heterosexuality in media

HETERO-ROMANTIC LOVE
AND HETEROSEXINESS
IN CHILDREN’S G-RATED FILMS
KARIN A. MARTIN
EMILY KAZYAK
University of Michigan
In this article, the authors examine accounts of heterosexuality in media for children. The
authors analyze all the G-rated films grossing $100 million dollars or more between 1990
and 2005 and find two main accounts of heterosexuality. First, heterosexuality is constructed through hetero-romantic love relationships as exceptional, powerful, magical,
and transformative. Second, heterosexuality outside of relationships is constructed through
portrayals of men gazing desirously at women’s bodies. Both of these findings have implications for our understanding of heteronormativity. The first is seemingly at odds with
theories that claim that heterosexuality’s mundane, assumed, everyday ordinariness lends
heteronormativity its power. In fact, the authors suggest heterosexual exceptionalism may
extend the pervasiveness of heterosexuality and serve as a means of inviting investment in
it. The second offers ways to begin to think about how heteronormativity is gendered and
racialized.
Keywords: adolescence/children; sexuality; media/mass communications
The role that Disney plays in shaping individual identities and controlling fields of
social meaning through which children negotiate the world is far too complex to be
simply set aside as a form of reactionary politics. If educators and other cultural
workers are to include the culture of children as an important site of contestation
and struggle, then it becomes imperative to analyze how Disney’s animated films
powerfully influence the way America’s cultural landscape is imagined.
—Giroux (1996, 96)
AUTHORS’ NOTE: Special thanks to Jacquelyn Richey, Hailey Mooney, and Tess
Tannehill for research assistance. Thanks also to the editor and reviewers for extremely
insightful and useful comments on an earlier draft. Correspondence concerning this article should be directed to Karin A. Martin, Department of Sociology, 3001 LSA Building,
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1382; e-mail: [email protected]
GENDER & SOCIETY, Vol. 23 No. 3, June 2009 315-336
DOI: 10.1177/0891243209335635
© 2009 Sociologists for Women in Society
315
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316 GENDER & SOCIETY / June 2009
Multiple ethnographic studies suggest that by elementary school, children
understand the normativity of heterosexuality. That is, by elementary
school, children have a heteronormative understanding of the world (Best
1983; Renold 2002, 2005; Thorne 1993). Yet we know little about what
children bring with them to the peer cultures these ethnographers describe
and how these understandings develop before elementary school. Martin
(2009) finds that mothers’ conversations with young children normalize
heterosexuality, but children’s social worlds are larger than the mother-child
dyad. Research on adolescence suggests that alongside parents and peers,
the media are important in shaping cultural understandings of sexuality
(Kim et al. 2007; Ward 1995, 2003). This article provides a beginning step
toward understanding the role of the media in the development of children’s
heteronormativity. We ask, How are heteronormativity and heterosexuality
constructed in children’s top-selling G-rated movies between 1990 and
2005? Before answering this question, we sketch our understanding of heteronormativity and explain why we chose this genre of media, why we
analyze the content of these films, and the limits of such analysis. We then
review the existing literature on children’s movies and finally turn to our
study, which finds heterosexuality in children’s movies is not entirely as
theorists of heteronormativity describe. That is, heterosexuality within the
context of romantic relationships in G-rated movies is not ordinary or mundane but, rather, is powerful, exceptional, and magical. Outside of romantic
relationships, heterosexual desire is much less serious.
HETERONORMATIVITY
Heteronormativity includes the multiple, often mundane ways through
which heterosexuality overwhelmingly structures and “pervasively and
insidiously” orders “everyday existence” (Jackson 2006, 108; Kitzinger
2005). Heteronormativity structures social life so that heterosexuality is
always assumed, expected, ordinary, and privileged. Its pervasiveness
makes it difficult for people to imagine other ways of life. In part, the
assumption and expectation of heterosexuality is linked to its status as
natural and biologically necessary for procreation (Lancaster 2003).
Anything else is relegated to the nonnormative, unusual, and unexpected
and is, thus, in need of explanation. Specifically, within heteronormativity, homosexuality becomes the “other” against which heterosexuality
defines itself (Johnson 2005; Rubin 1984).
But not just any kind of heterosexuality is privileged. Heteronormativity
regulates those within its boundaries as it marginalizes those outside of it.
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Martin, Kazyak / HETERO-ROMANTIC LOVE IN CHILDREN’S FILMS 317
According to Jackson (2006), heteronormativity works to define more
than normative sexuality, insofar as it also defines normative ways of
life in general. Heteronormativity holds people accountable to reproductive procreative sexuality and traditional gendered domestic arrangements of sexual relationships, and it is linked to particular patterns of
consumerism and consumption (Ingraham 1999). In other words, while
heteronormativity regulates people’s sexualities, bodies, and sexual relationships (for both those nonheterosexuals on the “outside” and heterosexuals on the “inside”), it regulates nonsexual aspects of life as well.
Heteronormativity also privileges a particular type of heterosexual.
Among those aspects desired in heterosexuals, Rubin (1984) includes
being married, monogamous, and procreative. We might also include that
heterosexuality is most sanctioned when it is intraracial and that other
inequalities, like race and class, intersect and help construct what Rubin
calls “the inner charmed circle” in a multitude of complicated ways (e.g.,
Whose married sex is most sanctioned? Whose reproductive sex is most
normal?). Heteronormativity also rests on gender asymmetry, as heterosexuality depends on a particular type of normatively gendered women
and men (Jackson 2006). In this article, we examine how children’s movies construct heterosexuality to better understand what information is
available in media that might contribute to children’s heteronormative
social worlds.
