Echoes of Our Favourite Childhood Figures : Examining the Role of Disney in Lifelong Character Development Through Its Generational Fairy Tales

Abstract

Since its founding, Disney has become the symbol of values such as joy, magic, entertainment, and family in our lives through loveable stories, characters, and unique experiences. Disney also has had a significant impact on youth culture with its ability to appeal to universal human experiences through its versatile character portfolio. Disney's recent tendency to reproduce their earlier success in modern adaptations (e.g., The Little Mermaid and Snow White coming in 2023) is the focus of this paper. It aims to examine the influence of Disney's representation of the mechanisms of our world on youth character development by comparing the responses given for the ‘classic’ and the ‘modern’ versions. For this reason, in addition to explicit measures (survey), an Implicit Associations Test (IAT) was used to discover those attitudes which would generally be hidden from explicit methods of analysis due to their subversive nature (e.g., deep affective content like nostalgia). The analysis revealed a significant correlation between IAT-measured implicit attitudes and explicit measures of attitudes and behaviour toward modern and classic (our target) categories. The results also indicate the significance of these scenes (especially the childhood ‘classic’ ones) as they can form strong bonds with the young audience, affecting their preferences, values, worldview, and, thus, their character development.