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- Volume 1, Issue 1, 2025
International Journal of Disney Studies - Volume 1, Issue 1, 2025
Volume 1, Issue 1, 2025
- Editorial
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Welcome to the International Journal of Disney Studies
Authors: Robyn Muir and Rebecca RoweIn this editorial for the first issue of the International Journal of Disney Studies (IJDS), the founding editors map the field of Disney Studies as it currently stands and then place this new journal within it. In particular, we explain the need for such a Disney Studies journal at this specific moment in time. The editorial ends with an introduction to this issue and thanks and welcomes to our editorial team, both at Intellect and on the journal team specifically.
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- Articles
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Conservatives watch cartoons: The rise of Disney, the right and cultural criticism in the 1990s
By Alex PinelliThis research explores the dynamic intersection of conservatism and Disney animation during the 1990s, a pivotal decade for both political ideology and cultural influence in the United States. It examines the complex relationship between conservative film critics and Disney’s animated productions, focusing on the tension between conservative expectations of Disney as a bastion of traditional values and the company’s evolving cultural and corporate identity. The study highlights key features of Disney’s animated films that troubled conservative critics while revealing the diversity of conservative perspectives. Central to the former critiques were concerns about the erosion of traditional family and societal norms, especially regarding power structures, feminism and familial hierarchy. Additionally, it addresses a gap in the historiography of American conservatism and Disney Studies by analysing how conservative cultural critics engaged with Disney’s animated productions, offering new insights into the interplay between conservative ideology and American popular culture. By analysing conservative film reviews from this period, the research challenges the notion that Disney’s animated features were merely conservative propaganda and identifies the 1990s as the turning point in the relationship between conservatism and Disney.
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Re-imaging empowered princesshood against the rise of the fourth-wave feminism: A thematic study of Disney’s princess live-action remakes
More LessFrom 2014 to 2023, The Walt Disney Company launched five princess live-action remakes and two adaptations to update its iconic female characters. In both media discussions and academic literature, these revamped princess productions have been celebrated for their embodiments of fourth-wave feminist qualities, such as confidence, independence and girl power. However, the exact process of framing women’s empowerment on-screen – translating abstract feminist ideologies into specific visualizations and bodily performances of Disney princesses – has been treated as a taken-for-granted phenomenon placed beyond interrogation. Through a thematic analysis of all released remakes, this article demonstrates how the live-action princesses are represented to reflect fourth-wave feminist notions and what gender messages are delivered by this renovated series. I identify two visual styles and three plot devices that are used repetitively across the remakes to endow the princess characters with a progressive persona. I further discover that, despite being empowered at first glance, the remakes’ engagements with fourth-wave feminism remain superficial and eventually channel the stories back to existing gender stereotypes and imbalanced structures. This conclusion contributes to the scholarship by ascertaining Disney’s strategic leverage of contemporary gender ideologies on-screen and revealing the problematic nature of such corporate-dominated, pro-feminist agendas.
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‘We’re not quite there yet… but we will be’: Identifying shifts in the Walt Disney Company’s LGBTQ+ representation
By Matt WeaverThe Walt Disney Company has a long, complicated history with the LGBTQ+ community, particularly regarding film representation. There has been much external pressure on Disney to provide better LGBTQ+ depiction, further emphasized with controversies surrounding their involvement in Florida’s ‘Don’t Say Gay’ Bill. In recent years, there have been some indications of progress in animated films such as Lightyear (2022) and Strange World (2022). In this article, I analyse these films as exemplary of how Disney can be more LGBTQ+ inclusive in both their censorship practices (the re-instatement of a same-sex kiss in Lightyear), and their narratives, themes and character developments (the introduction of Disney’s first openly gay character – Ethan – in Strange World). I also place these films within their wider political context, recognizing them as both reflective of Disney’s efforts to correct its past, and their significance in normalizing queer experiences during a time of growing hostility towards LGBTQ+ communities, and introduction of laws that negatively impact queer youth. I conclude with some thought on the company’s future, and whether progression will continue in film representation – when the future of democracy and visibility is increasingly uncertain, Disney can and need to ‘say gay’, now more than ever.
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Making history at Disney Springs: Florida’s past as themed tourism
By F. Evan NooeIn 2015, the Walt Disney World Resort rebranded their property’s 40-year-old shopping, dining and entertainment complex into ‘Disney Springs’. Since 1975, the property has served as a mixed-use shopping centre for tourists and locals visiting the 27,000-acre Walt Disney World Resort in Central Florida. Alongside a significant expansion, the name change signalled a new unifying theme for the 120-acre shopping centre taking inspiration from Florida’s past. This article argues the redeveloped aesthetic of Disney Springs leverages a selective interpretation of Florida history to create an immersive experience conveying a layered past and transitioning space over time. Theming deploys multiple architectural styles distinct to different eras of Florida history to chronologically intertwine the themed space into Florida’s past and present. Disney ‘Imagineers’ utilized locally inspired vernacular architecture, design features and a fictionalized historic narrative to present Disney Springs as a repurposed Florida town originally established in 1850. The shopping centre’s manufactured spring marks a fictionalized point of origin surrounded by four districts, referred to as ‘neighborhoods’, representing distinct time periods of Florida’s past. The result places consumers in a portrayal of Florida history as an immersive theme and interweaves Disney Springs’s fictional past into an ordered conception of the state.
