People’s Democratic Republic of Algeria
Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research
Mouloud Mammeri University of Tizi-Ouzou
Department of English
Dissertation Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements
For the Degree of Magister
Speciality: English
Option: Cultural Studies
Presented by:
Supervised by:
HENNA IBRAHIM
Dr. Zerar Sabrina
Subject:
The Family Romance in Selected Feature Films by Walt Disney:
A Psycho-Sociological Study
Panel of Examiners:
Dr. GUENDOUZI Amar, Maitre de Conférences A, Chair, Mouloud Mammeri University ;
Dr. ZERAR Sabrina, Maitre de Conférences A, Supervisor, Mouloud Mammeri University ;
Dr. TITOUCHE Rachid, Maitre de Conférences A, Examiner, Mouloud Mammeri University.
Academic Year : 2012 – 2013.
/…/ let us not forget that among our forebears discipline was
excessively harsh. Our immediate predecessors struggled to
soften it. They went too far, I am convinced, but let us not
forget what they accomplished and what we owe them. In sum,
it has not been demonstrated that the family is appreciably
worse than it was; it is different.
David Emile Durkheim, Libres entretiens (1912: 322).
I do not make films primarily for children. Call the children
innocence. The worst of us is not without innocence, although
deeply buried it might be. In my work, I try to reach and speak
to that innocence.
Walt Disney: Hollywood’s Dark Prince, In Marc Eliot (1993).
i
Contents
Epigraphs………………………………………………………………….i
Acknowledgements………………………………………………………v
Abstract…………………………………………………………………..vi
General Introduction……………………………………………………..1
Review of the Literature………………………………………………….2
Issue and working hypothesis…………………………………………….6
Methods and Materials…………………………………………………....7
Methodological Outline………………………………………………….11
Chapter One: Walt Disney, Life, Times and Influences
Walt Disney’s Cinematographic Business………………………………13
Disney’s Social Background…………………………………………….14
Disney, the Son of a Difficult Father, and an Unhelpful Mother………..17
The Socio-Historical Background of America…………...………………21
The Aftermath of WWI…………………………………………………..32
Disney and His View of the Family……………………………………...35
Chapter Two: The Family Romance in Disney’s Feature Films
A- The Father-Daughter Relationships
The Reasons for the Family of Stepparents and Stepchildren…………..39
Disney’s Mitigating of his Heroines’ Hardships………………………..44
Disney and the Overall Standpoint of the Woman/Daughter……………45
Women Stereotyping Still in Force……………………………………...48
Conclusion…………………………………………………………….....52
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B- Father-Son Relationships
Walt Disney and his Father, Elias: Conflict-Based Relationships………54
Disney’s Uprooted Male Characters………………………………….....54
Loveless Parents’ Suspicion of their Children ………………………….56
Female Characters as Disney’s Main Characters………………………57
The Socio-Cultural Value of a Male Child……………………………..57
Economic and Religious Impact on Family Romance………………….58
Conclusion………………………………………...…………………….66
C- Brother-Sister Relationships
Family Romance Adapted to Actual Social Unrest…………………….68
The Reasons for Underrating the Brother-Sister Relationships………...69
Fairy Tales and Religion at the Rescue of “Brotherless”Daughter.........70
Bonding Hints to Preserve and Consolidate the Brother-Sister Relationships……………74
Some Instances of Brother-Sister Relationships Outside the Western World…………….76
A Psycho-sociological Awareness to Prevent Unhealthy Brother-Sister Relationships…..78
Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………………79
Chapter Three: The Orphan Issue in Disney’s Feature Films and beyond
Facing the First Waves of Orphans in the American History………….…………………..81
Disney’s Handling of the Orphans in Fiction and in Reality……………………................82
Public and Private Institutions and the Orphans…………………………………………...86
The Dwarfs’ Cottage: A Disneyian Orphanage……………………………………………90
Distinguishing Two Orphan Categories…………………………………………………....91
Disney’s Cinderella and Freud’s “The Uncanny”…………………………….……………92
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Transforming Fairy Tales to Address New concerns to New
Audiences………………….94Sex and Gender vs. Disney’s Orphaned
Woman…………………………….…………….97
The Orphan’s Future Conditioned by Fostering Methods……………….………………...97
Conclusion………………………………………………………………………………...101
General Conclusion ……………………………………………………………………..104
Selected Bibliography …………………………………………………………………..111
Résumé…………………………………………………………………………………...118
Annex One: DVD Snapshots from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs……………
119
……… Two: DVD Snapshots from Cinderella………………….....................................120
……….Three: DVD Snapshots from Pinocchio………………………………………...121
……….Four: Audio CD, pictures from Hansel and Gretel…….....................................122
iv
Acknowledgements
I would like to express my gratitude to Dr. Zerar Sabrina, Dr.
Guendouzi Amar, Dr.Titouche Rachid, and Professor Riche Bouteldja for their
advice and assistance.
And I would like also to express my gratitude and indebtedness to all
my colleagues and classmates who have helped me build this modest
dissertation of mine.
v
Abstract
The present dissertation focuses on the major function of Walt Disney’s
cinematographic adaptations of fairy tales in the first half of the twentieth
century. One of the focal points in Disney’s full-length feature films, namely
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Pinocchio, Cinderella, and Hansel and
Gretel, was that they aimed at adjusting the American family to make it fit into
the profound changes in the American society. These adjustments were carried
out through the relationships existing between the parents and the children, and
with reference to a psycho-sociological approach inspired especially from
Sigmund Freud and Emile Durkheim. Relying on the didactic function of the
fairy tales, as suggested by Bruno Bettelheim, audiences realized how conflicts
inside the family could be solved. Similarly, Disney’s cinematographic
adaptations made use of the same formative strategy in addressing the
problems of the American family at a time when the majority of the American
society was going through one of the harshest cultural, socio-economic, and
political crises. Hence the assumption that even though Walt Disney was a film
maker, his function was not different from those of Freud and Durkheim.
Disney’s way of trying to adjust the American family to the constantly
evolving society was, indeed, worthy of that of a psychoanalyst and a
sociologist.
vi
General
Introduction
Introduction
The American family was perhaps experiencing its most disruptive moments in the
1920s and the 1930s. The Economic Depression of 1929, caused by the crash of the Stock
Market, was the number one cause which broke up the family system in the United States of
America and stepped on the society’s most valuable moral and social values. Poverty lingered
on for years: the then priority was survival, only survival.
The introduction of Emile Durkheim’s sociology of the family to American audiences
in the early 1900s by Talcott Edger Parsons, an eminent 20th century American sociologist,
served positively the purpose of his contemporary scholars. Because social sciences have been
influenced by the Darwinian social evolutionism, Durkheim affirmed that the “evolution of
society was also the evolution of the family, that the family in its recent history has been
shaped by industrialization and modernization” (Quoted in M.A. Lamanna, 2002:5). Another
scholar worthy of mention is, indeed, the British-Polish cultural anthropologist, B.K.
Malinowski, whose work consists in highlighting the function of culture in a given
community at a given period. This function is to meet the basic biological, psychological, and
social needs of the individual and create a strong bond between this individual and the society
to which he belongs (B.K. Malinowski, 1922).
From the psychological perspective, the visit of Sigmund Freud, the world famous
Austrian psychoanalyst, to America in 1909 was seen by many scholars of the rank of
William James, Franz Boas, and Adolf Meyer as an ultimate light and hope for the
reconstruction and consolidation of the American family principles. The spreading of Freud’s
novel psychological principles were backed up by his nephew Edward Louis Bernays who
specialized in crowd psychology, and was considered one of the most influential
1
personalities ever known in contemporary American history (Henry R. Luce; in Eugene C.
Gerhart, 1969).
The known American nuclear family was strengthened by Freud’s revolutionary views
explicating the psychological behavior and attitudes of the human being, resulting in
transcending mainly two aspects of his scientific research: sublimation and delayed (sexual)
gratification. These latter aspects are so fundamental for the founding of a healthy society and
a promising civilization (Quoted in Pamela Thurschwell, 2002:105).
Furthermore, another important figure emerged on the American scene: Walt Elias
Disney. His ability to adapt so masterfully the Grimm Brothers’ fairy tales, namely Snow
White and the Seven Dwarfs, Pinocchio, Cinderella, and Hansel and Gretel and others into
full-length feature films and cartoons was evident of his strong will to carry on the instructive
and formative function of educating audiences within his country and worldwide. The impact
was that the way he displayed the family romance and its different envisageable kinds with
the help of the new cinematographic techniques surpassed by far the best novels. This new
film genre of fairytales and cartoons traces undeniably Disney’s contribution in the evolving
feature of the oral, written, and now audiovisual continuum (Chandler D., 1994).
It is equally crucial to mention that the above-mentioned scholars and others stand
hand in hand to share a common noble objective which consists in improving the American
society (but not only) and adjusting the uncared-for children as it was symbolized by the fairy
tales.
