Surviving patriarchy: Interrogating ideology in children’s readers and their corresponding adaptations

Abstract

This paper investigates patriarchy as an ideology in selected children’s readers and their corresponding animated film adaptations. It investigates the various ways that patriarchy is captured in the texts and the way characters fight the effects thereof. The paper is divided into three parts. The first part which also acts as the introduction discusses the concept of ideology and the various manifestations of patriarchy. The second part discusses various ways in which the characters in the texts try to fight the effects of patriarchy while the last section consists of the conclusion. The paper has employed a comparative analysis of the literary texts and their animated film adaptations using the Adaptation Theory. This theory makes it possible to analyze texts of different media, in this particular case film and literary texts. The Children’s readers used are Wilhelm and Jacob Grimm’s Briar Rose (1812) and Rapunzel (1812), Robinson Crusoe for Boys and Girls (1915) by Lida Mc Murry and Mary Husted and The Story of Ferdinand (1964) by Munroe Leaf. The respective adaptations studied are The Seventh Dwarf (2014) directed by Herald Siepermann and Boris Aljinovic), Tangled (released in 2010 and directed by Byron Horward and Nathan Greno), Robinson Crusoe/The Wild Life (2016) directed by Vincent Kesteloot and Ben Stassen and Ferdinand (released in 2017 and directed by Carlos Saldanha).