- "Pinocchio" by Claudia Card
- "Somatexts at the Disney Shop: Constructing the Pentimentos of Women's Animated Bodies" by Elizabeth Bell
- "The Curse of Masculinity: Disney's Beauty and the Beast" by Susan Jeffords
Masculinity
The Big Picture
General Messages to Children
Disney movies exhibit clear messages for girls, boys, and children in general. These authors interpret films and point out the subliminal lessons children learn while watching Disney classics.
- Men need to have "feelings"
- Uses Disney's Beauty and the Beast to enhance her agrument
- Gaston is the stereotypical male character, while the Beast must overcome this in order to become human again
- Card uses Disney's Pinocchio, in contrast to Carlo Collodi's Adventures of Pinocchio
- Big lesson: the penalty for dishonesty and disobedience is that one makes a fool of oneself
- Payne uses Bambi to illustrate how boys are supposed to lure girls as the entire film is
Bambi's chase of Faline
Femininity
What the Critics Say
Russel Reising
- Offers a wealth of insights to specific Disney products
- Useful in the undergraduate classroom
- Suggests macro-level undercurrents of agenda are this collection's greatest strengths
- University of Oklahoma
- Marquette University
- Northwestern University
- University of Toledo
- American literature and culture, Japanese literature and culture, popular culture and popular music
- Disney's early heroines were constructed on the bodies of professional dancers
- Sells the fantasy of little girls wanting to be princesses and ballerinas
- Bell uses the movies Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella to prove her point
- Belle and Ariel are shown to
contrast typical princess
images
Russel Reising
American Quarterly (Dec. 1997)
The Johns Hopkins University Press
Eric Smoodin
- Mad that the editors did not include him in the collection
- Feels the problem is with the editors overall conception and execution of the project
- University of California, Davis
- American Studies and Film Studies
- Focuses on the relationships between popular, visual media and such institutions as education, government, and the military
Eric Smoodin
Film Quarterly (Spring 1997)
University of California Press
From Mouse to Mermaid:
The Politics of Film, Gender and Culture
Elizabeth Bell
Assistant Professor of Communication at the University of South Florida
Teaches courses in performance of literature, oral tradition, and women and communication
Lynda Haas
Assistant Professor in the Writing Program at Ithaca College
Researches feminism, cultural studies, and writing theory
Laura Sells
Professor of communication and women's studies at the University of South Florida
Her dissertation is on a feminist critical rhetoric of the body
- Edited by Elizabeth Bell, Lynda Haas, and Laura Sells
- Indiana University Press (1995)
Claudia Card
Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Wisconsin
Her research interests include ethics, social and political philosophy, feminist philosophy, and lesbian culture
David Payne
Associate Professor of Communication at the University of South Florida
Has published monographs and book chapters dealing with rhetorical analysis of popular film and media culture
Susan Jeffords
Chair of Women's Studies and Professor of English at the University of Washington
Author of Hard Bodies: Hollywood Masculinity in the Reagan Era, The Remasculinization of America: Gender in the Vietnam War, and co-editor of Seeing Through the Media: The Persian Gulf War
Gender in Disney Film
What Does Disney Teach Kids?