Feminist Ethics and its Developments in Walt Disney Animations of Princes

From 1937 to 2018, the Walt Disney Company produced animations about princesses that represented the feminist mentality and discourse of their time. These animations challenged traditional ethics and provided a feminist ethics that fitted dominant theories of the American community of the time. Thus, we see liberal and radical tendencies in 18 such animations. In this paper, we consider and analyze developments of the feminist ethics of Disney princesses in the last 80 years. In order to consider the message and extract the feminist ethics in these animations, we have deployed the method of content analysis. We conclude that ethics of care was the main theme of the female ethics of the Disney cinema in 1990s. In the first decade of the 21st century, this faded and in the second decade of the 21st century, the care aspect turned into the protection of women by women. Similarly, women’s agency increased in the second decade of the 21st century, and in addition to their supportiveness, they undertook the task of guidance as well. The free course of such animations moved from resistance towards the tradition to the presentation of a choice (a course of life) and the flourishing of talents.