Review of the Literature
The fairy tales Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, referred to as AT 709, Pinocchio,
and Cinderella, AT510, and Hansel and Gretel (AT 327 A) in relation to the tales
classification mentioned in S. S. Jones’s work (2002: 21, 13) that Walt Disney adapted into
2
full-length animated feature films, drew the attention of a multitude of scholars to develop
each one a theme that fits best his / her contribution to give significance to these stories.
Among these scholars, we can start with Bruno Bettelheim, a prominent psychoanalyst
and one of Freud’s followers, who set himself to carry on and take profit out of the very hard
task of the Grimm Brothers’ of collecting centuries-old fairy tales. In his work, The Uses of
Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales (1989), B. Bettelheim depicts
fairy tales as a school whose purpose is to educate not just children, but adults as well. Fairy
tales unveil the mysteries of life and help people face threatening problems they may
encounter all through their life, especially during their childhood. The way hardships are
experienced by the tale characters and the way they are resolved motivate the audience to
identify themselves with the heroes so that the resolution of the problems is shared. The
audience would unconsciously put themselves in the hero’s shoes and say the hero has
overcome his problems, so shall I.
For the fairy tales to have a positive effect, B. Bettelheim advises parents not to tell the
children how good they are for them; they must be given the chance to discover the core of
the tale by themselves through their unconscious identification with the heroes. The
pedagogical characteristic of the tales is meant to educate children to have the ability and the
courage to fight for their welfare no matter how. This very idea is illustrated in the following
quotation:
Psychoanalysis was created to enable man to accept the problematic nature of
life without being defeated by it, or giving into escapism: Freud’s prescription
is that only by struggling courageously against what seems like unwieldy odds
can man succeed in wringing meaning out of existence (1989: 8).
Obviously, fairy tales interpretations are much closer to psychology than to sociology even
though we cannot really dissociate the former from the latter as they both corroborate a
mental and societal awareness in both children and adults.
3
As regards the fairy tale, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the core of the story is
the uncovering of the different stages of development of the infant consisting of the Oedipus
Complex between the mother and the daughter in infancy, and finally at puberty and the
strategies to adopt in order to overcome these conflicts. The tale is gradually assisting Snow
White to get aware of her bodily transformations. Her sexual innocence, the whiteness (the
whiteness of snow and her body) is contrasted to the sexual desire symbolized by the redness
of the blood (the blood of her menstruation and that of her future sexual experience) so
necessary for her fertility.
Besides, as Snow White grows up, her stepmother feels threatened by the beauty of
her stepdaughter. The fact of conversing with the magic mirror about her beauty and that of
Snow-white shows how demonic her jealousy and her narcissism have made her. She realizes
that the physical growing of her stepdaughter implies that she is growing older, therefore less
beautiful, and less seductive. After long and painful conflicts, Snow White finally overcomes
and marries her prince charming and lives happily ever after.
Another important point debated in relation to children with no parents in fairy tales –
but not specifically – leads us to John Bowlby and his contemporary, Mary Ainsworth. These
two psychologists have shown a growing interest in the handling of this delicate social
phenomenon: they had experienced events in close contact with children living in government
institutions. Their major task was to find ways of rendering the loss and/or the absence of one
of the parents or both more bearable by elaborating methods susceptible of substituting both
fathers and mothers. This was duly explicated in their joint work entitled, The Attachment
Theory (1951), wherein the very onset of creating affection bonds with these maladjusted
children can guarantee to a viable extent their redemption and reintegration within the society.
4
It is clear enough that the aftermath of the broken American families in the period of
the economic depression is dramatic as regards the number of children who found themselves
abandoned by their ruined parents and their ruined households. To these are added, a few
years later, millions of other children whose parents were either missing or dead in World
War II.
Because of this havoc, the United Nations had commissioned John Bowlby as the head
of the infancy department in Europe and America. This commissioning represented an
unexpected enrichment for his work as he had benefited from the notes and reports of eminent
scholars who joined their efforts to this noble cause initiated by the United Nations
Organization (Jeremy Holmes, 1993).
Another characteristic not less important developed by Disney deals with the
introduction of the singing in choir -- Snow White and the dwarfs were dancing and singing a
number of songs. Music, it was said, and now proved, is a therapy that promotes health.
Research has shown that music has a profound effect on our body and psyche (Elizabeth
Scott, 2011).
Moreover, the charismatic feature added to the beauty of Snow White has given the
heroine a likable and sympathetic personality. Although her stepmother has always dressed
her in rags and reduced her to constraining household chores, she inspires everybody’s
confidence, especially children who find no difficulty in identifying themselves with her.
However, those people to whom these qualities are very difficult to cope with because of their
overwhelming jealousy and cruelty do not perceive this image similarly. The psychologist
Betsy M. Cohen, an American Certified Rehabilitation Counselor, develops these personality
features in what she calls The Snow-white Syndrome: All about Envy (1986). Accordingly
these features – including selfishness – which have unconsciously been internalized among
5
the society members tend to undermine the very unifying aspects of the community as a
whole. Consequently, being beautiful/ handsome, good, and intelligent does not always
provide the person with the expected results; on the contrary, they do their utmost to destroy
her/him. Hence, the Snow-white syndrome leads to the fear of being envied because if you are
successful, you will not be liked (Betsy M. Cohen, 1986).
Additionally, Bronislaw Malinowski (1922) sees the situation of the American
families in the post economic depression and World War II eras as catastrophic in that the
majority of the population is living in indescribable poor conditions. The broken families and
their scattered members are at a loss. The dilemma they are experiencing is intensified by the
scarcity of their vital needs. Consequently, the government institutions have to respond
positively to the different needs of the population which consist primarily of food, housing,
and security. The genius of the idea of the former extended family, embracing grand parents
and relatives, lies in the ability of this large family to help any one member of the group who
is in a difficult situation. If some members are jobless, the other family members will provide
them with necessary products, covering, thus, their needs. Despite the merits of the extended
family, Malinowski (1913) is in favor of the nuclear family as it fills a biological need caring and protecting infants and young children.
Issue and Working Hypothesis
Although considerable research has been devoted to illuminating the wisdom
conveyed in the fairy tales wherein audiences forge their aptitudes to fight against hardships
and eventually overcome them, so far, little attention has been paid to the family romance and
its adjustment in times of crises as reflected in Disney feature films. Indeed, what serves as
the impetus for Disney to reach his purpose of helping his fellow citizens – especially children
– find a way out of these choking hard times of the 1920s and the 1930s is his implementation
6
of his fairy tales with socializing and civilizing processes, and the incorporation of fantasy, as
illustrated in the works of both Steven Swann Jones (2002), and Jack David Zipes (2006). As
regards the relatedness of these two works, Steven Swann Jones highlights the psychological
and socio-historical aspects of the fairy tales and their impact on audiences whereas Jack
Zipes puts emphasis on the almost obligatory adaptive and subversive aspects of adapting
fairy tale narratives into films.
One of the assumptions underlying this research is that Walt Disney, through his
adaptations of fairy tales released in the first half of the twentieth century [those mentioned
above], plays a similar role as that of Sigmund Freud and Emile Durkheim in trying to fit the
maladjusted – the orphans, the dependent children, and the flappers –into the fabric of the
American society which is experiencing its deepest socio-economic crisis.
Methods and Materials
In order to investigate the problematic thus posed, I found it more suitable to adopt
Durkheim’s social theory combined with Freud’s psychoanalytic theory. The making of this
combination is not gratuitous; on the contrary, the very foundations of a healthy society, its
culture, and its civilization are built upon the individual - an important part of a whole. It
seems clear enough, too, that one cannot possibly dissociate sociology from psychology as the
latter contributes to the healthy development of the former.
Though the individual encompasses both the evolving and revolving points of society,
Durkheim’s broad social theory outlines insist that the unique subject matter for sociology,
embodied in what he calls “social facts”, is the property of the society rather than of the
individual members comprised in this society, for the individual is born of society, hence the
primacy of society over the individual (The Rules of Sociological Method, 1938).
7
Social facts, as enunciated in Durkheim’s sociology, consist in the performance of an
activity and/or act in complete conformity with the social norms and regulations in force.
They are inculcated through an education dispensed to the society by the ruling authority (E.
Durkheim, 1937: 3); and they are seen as behavioral standards which comply with the society
structure whose primary role is to channel the individual’s conduct. These patterns are
embodied in the collective consciousness, and are “institutionalized in the social structure and
internalized by individual members of the culture” (Andrea Nagy, 2006).
Although Durkheim acknowledges the availability of a set of dual consciences (one
individual, the other collective), he, notwithstanding, maintains that the social facts can by no
means be treated as biological or psychological phenomena (Frank W. Elwell, 2003). These
assertions seem to diverge with those of Bronislaw Malinowski who tends to appeal to
psychology to understand the overall social interactions in both the primitive and the modern
societies. According to Malinowski, “culture exists to meet the basic biological,
psychological, and social needs. This is the function of culture, and the link between the
society and the individual” (Malinowski, quoted in Patrick B., and F. C. da Silva, 2010:59).
