Elizabeth Bell, Lynda Haas, and Laura Sells, eds. _From Mouse to
Mermaid: The Politics of Film, Gender, and Culture_.
Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995. 280 pp. Index.
$39.95 (cloth), ISBN 0-253-32905-1; $16.95 (paper), ISBN
0-253-20978-1.
Reviewed by Steven Mintz, University of Houston, for H-Film
<SMintz@UH.EDU>.
Although this book seeks to explicate ideology in fifty-five
years of Disney films, it is no accident that the word "Disney"
is missing from the book's title. The studio discourages authors
of third-party books from using the name in their titles, on the
grounds that doing so would imply the company's sponsorship or
endorsement. No reader will doubt that this book is not a product
of the Disney system: its feminist, Marxist, and
poststructuralist readings of the Disney canon seek to demystify
and deconstruct the Disney "magic" and lay bare the films'
messages about gender, race, class, and politics.
The volume's initial section--Disney films as cultural
pedagogy-- examines the way that the Disney studio has
appropriated and transformed classic literary texts and
historical events and assimilated them to a distinctive
"American" ideology, emphasizing the values of "democracy,"
"technology," and "modernity." In the first essay, Jack Zipes
recounts the literary history of European fairy tales in order to
show that Disney was only the latest in a long line of authors,
folklorists, playwrights, and illustrators to rework traditional
folk tales, retaining and discarding elements that reinforced (or
contradicted) key ideological themes.
Henry A. Giroux then turns to the cinematic treatment of
Vietnam in American film, describing various strategies
filmmakers employed that obscured the war's political and moral
meaning (for example, focusing on the plight of individual
veterans and reducing the war to a coming-of-age tale). He argues
that the Disney version of the war, _Good Morning, Vietnam_,
exemplifies the studio's "politics of innocence"--a
characteristic approach that reduces history to nostalgia, erases
any sense of collective responsibility, and builds its narrative
around the heart-rending experiences of an alienated American
resister.
Next, Claudia Card looks at how Disney reshaped
_Pinocchio_, describing how the studio distorted and tamed the
original tale (which dealt with fundamental issues of trust and
the nature of humanity), by treating growing up as learning to
please others and to follow orders. Robert Haas's essay on _Billy
Bathgate_ focuses on the "Disneyfication" of the gangster
genre--the way the E.L. Doctorow's novel was transformed by the
Disney conventions of "innocent protagonists, male oriented
mentoring, [and] patronized and objectified women." Susan Miller
and Greg Rode explore the conflicting messages about race and
gender transmitted by _Song of the South_ and _The Jungle Book_.
The volume's second part--on gender construction--begins
with Elizabeth Bell's description of the "semiotic layering" in
the construction of women's bodies in Disney animation, focusing
on the adolescent heroine, the wicked stepmother, and the fairy
godmother. Using the lens of ecofeminism, Patrick Murphy seeks to
show how _101 Dalmatians_, the "Rescuers" films, and _The Little
Mermaid_ conflate the subjection of nature and the subjection of
women (depicting good women as domesticators and men as
civilizers), while David Payne shows how Bambi's emergent
masculinity is discovered in heroic combat.
The treatment of masculinity in Disney films is also
explored in essays by Brian Attebery and Susan Jeffords. Attebery
divides Disney's science fiction films into two distinct types:
those featuring a boyish inventor and his quest for romance, and
those featuring aliens who help a male adolescent make the
passage to adulthood. Susan Jeffords links the shift from the
hardened, muscle-bound, domineering action hero of the 1980s to
the nurturing new man of 1990s film to a pervasive sense of
economic decline.
Part III--on identity politics--continues the focus on
gender identity. Laura Sells argues that _The Little Mermaid_
successfully assimilates the classic tale of an adolescent girl's
coming of age to a contemporary vision of the costs of women's
access to the adult world. Lynda Haas examines the representation
(and lack of representation) of mothers in Disney films, arguing
that (with the notable exception of _The Joy Luck Club_) these
pictures reflect a very narrow range of role possibilities. Chris
Cuomo turns to the unmaternal characters in _Mary Poppins_ and
_Bedknobs and Broomsticks_, and argues that these women serve as
vehicles for validating traditional values and the family. D.
Soyini Madison's black feminist interpretation of _Pretty Woman_
emphasizes the film's ambivalence concerning women's autonomy and
sexuality. Ramona Fernandez's analysis of EPCOT examines the way
that it suppresses problematic aspects of American history,
minimizing traces of race, gender, and class.
The volume's overarching argument is that Disney's
trademarked innocence and magic are not reducible simply to a
blend of nostalgia, technological wizardry, gender caricatures,
and a sanitized version of reality. Rather, they represent a much
more intricate ideology that sends out conflicting messages which
defy simple summary--but which serve to mystify power relations
and to reinforce traditional gender roles.
Copyright (c) 1996 by H-Net, all rights reserved. This
work may be copied for non-profit educational use if
proper credit is given to the author and the list.
For other permission, please contact H-Net@H-Net.Msu.Edu.