CHILDREN, MEDIA, AND MOVIES
The media are an important avenue of children’s sexual socialization
because young children are immersed in media-rich worlds. Thirty percent of children under three years old and 43 percent of four- to six-year-olds
have a television in their bedrooms, and one-quarter of children under six
years old have a VCR/DVD player in their bedrooms (Rideout, Vandewater,
and Wartella 2003). Since the deregulation of television in the 1980s,
there has been more and more content produced on television for children.
Children’s programming produced for television, however, must still meet
educational regulations. Films produced with young children as a significant intended portion of the audience are under no such obligations.
However, to attract young children (and their parents) to films, filmmakers must get their movies a G-rating. Film producers are interested in
doing this because the marketing advantages that accompany a successful
children’s film are enormous (Thomas 2007). The Motion Picture Association
of America rates a film G for “General Audience” if the film “contains
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318 GENDER & SOCIETY / June 2009
nothing in theme, language, nudity, sex, violence or other matters that, in
the view of the Rating Board, would offend parents whose younger children view the motion picture. . . . No nudity, sex scenes or drug use are
present in the motion picture” (Motion Picture Association of America
2009). Thus, a G-rating signals that these films expect young children in
their audience.
We examine the top-selling G-rated movies to challenge the idea that
these movies are without (much) sexual content and the notion that young
children are therefore not exposed to matters relating to sexuality. As
theorists of heteronormativity suggest, heterosexuality is pervasive, and
we want to examine how it makes its way into films that are by definition
devoid of sexuality. If heteronormativity structures social life well beyond
the sexual arena, then it is likely at work even in films that announce
themselves as free of sexuality.
We look at movies themselves rather than children’s reception of them
because of the difficulty of research with young children generally, especially around issues of sexuality (Martin, Luke, and Verduzco-Baker 2007)
and around media (Thomas 2007). Parents, human subjects review boards,
and schools all serve as barriers to research with children on these topics.
Given that we know little about how heteronormativity is constructed for
children, examining the content of these films seems a logical first step
before asking what children take from them. Although we will not be able
to say whether or which accounts of heteronormativity children take away
with them after watching these movies, current research about children’s
relationships to such movies indicates that children are engaged with these
media and the stories they tell. Enormous numbers of children watch
Disney and other G-rated children’s movies. In a 2006 survey of more than
600 American mothers of three- to six-year-olds, only 1 percent reported
that their child had not seen any of the films we analyze here; half had seen
13 or more (Martin, Luke, and Verduzco-Baker 2007).
Many children also watch these movies repeatedly (Mares 1998). The
advent of videos made it possible for children to watch and rewatch movies at home. In fact, preschool children enjoy watching videos/DVDs
repeatedly, and this has implications for the way they comprehend their
messages. Crawley et al. (1999) discovered that children comprehended
more from repeated viewing. Repeated viewing may also mean that jokes
or innuendo intended for adults in these films may become more visible
and curious, if not more intelligible, to young children. Further work by
Schmitt, Anderson, and Collins (1999) also suggests that young children’s
attention is most focused and content best understood when watching
media that includes animation, child characters, nonhuman characters,
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Martin, Kazyak / HETERO-ROMANTIC LOVE IN CHILDREN’S FILMS 319
animals, frequent movement, and purposeful action (as opposed to live
action; adults, especially adult men; and characters who only converse
without much action). These are prominent features of most of the G-rated
films we analyze here, suggesting that they are certainly vehicles for children’s attention and comprehension.
We also know young children are engaged by many such films as the
plots and toys marketed from them are used in many creative ways in
children’s fantasy and play. Not only do movies make social worlds visible on screen, but the mass marketing surrounding these movies invites
young people to inhabit those worlds (Giroux 1996). These media not
only offer what is normal but also actively ensure that children understand
it and compel them to consume it (Schor 2004). Researchers have demonstrated the depth of children’s engagement with such media and how they
adapt it for their own uses. For example, Hadley and Nenga (2004) find
that Taiwanese kindergartners used everything from Snow White to
Digimon to demonstrate and challenge their Confucian values at school.
Gotz et al. (2005) similarly find that eight-year-old children across the
United States, Israel, Germany, and South Korea make use of the media
in constructing the “fantasylands” they imagine and play in. Thus, while
we must look at particular groups of children’s reception of particular
media to see what they do with it (Tobin 2000), there is evidence that
children certainly incorporate such media into their learning and play.
Finally, with respect to heterosexuality specifically, there is some evidence that suggests even young children learn from media accounts.
Kelley, Buckingham, and Davies (1999) find that six- to eleven-year-old
children incorporate what they learn about sexuality on television into
their talk and identity work in their peer groups. Martin (2009) finds
mothers of children ages three to six years old suggest that children, especially girls, know about heterosexual falling in love, weddings, and marriage from “movies,” “princesses,” and “Disney.” Again, our research
cannot address what children take away from their repeated viewings of
such movies, but given that the extant research suggests they take something, we analyze what is there for the taking.
