Interwoven Constructs of Gender and Race in Disney‘s Adaptations of Canonized Literary Works for Children

Abstract

The article deals with the discursive analysis of Disney‘s Little Mermaid, Pocahontas and Aladdin, which it discusses through the combined lens of feminist literary theory and postcolonial studies. It argues that Disney‘s adaptations of canonized literary fairy tales do not rest only on the perpetuation and further exacerbation of hierarchically structured gendered binarisms that abound in the original literary texts. It argues that these adaptations also rest on the introduction of a highly racialized discourse not found in the primary literary texts, which leads to a specific transmutation of literary fairy tales under consideration. – The article takes as its basic theoretical premise A Theory of Adaptation by Linda Hutcheon and argues that rather than viewing adaptations as failed or incomplete attempts at translating literary fairy tales into an animated medium, these adaptations should be looked upon as transcodifications and transmutations of the original texts that acquire a life of their own. As such they come to act as substitutes for the original texts, which in turn, due to the consistent marketing policies pursued by Disney, come to be side-tracked or completely replaced by their Disneyfied versions. The article argues that Disney‘s adaptations of literary originals partake in the rehabilitation of old colonial tropes such as Black legend, which they take to new heights through the inclusion of the liberal discourse of multiculturalism and the usurpation of a seemingly pro-feminist discourse. The article incorporates Balibar’s and Brown’s theories on the resurgence of neo-racist discourse. In doing so, it traces different instances of neo-racist discourse found in Disney’s animated films and focuses on the way recent restructurations of racist discourse are embedded in Disney’s latest productions under the common denominator of multicultural pluralism. The article argues that the way in which the discourse of race is re-activated and once again justified on the home turf of Western democracies is directly related to a system of management and control of those constituted as external racialised others inhabiting geopolitical locations of significance to neo-colonial hegemons. Pocahontas and Aladdin constitute such a link. – Disney’s animated adaptations consistently construct native women as victims in need of rescue from their patriarchal cultures, while at the same time they strategically elide and obscure patriarchal histories and asymmetrical power relations affecting women in western societies. This is even more ironic considering that Disney’s classic animations targeted at children and adults alike (such as Cinderella, Snow White, Beauty and the Beast, etc.) have played a direct role in upholding and re-naturalizing the patriarchal premises of Western societies.