Malinowski links these social facts to the psychological basic needs which are nutrition,
reproduction, bodily comfort, safety, relaxation, movement, and growth.
Malinowski’s connecting the social facts to biology and psychology has undoubtedly
resulted from the fact that he has devoted the major part of his life studying the social
construction and the micro-economic system of the peoples living in the region of New
Guinea, in the Western Pacific. This, as a matter of fact, places him as the pioneer of the
modern social/cultural anthropology and a revolutionary field-worker: a dynamic participant
observer. The long years he spent during the mid-twentieth century in the region of New
Guinea incited him to extrapolate this case to almost all societies (B.K. Malinowski, 1922).
8
In one of his works, The Argonauts of the Western Pacific (1922), Malinowski refers
to interpersonal behavioral attitudes within the society, sublimating social practices such as
this famous expression: ”it is the giver who gets the gift” (borrowed from the classic work by
Marcel Mauss, The Gift: The Forms and Functions of Exchange in Archaic Societies
(1954). The genesis of this social practice as developed by Malinowski and Mauss uncovers
the dialectic of the dependency of the relationships existing between the giver of the gift and
the receiver of this gift, and its intended/implied extrapolation to the entire primitive society
members. The very core of this socio-economic practice being: “they had a kind of system of
exchange, or rather of giving presents which had later to be exchanged or repaid” (M. Mauss,
1954: 8).
Following Malinowski’s viewpoint of relating social facts to psychology, it is worthy
to mention another building ingredient necessary for the development of the individual. The
reading and/or watching of fairy tales nourish and enable the reader / viewer to move from
childhood to maturity. The most entireties of the recurring themes developed in fairy tales are
linked to psychological significance involving the experiences of the human mind – this
human being who has been misunderstood for endless times. It is Freud who has first had the
curiosity delving into this complex human creature. He has succeeded in the mapping of the
human mind, making a distinction between what we can consider as the body and the psyche.
This mental apparatus combines two major features of the human mind: the conscious and the
unconscious. The understanding of a societal behavior is conditioned by the individual in the
sense that the more an individual person is healthy and well balanced, the better the image of
society will be. In order that an individual achieve this sanity and good balance, it is required
of him to comprehend that the personality of an individual is built upon three main concepts:
the Id, the Ego, and the Superego (Sigmund Freud, quoted in Thurschwell, 2000: 79-92).
9
According to Freud, for an individual to have a healthy behavior within a society, he
has to control his libidinal energies and deny some of his drives and impulses. The very
essence of life in society demands these frustrations (Seasons, M., 2005). The term libidinal
energies which belongs typically to the psychoanalytic metalanguage is indeed quite
compatible with what Durkheim terms as insatiable appetites in the sense that the two are
likely to engender the same result: intense anxiety for the former, and morbidity for the latter.
The common denominator of these two aspects is a downright infringement of the social
harmony. It is like that mathematical problem the solution of which has been attained through
two different approaches.
The initially individual-oriented psychoanalysis of Freud whose objective was to
exploit and understand the psyche has now shifted to a wider and more complex field:
psycho-sociology. In a nutshell, it is meant by psychoanalytic sociology that research field
which analyzes society using the same methods that psychoanalysis used to analyze an
individual. After dealing with the hysteria cases, Freud found it necessary to extrapolate his
psychoanalytic theories from the individual to society, beginning with the family. Though
Freud has not theorized on the family proper, it has always been his concern to relate the
individual to his essential family relationships. This makes Freud lean on this fundamental
social institution. The family is, for him, the key that unravels the riddles and mysteries
embodied in the individual’s unconscious. “Hence, the family is the secret of the individual”
(Freud’s concept of the family, in Deleuze and Guattari, 1989).
Accordingly, the individual is not a mere isolated case, but a member duly integrated,
first in his own family, then in his society. This shift from the individual to society has
resulted in the publication of Freud’s seminal work, Totem and Taboo: Resemblances
between the Psychic Lives of Savages and Neurotics (1913), where he unfolds the
functioning of society, rather than the individual psyche. The work is about the origins of the
10
early primitive societies whose relationships are based on a kinship network which was
supplanted, later on, by a more complex tribal system drawing its principles from civilization
(The Macmillan Center/ Yale University Video Programs).
The shift from primitive life to civilization, Freud affirms, started with the brothers
killing their father who had absolute power in the kinship system. The father could even have
sexual relations with his daughters as he believed that there was no incest taboo in the
kinship-based societies. Following the sacrifice of the father and the endless remorse that
ensued, the brothers have established a symbolic figure for his memory – a totem (S. Freud,
1913). The totem is associated with a twofold proscription: one, considering sexual relations
with women belonging to this totem incestuous; and, two, forbidding the killing of the father,
the patricide. Failure to respect the incestuous relations with the “mother” would lead to
castration from the part of the “father”, and that led to the emergence of the Oedipus complex.
Ignoring the importance of the taboo of patricide would result, indubitably, in the
notion proper referred to as Hilflosigkeit which, according to Freud, conveys the
overwhelming state of anxiety subsequent to an eventual murdering of the father. The
disappearance of the father would mean, to the infant, the incapability of acquiring his vital
needs as regards food and security necessary for his sound physical and mental developments.
The infant would plunge in an abandonment distress and be fixated at the very onset of his
psychosexual development. As a consequence of the collective murdering of the father whose
sexuality knows no prohibitions, the brothers began repressing the desires -especially sexual and started sharing the power among them, creating, thus, the modern civilization (P.
Thurschwell, 2000: 1940).
Bearing in mind the lead of Bruno Bettelheim in attempting to wring meaning out of
the fairy tales, I shall apply the above Freudian theory of the family romance to the analysis of
11
Disney feature films, but I shall supplement it by reference to the sociological and cultural
anthropological approach to the issue of the family development by Emile Durkheim and
Bronislaw Malinowski. Accordingly, emphasis will be put on the historical context as well as
the filmmaker’s life background likely to shed light on the psychological phenomenon of
maladjustment and its remedy through fantasy.
Methodological Outline
The first chapter will be devoted to the historical background of the 1920s and the
1930s America, and to Walt Disney’s cinematographic business and life. The chapters that
follow will develop:
2-The family romance in Disney feature films:
A- The father- daughter relationships;
B- The father-son relationships;
C- The brother-sister relationships;
3- The delicate social phenomenon of the orphan. We will throw more light on the
essential phase in the child development that revolves around the treatment of the
surrogate mothers and the surrogate fathers and the requirements of their caring
methods as regards the orphans and the dependent children placed under their
responsibility. We will equally put emphasis on the internal as well as the external
mischievous practices which are related to the grooming of children for sexual
molestations.
As has already been noted, Walt Disney has made it his concern to give a hand to his fellow
American citizens, especially the children, who were wallowing in misery and disruption
during these hard years of the 1920s and the 1930s, as will be shown in the following
12
chapters. His profuse fairy tales adaptations witness plainly his eagerness to make them as
adaptive at times, and subversive at others as possible in order to achieve his objective.
13
Chapter One
Walt Disney,
Life,Times and
Influences
Walt Disney’s cinematographic business
In order to give more credit to Disney’s innovative and revolutionary cinematic
production of fairy tales, I would briefly throw light on his conception of cartoons as a means
of instruction, entertainment, and communication. Though the creation of cartoons dates from
the Ancient Times of the Greeks and the Egyptians, (M. Elizabeth Pryor, 2004), we restrict
this endeavor to the sole American context.
Among the best-known cartoonists of the twentieth century on the American scene, we
can mention Walt Elias Disney, Charles Schultz, William Hanna, and Joseph Barbara. Prior to
tackling Disney’s cinematographic cartoon production, it, indeed, seems of paramount
importance to proceed to a flashback to eighteenth century history of America. The first
historical, and, therefore to some extent, political, cartoon to be issued in the Pennsylvania
Gazette of May 1754, was the well-known Join, or Die produced by Benjamin Franklin as a
message to encourage the former thirteen New England colonies to unite against the then
British rule. The symbolic message was a coiled snake, cut into pieces, to convey a
metaphoric insinuation of the broken unity and strength.
As a boy, Walt Disney was already endowed with an acute sense of drawing pictures,
and molding animals into miniaturized shapes. He also had a predisposition of telling funny
stories to children of his age at school as well as outdoors, as witnesses this quotation:
Besides drawing, Walt had picked up a knack for acting and performing. At
school, he began to entertain his friends by imitating his silent screen hero,
Charlie Chaplin. /…/ he would tell his classmates stories while illustrating on
the chalkboard (Disney’s biography).
Disney’s awareness of the difficult task he has to attain, as regards his contribution to
alleviating the sufferings of the American citizens in these hard times of the early twentieth
14
century, thrust him and his staff in a relentless process of designing and producing cartoons.