Some scholarship has begun to look at what kinds of narratives,
accounts, and images are available in children’s movies, and especially in
Disney movies. Most useful for our purposes is the research on gender
(Thompson and Zerbinos 1995; Witt 2000) and on gender and race stereotypes in young children’s media (Giroux 1996; Hurley 2005; Mo and Shen
2000; Pewewardy 1996; Witt 2000). Most of this research indicates that
there are fewer portrayals of women and of nonwhites and that those
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320 GENDER & SOCIETY / June 2009
portrayals often rely on stereotypes. Analyses of the stereotypes and
discourses of race and gender sometimes embed some discussion of sexuality within them. A smattering of research on race examines how some racial/
ethnic groups are portrayed as exoticized and more sexualized than white
women (Lacroix 2004). Research that examines gender construction in
the media sometimes links heterosexuality and romantic love to femininity and discusses the importance of finding a man/prince for the heroines
(Junn 1997; Thompson and Zerbinos 1995). But heterosexuality is a given
in such analyses. The existing research does not fully analyze how heterosexuality is constructed in these films.
In a different vein, media scholars have offered queer readings of some
children’s and especially Disney films (Byrne and McQuillan 1999;
Griffin 2000). Employing a poststructuralist lens that privileges the radically indeterminate meaning of texts, Byrne and McQuillan (1999) highlight how certain characters and story lines in Disney movies can be read
as queer. They discuss the many queer or ambiguous characters populating these films, such as Quasimodo and the gargoyles in The Hunchback
of Notre Dame. They describe the character Mulan as a “transvestite
bonanza,” representing “Disney’s most sustained creation of lesbian chic”
(1999, 143). Moreover, they highlight the queerness of certain story lines
in Disney movies. For instance, they argue that homosocial desire and
bonds between men structure many of the films, and they explicate the
queerness of the portrayal of monstrous desire, a desire that threatens the
family unit, in Beauty and the Beast. These readings do not argue that
particular characters or plots are gay or lesbian per se; rather, they emphasize their queer potential. Similarly, Griffin (2000) aims to queer Disney
by analyzing how gay and lesbian viewers might understand these films
with gay sensibilities. He highlights how Disney characters who do not fit
into their societies echo the feeling of many gays and lesbians. He also
argues that many characters (especially villains) lend themselves to queer
readings because of how they overperform their gender roles. Villainesses
often look like drag queens, such as Ursula in The Little Mermaid, a character modeled after the transvestite star Divine. These analyses rest on the
desire to destabilize the meanings of characters and story lines in movies
to open them up and discover their queer potential. This scholarship, however, presumes a sophisticated and knowledgeable reader of culture. It
does not consider children as the audience or address whether such readings are possible for young children. It overlooks, for example, that while
there are transvestite characters like Mulan, the Mulan toys marketed to
children were feminine, long-haired, non-sword-wielding ones (Nguyen
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Martin, Kazyak / HETERO-ROMANTIC LOVE IN CHILDREN’S FILMS 321
1998), perhaps making such readings less sustainable for children even if
they are possible. Again, we will need research on what children take
away from such media to address these issues.
OUR RESEARCH
In this article, we do not aim to do a queer reading of these films as
such readings have already been done. Instead, we analyze how heterosexuality is constructed in children’s G-rated films. We ask not how characters might be read as queer but what accounts these films offer of
heterosexuality and how such accounts serve heteronormativity. Unpacking
the construction of heterosexuality in these films is a first step toward
understanding what social-sexual information is available to the children
who watch them.
SAMPLE AND METHOD
The data for this study come from all the G-rated movies released (or
rereleased) between 1990 and 2005 that grossed more than $100 million
in the United States (see Table 1).1 Using this sample of widely viewed
films overcomes the limitations of previous analyses of children’s, and
especially Disney, movies, which often focus on a few particular examples. Here we have tried to examine all the most viewed films within this
genre and time period. The films in our sample were extremely successful
and widely viewed, as evidenced by their sales numbers in theaters. Home
videos/DVDs sales and rentals of these films are also very high (Arnold
2005), including direct-to-video/DVD sequels of many of these films, for
example, Lion King 1.5, Ariel’s Beginning, and Beauty and the Beast’s
Enchanted Christmas. While the audience for these films is broader than
children, children are certainly centrally intended as part of the audience.
G is the rating given to films that contain nothing that “would offend parents whose younger children view the motion picture” according to the
Motion Picture Association of America (2009). Sixteen (80 percent) of
these films are animated, and 17 are produced by Disney, a major producer of children’s consumption and socialization (Giroux 1997).
After collecting this sample, the first author screened all the films and
then trained three research assistants to extract any story lines, images,
scenes, songs, or dialogue that depicted anything about sexuality, including
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322
TABLE 1: Sample: $100 Million G-Rated Movies, 1990-2005
Hetero-Romantic Story Line Heterosexuality
Ogling of
Any Major Minor Women’s
Movie Year Produced By Reference Plot Plot Sexiness Bodies
Chicken Little 2005 Disney x x x
The Polar Express 2004 Castle Rock
Finding Nemo 2003 Disney/Pixar x
The Santa Clause 2 2002 Disney x x
Monsters, Inc. 2001 Disney/Pixar x x x
The Princess Diaries 2001 Disney x x x x
Chicken Run 2000 Dreamworks x x x
Tarzan 1999 Disney x x
Toy Story 2 1999 Disney/Pixar x x x
A Bug’s Life 1998 Disney/Pixar x x x
Mulan 1998 Disney x x x
The Rugrats Movie 1998 Nickelodeon
101 Dalmatians 1996 Disney x x
The Hunchback of Notre Dame 1996 Disney x x x x
Toy Story 1995 Disney/Pixar x x
Pocahontas 1995/2005 Disney x x
The Lion King 1994/2002 Disney x x
Aladdin 1994 Disney x x x x
Beauty and the Beast 1991/2002 Disney x x x x
The Little Mermaid 1989/1997 Disney x x x x
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Martin, Kazyak / HETERO-ROMANTIC LOVE IN CHILDREN’S FILMS 323
depictions of bodies, kissing, jokes, romance, weddings, dating, love,
where babies come from, and pregnancy. The research assistants then wrote
descriptions of the scenes in which they found material related to sexuality.
