Anastasia is a movie released in 1997. The story takes us back to the Imperial Russia in the period of 1917 when the country was governed by Tsar Nicholas II. Rasputin plotted against Romanov family with the intention to kill all of its members, but the youngest Tsar daughter, Anastasia, with only six years old, was able to escape this terrible fate. However, after she ran away, she suffered from amnesia, a disease that made her forget all about her past and about who she really was. The story goes forward twelve years and now Anastasia is a beautiful eighteen years old girl, wondering about her history, who she really is and who are her relatives.
The purpose of this essay is to link the real Romanov family history with the story built in this particular movie and the stereotypes which originate from the Disney’s version. Here, the focus is to show historical stereotypes related to evil and American way of life (capitalism).
Before directly discussing the Disney movie, a panoramic view about the Romanov real history is necessary in order to understand this text’s point of view. Russia was governed by Romanov royal family, following the capitalism way of life and the Imperial Russia was a country deeply miserable. During this period, a new economic trend starts to add followers through Europe: the Socialism. In 1917, in order to combat the Tsar dictatorship, the Bolsheviks invaded the Imperial Castle in Russia, which lead to the death of Tsar Nicholas Romanov and his family. Therefore, the death of Romanov dynasty symbolizes socialism ascension.
In the movie, evil is personified by the figure of Rasputin, a wizard who tries to destroy the Romanov family at any cost. He is the responsible for the Royal Family destruction and Anastasia’s amnesia. In other words, he is a metaphor to Socialism. When he finds out that a member of Romanov family is still alive, he comes back from the Limbo, trying to find a way to kill the last Romanov. This attitude symbolizes the will of socialism to put an end to capitalism. Rasputin being killed by Anastasia at the end of the movie represents the victory of Capitalism over Socialism. The following song is proof of the stereotype which says that “socialism is a bad thing”:
St. Petersburg is gloomy!
St. Petersburg is bleak!
My underwear got frozen standing here all week!
Oh, since the revolution our lives have been so gray!
Thank Goodness for the gossip that gets us through the day! Hey!
Another point which is worth to be mentioned is the way Rasputin is characterized: as a thin tall ugly man. His hair and his beard are long and black; his skin is darker if compared to the other characters. He has a curious characteristic regarding his body, which can be decomposed. His arms, legs, head, fingers can separate from the rest of his body – for example, sometimes his head falls off of his neck. All of it together makes the stereotype in which everything that is ugly is bad.
It is possible to see the constructions of two different stereotypes that are rooted in our culture by analyzing the relations between Disney’s fictional creation and the real history, and they are: a) the evil being represented by the ugly appearance and b) the capitalism as the superior way of life, meaning that what is different is bad and, therefore, must it be repressed. This means that these stereotypes are constructed since childhood and they end up being accepted as a universal truth when in fact they are just reflecting the prejudice against different ways of perceiving the world.
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