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Revisiting Disney’s The Living Desert: A documentary or a wildlife fable filmed in a mythical desert?
More LessThis article examines Walt Disney’s 1950s-era Academy Award-winning wildlife film, The Living Desert, the first full-length feature film in Disney’s True-Life Adventures series. Using a historical case study approach, the nature and significance of the film and its narrative’s impact on the public’s understanding of and connection to the natural world are explored. Although the film was produced 70 years ago, its impact is still felt in the wildlife and nature films of today. The article addresses several questions: Where does The Living Desert’s narrative fall on a continuum of authenticity? How accurately does the film describe the relationship between human and non-human life? And how might the film’s authenticity (or lack thereof) have impacted the public’s understanding of nature, its inhabitants and the environment?
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‘To infinity and beyond’? A textual analysis of the representation of friendship between Buzz and Woody in Disney–Pixar’s Toy Story films
Authors: Anita Jandaly and Sandra Chang-KredlToy Story is one of the most successful film series in the Disney–Pixar enterprise with the friendship between the protagonists Buzz and Woody being central to the franchise’s critical acclaim. However, despite the social phenomenon of friendship and its significance in children’s lives, a dearth of research exists on the types of friendship ideologies these films promote. This study used qualitative textual analysis to investigate the dyadic friendship narrative between Buzz and Woody across the four Toy Story films. Using an inductive and deductive analysis on the behaviours and interactions between Buzz and Woody, three main themes emerged regarding Toy Story’s ideology of friendship. The first theme yields insight into Buzz and Woody’s friendship formation, which were found to be influenced by internal (e.g., self-esteem), external (e.g., peers) and interpersonal features (e.g., self-disclosure). The second theme suggests that friendship is maintained through affective reciprocity, whereas the final theme upholds the notion that (hetero) romantic partnerships supplant close friendships. Practical implications consider the importance for parents and practitioners to engage in critical analysis of popular portrayals of friendship, whereby Toy Story may be used as a pedagogical tool to discuss friendship, including its formation, maintenance and stability over time, with children.
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- Commentaries
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The lasting impacts of The Walt Disney Company within and beyond the classroom: A case study
By Hannah HelmThis brief and reflective commentary piece discusses a series of outreach workshops entitled ‘Deconstructing Disney: Society, Culture, and Creativity’, which took place at Media City (University of Salford) in March 2023. The workshops were delivered to groups of school-age learners aged 14 to 16, and they focused on the social, cultural and political impact of The Walt Disney Company. Through the workshops, students were able to hone key critical thinking skills and build confidence by sharing viewpoints in a supportive and thought-provoking space. The workshops provided a stimulating and interactive platform in which students could explore the impact of Disney in society and culture, particularly through the lens of Disney films. The activities – which included analysis and discussion of the film clips and playing a game based on opinions about Disney – were both enjoyable and educational for students. By the end, students understood that Disney both implicitly and explicitly shapes our experiences and world-views, and that common stereotypes in Disney films ultimately influence how we perceive ourselves and others.
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Riley and representation: Challenging assumptions of generalizability in the Inside Out franchise
More LessThe following commentary calls to question the assumptions of generalizability in the Inside Out franchise, specifically the notion that Inside Out 2 depicts an authentic adolescent experience. It uses specific examples from the sequel in conversation with intersectionality to demonstrate how both films reflect a world from the eyes of a white, upper-middle-class, non-disabled, neurotypical girl and therefore should be regarded as a reflection of one type of teenage experience. This particular piece makes an effort, however, to acknowledge the progressive attempts the franchise makes at providing an educational opportunity for youth audiences, but cautions scholars and the public against assuming the applicability of the film’s elements to each and every viewer.
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- Book Reviews
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Contemporary Disney Animation: Genre, Gender and Hollywood, Eve Benhamou (2022)
More LessReview of: Contemporary Disney Animation: Genre, Gender and Hollywood, Eve Benhamou (2022)
Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 264 pp.,
ISBN 978-1-47447-612-6, h/bk, £85.00
ISBN 978-1-47447-613-3, p/bk, £24.99
ISBN 978-1-47447-614-0, e-book, £24.99
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Staging a Comeback: Broadway, Hollywood, and the Disney Renaissance, Peter C. Kunze (2023)
More LessReview of: Staging a Comeback: Broadway, Hollywood, and the Disney Renaissance, Peter C. Kunze (2023)
New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 223 pp.,
ISBN 978-1-97882-782-0, h/bk, $150.00
ISBN 978-1-97882-781-3, p/bk, $32.95
ISBN 978-1-97882-783-7, e-book, $32.95
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