Diplomarbeit / Diploma Thesis
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DIPLOMARBEIT / DIPLOMA THESIS Titel der Diplomarbeit / Title of the Diploma Thesis “Braving the Magic Kingdom - Constructions of Ethnic and National Identities in Disney Films with a Focus on Brave (2012)” verfasst von / submitted by Claudia Fraberger angestrebter akademischer Grad / in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Magistra der Philosophie (Mag. phil.) Wien, 2016 / Vienna, 2016 Studienkennzahl lt. Studienblatt / A 190 344 353 degree programme code as it appears on the student record sheet: Studienrichtung lt. Studienblatt / Lehramtsstudium UF Englisch UF Spanisch degree programme as it appears on the student record sheet: Betreut von / Supervisor: ao. Univ.-Prof. Dr. Monika Seidl Table of Contents 1. Introduction: Entering the Magic Kingdom …………………………….. 1 2. Representation and Identity………………………………………………. 5 2.1 Representation of Ethnic and National Identities……………………... 9 2.1.1 Ethnicity, Race and Nation……………………………………………. 12 2.1.2 Territory and Landscape………………………………………………. 16 2.1.3 Historical Memories, Myths and Traditions…………………………... 18 2.1.4 Otherness and Stereotyping…………………………………………… 22 2.2 Representations of Ethnic and National Identities in Brave…………... 27 2.2.1 Common Representations of Scottishness in Cinema………………… 28 2.2.2 Setting the Scene in Brave……………………………………………. 32 2.2.3 Myths, Legends, Traditions and Customs in Brave…………………… 37 2.2.4 Otherness and Stereotyping in Brave…………………………………. 44 2.2.5 Key Points of Brave…………………………………………………… 48 3. Contextualizing Brave……………………………………………………... 50 3.1 Producing Disney Magic………………………………………………. 51 3.1.1 Building the Disney Empire…………………………………………… 51 3.1.2 Issues of Production in Brave…………………………………………. 54 3.2 Regulating Disney’s Output…………………………………………… 59 3.2.1 Disney as Big Brother? ……………………………………………….. 59 3.2.2 Issues of Regulation in Brave…………………………………………. 60 3.3 Consuming Disney Magic…………………………………………….. 63 3.3.1 The Disney Hype……………………………………………………… 63 3.3.2 Issues of Consumption in Brave……………………………………... 65 4. Ethnic and National Identities in other Disney Movies…………………. 71 4.1 Mulan………………………………………………………………….. 72 4.1.1 Setting the Scene in Mulan……………………………………………. 72 4.1.2 Historical Memories, Legends, Traditions and Customs in Mulan…… 73 4.1.3 Otherness and Stereotyping in Mulan…………………………………. 77 4.1.4 Key Points of Mulan…………………………………………………... 79 4.2 Pocahontas…………………………………………………………….. 80 4.2.1 Setting the Scene in Pocahontas………………………………………. 81 4.2.2 Historical memories, Traditions and Customs in Pocahontas………… 82 4.2.3 Otherness and Stereotyping in Pocahontas…………………………… 84 4.2.4 Key Points of Pocahontas…………………………………………….. 86 4.3 Aladdin………………………………………………………………… 87 4.3.1 Setting the Scene in Aladdin…………………………………………... 88 4.3.2 Legends, Myths, Traditions and Customs in Aladdin…………………. 89 4.3.3 Otherness and Stereotyping in Aladdin……………………………….. 92 4.3.4 Key Points of Aladdin………………………………………………… 93 5. Conclusion………………………………………………………………….. 97 Bibliography……………………………………………………………….. 101 List of Figures……………………………………………………………… 109 Appendix…………………………………………………………………… 111 English Abstract……………………………………………………… 111 German Abstract……………………………………………………… 112 1 1. Introduction: Entering the Magic Kingdom I think of a child’s mind as a blank book. During the first years of his life, much will be written on the pages. The quality of that writing will affect his life profoundly. - Walt Disney- There is no escaping the Magic Kingdom as it continuously expands its terrain each year to reach an ever growing number of consumers. The Walt Disney Company has become an entertainment and media conglomerate influencing, inspiring and indoctrinating people around the globe with its beliefs about the happily-ever-after life. Although the messages of their animated movies are often hidden behind a veil of fun and childhood-innocence, the primarily young target audience does learn their lessons from the films and they will affect their lives profoundly. Disney’s animated world communicates ideas about the ideal family life, the roles one should assume as girl or boy and, as will be the focus of this study, about people from different ethnicities and nationalities. Since Aladdin (1992), Disney’s princess fairytales have started to include princesses from diverse ethnicities and nationalities, such as the Arabian princess Jasmine, the Native American Pocahontas, the Chinese Mulan as well as the Scottish princess Merida from Brave (2012), which will be the focus of this paper. For a long time, Disney’s animated movies have not been under close scrutiny. Dismissing the need to critically investigate the messages communicated, people continued to belief in the ‘safety’ of Disney films, an image which was supported via Disney’s claim to ‘simple’ family-oriented entertainment. One of the first influential and critical works stems from Richard Schickel, The Disney Version (1968), a biography about the life of Walt Disney. Yet, in recent years, the number of works critically investigating the cultural machinery of the Disney Company has grown. Among them are Bell et al.’s From Mouse to Mermaid (1995), Henry Giroux’s The Mouse that Roared (1999), Annalee R. Ward’s Mouse Morality (2002) and Amy M. Davis’ Good Girls and Wicked Witches (2006). While most of these works rather focus on earlier films of the Disney canon (Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs until Mulan), the following study examines closely one of the more recent Disney/Pixar princess movies, namely Brave (2012). In addition, it mainly addresses the depiction of different ethnicities and nationalities, an aspect which is often marginalized compared to the amount of studies concerned with issues of gender representation in Disney films.1 A further integral, but often overlooked, aspect of the following analysis is 1 see for instance Davis; Giroux and Ward who seek to answer more general questions regarding the pedagogical and moral influence Disney exercises on its audience; and Bell et al. whose focus is on gender, film and other cultural, but not ethnic/national, issues; 2 the contextualization of the movie Brave within its production process as well as its reception. Beginning with a closer examination of Brave, the first part questions what strategies of representation are used to depict Scottish identity. It also addresses issues of whether the characters’ Scottish identity offers scripts of behavior for them and whether these Scottish character traits influence aspects of gender portrayal. Hence, does the Scottish nationality enable the producers to feature a stronger, more self-empowered female heroine? Besides the influence of Scottishness on the characters and the plot, the analysis also considers possible effects the cultural background of the Disney Company itself, i.e. US American values and beliefs, have on the representation of Scottish culture. The second part serves as a contextualization of the movie Brave uncovering issues of production, regulating forces and the consumers’ reception of the film. Finally, the study refers to three popular Disney princess movies: Mulan (1998), Pocahontas (1995), and Aladdin (1992). The analysis of these films serves to show Brave’s positioning within those movies, their similarities and differences, and allows for the making of more general statements about the influence of cultural values and beliefs cherished by the Disney Company in regards to the representation of other ethnicities and nationalities. The representation of ethnic/national identities in Brave and the film’s contextualization within issues of production, regulation and consumption is methodologically based on du Gay’s circuit of culture (see fig. 1). Fig. 1: The circuit of culture (Du Gay et al. XXXI) The circuit of culture comprises of five interrelated cultural processes: representation, identity, production, consumption and regulation. During the process of representation, meaning is created via language, in oral or visual form. This aspect is closely intertwined 3 with identity since, through representation, identities are constructed. In this paper, the examination of various ethnic/national identities represented in Disney movies is informed by theories from Stuart Hall (on representation), Michel Foucault (on discourse), Roland Barthes (Mythologies), Hayden White (Metahistory and Tropics of Discourse), Anthony D. Smith (on national and ethnic identity), Benedict Anderson (Imagined Communities), Richard Dyer (on stereotyping) and Edward Said (Orientalism). The circuit of culture, furthermore, encourages its users to go beyond a rather textual analysis of representation and identity within a film to include the processes concerning the context in which the movie was produced; in other words, to go beyond face value. Issues of production, regulation and consumption of Brave are investigated by mainly drawing on information about the production process as articulated in the book, The Art of Brave, as well as consulting newspaper articles, interviews and reviews. The final part of this study, which focuses on ethnic/national identities in three other Disney films, summarizes relevant findings from books and articles about these films such as Ward’s Mouse Morality, Giroux’s The Mouse that Roared and Ayres et al.’s The Emperor’s Old Groove. By taking a closer look at the mechanics involved in the construction and endurance of ethnic and national identities, it will be shown that the same aspects are essential to representing such identities on screen. Hence, representations of landscape and territory, history,