Breaking The Disney Spell By Jack Zipes

Walt Disney is famous for his animated movies through the 20th century. It all started in the 1920s with a series Walt Disney directed consisting of seven fairy tales. Walt Disney is most famously known for his character Mickey Mouse, which appears first in Steamboat Willie, in 1928. It was the first Disney cartoon to be produced with synchronized sound. From this, an empire was created. The Walt Disney Company still produces cartoons to this day, but how did we get to the movies children watch today…

Disney has been around for decades, and over the course of that time it has vastly expanded the name of its brand. Children see Disney everywhere. It has a very strong impact on the youth. It also plays a very key role in their early developmental stages. In a way, Disney is like a role model to the young. For instance, look at the relationship between Disney princesses and little girls. Almost every woman, as a young girl, has seen a Disney animation. Movies that include princesses like Sleeping…

Disney is hard to miss. The umbrella of the Disney Corporation reaches from books and toys to movies, television networks, and radio (Towbin 2003). Beginning around the age of 18 months, cartoons are the most interesting format of media to children (Thompson 1995). When young children spending so much time engaging in these forms of media, the messages they send are very important. When young children- boys and girls are absorbing all this information, aren 't consciously aware of the stereotypical…

BRAVE The first of Disney Pixar’s animated films without a male-centered cast featuring a spunky, defiant, and disheveled Scottish princess (figure 5), Merida, was Brave. Opening with the expected invocation, “Once Upon a Time,” Disney prepares the audience to expect the stereotypical gender patterns of the past to include a land far away and a beautiful princess (Preston 198). Immediately opening with what might appear to be an twist from Disney tale’s tradition, the audience discovers that Merida…

The Spell of Sensibility Although the Romantic Era's general perspective regarding a woman's "sensibility" may seem distasteful to most contemporary readers, the viewpoint was commonplace during the period. To be clear, this was mainly the assumption that women were dominated by their ‘specially configured’ and ‘delicate’ senses, rather than reason and intellect. Authors like Edmund Burke passively promoted these fragilities in his verbosely titled piece A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of…

When we think of Disney princesses, we think of beauty and song. We also have the vivid vision of true love’s kiss and a castle in the clouds. Disney has received major criticism because some feel as though the model for Disney princesses perpetuates a weak female image. “In these animated worlds, good women are domesticators and resources; bad women are evil, greedy, individual perversions of natural orders; men ultimately hold procreative and productive dominion as civilizing forces in these worlds”…

Jack Zipes, in his essay "Breaking the Disney Spell", directly addresses the issue of what happens when a story is taken from its original oral form and written down. Zipes discusses in depth what Walt Disney has done to fairy tales and the consequences of Disney's actions. Zipes addresses many issues, including those of context, society, and alteration of plot. He accuses Walt Disney of attacking "the literary tradition of the fairy tale" (344). While many scholars disagree with Zipes' accusations…

When asked about Disney the overwhelming majority will have happy thoughts associated with Disney. However, my research into Euro Disney radically changes my opinion on such a glamourous franchise. This is coming from one of the biggest Disney advocates in the world, Euro Disney is an embarrassment to the Disney name as well as the brand. The disrespectful manner Disney went about creating a new world in a foreign nation lead directly to its looming demise. Disney world has invented an immensely…

Literature Review Study of representation of women in Walt Disney Cartoon Characters. Title: Study of representation of women in Walt Disney Cartoon Characters. Introduction: As long as there have been civilizations, there have been stories, myths that are told to children. These stories are usually the basis of the cartoons characters except some which are from creator’s imagination. This story telling is a means of not only comforting and amusing a child, but of teaching the child the societal…

Zipes and Mollet Summary Tracey Mollet is a modern history researcher. She received her BA from Oxford and her MA from Leeds. Primarily she researched the Nazi regime in Germany, from 1933 to 1945. However while she was working on her MA she became more interested and captivated in the animation produced by the famous Disney Studios during World War II. This particular subject has not been researched or studied on: which made her even more interested and…