They described the visuals of the scenes in as vivid detail as possible and
transcribed the dialogue verbatim. Two research assistants watched each
film and extracted the relevant material. The first author reconciled the
minimal differences between what each research assistant included by
rescreening the films herself and adding or correcting material.
This text describing the material in each film was then inductively
coded using the qualitative software program QSR-Nvivo. The themes
that emerged from this open-coding were then developed in a series of
initial and then integrative memos. The movies were re-viewed again by
both authors as needed to further explicate the categories of understanding
that emerged from first round coding. The memos were then developed
into the results below (Emerson, Fretz, and Shaw 1995).
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
We describe two ways that heterosexuality is constructed in these films.
The primary account of heterosexuality in these films is one of heteroromantic love and its exceptional, magical, transformative power. Secondarily,
there are some depictions of heterosexuality outside of this model. Outside
of hetero-romantic love, heterosexuality is constructed as men gazing
desirously at women’s bodies. This construction rests on gendered and
racialized bodies and is portrayed as less serious and less powerful than
hetero-romantic love.
Magical, Exceptional, Transformative
Hetero-Romantic Love
Hetero-romantic love is the account of heterosexuality that is most
developed in these films. Only two films have barely detectable or no heteroromantic references (see Table 1). In eight of these films hetero-romance
is a major plot line, and in another seven films it is a secondary story line.
Those films not made by Disney have much less hetero-romantic content
than those made by Disney.
Films where we coded hetero-romantic love as a major plot line are
those in which the hetero-romantic story line is central to the overall narrative of the film. In The Little Mermaid, for instance, the entire narrative
revolves around the romance between Ariel, a mermaid, and Eric, a human.
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324 GENDER & SOCIETY / June 2009
The same is true of movies like Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, and Santa
Claus 2. There would be no movie without the hetero-romantic story line
for these films. In others, the hetero-romantic story line is secondary. For
example, in Chicken Run the romance develops between Ginger and
Rocky as they help organize the chicken revolt—the heart of the movie—
although the movie ends with them coupled, enjoying their freedom in a
pasture. While removing the hetero-romantic story line would still leave
other stories in place in such films, the romance nonetheless exists. In other
movies, like Toy Story, references are made to hetero-romance but are not
developed into a story line. For instance, this film suggests romantic interest between Woody and Little Bo Peep, but their romance is not woven
throughout the film.
While our focus is on the construction of heterosexuality, we recognize
that other stories exist in these films. For instance, there are stories about
parent-child relationships (e.g., Chicken Little wants his father to be
proud of him; Nemo struggles against his overprotective father). Stories
about workers, working conditions, and collective revolt also appear, for
instance, in Monsters, Inc. (whose characters, working for the city’s
power company that relies on scaring children to generate electricity, successfully stop an evil corporate plan to kidnap children and eventually
change their policy to making children laugh) and Chicken Run (whose
main character, Ginger, successfully organizes all of her fellow chickens
to escape their farm after learning of the farmers’ plan to begin turning
them into chicken pies). Though certainly there is much analysis that
could be done around such stories, we do not do so here. Rather, we turn
our attention to the hetero-romantic story lines and the work they do in
constructing heterosexuality.
Theorists of heteronormativity suggest that the power of heteronormativity is that heterosexuality is assumed, mundane, ordinary, and expected.
In contrast, we find that in these films, while it is certainly assumed, heterosexuality is very often not ordinary or mundane. Rather, romantic
heterosexual relationships are portrayed as a special, distinct, exceptional
form of relationship, different from all others. Characters frequently defy
parents, their culture, or their very selves to embrace a hetero-romantic
love that is transformative, powerful, and (literally) magical. At the same
time, these accounts are sometimes held in tension with or constructed by
understandings of the naturalness of heterosexuality. Below, we describe
how the films construct these relationships as distinct, set apart, and different from others. We also describe how they are constructed as powerful, transformative, and magical.
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These films repeatedly mark relationships between cross-gender lead
characters as special and magical by utilizing imagery of love and
romance. Characters in love are surrounded by music, flowers, candles,
magic, fire, ballrooms, fancy dresses, dim lights, dancing, and elaborate
dinners. Fireflies, butterflies, sunsets, wind, and the beauty and power of
nature often provide the setting for—and a link to the naturalness of—
hetero-romantic love. For example, in Beauty and the Beast, the main
characters fall in love frolicking in the snow; Aladdin and Jasmine fall in
love as they fly through a starlit sky in Aladdin; Ariel falls in love as she
discovers the beauty of earth in The Little Mermaid; Santa and his eventual bride ride in a sleigh on a sparkling snowy night with snow lightly
falling over only their heads in Santa Claus 2; and Pocahontas is full of
allusion to water, wind, and trees as a backdrop to the characters falling in
love. The characters often say little in these scenes. Instead, the scenes are
overlaid with music and song that tells the viewer more abstractly what
the characters are feeling. These scenes depicting hetero-romantic love
are also paced more slowly with longer shots and with slower and soaring
music.
