Good Girls and Wicked Witches. Amy M. Davis
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then transformed to make them suitable for filming. Concurrently to changing them so as to fit the constraints of each new medium, each new teller has also re-formed and re-shaped elements of the stories to fit both the medium they were using and the audience they were targeting.
It is the intention of this book to begin to delve into the ways in which the Disney studio re-told traditional tales, and by doing so, sought to find ways that would make these stories work cinematically, as well as making them relevant and attractive to contemporary movie audiences. The study itself is concerned primarily with an examination of the characterisations of women in a selection of Disney’s animated feature films. The question will be posed as to whether or not these characterisations reflect not only contemporary stereotypes, but also modern stereotypes of women within Western society. In particular, my focus will centre on those films in which the main character is not only female, but human. There are a few films in the selection which have a male character as a leading role, but these films also have an important female character who is pivotal to the plot-line, such as the role of Wendy in Peter Pan (1953). While other films will be mentioned as necessary, the films which will serve as my primary focus are Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), Melody Time (1948), The Adventures of lchabod and Mr. Toad (1949), Cinderella (1950), Alice in Wonderland (1951), Peter Pan (1953), Sleeping Beauty (1959), 101 Dalmatians (1961), The Rescuers (1977), The Fox and the Hound (1981), The Black Cauldron (1985), The Little Mermaid (1989), Beauty and the Beast (1991), Aladdin (1992), Pocahontas (1995), The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996), Hercules (1997), Mulan (1998), Tarzan (1999), The Emperor’s New Groove (2000), Atlantis (2001), Lilo and Stitch (2002), and Treasure Planet (2004). It is the hope of this book to add to the understanding of twentieth-century American social and cultural perceptions of women, as well as to contribute to a better understanding of the content of traditional “2D” Disney animated features and their place in American society. It should be noted here that, as is becoming standard practice amongst Disney scholars, “Disney” or “the studio” will refer to the Disney studio, and “Walt” will refer to Walt Disney the man (except, of course, within quotes; in such cases, naturally, quotes will be recorded accurately, with clarifications inserted where necessary). The Disney corporation will be referred to as either the Disney corporation or the Disney company.
The book begins with two chapters outlining the basic background to the problems to be analysed. Having looked briefly at constructions of femininity within American popular culture in this introduction and in the following chapter, it is intended that this initial discussion will serve as a basis for the in-depth examinations of constructions of femininity which will be undertaken on a film-by-film basis in the fourth, fifth, and sixth chapters. Chapters one and two will serve also as background for the later chapters, with Chapter two providing the reader with an explanation of the history and mechanics of animation. This chapter is included because, in order to examine and analyse accurately a body of films such as these, certain aspects of how animation as a medium has evolved is essential for understanding why certain choices were made in terms of story, design, and the scale of each project. Chapter three will begin to narrow the study’s focus by introducing the history of the rise of the Disney studio, and will also give some biographical details of Walt Disney’s childhood, youth, and early adulthood as a way of looking at some of the possible roots of his attitudes and beliefs about women in order to better understand how much the attitudes in these films come from Walt himself, and how much they were normal ideas, attitudes, and values of twentieth century America. Chapter four will emphasise the Disney studio’s history between 1937 and 1967, focusing predominately upon the analysis of the films made during that period which fit the criteria of this study. Following this same format, Chapter five will concentrate on films made between 1967 and 1989 and the state of the Disney studio during those years, and Chapter six will offer analysis of films made from 1989 to 2004. This chronological division of the studio’s history is one which has been used by others when looking at the history of the studio. In my opinion, it is a useful format for me to follow: firstly, it links this study to earlier histories of the Disney studio; secondly, it reflects the very real differences in management styles at different periods within the company’s history, in order to allow some consideration of the effects these have had on the animation studio’s thinking and output; thirdly, they reflect (perhaps not coincidentally) the rise, decline, and rebirth of the studio’s fortunes as a producer of entertainment within Hollywood and for the US and world markets.
That the Disney studio has been a Hollywood success story is unquestionable: beginning as a tiny independent studio with a staff of four (including Walt, his brother Roy as the business manager, and two animators, Ub Iwerks and Ham Hamilton) in October 1923,28 it has since grown into one of the richest and most powerful multi-media conglomerates and corporations in the world. That this success is owed, for the most part, to the studio’s ability to produce entertainment which appeals strongly to audiences is evidence that the ways it has told these stories resonates with viewers.
The fact that many of these films have achieved classic status, that they are continuously referenced by other films and animated works, that they are deemed to warrant scholarly attention, and that they continue to be measurably popular with audiences, shows that these films play an important cultural role. How much they tap into their culture’s ideas, hopes, fears, and attitudes is what this study seeks to understand.
1
Film as a Cultural Mirror
In Hollywood, both in the past and in the present, what decides whether or not a film will be made, ultimately, is whether or not it is believed that the film will make money. If a film is to make money, it must appeal to a mass audience. If it is to do this, it must contain ideas, themes, characters, stories, and perceptions to which it can relate. It must, in other words, be relevant to the audience’s world view if it is to be successful. Why does a film like Thelma and Louise (1991), ostensibly a road movie about two redneck women trying to escape to Mexico, strike such a chord – and stir up such controversy – amongst audiences around the world? The simple answer to this is that Thelma and Louise touches upon certain issues – mainly women’s roles, rights and positions in what is still very much a male-dominated society – which are relevant not only to the lives of women of the same basic background as the title characters, but also to women as a whole, nearly all of whom have experienced some form of gender-related harassment and/or discrimination. More recently, the phenomenon of the success of the film Bridget Jones’s Diary (2001), as well as the attendant criticism of the way it depicts thirty-somethings at the turn of the twenty-first century, has enjoyed great success. This far-reaching popularity comes from the fact that, like it or not, Bridget Jones’s Diary mirrors back to a great many women the conflicting roles they are expected to fill, and their confusion as to how to navigate the difficulties and contradictions to be found within the era’s complex and evolving understanding of the ways in which marriage, career, and family are/should be prioritised amongst middle-class Western women.
Likewise, there are within Disney’s films certain ideas, perceptions, themes and stereotypes which are relevant to the daily lives of those who made these films successful, namely the audiences, who paid to see these films in the cinema, bought the related merchandise, went to the theme parks and rented or purchased the videos and DVDs. Had these films not “spoken” in some way to contemporary audiences, or at least if the studio had not believed that these films had this potential, then the films themselves would never have been made. Or, if they had been made regardless (which, owing to the expense of their production, is doubtful), then they would – like the many films which have failed to gain a favourable reception with audiences – have disappeared not long after their release. Likewise, had the films been successful in their day, but the ideas and themes they contain ceased to resonate with the public (or, in extreme cases, jarred hatefully with modern values), they would have become rare, controversial cinematic relics along the lines of films such as D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation (1915): watched out of scholarly curiosity, at best saluted for their technical innovations, but used – ultimately – as a measure of how far social attitudes and values had progressed since such films’ releases.29 Granted,