His 1927 chain of animated cartoons procured him an intense relief as they all received rave
reviews from the part of the public (M. Eliot, 1993:34). The premièred release of Oswald the
Lucky Rabbit drained other successes like Steamboat Willie, Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse,
Donald, etc…The subsequent shift from short cartoons with anthropomorphous characters to
the realization of sound and color full-length animated films like Snow White and the Seven
Dwarfs, Pinocchio, and Cinderella, and others crowned Disney cinematographic business.
The introduction of magically-drawn comic characters, the light songs, and the
interaction between children and animals in an environment worthy of enchantment, had a
deep echo from the part of audiences. And, it is through these children’s amazement and
euphoria that Disney proceeded to his informative and relieving objectives. Ultimately, Walt’s
inquisitive mind and his inexhaustible sense for education through entertainment resulted in
his consideration not only as the Hollywood’s Lucky Boy, but the world-famous icon.
Disney’s social background
The introduction of Walt Elias Disney - whom millions of people rank as a legendary
personality - would only contribute to a better elucidation of his complete devotion to provide
children worldwide with a multitude of entertaining material and activities. His creation of a
new form of entertainment based on cartoons and full-length feature films has had an
unprecedented impact on both children and adults alike.
His perseverance enhanced by his friends’ and family’s encouragement made him an
incredible and inexhaustible source of relaxation and relief especially for the American
children who suffered much from the hardships of the Economic Depression Era of the 1920s
and the 1930s.
15
Though Disney was not himself attached to school in general, he succeeded in
complementing
his
cinematographic
business
with
a
real
aspect
of
teaching
(Justdisney.com/biography). Disney’s animated cartoons and chiefly his adaptations of the
Grimm Brothers’ fairy tales into full-length feature films went far beyond his predecessors’
and contemporaries’ literary enterprise. The novel is, as of now, relegated to a minor position
in comparison to a film version of the same story, as, undoubtedly, the latter requires almost
no special prerequisite ability of literacy, and it is not time-consuming.
This relatively brief hint to Disney’s life should, by no means, be considered as only
successful without any drawbacks; on the contrary, he, too, experienced ups and downs in
both his private and business life (M. Eliot, 1993). As regards his cinematographic enterprise,
his success has resulted from the lessons he has drawn from the various material/financial
difficulties of running the business which have led him to bankruptcy. But as the saying goes,
approximately, he who does not make mistakes cannot make discoveries.
Focusing on the person of Disney, he has a hot temper which, at times, drives him to
turn the household upside down. Walt Disney’s early boyhood, from the psychological point
of view, is characterized by constant unrest and deep frustration as a result of recurring sexual
molestations and beatings from the part of his father (M. Eliot, 1993:5).
Sexual molestations as experienced by Walt Disney do not always convey the idea of
physical contact by an older figure who is usually a parent; most often the father. The
Seduction Theory, as termed by Freud in the discipline of psychoanalysis, has a twofold
meaning: first, it can refer to a Real Event as in Walt’s case; second, it can merely be the
result of fantasy where the protagonist develops unconsciously the idea of fulfilling a sexual
wish in a distorted way (Freud’s paper, 1896; in B. R. Hergenhahn, 2009: 525). The
individual’s Id creates an imaginary scene in which sexual drives are searching pleasure
16
through instant gratification. The fulfillment of this constraining sexual desire is, however,
hindered by the Ego of the individual who exhibits a balanced personality. But when the Ego
happens to be overwhelmed, the Id leads the author of the sexual wish to disastrous
consequences (S. Freud, 2000:24).
Still related to Disney’s life, but as an ordinary adult citizen this time, is that reproach
his fellow gentlemen tend to circulate on his behalf: the rumors accusing him of being an
F.B.I. informant went true. In fact, when the red scare/peril was spreading and gaining ground
in the U.S., and when it reached the Hollywood Studios, Walt Disney did not bother himself
to become a domestic spy for the United States government, as shown in this statement:
His [Disney’s] assignment was to report on the activities of Hollywood actors,
writers, producers, directors, technicians, and union activists the Federal
Bureau of Investigation suspected of political subversion (Marcel Eliot, 1993:
xvii).
The reason why Walt Disney indulged into such an extra professional activity is his
conviction that the bankruptcy he had experienced in the 1930s was caused by members of his
staff who did have a direct link with the known communist party (C.P.A). Another
marginalization from which Disney suffered concerned the premièred release of his first fulllength animated film, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, by the R.K.O. radio pictures on
December 21, 1937. The overall atmosphere in the Hollywood studios was filled with
skepticism as to getting audiences sit before the screens watching Snow White – a new type
of cartoon six or seven times the length of an ordinary cartoon. This is indicated in the
following quotation:
Reaction among the industry’s insiders, however, was less enthusiastic, the
general consensus among them being that this time Disney may have gone too
far. A five or ten-minute cartoon was one thing. Nobody, they believed, would
sit through an animated feature of a gothic fairy tale. “Snow White” quickly
became known as Disney’s folly/…/ (ibid: 100).
17
Though Disney’s detractors were bent on giving him no moment’s respite and did
their best to deter him from trying to succeed in his flourishing cinematographic career, the
release of the animated film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, among others, provided
audiences with unprecedented feelings of love and attraction. Ultimately, Disney’s
productions opened up new horizons in the Hollywood’s film industry by supplementing the
old black and white and silent films by introducing color and speech. Hollywood has, as of
the mid 1930s, embarked on a new film production technology.
As regards Snow White’s premiered release at the Carthay Circle Theater, and its
subsequent worldwide release on February 4, 1938, a plethora of film critics ensued: The New
York Herald Tribune stated:
After seeing Snow White for the third time, I am more certain than ever that it
belongs with the few great masterpieces of the screen… one of those rare
works of inspired artistry that weaves an irresistible spell around the
beholder… a memorable and enriching experience (ibid: 108).
Although Snow White undeniably enchanted millions of viewers and scores of
countries, the British government’s censors singularly declared it unfit for children to see,
fearing it would give them nightmares (ibid: 109). Aware of the success of his film and the
positive impact it had on the American population, Disney offered thousands of free tickets
for those who may not afford watching it.
Walt Disney, the son of a difficult father, and an unhelpful mother
Disney’s father, Elias, has almost always been disappointed by his poor agricultural
crop productivity and his difficulty of making ends meet. This has probably rooted in him the
feeling of inability to sustain his family needs, as referred to in this citation:
18
Elias worked as a handyman and carpenter and after the Preacher Walter
Parr /…/hired him to build a new wing on the church, Disney became an
active member of the congregation. Preacher Parr took a liking to Elias
and often found odd jobs to help him out (M. Eliot, 1993:3).
The strangeness which seems to make Elias a suspicious character is the double
personality he exhibits. On the one hand, he is a “somewhat” faithful member of the Saint
Paul Church Congregation; on the other hand, he behaves as somebody with light mores,
spending most of his nights in ill-reputed places, as illustrated in this quotation:
Elias, like Kepple before him (Walt’s grandfather), had a decidedly
sacrilegious taste for the good life. He loved smoke-filled saloons, the loose
women who worked for them, 90-proof whiskey, and dog-eared poker decks
that had sustained so many of his nightly flights of fancy (ibid: 4).
As a result of the regular frequentness of these places of immorality, it is clear that
Elias’ sexuality knows no boundaries and no prohibitions, and, therefore, it would not be
surprising if he directs his sexual impulses towards his “son”, with no need of grooming him
as the sexual molestation is accompanied with bitter beatings (ibid: 5).
The relation father/son in the Disney family is characterized by terror from the part of
the father, and this, indubitably, gives rise to frustrations and dread to the son. The fatherly
love which should prevail - as suggested by Erich Fromm in his artwork, The Art of Loving
(1957) - in homes is, unfortunately, supplanted by tyranny and domination.
Moreover, Walt Disney’s misfortune is double: a tyrant father from one side, and an
utterly dominated mother, Flora Call, from the other. The unconditional motherly love Walt is
longing for happens to be missing because his mother is no help for him when his father beats
him. Walt is in insecurity in his home where protection and love ought to prevail. This very
situation is to be extrapolated to the whole American community which is tormented to the
bones in their home country. The harshness of their fate caused by the economic crisis of the
19
1920s and 1930s ousted them from within their homes and dispatched them at large: “The
mood of most Americans veered swiftly from confidence to despair” (Irving L. Gordon, 1969:
404).
What accentuated Walt’s wretchedness was his belief that he and his brother Roy were
responsible for the death of their mother by asphyxiation with gas fumes inside the new home
they offered their parents following the great success of the RKO Studio release of Snow
White and the Seven Dwarfs, in 1938 (Louise Krasniewicz, 2010: xi)
Considering the restlessness of Walt’s early childhood, one is tempted to affirm that,
through the Freudian psychoanalytical perspective, Walt’s rearing as a child cannot be
assimilated to other children’s. This, in the sense that the family romance embodied in the
father/son relationships is at stake: the son is haunted and mistreated by the father, creating,
thus, deep phobias; and the supposedly-protective and loving mother cannot interfere to
secure her child who yields to the feeling of abandonment.