These films also construct the specialness of hetero-romantic love by
holding in tension the assertion that hetero-romantic relationships are
simultaneously magical and natural. In fact, their naturalness and their connection to “chemistry” and the body further produce their exceptionalness.
According to Johnson (2005), love and heterosexuality become interwoven
as people articulate the idea that being in love is overpowering and that
chemistry or a spark forms the basis for romantic love. These formulations
include ideas about reproductive instincts and biology, and they work to
naturalize heterosexuality. We see similar constructions at work in these
G-rated movies where the natural becomes the magical. These films show
that, in the words of Mrs. Pots from Beauty and the Beast, if “there’s a
spark there,” then all that needs to be done is to “let nature take its course.”
However, this adage is usually not spoken. Rather, the portrayal of romantic love as occurring through chemistry or a spark is depicted by two characters gazing into each other’s eyes and sometimes stroking each other’s
faces. The viewer usually sees the two characters up close and in profile as
serious and soaring music plays as this romantic chemistry is not explained
with words but must be felt and understood via the gazing eye contact
between the characters. Disney further marks the falling in love and the
triumphs of hetero-romantic love by wrapping the characters in magical
swirls of sparks, leaves, or fireworks as they stare into each other’s eyes.
The music accompanying such scenes is momentous and triumphant.
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326 GENDER & SOCIETY / June 2009
We asked whether all sorts of relationships might be magical, special,
and exceptional in similar ways, as it is possible that many types of relationships have these qualities in these imaginative fantasies where anything is possible. However, we found that romantic heterosexual relationships
in G-rated movies are set apart from other types of relationships. This
serves to further define them as special and exceptional. All other love
relationships are portrayed without the imagery described above. The pacing of friendship scenes is also faster and choppier, and the music is
quicker and bouncy. Nor do friendships and familial relationships start
with a “spark.”
Parent-child relationships are portrayed as restrictive, tedious, and protective. The child is usually escaping these relationships for the exciting
adolescent or adult world. Friendships are also set aside as different from
romantic love. There are many close friendships and buddies in these
stories, and none are portrayed with the imagery of romantic love. Crossgender friends are often literally smaller and a different species or object
in the animated films, thus making them off limits for romance. For
example, Mulan’s friend is Mushoo, a small, red dragon; Pocahontas
is friends with many small animals (a raccoon; a hummingbird); Ariel
is looked after by Sebastian (a crab) and Flounder (a fish); and Belle is
befriended by a range of small household items (teapot, candlestick,
broom). Same–sex friendships or buddies are unusual for girls and women
unless the friends are maternal (e.g., Willow in Pocahontas, Mrs. Pots in
Beauty and the Beast). The lead male characters, however, often have
comical buddies (e.g., Timon in The Lion King, Abu in Aladdin, the gargoyles in The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Mike in Monsters, Inc.). These
friendships are often portrayed as funny, silly, gross, and fun but certainly
not as serious, special, powerful, important, or natural. For example, in
The Lion King, Timon (a meerkat), Pumba (a boar), and Simba (a lion) all
live a carefree life together in the jungle as the best of friends, but Simba
quickly deserts them for Nala, a female lion, once he is an adolescent.
Throughout the film, Timon and Pumba provide comic relief from the
serious business of the lions falling in (heterosexual) love and saving the
kingdom. Thus, the construction of friendships and family relationships
reveal that hetero-romantic relationships in contrast are serious, important,
and natural.
Furthermore, while friendships provide comic relief and friends and
family are portrayed as providing comfort or advice to lead characters,
these relationships are not portrayed as transformative, powerful, or magical. Hetero-romantic love is exceptional in these films because it is
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constructed as incredibly powerful and transformative. Throughout many
of these films with a primary plot about hetero-romantic love, such love
is depicted as rebellious, magical, defiant, and with a power to transform
the world. This is quite different from our understanding of heterosexuality as normative, ordinary, and expected. The hetero-romantic relationships in these films are extraordinary. Falling in heterosexual love can
break a spell (Beauty and the Beast) or cause one to give up her identity
(The Little Mermaid). It can save Santa Claus and Christmas (Santa Claus 2).
It can lead children (e.g., Ariel, Jasmine, Pocahontas, Belle) to disobey
their parents and defy the social rules of their culture (e.g., Jasmine,
Pocahontas). It can stop a war that is imminent (Pocahontas) or change an
age-old law (Aladdin).
Hetero-romantic love is constructed as being in a realm of freedom and
choice, a realm where chemistry can flourish and love can be sparked and
discovered. Thus, romantic love is so exceptional it is positioned “outside
of the control of any social or political force” (Johnson 2005, 37). This
construction appears in G-rated movies and intertwines race and heteronormativity as characters who are nonwhite critique arranged marriages
as backward and old-fashioned and celebrate a woman’s ability to choose
her own husband. For example, in Aladdin, Jasmine protests the law that
dictates that she must marry a prince and says, “The law is wrong. . . .
