wanted to investigate how the female characters were portrayed in terms of physical appearance, personality and stereotypical femininity. We made a semiotic analysis to discern signs in respective movie, we used Roland Barthes’s theory consisting of the idea of denotation, connotation and myths. Our analysis lead us to the conclusion that several changes can be seen. Instead of portraying female characters as innocent, love-seeking and in the need of rescue, the modern princesses are physically strong, determined and adventurous. The viewers are also being introduced to new kinds of relationships that differs from the previous heterosexual standards. Even though some gender roles and intersectional standards were remained visible, we found new stereotypical ways of portraying women in Disney