The notion of the Oedipus complex and infantile sexuality in this very case appear as
unattainable: the primary wishes of early childhood which consist in being the center of love
and attention from the parents, as Freud argues, tend to be missing. Walt may have had
nourishment satisfaction from sucking his mother’s breasts, but without the feeling of
protection and love:
Walt would often lie awake in bed; whimpering/…/He (Roy, Walt’s elder
brother) would rub Walt’s hurts and rock him to sleep with promises that
everything would be all right in the morning. Walt would bury his head in the
bend of Roy’s elbow, /…/ (M. Eliot, 1993: 5).
Roy’s behavior in relation to his younger brother Walt is self-evident of a mother’s
role. The motherly love and care have vanquished, yielding to Roy’s brotherly love
20
complemented with the qualities of mothering and nurturing. This foreshadows the life-long
commitment existing between Roy and Walt in their successful professional life.
The dread-based antagonism reigning between the two spouses indicates the selfcentrality of Walt as a baby. Neither the father nor the mother shows the slightest possible
feeling of attention. The jealousy which is an essential characteristic of the Oedipus complex
is replaced by the hatred of the parent of the same sex; the erotic love a child develops for the
opposite sex seems jeopardized, as referred to in the above-mentioned citation.
Given the overwhelming and severe family relationships he experiences daily with his
father as well as his unhelpful mother, Disney finds a liberating strategy to rid him of the
oppression through fantastic projections which are likely helping him break with these
constraining family conditions. Disney’s opting for fantasy in his cinematographic production
is not accidental. Persuaded by the optimistic interpretations of the fairy tales , Disney has set
himself to make up for the joyous childhood he has been deprived of by turning to a
wonderful world he has created with his crayons and colors, as Serguei Eisenstein witnesses
in the French version of his work entitled, Walt Disney, (2013):
Disney- et ce n’est pas pour rien qu’il dessine, - c’est le retour complet au
monde de l’entière liberté – et ce n’est pas pour rien qu’elle est fictive- un
monde libéré de la nécessité, son autre extrémité primaire /…/ Quelle magique
restructuration du monde selon sa propre fantaisie et son propre arbitraire !
D’un monde fictif. D’un monde de lignes et de couleurs (S. Eisenstein, 2013:
12).
As it turns out, Disney’s salutary pedagogizing strategy – which he has developed all
along his cinematographic career – is meant to liberate himself and his audiences from the
harshness of the real world, and ultimately feel the power to draw constructive lessons from
his fairy tales adaptations. Disney has not sunk into anxiety and morbidity; instead he has
sublimated his hardships into art – an art which has gained him an unexpected reputation
21
worldwide. His fantasy and utopian vision have had an undeniably profound influence on
civilizing children and adults, as will be developed in the chapters to come (Jack Zipes, 2006:
193).
The rubric about Disney’s Career and Death depicts Walt Disney as one of the
heaviest smokers in the world. The point in this feature is not the smoking habit per se, or the
cause of his death by lung cancer, but the direct relation this fact has with Freud’s
psychosexual development stages. It is, indeed, all too suggestive that Walt, as an infant, had
had a fixation in his primal oral stage. This consists in the one-year-old infant receiving oral
gratification by sucking at its mother’s breast. And this sucking procures the infant the
necessary nutrition and love for its development (Nathan Driskell, Freud’s psychosexual
development stages). Failure to succeed at this psychosexual development stage causes a
maladaptive oral fixation which is characterized by various continual oral stimuli such as
eating, chewing, drinking, or smoking as is the case of Walt (Douglas A. Bernstein, 2011:
428). His colleagues call him not just a heavy-smoker, but a chain-smoker which means that
the person in question uses the finished butt-end of the cigarette to light the next one, in an
almost indefinite way.
The socio-historical context of The United States in the 1920s and the 1930s
The depiction of Walt Disney as sinking in this smoke vice is only symptomatic of the
profound change of the hope and optimism known as the American Dream into a nightmare.
The desolating scenes of the Dust Bowl families stampeding to their promised land in
California, and the ever-growing emergence of the Hoovervilles in a great deal of urban areas
during the Dark Thirties were enough to pave the way to an abysmal discomfiture of the
depraved American nation. The Great Depression was at its worst when the then President
Franklin D. Roosevelt addressed his desolate report to the population:
22
I see millions of citizens – a substantial part of the population – who at this
very moment are denied the greater part of … the necessities of life. I see one
third of a nation, ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished (Russell Freedman, 2005:
13).
This very context is characteristic of Durkheim’s notion of anomie where the nationpopulation relationship is teetering on the brink of uncontrolled social panic. The application
of the prohibition of liquor – initially meant to reduce the population disarray – finally led to
critical social phenomena such as the formation of a nationwide bootlegging and the
organized murdering. This wave of unprecedented violence was initiated by the world-famous
Al Capone and his “cousin” Charles “Lucky” Luciano. As the bootlegging benefits gained
them power and terror, they turned to the Hollywood Studios for easier and bigger money, as
this citation illustrates:
Convinced Motion Pictures were an even better cash cow than illegal
whiskey, Capone planned to use his trademark methods of muscle and, if
necessary, murder to take over one or two studios (M. Eliot, 1993: 67).
The other side of the coin, however, procured the American people relief and
relaxation. This was made possible thanks to eminent personalities and institutions. The Dick
and Jane Books Corporation volunteered their services to assist the child in his education:
the new image presented to the audiences consisted of the mother, father, Dick, Jane, Sally
and Spot, and their happy lives in an untroubled world. This evidently seeks to supplant the
disastrous and real family image by a happier and a more promising one (Lynn Granger,
2011: 11).
Musicians like Duke Ellington, Glen Miller, Walt Disney with his tremendous Silly
Symphonies, and Woody Guthrie’s famous and touchy song, “I Ain’t Got no Home” got the
mournful citizens to sing and dance in order to depressurize their intense anxiety and
morbidity. Film stars and producers equally took the lead. “Hollywood turned out movie after
23
movie to entertain its Depression audiences” of the 1930s. The then film adaptations of
famous literary narratives like The Grapes of Wrath, Gone with the Wind, and especially
Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs acted like an antidote to the viewers.
Disney’s deep involvement in the rescue operation intended to help the American
people get rid of his disrupted life pivots around his tormented childhood and the fantasies he
had been deprived of. These are discernible all along his career: “Memories of child abuse
(and bereavement) are long-lasting, even for adults many years later” (Walt Disney biography
– and the psychology of children’s cartoons). Sigmund Freud enlightens this state of mind as
follows:
/…/ as a result of trying to regain the childhood that we may have lost through
experienced in childhood. This seems to be true to Disney. His abusive
childhood may have led him to a campaign to create the perfect fantasy world
that he did not experience as a boy (ibid.).
The resourcefulness Walt was endowed with enlightened his adolescent life by
channeling his potentials not towards vindictiveness, but towards artistry. From the
psychoanalytical perspective, Walt Disney has finally resolved to appeal to the sublimation
principle which consists in transforming his instinctual drives and impulses into a positive
force to create art – cartoons and their animation. The ability of an individual in re-routing
instinctual energies, according to Freud, is an especially conspicuous feature of cultural
development, and it plays an important part in civilized life (Freud, 1930:286, Quoted In P.
Thurshwell, 2000:105).
Additionally, the impetus which undeniably clears the way for Walt Disney in his
pubertal and adolescent life is his assimilation of the prerequisite conditions of success as
developed by Bruno Bettelheim in his seminal work The Uses of Enchantment (1989). As
Bettelheim put it, for a successful struggle for the acquisition of meaning in one’s life, one has
24
to fight firmly and courageously against the psychological hindrances of growing up, and dare
gain a feeling of self-hood and self-worth. One ought to understand the unconscious in order
to undermine its eventual overwhelming of the conscious: the shortest and surest way for this
achievement being the ability of coping with one’s real situation, and a rational understanding
of this unconscious (ibid: 6-7).
The amazing greatness and wisdom in Walt Disney prior to his conception of
animated cartoons and fairy tales adaptations into films lies in his own identification with the
tales’ characters forcing their way through existential hardships to achieve relief. The fairy
tales’ characters succeeded in overcoming their difficulties, so did Walt, and so, logically, will
the audiences for whom Disney’s art is directed (M. Eliot, 1993: 110).
The identification as thought of in Disney’s mind is twofold: first, it enabled him to
overcome the family problems, and, second, it is extrapolated metaphorically to the scale of
the whole American nation which is struggling relentlessly against the evils of the Economic
Depression and the Dust Bowl of the 1920s and the 1930s. As this illustration suggests:
The film’s basic theme also managed to strike a critical social nerve.
Snow White’s struggle against her frightful stepmother became a
vivid metaphor identifying the fears of a nation about to enter a world
where the dark forces of evil seemed to threaten America’s very
existence (ibid: 110).
