Mickey Mouse: Complex Character to Corporation Icon

          Mickey mouse will no doubt always be at the face of the Disney corporation, but those that know about the magnitude of his importance is beginning to diminish. Mickey the Mouse had a profound effect on those of the Great Depression in the 1930's, but the younger generation of today only know's Mickey as the big furry mouse character at Disneyland that signs your autograph book for you. According to Robert Brockway in his article, The Masks of Mickey Mouse: Symbol of a Generation, Brockway claims, "Mickey has some impact on the younger people but far less than those born upon the inter-war years." (33)
          Growing up, I knew that Mickey mouse was important to Disney and was the center of many early Disney shows, but I never knew how integral he was to the upbringing of the Disney corporation as a whole.   Brockway examines Mickey's importance, "While technical innovation and commercial promotion account for some of Mickey's popularity as a film star, his remarkable endurance shows that his creator unwittingly touched something deep in the human psyche." (26) Mickey held a great emotional importance to the people of that era, but it now has fallen into the hands of a plethora of new animated characters that hold the generational torch of significance to the youth culture.
           I believe that the reason why Mickey is only an icon now, not a character, it is partly due to Disney's discontinuance of airing the Mickey Mouse club in 1996.  The era of Mickey mouse was dead even then, because the popular characters of Dinsey's films took the forefront of youth attention.  But at least the Mickey mouse club kept the image of Mickey going, trying to revive it as much as possible. Enjoy the video, 90's kids.

Source:

Brockway, Robert W. "The Masks of Mickey Mouse: Symbol of a Generation." Journal of Popular Culture; Spring 1989; 22, 4; ProQuest Research Library. 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FDclvF1v5-U
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/archive/d/d4/20130713135902!Mickey_Mouse.png

Disney: America's American Dream

Walt Disney may just be the most successful example of the "American Dream" to the public.  Making it past the white picket fence, house, and car, Walt Disney headed one of the most successful American companies of all time.  He came from a modest background and essentially made it to the top, encapsulating the "work hard" ideology of many immigrants at the time, "Beginning in the late 1920s, his immense end multifaceted entertainment enterprise - short cartoons, feature-length animations, live-action films, comic books, and records, nature documentaries, colossal theme parks-  inundated the United States, much of the Western world, and beyond." (84)  Disney honestly started at the bottom a starving artist and made it to the top a multi-billionaire, succeeding the American dream. 

 

Source:

Source: The Journal of American History, Vol. 82, No. 1 (Jun., 1995), pp. 84-110 

Disney is for Everyone!

When we hear the word "Disney," we primarily think about the animated, visually entertaining films that are at the forefront of Disney's economic empire. I find most of their films attractive and entertaining, simply because I'm a child at heart. However, in Janet Watsko's article, Challenging Disney Myths, Watsko makes great points as to why Disney is a great source of entertainment not only for children, but for everyone.
Disney owns "Touchstone, Holleywood, and Miramax films and ABC, ESPN, and other cable channels..." (250) Through this, Disney exponentially expands its fanbase to more than just children and child-like adults such as myself, they provide entertainment to all age groups of American life.
This essentially makes the phrase, "Disney is for kids," absolutely false. Although they don't directly label their ownerships with Disney's name to avoid the "monopoly" feeling, they are certainly running them by a different name.


Source:
Watsko, Janet. "Challenging Disney Myths." Journal of Communication Inquiry. Sage Publications. 2001. Web.
http://tylerj412.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/espn-disney-abc.jpg

The Evolution of Disney

Disney, as a company, first began with essentially a "whites only" approach to the makings of its films. Beginning with Snow White, Disney eventually created the infamous prince and princess routine which involved a love story and a single race.  This was very appealing to the white audience that could afford to buy movie tickets at the time.
Yet, as you look further and further into the future, you can see Disney's divergence from the usual system it was using.  It wasn't until 1992 when Aladdin was released that Disney began to expand it's racial interpretations to involve another culture besides something caucasian. In Celeste Lacroix's article, Images of Animated Others: The Orientalization of Disney's Cartoon Heriones From The Little Mirmaid to The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Lacroix claims, "Jasmine of Aladdin posed problems for the Disney animators. Her skin tone is appropriately darker for the Middle Eastern setting of the story. Yet, she retains many White features, such as a delicate nose and small mouth." (220) In Disney's defense, they we're grappling with their first non-white disney animated film. Not being culturally accurate, though, seemed to be their downfall according to critics. Lacroix focuses on the fact that Disney labeled their non-white characters their respective races, they failed to illustrate them accurately.
Disney tried, and most first tries are a failure. Yes, they didn't portray the characters necessarily correct in Aladdin, Mulan, or Pocahontas, but they at least deserve credit for making a film and diverging from their "white princess" routine pre-1990s.