I hate being forced into this . . . if I do marry, I want it to be for love.”
Later, Aladdin agrees with her that being forced to be married by her
father is “awful.” Pocahontas faces a similar dilemma, as her father insists
that she marry Kocoum. When she disagrees and asks him, “Why can’t
I choose?” he says, “You are the daughter of the chief . . . it is your time to
take your place among our people.” While arranged marriages are portrayed
as something outdated, these characters “choose” whom they will love, thus
simultaneously securing hetero-romantic love’s naturalness and extraordinariness and its position beyond the prescriptions of any social-political
context. In fact, their love changes these prescriptions in both of these
examples. Jasmine and Aladdin’s love overturns the age-old law that the
princess must marry a prince when she is of age, and Pocahontas’s love for
John Smith ends the war between her tribe and colonizers. This transformative power of hetero-romantic love is echoed throughout these films.
Finally, we observe that hetero-romantic love is not sexually embodied
in these films except through kissing. The power of hetero-romantic love
is often delivered through a heterosexual kiss. A lot of heterosexual kissing
happens in G-rated films. Princess Diaries, with its live-action teenage
characters, contains the most explicit kissing, as the main character
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328 GENDER & SOCIETY / June 2009
daydreams that a boy kisses her passionately, open-mouthed as she falls
back against the lockers smiling and giggling. Most animated kisses are
with closed mouths (or the viewer cannot fully see the mouths) and of
shorter duration, but they are often even more powerful. Throughout these
films, but especially in the animated ones, a heterosexual kiss signifies
heterosexual love and in doing so is powerful. Ariel of The Little Mermaid
must secure a kiss from the prince to retain her voice and her legs. In The
Lion King, when Nala and Simba kiss (lick and nuzzle) as they are
reunited, they not only realize their love, but Simba realizes he must
return to his rightful place as king and save his family and the entire kingdom. We often see these powerful kisses first very close-up and in profile
and then moving outward to show the wider world that the powerful
kisses are transforming. For example, once the Beast is transformed back
into a man by Belle’s declaration of love, they kiss, and the entire kingdom appears to turn from winter to springtime, flowers bloom, and others
who had been damaged by the same spell as the Beast are restored to their
personhood.
In one case, the kiss of love initially leads to making the world worse.
When Pocahontas kisses John Smith, others see them, and this leads to the
death of the man Pocahontas’s father wanted her to marry. Eventually,
however, their love is what brings peace between the Native Americans
and European colonizers. Even this negative transformation brought on by
a kiss is different from kisses outside of hetero-romantic love. Take, for
example, the only same-gender kiss in these films. In The Lion King,
Pumba and Timon are eating dinner and sucking on opposite ends of a
worm (reminiscent of the classic Lady and the Tramp spaghetti vignette).
When they reach the middle, their lips touch with a smooch, and they both
look toward the camera aghast, seemingly both at the deed (the “kiss”)
and having been “caught” by the camera. This kiss is treated as humorous
and not as serious or powerful as the kisses of hetero-romantic love. Even
heterosexual kisses outside of love relationships are not serious, powerful,
or transformative. For example, Jasmine kisses the evil Jafar in Aladdin,
but she does so to trick him. It works as a trick and distraction, but it is
not powerful or transformative. Only hetero-romantic kissing is powerful
in that it signifies love and in doing so can change the world.
Heterosexiness and the Heterosexual Gaze:
Heterosexuality Outside of Love
Thus far, we have described how heterosexuality is constructed through
depictions of hetero-romantic love relationships in these films. There is
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Martin, Kazyak / HETERO-ROMANTIC LOVE IN CHILDREN’S FILMS 329
also heterosexuality depicted outside of romantic relationships, though
this heterosexuality is quite different and more ordinary. As such, it is
depicted not as earnest or transformative but as frivolous, entertaining, and
crude. This nonromantic heterosexuality is constructed through the different portrayals of women’s and men’s bodies, the heterosexiness of the
feminine characters, and the heterosexual gaze of the masculine ones.
Heteronormativity requires particular kinds of bodies and interactions
between those bodies. Thus, as heterosexuality is constructed in these
films, gendered bodies are portrayed quite differently, and we see much
more of some bodies than others. Women throughout the animated features in our sample are drawn with cleavage, bare stomachs, and bare legs.
Women of color are more likely to be drawn as young women with breasts
and hips and white women as delicate girls (Lacroix 2004). Men are occasionally depicted without their shirts, such as in Tarzan; or without much
of a shirt, as in Aladdin; and in one scene in Mulan, it is implied that men
have been swimming naked. However, having part of the body exposed is
more common among the lead women characters and among the women
who make up the background of the scenes.
Women’s nudity is also often marked as significant through comment
or reaction. Women are often “almost caught” naked by men. For example, Mia of the Princess Diaries has her dressing area torn down by jealous girls, almost revealing her naked to a group of male photographers.
Mulan bathes in a lake when she thinks she is alone, but when male soldiers come to swim, Mushoo refers to her breasts, saying, “There are a
couple of things they’re bound to notice,” and she sneaks away. Similarly,
Quasimodo accidentally stumbles into Esmeralda’s dressing area, and she
quickly covers up with a robe and hunches over so as not to expose herself. She ties up her robe as Quasimodo apologizes again and again and
hides his eyes. However, as he exits, he glances back toward her with a
smile signifying for the viewer his love for her. A glimpse of her body has
made her even more lovable and desirable.
