Blog Post 3

Finalized Methodology

For the methodology, I decided to follow a simple coding style. While watching the Cinderella film, I will code each important character into four different categories. The categories are of the following: 

• Main characters: Meaning that the character is essential to the plot line and appears multiple times throughout the movie.

  • Negative Representation

    • Meaning that this character is either a villain or someone that has bad traits

  • Positive Representation

    • Meaning that this character is someone that is "good" and has more positive traits

• Side/ Background Characters: Meaning that the character does not add to the film in either a positive or negative way, and is simply in the background.

• No representation

  • There is no people of color in the film

After coding the characters, I used the data collected to create multiple graphs to compare how the amount of characters in each film changes over time, and I analyzed that to be able to see the changes in representation.

Data Results 

Something else that I wanted to note in my data was whether or not the representation of characters in the movies was stereotypical or not. Out of all 10 movies that I watched, I only saw stereotypical representation in one of the movies, that one being the Disney Cinderella remake from 2015. In this movie, a lot of the servants in the household were shown to be black, and considering this racial history in America and the topic of slavery, I believed this to be stereotypical. This movie also only had one person of color in the main role, and although it was positive, it’s surprisingly low for a movie made in 2015.

Discussion

My data does not technically support my hypothesis, because although there is an increase of representation from the first movie to the last movie, the movies in between don’t show an increase over time, and they actually show a peak in 2004-2012 that then a decrease in later years. However, although my hypothesis is not supported, there is a very obvious increase in the number of people of color that are present in film since the 1950s. On top of this, there is very little representation in the films that were seen to be negative. 

As we can see, none of the movies had more than one or two negatively represented characters of color in them. The majority of them had more positively represented characters than negatively represented characters, except for the movie A Cinderella Story (Christmas Wish) which was made in 2019. 

In this film, all the main characters were white, except some of the friends of the male protagonist that were characterized as bullies, who were both of color. As they were both integral to the part and acted negatively towards Cinderella, I placed them under the negative representation category. This made it so that there were only two side characters of color in the film, and both were negative.

However, there are some limitations to my data. For one, this was a small sample size, and there may have been some more evidence towards my hypothesis if I had a larger sample size. This is due to the fact that when we are presented with more data, it’s easier to make a more accurate conclusion.

Another limitation of my research is that I only chose to count the number of people of color within each movie. Looking back, it may have been more beneficial to instead look at a ratio of people of color in comparison to white individuals due to some movies just having larger cast sizes. A lot of the movies that had more people of color in them also ended up being high school dramas, which were extremely popular in the 2010s, and which is also something that would lead to more people of color naturally showing up. This research also exclusively focuses on Cinderella films. Because of this, I will not be able to generalize my results to a larger range of fairy tale films.

Now let’s revisit the gap in the conversation. This research allows for individuals to see how people of color are represented with these fairy tales. Although these movies may only apply and be viewed by children who may not as deeply understand the concept or importance of representation, it can still lead to earlier distortions on their views of people of color that further contribute to negative stereotypes. 

By changing how individuals in these movies are represented, society can positively change how children across the globe view themselves, leading to a happier world.

Reflection

If I could revisit the research process, I think there are a couple things that I would do differently. Firstly, my research mainly focused around how many people of color were present in my films, but as stated before, it would have been better to focus on ratio of people of color due to some movies having more characters present. Something else I would've done is started with the data model that I'm using now. I changed my model partial-way through and it put me slightly behind. 

The most important research skill I developed from this process was being able to properly communicate my results. Although the actual process of collecting my data was generally easy, it was a little more challenging explaining my process and making sure my presentation is clear and understandable.