IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jscscx/v7y2018i11p237-d183008.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Beauty and the Beast , and Disney’s Commodification of Feminism: A Political Economic Analysis

Author

Listed:
  • Kailash Koushik

    (School of Communication, Florida State University, 3100 University Center, Building C, Tallahassee, FL 32306, USA)

  • Abigail Reed

    (School of Communication, Florida State University, 3100 University Center, Building C, Tallahassee, FL 32306, USA)

Abstract

This paper seeks to explore the strategies Hollywood utilizes to capitalize on feminist social movements through replacing hegemonic male characters with female ones or updating traditional stories through a more “feminist” retelling. By analyzing both 2017’s Star Wars: The Last Jedi and Beauty and the Beast as representative of this corporate trend, we critique the ways in which these pseudo-feminist texts not only contribute little to the social conversation surrounding the evolving roles of women and their representations in media through the lenses of critical political economy, feminist political economy, and feminist film criticism. We conclude that creating “feminist” reimaginings of classic narratives ultimately serves to uphold the existing economic structures that maintain social and financial capital within the largest Hollywood studios. Thus, little to no social progress is made through the creation of these retellings.

Suggested Citation

  • Kailash Koushik & Abigail Reed, 2018. "Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Beauty and the Beast , and Disney’s Commodification of Feminism: A Political Economic Analysis," Social Sciences, MDPI, vol. 7(11), pages 1-21, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jscscx:v:7:y:2018:i:11:p:237-:d:183008
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0760/7/11/237/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0760/7/11/237/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Madeline Streiff & Lauren Dundes, 2017. "Frozen in Time: How Disney Gender-Stereotypes Its Most Powerful Princess," Social Sciences, MDPI, vol. 6(2), pages 1-10, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Lauren Dundes & Madeline Streiff Buitelaar & Zachary Streiff, 2019. "Bad Witches: Gender and the Downfall of Elizabeth Holmes of Theranos and Disney’s Maleficent," Social Sciences, MDPI, vol. 8(6), pages 1-17, June.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Madeline Streiff & Lauren Dundes, 2017. "From Shapeshifter to Lava Monster: Gender Stereotypes in Disney’s Moana," Social Sciences, MDPI, vol. 6(3), pages 1-12, August.
    2. Haripriya Sreekumar & A. Poongodi, 2024. "The Journey of Women in Disney Movies and Their Impact on Shaping Social Perceptions," Studies in Media and Communication, Redfame publishing, vol. 12(3), pages 255-262, September.
    3. Benjamin Hine & Dawn England & Katie Lopreore & Elizabeth Skora Horgan & Lisa Hartwell, 2018. "The Rise of the Androgynous Princess: Examining Representations of Gender in Prince and Princess Characters of Disney Movies Released 2009–2016," Social Sciences, MDPI, vol. 7(12), pages 1-23, November.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jscscx:v:7:y:2018:i:11:p:237-:d:183008. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.