Men’s bodies are treated quite differently in these films. Male bodies,
to the extent they are commented on at all, are the site of jokes. Men’s
crotches, genitals, and backsides are funny. For example, in Hunchback of
Notre Dame, a cork from a bottle of champagne flies between a man’s legs
and knocks him over and the man yells in pain; later in that movie, during
a fight, someone says, “That’s hitting a little below the belt,” and the
woman says, “No this is!” and aims to strike him in the groin but is
deflected by a sword. A boy in Princess Diaries is doubled over in pain as
a baseball hits him in the groin. This scene is played as funny and the
result of another character extracting her vengeance. The Rugrats Movie
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330 GENDER & SOCIETY / June 2009
is full of jokes and images of boys’ bare bottoms and penises. There are
also references in other films to “a limp noodle” (Mulan) and “a shrinky
winky” (101 Dalmatians). Mushoo in Mulan also jokes about male nudity,
saying, “I hate biting naked butts.” Women’s genitals are never mentioned
or invoked in any way. Their bodies are not the sites of jokes. Rather,
women’s bodies become important in the construction of heteronormative
sexuality through their “sexiness” at which men gaze.
Much of the sexuality that these gendered bodies engage in has little to
do with heterosexual sex narrowly defined as intercourse or even behaviors that might lead to it, but rather with cultural signs of a gendered
sexuality for women. These signs are found in subplots, musical numbers,
humorous scenes, and scenes depicting women’s bodies, rather than in the
main story lines of hetero-romantic true love. Such scenes contain sexual
innuendo based in gesture, movement, tone of voice, and expression.
Importantly, in all cases, sexiness is depicted as something women possess and use for getting men’s attention. Sexiness is more often an attribute of female characters of color (e.g., Esmeralda, Jasmine, Ursula)
(Hurley 2005) and is implicitly heterosexual given that the films construct
the intended spectator of this sexiness as male (Mulvey 1975).
The best example of the representation of sexiness appears in The
Hunchback of Notre Dame. Esmeralda, the Gypsy female lead, is drawn
with dark hair, big green eyes, a curvy body, cleavage, and a small waist.
She is also drawn with darker skin than other lead Disney characters like
Belle (Beauty and the Beast) and Ariel (Little Mermaid). Darker skin
and hair and “exotic” features are part of the representation of heterosexual sexiness for women. Moreover, Esmeralda spends much time in
this film swaying her hips and dancing “sexily” while men admire her.
An early scene in the film resembles a striptease, although all the character’s clothes do not come off. The scene begins with the song, “Come
one, come all! Hurry, hurry, here’s your chance. See the mystery and
romance . . . See the finest girl in France . . . Make an entrance to
entrance . . . Dance la Esmeralda . . . Dance!” Esmeralda begins to
dance. She is dressed seductively, and her dancing is provocative. We
then see the men who are watching her. Frollo says, “Look at that disgusting display” to which Captain replies, “YES SIR!” and opens his
eyes wider. She perches in front of Frollo and then tosses her scarf
around his neck, pulls him in as if she is going to kiss him, puts her lips
on his nose, and then pushes his hat over his face. She dances back to
the stage where she does a split in front of Quasimodo and gives him a
wink. She then steals a large spear from a security guard, stabs it into
the stage and begins to swing and twist around the pole. The men in the
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Martin, Kazyak / HETERO-ROMANTIC LOVE IN CHILDREN’S FILMS 331
crowd are all wide-eyed, screaming and cheering, and then they all toss
money on stage for her performance.
Not all scenes with the signification of sexiness are so elaborated.
When the candlestick and duster are turned back into people in Beauty
and the Beast, the now-voluptuous maid prances bare-shouldered in front
of the chef who stares. Throughout Aladdin, especially in fast-paced musical scenes, sexy women prance, preen, bat their eyelashes, shake their
hips, and reveal their cleavage. When Genie sings to Aladdin, he produces
three women with bare stomachs and bikini-like outfits who dance around
him, touch him, bat their eyes at him, and kiss him. He stares at them
sometimes unsure, but wide-eyed and smiling. When Prince Ali comes to
ask Princess Jasmine for her hand in marriage, his parade to the castle is
adorned with writhing, dancing women with bare stomachs and cleavage.
Later, Jasmine sees Prince Ali as a fraud and tricks him with similarly
sexy moves. Heterosexiness in Aladdin is delivered through the bodies of
women of color who are exoticized.
There are a few examples of white women depicted as “sexy,” although
these are more delimited and do not involve the main white women/girl
characters. In Princess Diaries, a group of teenage friends are shown
doing many of the same things as the animated women in Aladdin. They
dance, shake their hips, make faces with curled and puckered lips and
squinting eyes, play with their hair, and slap their hips. In Beauty and the
Beast, a man is hit on the head for talking to a large-breasted woman with
cleavage and much lipstick who moves and speaks in a sexy, flirtatious
manner. Toy Story 2 has a group of singing, dancing, nearly all-white
Barbies who are ogled by the masculine toys. These scenes make it clear
that women move and adorn their bodies and contort their faces for men.