The nucleus of essential characteristics that transcends the ubiquitous humane message
in Disney’s cinematographic production is his contribution to assist the young and adult
audiences to adjust themselves in their society. The strategy adopted in his conception and
elaboration of his animated cartoons and films is very analogous to that conveyed in fairy
tales. This strategy underpins the appeal and significance of the work being presented to the
audiences (Steven Swann Jones, 2002: 4).
25
The concept of the adjustment process as imagined by Disney is based on his
providing the audiences with plots combining “real” life events and unfairness. Disney’s
consecration to this very activity is no coincidence, all the more so since he has himself
experienced a nightmarish boyhood, of which he has come out safe and sound. Disney’s early
public presentations of his cartoons and feature films were greeted as an ultimate relief for the
entire American society, which, at that time, was experiencing the harshest and the most
difficult years in its history.
The principle of adjustment or rather the socialization as thought of by E. Durkheim,
underpins the method a society sets forth the transformation of a biological being [here, a
tormented and a maladjusted individual] into a social being in a given society. For this
adjustment and/or socialization to become effective, Durkheim puts emphasis on the role of
the family and especially the system of education which must inculcate to the younger
generations the rudiments of ethics and morality. Durkheim detaches himself from those
scholars like Claude Lévi-Strauss who are inclined to think that “the family is the agency to
which society entrusts this complex and delicate task [socialization]. Durkheim opposes this
trend and ascertains that for “an individual to achieve socialization, separation from the
family is necessary, and the state must play a role”, because the “warmth of the family and its
indulgence” are very likely to abort this difficult mission (Quoted in Mary Ann Lamanna,
2002: 124). The primary socialization, which, in a sense, is the sum total of the multifarious
acquisitions during childhood and boyhood, renders the individual a member of society. It
ought to be complemented by the secondary socialization which necessitates more
consciousness of the objective world of his society (Scott Applerouth et al., 2010: 283).This
would create a harmonious shift from the primary socialization to the secondary
socialization.
26
Put into practice in the American social context, this socialization is assimilated to the
cinematographic productions of Walt Disney which are intended to reduce the impact of the
Dirty Thirties on the American population. The social contributions of Disney in the 1920s
and the 1930s America is quite analogous to that of Emile Durkheim. The similitude which
seems to connect the artist Disney and the sociologist Durkheim rests on the socio-historical
background they have emerged from. Durkheim, like Disney, has suffered during his
childhood from vicissitudes and hardships caused by the war between his country, France,
and Germany in the late 1860s. Durkheim has set himself a challenge – just like Disney – to
help “his compatriots to forge a path towards a society which, in unity and solidarity, would
transcend [sublimate] its own conflicts, and to foster changes in society that would lead to
cohesion, enabling his fellow citizens to experience what he called the ultimate good
communion with others (Quoted in J. C. Filloux, Emile Durkheim, Unesco Document. Vol.
23 (1993: 303).
The early twentieth century American women had had more than enough of their
marginalization from the social and political scenes and their confinement inside the homes to
reproduce children. This new type of women was definitely bound to wage a battle to retrieve
the pass key embodied in their participation in voting for a favored candidate who would
restore the social equilibrium between men and women. Their fierce determination and
resolute commitment to abrogate man’s assumptions and canons as regards women proved
convincing, as indicated in this quotation:
The vote invoked a wider universe that defined an individual not as man or
woman but as a citizen that carved out a vital role for each member of society
as a person who held responsibility for the future of the republic and the
orderly workings of the state (L. Flexner and E. Fitzpatrick, 1996: ii).
The breaking of the yoke of submission and tyranny took centuries for women to
realize, or rather have the necessary courage, to fight back their oppressors. The latter’s
27
egotistic tendencies on behalf of women were leading nowhere but to a dead end. The
women’s awakening and their firm intention to appropriate what they believe as legitimate put
men’s economic and religious interests at stake: the time of perpetuating domination and
power through coercion and acquiescence is over; the time to change power has ultimately
come (Norman Fairclough, 2001: 3). The women’s battle in the suffrage movement drew
millions of sympathizers who reinforced their acquisition of socio-political equality. Through
restless labor and struggle “the ratification of the nineteenth amendment, in August 1920,
marked a triumph that had often impossibly seemed out of reach” (L. Flexner and E.
Fitzpatrick, 1996: x).
It is, nonetheless, important to stress that the procedures that led to guaranteeing the
right to vote for women was not fortuitous; on the contrary, it was a grateful response of the
Western States as recognition of women’s services during World War I, decreeing the
following article:
The right of citizens of The United States to vote shall not be denied or
abridged by The United States or by any State on account of sex (Irving L.
Gordon, 1993: 100).
Although the American woman had successfully snatched her socio-political position
through long years of perseverance, a non-negligible portion of the male citizens did not have
faith in the idea that women could be the equal of men. Among these, we can mention the
famous psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud who “refuses all independence of action to women”
and contends that “they are simply the objects of desire” (Lynn A. Hunt, 1992: 12). The
stinging indictment of women as being only sexual lusts made available for men turned out to
be an incentive step forward on women’s sexual emancipation.
Indeed, the aforementioned visit of Freud to The United States contributed enormously
to the social adaptation of the American woman who had just left behind all the hardships and
28
the miseries man afflicted to her. The uncovering of the sexual mysteries described in Freud’s
theories – mainly sexual theories – blew apart a taboo that was intended to keep lullabying the
woman in her innocence without giving her the opportunity to grapple with the reasons for
her being a sex object. The tabooing of the libidinal drives and impulses gave rise to the
formation of abnormal behaviors, as shunning what is hypocritically thought of as horrific and
liable to unveil the dangers of prudery (Mari Jo Buhle, 1998: 22).
The Freudian findings and revelations in the field of the psychology of sexuality
opened up new horizons for the transformation of behavior and sensibility in the American
individual of the twentieth century. A new individual willing to supplant his outdated
assumptions by new notions imbued with scientific findings is at hand and ready to “exalt the
pleasures of sexual encounters, and condemn excessive self-restraint.” Thanks to Freud’s
psychoanalysis, the riddle-like sexual practices which have haunted man for innumerable
centuries have now become clear and plain, and they are used, instead, to boost humanity
forward, as report these American feminists:
In short, while feminists admired Freud for establishing the importance of
sexuality, they exalted him insisting that women and men share the instinct
that makes the world go round (ibid: 22).
However, the inability of the American woman to relativize and assess the positive
values of this Freudian sexuality within the limits set forth by society and civilization in
general led to womanhood disruption. This gave rise to a new type of women known as the
flappers (Catherine Gourley, 2008:13–14). Zelda Sayre, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s wife-to-be,
“was considered by many of her era to be the embodiment of the modern 1920s woman”
(ibid: 13). The objective of this new wave of the twentieth century women lies in exhibiting
blatantly their subjectivity which, through years, has become too hard to ignore. The time for
29
these new women has come to express their bitter contempt and break the males’ assumptions
which have confined them in homes for the reproduction of children:
Zelda Sayre was a modern woman, and she knew what she wanted. But before
she settled down to become a society wife and mother, she intended to have
some fun (ibid: 14).
Indeed, an increasing number of these flappers used their sexuality and their sex
magnetism for purely personal interests: instant sexual gratification, no matter what. As a
result of this horde sexuality, important national figures and prominent leaders like President
Theodore Roosevelt “lamented the falling birth rate among white Protestants and predicted
race suicide unless the “better stock” restored its procreative habits” (Mari Jo Buhle, 1998:
24-25). The boundlessness of this sexual trend appeared to be more interested in prompt
pleasure than in marriage and procreation: the free sexuality and overt prostitution reached
alarming levels and produced a sex-mad generation. One of the conspicuous aspects of this
generation gone adrift is illustrated in this quotation:
Off the job, working women appeared to social workers to spend their leisure
hours solely in pursuit of men. They congregated in movie houses, amusement
parks, and dance halls, where they expressed their intentions even more
graphically (ibid: 25).
The emergence of the flappers in these very roaring 1920s invoked no surprise. The
introduction of a large variety of entertainment facilities as cinemas, theaters, music halls,
cars, radio sets, and especially the ever-growing jazz music with its electric musical
instruments served as a therapy to break the psychodrama in which the American people had
sunk for centuries. A new era of consumerism was born, and business advertising specialists
of the rank of Edward E. Bernays – Sigmund Freud’s nephew and a crowd psychologist by
his trade – proceeded to the stirring of the mournful society to alleviate its sorrows by veering
to this new world of consumption:
30
One notorious example of how consumerism offered women the illusion of
“determining power” was the Torches of Freedom march held in New York on
Easter Sunday 1929, when a group of women led by feminist Ruth Hale
paraded up and down Fifth Avenue puffing on cigarettes (Kirk Curnutt, 2004:
124).
The American woman, who had long been under the domination of man, made the
most of this opportunity to deconstruct all she had been burdened with. She was now breaking
convention after convention, including prudery and eroticism as a response to man’s sexual
boundlessness and tyranny during the time of the woman’s confinement to her four walls.
