Disney Restyles 'Rapunzel To Boys': Article Analysis

‘Disney restyles ‘Rapunzel’ to appeal to boys’ is an article written by Dawn.C Chmielewski and Claudia Eller, writers of Los Angeles Times. As this article is published in Los Angeles Times, its main audience would be the general public. In this article, Chmielewski and Eller (2010) argue about how Disney directors are changing the name of ‘Rapunzel’ to less gender-specific titles to draw in a bigger audience. While I feel that Chmielewski and Eller have provided a refreshing insight of how the title of a movie could have a significant impact on ticket sales, the evidence provided is unsubstantial, unreliable and self-contradictory.

The article lacks substantiality in the evidence provided as the claim that a gender-specific title would cause a movie to fail was based on only one movie example, “The Princess and the Frog” (Chmielewski & Eller, 2010, para.2) Moreover it is only on the hunch of what the executives “believe” to be the reason for its failure (Chmielewski & Eller, 2010, para.2) that they establish their claim, making the evidence’s credibility questionable. Hence to base their claim on only one example and on the hunch of executives dilutes their claim, due to the severe lack in substantial evidence.
Thus I feel this lack of solid evidence dampens their claim of a correlation between gender-specific title and ticket sales, as credibility of evidence is