While the women are being sexy, the (usually white) men are performing
a different role as these films construct heterosexuality. As evident from
some of the examples above, there is much explicit heterosexual gazing at
or ogling of women’s bodies in these films. Sometimes such gazing establishes that a woman is worth the pursuit of men and the fight for her that
will develop the plot of the film, as in Beauty and the Beast. In an early
scene in this film, when Belle walks out of a bookshop, three men who had
been peering through the window turn around as if to pretend that they had
not been staring. The man in the middle is then held up by the other two so
that he can stare at Belle’s backside as she walks away. All three men stare
and then start to sing of her beauty. In other films, sexualized gazing is not
so tightly attached to beauty but to the performance of heterosexual masculinity. In one instance in Chicken Run, the chickens are “exercising,” and
Rocky (a chicken) stares at Ginger’s (a chicken) backside. She catches him,
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332 GENDER & SOCIETY / June 2009
and he smiles, slyly. When the main characters refrain from overt ogling and
sexual commentary, the “sidekicks” provide humor through this practice.
For example, in Toy Story 2, Rex, Potato Head, Slinky Dog, and Piggy Bank
drive through aisles of a toy store and stop at a “beach party” where there
are many Barbies in bathing suits, laughing and dancing. As the male characters approach, a jackpot sound (“ching”) is heard, and all four male characters’ jaws drop open. Then “Tour Guide Barbie” acrobatically lands in
their car and says she will help them. They all stare at her with open eyes
and mouths. Mr. Potato Head recites again and again, “I’m a married spud,
I’m a married spud, I’m a married spud,” and Piggy Bank says, “Make
room for single fellas” as he jumps over Potato Head to sit next to Barbie.
They remain mesmerized by Barbie as she gives them a tour of the store.
The objectifying gaze at women’s bodies is often translated into objectifying, sexist language. Girl/women characters are called doll face,
chicks, cuties, baby doll, angel face, sweet cheeks, bodacious, succulent
little garden snail, tender oozing blossom, temptress snake, and tramp;
and the boys/men say things like “I’ll give you a tune up any time” and
“give her some slack and reel her in.” The desiring gazes, the commentary, and the depictions of them (large eyes, staring, open mouths, sound
effects, and anxiousness) are constructed as competitive and conquering
or frivolous, in stark contrast to the exceptional, magical, powerful heteroromantic love described above. These depictions of heterosexual interactions have the effect of normalizing men’s objectification of women’s
bodies and the heterosexual desire it signifies.
CONCLUSION
Despite the assumption that children’s media are free of sexual content,
our analyses suggest that these media depict a rich and pervasive heterosexual landscape. We have illustrated two main ways that G-rated films
construct heterosexuality. First, heterosexuality is constructed through depictions of hetero-romantic love as exceptional, powerful, transformative, and
magical. Second, heterosexuality is also constructed through depictions of
interactions between gendered bodies in which the sexiness of feminine
characters is subjected to the gaze of masculine characters. These accounts
of heterosexuality extend our understandings of heteronormativity.
First, the finding that heterosexuality is constructed through heterosexiness points to the ways that heteronormativity intersects with gender, race,
and class in its constructions. While heterosexuality is normalized and
expected, it takes different forms for different sorts of bodies, and this is
especially true for heterosexuality outside of romantic relationships.
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Martin, Kazyak / HETERO-ROMANTIC LOVE IN CHILDREN’S FILMS 333
Second, the finding that hetero-romantic love is depicted as exceptional,
powerful, and transformative runs counter to current theoretical understandings of heteronormativity’s scaffolding being the ordinary, expected,
everydayness of heterosexuality. These films show heterosexuality to be
just the opposite. Heterosexuality achieves a taken-for-granted status in
these films not because it is ordinary, but because hetero-romance is
depicted as powerful. This finding in no way negates previous understandings of heteronormativity but rather extends another theoretical tenet—that
is, that heterosexuality and its normativity are pervasive. Heterosexual
exceptionalism extends the pervasiveness of heterosexuality and may serve
as a means of inviting investment in it. Furthermore, heterosexuality is
glorified here in mass culture but is also ordinary and assumed in everyday
life. Thus, its encompassing pervasiveness lends it its power. Both ordinary
and exceptional constructions of heterosexuality work to normalize its
status because it becomes difficult to imagine anything other than this form
of social relationship or anyone outside of these bonds.
Finally, we want to again emphasize that we cannot know what understandings and interpretations children might take away from these films
or how they make sense of them alongside all the other social and cultural
information they acquire. Others have shown that queer readings of such
films are possible for adults (Griffin 2000). Children may have their own
queer readings of such films. Without future work with children directly,
we cannot know. However, these films are widely viewed by many very
young children who are engaged with media rich worlds. It is likely that
these accounts of heterosexuality make it into their understanding of the
world in some way, albeit likely with layers of misunderstanding, reinterpretation, and integration with other information. Regardless, these films
provide powerful portraits of a multifaceted and pervasive heterosexuality
that likely facilitates the reproduction of heteronormativity.
NOTE
1. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/style/daily/movies/100million/
article.htm.
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Karin A. Martin is an associate professor of sociology at the University of
Michigan. She does research on gender, sexuality, bodies, and children and
adolescents. She is author of Puberty, Sexuality, and the Self: Girls and
Boys at Adolescence (Routledge, 1996).
Emily Kazyak is a doctoral candidate in sociology at the University of
Michigan. Her research interests include gender, sexuality, social theory,
and social psychology. Her dissertation examines the experiences of rural
gays and lesbians to ask how geography and class shape the constructions
of sexual identity.
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