social sciences $€ £ ¥ Article Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Beauty and the Beast, and Disney’s Commodification of Feminism: A Political Economic Analysis Kailash Koushik and Abigail Reed * School of Communication, Florida State University, 3100 University Center, Building C, Tallahassee, FL 32306, USA;
[email protected] * Correspondence:
[email protected] Received: 1 October 2018; Accepted: 28 October 2018; Published: 15 November 2018 Abstract: This paper seeks to explore the strategies Hollywood utilizes to capitalize on feminist social movements through replacing hegemonic male characters with female ones or updating traditional stories through a more “feminist” retelling. By analyzing both 2017’s Star Wars: The Last Jedi and Beauty and the Beast as representative of this corporate trend, we critique the ways in which these pseudo-feminist texts not only contribute little to the social conversation surrounding the evolving roles of women and their representations in media through the lenses of critical political economy, feminist political economy, and feminist film criticism. We conclude that creating “feminist” reimaginings of classic narratives ultimately serves to uphold the existing economic structures that maintain social and financial capital within the largest Hollywood studios. Thus, little to no social progress is made through the creation of these retellings. Keywords: Disney; gender; feminism; political economy of film; feminist film criticism; feminist political economy of media 1. Introduction and Literature Review In 2017, Hollywood saw two contradicting trends. On one hand, it was rocked by sexual harassment and abuse scandals, with women coming forward and revealing not only the names of their abusers, but also the rampant prevalence of such harassment.