Whistle While You Work

by Alejandro Tachile & Julio Servin

Big media corporations have an enormous impact upon their audience.  The ideas and stereotypes that they present  are going to be seen and consumed by millions of people.  In a way, media corporations enculturate persons into accepted stereotypes hidden in innocent products like movies or songs.  Essentially, what they do is to construct people´s identity.  And if we take this to the infant audience, the matter is even much more delicate.  Since products for them are enchanting and terribly attractive, children will not stop to analyze what they consume they just want to have fun.

One successful product of media corporation is the Disney version of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.  When the movie was released in 1937 in California, only 6% of academic people were women.  And the general image of women was one of submission with the dream of finding a man to please and serve.  The movie is not far from the reality of the time because what is portrayed in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs are notions about women´s role through ideas of submission.

Being happy while doing a miserable task is a feature that makes you a submissive person.  And Snow White carries out this idea perfectly well.  While running away from the hunter, Snow White encounters the messy house of the dwarfs.  And with the help of a bunch of animals, she decides to clean the place and sings:” whistle while you work and cheerfully together we can tidy up the place so hum a merry tune” .  In this way the character teaches the girls to be delight while performing an awful task.  To make it clearer the song goes on: “ and as you sweep the room image that the broom  is someone that you love”

Another element of submission is the idea of limitation.  Not to see beyond the role that society imposes to each of us is also part of being a submissive subject.  The whole movie is a clear example of this.  Snow White makes obvious that women are supposed to be domestic and stay at home.  The lesson learned in the movie is that there is no better role for women than to be a loving housewife, a lesson of limitation.  As an indication of this, Snow White is innocent, optimistic, naïve and effective in house chores.  For example, she explains to the dwarfs that the queen wants to kill her and she asks them to stay in their house she says: “ I can sew, I broom perfectly well and I make an excellent a wonderful stew.” 

Not all the products that the media presents us should be consumed as harmless Entertainment.  Although most of these movies are wrapped up in powerfully attractive worlds, they hide many strong and sharp ideas that not all parents would accept for their children.  Sometimes media products can be enjoyed but just as examples of the cynicism all these corporations have.