HOW TO WATCH A DISNEY FILM
You can find a list of all Disney animated films here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Disney_animated_features. Please note this includes compilations (such as Saludos, Amigos!) as well as the traditional full-length feature films discussed below.
All cultural products give us insight into the workings of culture: how a culture works, what a culture believes, who a culture affects. The animated films of the Walt Disney Company (which began producing feature films in 1934 [Snow White and the Seven Dwarves]) provide us with particular insight into how culture refashions previously known stories for a particular audience of viewers (families; NB: it is more accurate in most cases to describe animated Disney films as family films rather than children's films, for reasons we will explore a bit below).
We can analyze Disney films generally from multiple, media-related perspectives:
As commercial ventures, Disney films are designed to appeal to a wide audience; we can therefore ask what (Disney believes) is "appealing" to mass audiences in terms of content and story;
As family films, they are designed to speak not only to "adult" issues, but also provide a context for the exploration of basic moral questions that are appropriate to children;
Finally, as animated films, Disney films engage the intersection of "tradition" and "technology," raising questions of modernization and cultural development; animation also opens up the exploration of fantasy (talking animals; supernatural causes; "fate" or "destiny") to spur, but also in many ways train, youthful imagination.
Disney films are also notable as adaptations: all but a small handful of Disney animated films are based on earlier materials (books, folk tales, music, short stories; for a list see this handy Wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disney_animated_feature_film_source_material; although even some of the films listed as "original," such as The Lion King, draw on earlier narratives). Because these films are adaptations of earlier narratives, we can also analyze them from this perspective:
Why have the animators chosen this story? Are there particular themes, character-types, or plot devices that they feel resonate with contemporary concerns? This question gains additional relevance when the source material is historical, as in Pocahontas or Mulan: does it matter if Disney changes history?
How have the animators altered this story? Are these changes largely aesthetic? Are they introduced because of the "family" nature of the film? Do these changes give us insight into what the "message" of this story is?
To what extent do the animators' changes significantly alter the context, content, or message of the story? (For instance, the ending of The Hunchback of Notre Dame is very different from Victor Hugo's novel: is this due to sensitivity to young audiences, or the desire to convey a different moral about disability and tolerance?)
Finally, we can (and should) analyze Disney films in the same way we analyze other adaptive cultural products aimed at children. Like folk tales, cartoons, and other "children's media," Disney films are both reflective and instructive.
They are reflective because, as commercial media, they are designed to appeal to the parents who will take their children to see Disney films (and purchase related consumer product tie-ins). No matter how much children beg, parents are unlikely to take their toddlers and young children to see a Disney adaptation of A Nightmare on Elm Street. When we ask questions about the nature of these films, then, we must ask: what do Disney, and Disney parents, think their children should and should not see?
They are also instructive: children learn from all media. They learn information (who was Hercules? what is a hyena? what are Siamese cats like?), but they also learn culture, everything from moral lessons to social system. When children watch a Disney film they will often learn about:
family dynamics (what makes a good/bad parent? what makes a "good" child? what are the limits of family loyalty? obedience? independence?)
social roles and duties (does might make right? why are some kings/queens/rulers good, and others bad? what responsibility do we have to serve others?)
gender, race, and difference (are we all the same "underneath"? do different people have different roles in the family, or society?)
environment (what relationship should we/can we/do we have with the world around us?)
One reason Disney films make such a fruitful arena for exploring all of these issues is because of the long history of Disney: we can compare (if we like) questions of race and gender, or class and family, or environment, in the films of the 1940s with those of today. Does a shift in Disney's cultural productions reflect a shift in our culture? Has Disney actually prompted shifts in our cultural views?
This page has been written for Core II, section 9, taught at Scripps College in Spring 2010, by Andrew Jacobs. Feel free to link to this page, but please to not reproduce it without permission.