Aware of the multifarious needs of the flappers – this new type of women – and
especially their overall weaknesses, advertisers “advanced the subtle argument, if they bought
the product [Woodbury’s facial soap and Jürgen’s lotion], could become the object of the
right kind of man’s desire (ibid: 124).
Reportedly, the Torches of Freedom march of 1929 which was apparently meant to
celebrate and reinforce the liberation of women turned out to be a mere economic and
marketing strategy organized by Edward L. Bernays, “one of the founding fathers of modern
public relations, at the behest of the American Tobacco Company” (E. L. Bernays, 1965: 386
–87). The power of money seemed settled deep within the society. Cinematographic
productions complemented the non-stop marketing campaigns, and both got associated with
the very popular phrase “keeping up with the Joneses”, suggesting “fashionable extravagance
among the sons and daughters of the affluent middle class (K. Curnutt, 2004: 125).
Unquestionably, a rather common concern seems to link tightly two great personalities
of this early twentieth century America: Walt Disney and F. Scott Fitzgerald, but each one his
own way. Disney’s fairy tales adaptations use female characters that strive against society
hardships and injustices, and ultimately succeed in overcoming both their family problems
and their development from childhood to adulthood (Bruno Bettelheim, 1989). Scott
31
Fitzgerald is a fanatic of the cinema. He is squarely amazed by the achievements of what we
can call the cinematic giants such as George Méliès, Thomas Edison, Serguei Eisenstein, and
the master silent-film director, D. W. Griffith. Fitzgerald does support the idea that the cinema
is a source of relief to anxious and neck-deep people in life difficulties, as this illustration
suggests:
Fitzgerald recognized that the industry [cinema] was a fact of contemporary
life, that movies provided opportunities to escape from the mundane and to
live, albeit vicariously, in a world illuminated by wealth and beauty (K.
Curnutt, 2004: 130).
The only but enormous difference between Disney and Fitzgerald is that the former’s
strategy is based on the good deeds of sociologists and psychologists in their attempt to
socialize the individual, whereas the latter’s is based mainly on materialistic endeavors and
the niceties of money as shown in his famous classic work The Great Gatsby (1925). Though
Disney is known for his motto saying “work is the real adventure in life; money is merely a
means to make more work possible” (ibid: 72), it is important to mention that he, too, has
labored in this new era of consumerism by flooding the American landscape with enormous
waves of merchandise, and presenting a vast array of commercial products with the Disney
stamp (ibid: 143, 146).
Fitzgerald’s ability to have his 1920 short stories, namely The Chorus Girl’s
Romance, The Husband Hunter, and The Offshore Pirate, adapted into films helped him
transmit to his audiences the exploits of the new woman, the flapper, who, according to the
author, is “shameless, selfish, and honest, but at the same time she considers these three
attributes virtues” (ibid: 131). The success of Fitzgerald’s heroines in awakening the
awareness of the American woman has virtually been diverted from its noble mission, and
served the purpose of greedy and insatiable needs of the capitalist manufacturers: advertising
32
clothing, architecture, home décor, etc. (ibid: 133). The philosophy of the flapper ideal has
become a game, so vital for the expansion of consumerism.
Sociologically speaking, the legitimate longing of the marginalized women to become
free and liberated proved more straining than enabling. Indeed, the above mentioned flappers’
attitudes of shocking the society – which, to some extent is conservative – with their overt
eroticism and prudery is, in Durkheimian sociology, stepping on the morality and the social
conventions in force. Though the notion of individual freedom and its relationship with
society constraints is dialectical, the savoring of freedom can only be achieved “by virtue of
participation and membership of social groups, rather than through any negative absence of
constraint” (Quoted in Simon Bradford’s essay, 2012: 15).
Besides, failing to keep these insatiable appetites under the control of society
conventions results in what Durkheim refers to as anomie, characterized by the existence of
disequilibrium between the society members and the authority which holds power. The newly
acquired consuming habits of the American people of the 1920s procured them so much relief
that they surrendered to the amazing effect of money. The overwhelming monetized
marketing habits brought the American society straight against the deadly collision of the
Great Depression of 1929.
The aftermath of World War One
As a matter of fact, the early twentieth century America was shaken to the profundity
of its existence: the end of the First World War (1918) which was a long-wished-for relief for
the Europeans turned out to be nightmarish and apocalyptic to the American nation as a
whole. The sudden slowing down of the economic activity gave rise to the firing of millions
of American workers who, instantly, proceeded to endless bloody strikes. The relative
American prosperity during the war was abruptly interrupted by the declaration of the end of
33
this war. The ensuing difficulties of the then U. S. economy faced two fronts: the first rested
on the shifting from the making of war products to consumer products; the second on
reintegrating the four million, or so, military forces returning from Europe (Philip Stanton,
2000: 8). The whole social atmosphere went upside down, causing fractures in the very heart
of the American nuclear family institution so dear and so praiseworthy for the American
people:
Historians estimate that 42% of Americans lived below the poverty line– they
did not have the money to pay for essentials such as food, clothing, heating
and housing for their families (Ben Walsh, GCSE modern world History. In,
P. Stanton, 2000:18).
The American people, however, persisted in overcoming the harshness which seemed
to haunt their life. Conversely, the onset of the 1920s proved to be salutary for the Americans,
in the sense that a new wave of inventions in the fields of science and technology regained
hope and confidence to the population. The availability of means of entertainment, as a result
of a sustained economic prosperity, and the ensuing blossoming of Jazz music, served as a
therapy – a therapy, which, unfortunately, did not last very long. In effect, the social and
cultural features known as the Roaring Twenties associated with the widespread prosperity
and the feeling of overcoming ailments were severely brought to an end by another economic
catastrophe (ibid: 18).
The unlucky American citizens had no sooner got rid of the specter of WWI than they
plunged into a deadlier social unrest generated by the flaws of the business boom: the fact of
not sharing equally the overall prosperity, and the uncontrolled greed of an unscrupulous part
of citizens – those tempted by the get rich quick formula – resulted in the Great Depression
of October 1929 (Irving L. Gordon, 1969: 404). In these particular social developments, a
general panic seized the population and tore family bonds to pieces. The then President
34
Herbert Hoover’s promises to recover economic and social stability (The final triumph over
poverty) ran vain (ibid: 408).
The shift of the American economic and living standards from agrarian to urban
industrial which characterized the Golden Twenties proved too ephemeral and led to the
dislocation of the entire family system of the American society. Hundreds of thousands of
family homes broke apart; millions of family members experienced separation, abandonment,
and homelessness. To express their bitter feelings against President Hoover’s failure in the reestablishment of a sound economy and a stable society, the homeless Americans found shelter
in Hooverville shanty towns. Other highly, witty, but derogatory terms were issued to satirize
the deep poverty the American people were floundering in: Hooverblankets refer to the
newspapers used by people to cover their bodies when they sleep; Hooverflags to the empty
pant pockets turned inside out to suggest they are broke; and, finally, Hooverwagons to those
broken-down cars drawn by horses because their owners cannot afford their repair, or fill their
tank with gasoline (Steven L. Danver, 2011: 838, 839).
The socio-economic tragedy did not spare the American homeless and jobless youth;
they, too, had led a miserable life. They were so disoriented and so lost that they were referred
to as the Lost Generation (Irving L. Gordon, 1969: 405). The bourgeois capitalists were
pointed at as the sole responsible for the degraded living conditions of the American people as
it was illustrated by the iconic folk singer, Woody Guthrie, in his very popular song, “I Ain’t
Got no Home”.
As the popular adage says a misfortune never comes alone, the American people falls
into another tragedy – this time, natural: The Dust Bowl. The little hope burgeoning anew
among the people after the economic crisis was swept away by these droughts and horrendous
dust storms, forcing other thousands of families (the Okies, families from Oklahoma State,
35
and the Arkies, families from Arkansas State) to migrate/ride the rails to California and other
Far Western States in search of better opportunities (James N. Gregory, 1989: 115 - 120).
This westward migration happens to be second of its kind in the American context of the
1930s, or rather the Dirty Thirties. The new wave of the families going west is analogous to
those responding to the famous quote “Go West, Young Man, and Grow up with the country”
(Horace Greely, 1851:61). This, of course, concerns the Frontier and the fulfillment of the
dreams of the Manifest Destiny of the 1840s (Irving. L. Gordon, 1969: 149).
This relatively brief historical survey is by now plain enough to tackle the diversity of
Walt Disney’s work in the field of film/cartoon production of that era. As an American citizen
who had experienced all the tragedies befallen on his country, and the West in general, Disney
perceived the unexpected sinking of the Royal Mail Ship (RMS) Titanic in April 1912 as bad
omen as regards the future of the Western civilization based on unjust materialist divisions of
the social tissue. The ensuing World War I, the Great Depression, the Dust Bowl, World War
II, and the Cold War, show that he was deeply affected both as an individual and as a film
maker. It is equally clear that among the various themes developed in his animation films and
cartoons, the family institution has had its share in most of Disney’s work. And, as Sue
Langeder, the Australian author of Reasons why many Disney Main Characters do not have
mothers (2009) put it, “Disney movies are family movies”.
