Swiss Not So Much Of A Real Family Robinson

Michael Farmer

Nina Perez

WST 3015

14 April 2010

Swiss Not So Much Of A Real Family Robinson

Swiss Family Robinson is a film that was one of my personal favorites as a child. As an adult and someone who studies women’s studies I must say I look back in a certain degree of horror at the number of stereotypes and unstable constructions presented in that historic Disney film.
In class we spoke about women and young girls being portrayed as always being whole some and good and feminine. The people in this film who are portrayed as “good”, “wholesome” and “nurturing” are the group of people who make up the group that contains women and looks like the “traditional”, white hetero normative family; The Robinsons. Meanwhile the pirates, who are portrayed as male, are also animalistic, foreign, and brown skinned.
The Caucasian, European, Robinsons are portrayed as people who are outside of nature; they are of the city and of the world and thus toil with nature. We see them in their struggle with the violent, seas and with the challenge of day to day living on the barren island.
In contrast, the brown, indigenous pirates are portrayed as masters of the sea and people can easily maneuver through thick tropical rainforests.
As is typical in many films when women encounter danger from nature/the pirates in this film, the men become suddenly masculine and begin to work to protect the weak and defenseless woman. I was reminded of our class discussion reflecting on the passage from the first Gaia Girls book; “Girls are conditioned to being delegitimized by their parents and society and are constantly sent the message they can’t perform the same ways men can.” (Eco-Feminism)
Throughout the film the characters work to reinforce the idea of a hetero normative nuclear family as well as the unstable notion that men are meant to be fathers and women are meant to be mothers. The father figure in the family does this by calling his wife mother instead of by her own name and visa versa.
In the film the family uses their own form of “Monkey wrenching” to booby trap the Island in hopes of preventing the pirates from penetrating its borders. “Monkey wrenching is a form of eco activism that seeks to prevent humans from harming the environment.” (Eco-Feminism) In this scene the pirates are also portrayed as “masculine” and thus destructive to the island and the family. This unstable idea of masculinity and nature is broken down by Kirk, “based on their analysis of the connections between masculinist social institutions and the destruction of the physical environment” (Kirk 539)
However over sensitive this might sound thinking about Swiss Family Robinson in this way makes me a lot less comfortable with my future children watching it. I don’t want my children trapped by traditional roles as espoused in this film.

Work Cited:

Kirk, Gwyn and Okazawa-Rey, Margo. "Violence Against Women." Women's Lives Multicultural Perspectives. 5th Ed. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2010. 535-549.

Eco-Feminism, In-Class Notes, Womens Studies 3015, Nina Perez, April 14th, 2010.