Sources:

Celeste Lacroix (2004): Images of Animated Others: The Orientalization of Disney's Cartoon Heroines From The Little Mermaid to The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Popular Communication: The International Journal of Media and Culture, 2:4, 213-229 

Princess and The Frog

I believe Disney did an exceptional job in it's dealing with racism in it's movie The Princess and the Frog.  As said in class, Disney was stuck in a corner with the "double-edged sword" it was stuck with. If they illustrated it's characters to be too "black", they would have gotten criticized.  If they did not attempt to interpret Tiana and her family to be culturally accurate, they would have gotten criticized as well. 

Breaking away from their repertoire of flawless, non-African American homogenous princesses that found a perfect white man, Disney finally threw in Tiana.  Tiana, to me at least, is the best possible portrayal of the 1920's black female who is just trying to find success against all odds. 

In Sarah Turner's article, Blackness, Bayous, and Gumbo: Encoding and Decoding Race in a Colorblind World, Turner heavily attacks The Princess and the Frog for being colorblind; essentially ignoring the fact that Tiana is African American, "Color-blind racism denies difference on skin color by simply refusing to see color; therefore Tiana is "just a princess," not a black princess." (84)  Turner argues that by Disney's lack of acknowledging Tiana's "blackness", they are being racist. I have to disagree with Turner, knowing that Disney is trying their best to play it safe in their cultural representations in the film. Disney knew what they were getting into, and they did a very good job in a portrayal that could have ended horribly. 

Sources:

Turner, Sarah. “Blackness, Bayous, and Gumbo” Diversity in Disney Films: Critical Essays on Race, Ethnicity, Gender, Sexuality, and Disability. Johnson Cheu (Editor). Jefferson: McFarland, 2013. Duke University Libraries. Nov. 2013.

Nice Guys Finish Last

In Gary Trousdale and Kirk Wise's The Hunchback of Notre Dame, I find a reassurance of Disney's "beautiful people" complex.  In all of Disney's films, each protagonist is physically appealing and essentially flawless in beauty. As mentioned in class, the waste line of most disney princesses are smaller than the circumference of their head, which is (in the real world) impossible.  Disney clearly wanted to switch it up a bit by making the main character in The Hunchback a little less than perfect. Quasimodo in The Hunchback is the quite the stray away from conventional Disney characters, but what Disney decides to do with him is what bothers me.

In the film, Quasimodo is the center of the entire plot line. They also show his emotional thoughts throughout the movie as well.  The audience is exposed to the fact that Quasi has strong feelings for Esmeralda, the beautiful gypsy whom Quasi falls for. I find that if Disney was going to have Quasi get denied in the end, essentially "friend-zoning" him by Esmeralda, why would they have Esmeralda send him certain signs that she was interested in him?
In Martin Norden's article, Disability and Otherness in The Hunchback, Norden emphasizes the belief that Quasi is simply too young mentally, and can't be with Esmeralda because of it. He says, "From such a perspective, there is little wonder why Quasi cannot have a mature relationship with Esmeralda; he is, despite his years, just a kid" (171).  Norden's belief that Quasi's self-esteem problems and mental youth will prohibit his capturing of Esmeralda's heart is simply ridiculous. There are many other examples of Disney "princes" being childish and immature.  Looking at Beast from The Beauty and the Beast, in his pre-beast form he was cocky and immature, essentially placing him under the category of "young" with Quasi.

When Esmeralda is trapped in Notre Dame and can't find a way to escape, Quasi helps her escape and she ends up kissing him on the cheek, flirting (debatable) during the process.  Yet, in the end Esmeralda chooses Phoebus as her "man".  If Disney had the intention of Quasi getting denied in the end, why would they lead him on with that display of affection from Esmeralda? By Quasi helping out Esmeralda, the movie's audience learns in the end the shallow notion that the beautiful people end up together, which is a message I wouldn't want portrayed to America's youth.

                                                                           

Sources:
Cheu, Johnson. Diversity in Disney Films: Critical Essays on Race, Ethnicity, Gender, Sexuality and Disability. Print.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0116583/

http://millaindiedisneylists.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/phoebus-esmeralda-kiss.png

http://iohnson. Diversity in Disney Films: Critical Essays on Race, Ethnicity, Gender, Sexuality and Disability.

The Islamic Dismantling

        In Erin Addison's "Saving Other Women from Other Men: Disney's Alladin", Addison claims that certain parts of the film and "coupling" between Aladdin and Jasmine in the film is essentially a poor, racist interpretation.  I definitely agree with Addison's notion of racial inequality in the film, that much is clear. However, I have to criticize her for her targeting of Jasmine and Alladin portrayal in particular.
        Doesn't every Disney film possess some course of romance between protagonists?  Isn't it fit that, given Alladin is a DISNEY movie based in the middle east, both the characters are westernized versions of arab people?  Yes, Jasmine might wear clothes that show too much skin and Alladin might not look "like the rest of the arabs in the movie" (10), but you have to give Disney credit for making the film the most aesthetically pleasing to American youth that they could.  If Addison wants real and racially correct characters, then she should have watched National Geographic.

Source:
Addison, Erin. "Saving Other Women from Other Men: Disney's Aladdin."