a. Title of Article:
Why Children's Movie Audiences Are Filled With 24-Year-Olds
b. APA Citation:
Hugel, M. (2013, December 11). Why Children's Movie Audiences Are Filled With 24-Year-Olds. Retrieved December 12, 2014.
c. Important Quotes:
1. "As we deal with financial and political unrest, it's reassuring to watch a film where we know the stakes and the outcome."
2. "They set themselves apart from others in mainstream Hollywood by appealing to our yearning for the simplicity of childhood, and lamenting a world of unoriginal, misogynistic adult fare"
d. Analysis:
In the story Peter Pan, children never want to grow up, and they never do. Today the adult is nostalgic and sentimental of their childhood. Disneys target audience is of course children under 18 but today we see a percentage of families going to the theater along with a percentage of others. These "others" are adults. Why? The author of the article speculates that it might be due to nostalgia or maybe because it is a predictable escape from our society. Has Disney changed their movies to secretly cater to the desires of adults? Or is this percentage of attending adults due to a deep rooted love of Disney?
One can doubt the particular outlining of the adult audience by Disney but Disney has a deep rooted presence in the "younger adult" generation (20-27). During their childhoods, Disney movies had began to become more popular for example movies like Aladdin (1993) are still watched and enjoyed today. Now movies like Frozen (2013) and Into the Woods (2014) have and will attract adult audiences. Maybe these movies are a sort of escape from our society and the trials and tribulation of it. They bring back childhood memories of watching movies with their family and provide a predictable plot. The main character will never die brutally, and the main character will never have to pay taxes, go through divorce, or worry about the stock market. Maybe Adults are so attracted to these movies because these movies are a paragon of what their lives could be or could have been; simplistic and without trial and calvary. These movies remind the viewer of childhood, when life was simplistic and watching a Disney movie would be the highlight of their days. In this case, nostalgia and marketing play off each other for this emerging adult audience.
Nevertheless, this is just another audience that Disney is able to target because of their longstanding history in the film industry.
When stating that the reason behind people watching children's movies is because of a nostalgic feeling of both simplicity and the non complications is that really the reason? When actually disregarding Disney as a prime marketer, looking all around there a many different forms of social media that not only market the feelings of childhood but rather embrace the desire to restore time lost. Looking at it from another stand point many films and shows and even books center around the ideas of either repeating history, going back to a certain time period in life, or even going back to when you didn't understand the complexity of human emotions. Movies such as "The Time Travelers Wife" and "About Time" are two prime examples of how media as a whole has glorified the concept of returning the clock. I don't think Disney is necessarily benefiting from them only promoting childhood but rather based on films that incorporate the feelings of nostalgia tend to appeal to a greater audience. Disney is the major company that has embraced this idea.
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