Tinker Belles and Evil Queens: The Walt Disney Company From the Inside Out Read Online Free PDF

into the clouds with Prince Charming or waltzing endlessly in a palace ballroom. Since no one is ever seen actually having sex, many viewers would argue that reading sexual messages into Disney’s films is itself nothing but a perverse act.2
    Although many historians and biographers have consciously rein-scribed the asexual mythology of the company, Disney has consistently posited and reinforced an image of sexuality in films, television series, comic books, theme parks and countless other Disney texts: specifically, an image of American middle-class heterosexual courtship. Furthermore, through careful and untiring public relations, Disney has made this vision of sexuality seem such a given fact of life that most consumers are incapable of consciously acknowledging its construction.
    Disney consequently posits heterosexual courtship as the only “true” (if not the “only”) method by which individuals may conceive of sexuality. Foucault states plainly that “power is only tolerable on condition that it mask a substantial part of itself. Its success is proportional to its ability to hide its own mechanisms.”3 With this in mind, the refusal to read the discourse of sexuality contained within the oeuvre of the Walt Disney Company displays the enormous power that the “Disney mystique” has on individuals.
    Tied into the discourse of sexuality is a larger discourse of “the body.” Foucault points out that “[sexuality] has been linked from the outset with an intensification of the body—with its exploitation as an object of knowledge and an element in relations of power.”4 Hence, power over the discourse of sexuality depends upon “proliferating, innovating, annexing, creating, and penetrating bodies in an increasingly detailed way.”5 Judith Butler’s work (on how gender and sexuality are culturally inscribed) points out that in using “the body” to control and regulate sexual discourse, “the body” itself is culturally constructed:
    “Any discourse that establishes the boundaries of the body serves the purpose of instating and naturalizing certain taboos regarding the appropriate limits, postures, and modes of exchange that define what it is that constitutes bodies.”6 By making certain conceptions of “the body”
    seem “only natural” (its boundaries, its optimal use, its gender), the construction of the discourse of sexuality grows more powerful. For ex-M I C K E Y ’ S M O N A S T E RY
    5
    ample, discourse on “the body” regulates definitions of “male” and “female,” of “masculine” and “feminine,” which are essential to a concept of heterosexuality (and homosexuality). If representations of women’s bodies consistently display how they are “designed” for motherhood, a discourse that promotes heterosexuality becomes “normalized.” The Walt Disney Company’s emphasis in animation constantly forces the studio to consciously fashion and control bodies—drawing characters that somehow represent images of “men” and “women.” From Snow White and her Prince to Tarzan and his Jane, careful work has been done to make sure that the heroes and heroines of these animated features “measure up” to certain gender expectations. Without such stringent scrutiny, the studio’s promotion of heterosexual courtship would be compromised.
    This chapter explores and analyzes how Walt Disney and his studio promoted a heterosexual paradigm through specific strategies of representing sexuality and the body. The chapter does not specifically engage with issues of homosexuality, but it is vital to deconstruct the naturalization of Disney’s produced image of “normal” heterosexuality in order to understand more fully how queer individuals at this time could read Disney “against the grain.”7 Disney’s motion picture and television production function as a form of social discourse used to control and regulate sexuality and the body and, in the early years, the studio