{"id":962,"date":"2025-11-30T00:57:14","date_gmt":"2025-11-30T07:57:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mdia300\/?p=962"},"modified":"2025-11-30T02:38:29","modified_gmt":"2025-11-30T09:38:29","slug":"we-dont-just-watch-disney-we-become-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mdia300\/archives\/962","title":{"rendered":"We Don’t Just Watch Disney\u2014We Become it"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In Bridghet\u2019s blog post Guys, He\u2019s Literally Me<\/a>, the author writes about how prosthetic memories, proposed by Alison Landsberg, can be imagined through films to shape identities that lived memories do. The article further argues how this mechanism may also enforce confirmation bias when being uncritical about who they identify with. Referencing to American Psycho and the modern “Sigma Male” trend, the author shows that viewers do not always empathize with the intended subject of the film, instead adopting the film as a means of validating misogyny, narcissistic masculinity, and entitlement. Thus, films double in their effects: they have the capacity to build empathy and understanding, but they can also maintain oppressive social narratives and reproduce damaging identities when audiences misread them or internalize them selectively .This dynamic is not unique to American Psycho or Sigma Male culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201c<\/em>We\u2019re promoting merchandise to adults as well as little girls,\u201d said the company\u2019s director of licensing in 1987, referring to products that had been created for the 50th anniversary of Snow White (Tait). I couldn\u2019t help but wonder, do we grow out of Disney\u2014or does Disney simply grow into us? 91% self-identified \u201cDisney adults\u201d expected to remain Disney adults for life, showing how prosthetic memory and identity production by media is structural, not individual. It is not simply just building a nostalgic childhood, as one may naturally think. It is an actual lived, long-lasting identity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Disney films have been producing similar \u201cprosthetic identities\u201d for decades\u2014often in ways that also affirm harmful cultural scripts. Disney\u2019s narratives generate extraordinarily powerful memories in childhood audiences: for many people, these films become their earliest emotional templates for love, heroism, gender, and belonging. If Landesberg argues that films allow us to \u201cconstruct narratives for ourselves,\u201d(186) Disney arguably teaches us who we are supposed to want to become.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Take the “princess” narrative: Disney’s heroines repeatedly enact the prosthetic memory of transformation-an ordinary girl becomes the chosen one, love is fate, goodness is destiny. Children adopt those feelings, internalize the desire, and carry that prosthetic memory into adulthood. But, like the men who selectively identify with Bateman, audiences often internalize the surface fantasy and neglect the critique. For example, the early Disney canon accidentally supports the fantasy of male entitlement and female reward: the prince’s perseverance is framed as love, not stubbornness, and the princess’s silence or sacrifice becomes virtue, not constraint. The audiences “remember” these roles even without living them. The result can be the same confirmation bias, except directed toward romance, gender norms, happiness, and competition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Disney has also perfected the art of extending these memories beyond the screen and into everyday consumption. Through theme parks, merchandise, streaming platforms, and curated nostalgia, Disney provides an entire ecosystem where these identities are reinforced repeatedly. Visiting Disneyland becomes a ritual\u2013wearing themed dresses, buying branded products becomes an act of belonging, and nostalgia becomes a commodity that is constantly renewed. In the same manner that Sigma Males “perform” masculinity through imitation, Disney fans perform their identity through participation in a shared fantasy world that blurs the line between media and lived memory. This shows that prosthetic identity is not just emotional or psychological. It is economic, cultural, and social, quietly infiltrating every aspect of our community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Interestingly enough, Disney has recently attempted to revise this prosthetic memory. Films like Frozen<\/em> and Moana<\/em> actively resist the earlier narratives of entitlement or rescue (Mendelson). In other words, Disney knows that people don\u2019t just watch princess movies\u2014they model themselves after them. Disney has had to become aware of film\u2019s power not just to teach empathy, but to reinforce bias.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Taking the author\u2019s argument further, the problem isn’t just that audiences identify with Bateman incorrectly\u2013it’s that culture conditions us to look for ourselves in the narratives to confirm the scripts we already carry, whether that’s the Sigma Male fantasy, the Nice Guy narrative, or the Disney princess myth. Prosthetic memories can produce empathy, but they also produce archetypes that get recycled across media and across identity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What Bridghet\u2019s post reveals\u2014and what Disney makes even clearer\u2014is that prosthetic memory is not neutral. It can produce empathy, or entitlement. It can create community, or isolation. Perhaps the task for filmmakers and audiences isn\u2019t to stop identifying with characters, but to become more aware of what we are being trained to desire in the first place. So I agree with the author\u2019s conclusion that film produces identity as much as emotion. Still, I would add that even the most seemingly innocuous films, especially Disney films, have always been doing the same kind of cultural work that American Psycho does: shaping what we think we are, who we think is heroic, and what futures we believe we deserve.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Works Cited<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Landsberg, Alison. Prosthetic Memory: Total Recall and Blade Runner<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mendelson, Scott. \u201cWhy \u2018little Mermaid\u2019 May Mark the End of Disney\u2019s Remake Factory Hits: Analysis.\u201d TheWrap<\/em>, 1 June 2023, www.thewrap.com\/disney-remake-little-mermaid-moana-frozen\/.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tait, Amelia. \u201cThe \u2018Disney Adult\u2019 Industrial Complex.\u201d New Statesman<\/em>, New Statesman, 26 Feb. 2024, www.newstatesman.com\/culture\/2024\/02\/disney-adult-superfan-industrial-complex#:~:text=Far%20more%20common%20answers%20include,%E2%80%9Cmakes%20me%20feel%20happy%E2%80%9D.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cover art: https:\/\/www.pinterest.com\/pin\/118430665278991259\/<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Written by Gina Chang<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Bridghet\u2019s blog post Guys, He\u2019s Literally Me, the author writes about how prosthetic memories, proposed by Alison Landsberg, can be imagined through films to shape identities that lived memories do. The article further argues how this mechanism may also enforce confirmation bias when being uncritical about who they identify with. Referencing to American Psycho … Continue reading We Don’t Just Watch Disney\u2014We Become it<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":103710,"featured_media":966,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[170,196,124,145],"class_list":["post-962","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-critical-response","tag-critical-response","tag-disney","tag-landsberg","tag-prosthetic-memory"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mdia300\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/962","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mdia300\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mdia300\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mdia300\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/103710"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mdia300\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=962"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mdia300\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/962\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":972,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mdia300\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/962\/revisions\/972"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mdia300\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/966"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mdia300\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=962"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mdia300\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=962"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mdia300\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=962"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}