Disney and his view of the family
In an attempt to bring more light to the notion of the family, the French social
anthropologist, Claude Lévi-Strauss, sets to reduce the diverging views attached to the theme
by defining it. The term family, according to him, serves to designate a social group offering
at least three characteristics:
36
1- It finds its origin in marriage,
2- It consists in husband, wife, and children born out of their wedlock, though it
can be conceived that other relatives may find their place close to that nuclear
group;
3- The family members are united together by:
a- Legal bonds,
b- Economic, religious, and other kinds of rights and obligations,
c- A precise network of sexual rights and prohibitions, and a varying and
diversified amount of psychological feelings such as love, affection,
respect, awe, etc. (S. Rapport et al., 1968: 149).
The concept of the family, therefore, in Disney’s works, embodies a relative
correlation between the above cultural anthropological definition and the family types
invoked in his animation films:
Generally acknowledged as the crown jewels of his animated-film career, each
reflects aspects of Disney’s single greatest theme: the sanctity of family and
the tragic consequences when that sanctity is broken (M. Eliot, 1993: xx).
Perceived as such, the family appears as an ideal social model, delimited from all
sides, and making it an unquestionable social institution which assures the perfect stability
and the perpetuation of society. This is, in a nutshell, the primal sociological lesson Disney
hammers all along his cinematographic career in the American audiences’ minds to inculcate
the value of the family and the morality on which it is founded.
This inculcation is meant to revive the family remnants caused by the successive
national tragedies of the 1920s and the 1930s, and to revive, at the same time, the hope and
the glamor erased from people’s faces. And, in order to achieve this difficult challenge,
Disney complemented the informative mission of all of the Grimm Brothers, Bruno
Bettelheim, Joseph Campbell, and others, by not giving technology to us piece by piece, but
he connected it to his ongoing mission of making life more enjoyable, and fun. Walt Disney is
seen by many as our bridge from the past – filled with worry and hardships – to the future we
are likely to build upon love, mutual help and morality (B. Bettelheim, 2010).
37
The full-length musical feature Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs came,
undoubtedly, as a rescue for the tormented American population of the 1930s. Indeed, Disney
complemented the entertainment with some didactic notions the purpose of which is likely to
stimulate the audience’s awareness of not falling into escapism and despair when they face
difficult moments in their life. Besides the psychological overt and covert meanings this
animated film comprises, Snow White embodies actual situations linked with people in
difficulty (Snow White confronting with her stepmother) and transcends the acquisition of
giving a meaning and an objective to life. According to Bruno Bettelheim, for a story to
attract a child’s attention, it must entertain him and awake his curiosity; it must make him
aware of his difficulties while suggesting solutions to them.
Consequently, Disney’s heuristic mission via his fairy tales adaptations lies in getting
the audiences to comprehend the nature of the difficulties which overwhelm their existence,
and proceeds to their solutions through the creation of positive feelings and amusement. The
depiction of the main protagonist, Snow White, as a very beautiful and an innocent girl
enthralls the viewer and drives him unconsciously to his identification with her, causing him
to ponder about his difficult and embarrassing situation.
The enrichment of the fairy tales and cartoons with music and likable animals
conversing with the tale protagonist – an initiative added to complement the Grimms’ original
tales – conveys a twofold objective: first, it is meant to affect children and get them to watch
the story in great numbers; second, the music is a kind of therapy, as Elizabeth Scott, M. S.
put it:
Research has shown that music has a profound effect on your body and
psyche. /…/even hospitals are beginning to use music /…/to help with pain
management, to help ward off depression, to calm patients…(Quoted In Music
and your Body, in about.com/health).
38
Overall, music undeniably constitutes a substantial impact on the individual’s body and
psyche. Of the phenomena which render people’s lives unbearable and are likely to drive them into
severe depressive states of mind, the stress is now being successfully combated – or at least
diminished – with the new strategies adopted by music therapists.
Subsequent to the uncovering of the ups and downs of the filmmaker’s life and experience, we
will show in the next chapters how these events have affected and deeply shaped Disney’s portrait of
the family romance in the 1920s and the 1930s.
39
A- The father-Daughter Relationships in Disney Feature Films
The actual family romance as portrayed in Disney’s real family life is, as already
stated, characterized by the tyranny/domination of the father, the submission of the son, and,
finally, the ineffectiveness of the mother’s existence. From this real life family romance, we
shift to Disney’s fantasy: the world of imagination and enchantment. It is, as a matter of
fact, in this imaginary and enchanted environment that Disney implants his pedagogizing
strategies which at times, are adaptive, at others, subversive. The adaptive characteristic
underpins the perpetuation and the inculcation of the Judeo-Christian ideals and the
reinforcement of the “patriarchal symbolical order based on rigid notions of sexuality and
gender” (Jack Zipes, 2006: 115). For instance, Disney seems to be contented with portraying
the daughter / woman as someone who is always submissive and waiting for someone to
come for help, as is the case in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, and Cinderella.
Moreover, the stereotypical image Disney constructs of the daughter is this beautiful and
innocent cherub who displays a variety of personality features such as passivity, obedience,
industry, self-effacing, and self-sacrificing. These aspects are endorsed to the heroines and
constitute a set of manners which Pierre Bourdieu qualifies as Habitus (Quoted in Jack Zipes,
2006: 194). Disney’s female protagonists are just like his mother, Flora Call, who fulfills a
pre-determined social role (ibid: 194).
As regards the subversive side of the fairy tales, Disney’s contribution encompasses
the deeds of his predecessors in terms of promoting or subverting story elements to make
them fit into an overall ideology evolving in the civilizing process; for fairy tales have always
served the purpose of socialization and acted as the impetus of internalization of specific
social values and gender roles.
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With reference to the fairy tale, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, as adapted by
Walt Disney, the father/daughter relationship, as such, is almost inexistent as Snow White’s
father’s presence is of no help to her, whatsoever. And worse, this female story character is
deprived of her mother the very first day of her birth, leaving her at the mercy of her
stepmother who turned her into a servile maid (Opening sequence of the film.)
The present representation of the family bonds Disney depicts in his feature film in the
midst of the severe socio-economic situation of the American people reveals the
disintegration which haunts the very soul of the modern nuclear family: the broken homes and
the scattering of the family members. Snow White’s case, as an infant, is similar to one where
the father is missing, the mother dead, and the child abandoned with almost no one to take
care of her, responding, thus, perfectly to the definition of the orphan.
From the psychoanalytic perspective, the father model Disney introduces to his
audiences is a kind of neurotic individual who is dominated by his second wife, transforming
his presence to an absence stained with carelessness towards his unique daughter. The father’s
ingratitude relative to Snow White’s birth makes him unworthy and fake. The psychological
implications of the fairy tales unveil the imaginary relationship between the real world and
the cosmic world which produces miracles, or rather wish-fulfillments. The King and his
former wife were incapable of procreation, and therefore, his wife formulated a wish to
cosmogony power to bless them with a daughter. Snow White is, therefore, a wishfulfillment. The father’s denial of this indebtedness and his overall behavior exhibit him as an
individual who is submerged by intense neurotic anxiety which indicates his outright
subordination to his second wife (Quoted in Nathan Driskell, Psychoanalysis of Freud: Main
Points, 2009).
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Chapter Two
The Family Romance in Disney Feature
Films:
A- The Father-Daughter Relationships;
B-The Father-Son Relationships, and
C- The Brother-Sister Relationships
The reasons for the family of stepparents and stepchildren
The stepmother’s abridgement of the relationship between the father and his daughter
is probably fueled by the jealousy she bears against her stepdaughter; for, Snow White’s
beauty and radiance constitute a real hindrance for her sexuality, as shown in this film
sequence:
Magic mirror on the wall
Who is the fairest one of all?
Famed is thy beauty, Majesty,
But hold, a lovely maid I see
Rags cannot hide her gentle grace,
Alas, she is more fair than thee.
The stepmother’s awareness of her aging attractiveness drives her to lose balance in her
personality – her Id overwhelming her Ego – making her the prey of enmity and evil
intentions which she displaces towards her stepdaughter (Henk Deberg, 2003).
As regards Snow White as a daughter, her state of mind is deeply troubled in that her
feeling of abandonment from the part of her biological father is intensified by the rejection of
her supposedly loving and caring stepmother. Disney’s acute sense of portraying the heroine
as a sublime creature, full of grace and innocence makes her sublimate her servility, disdain,
and sexual desires towards the noble motherly loving and nurturing instincts. Disney has
successfully enlivened in his heroine – and the audiences who identified themselves with her
– the capacity to control her libidinal drives and impulses to assure a balance between the
pleasure principle (Id), and the reality and morality principles (Ego and Superego) (ibid, 2003:
53-54).
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Sociologically speaking, rearing children in the family environment underlies great
responsibilities from the part of both parents, but the reality seems to be dominated by talk
about mothering, rather than fathering. As Dr. Linda Nielsen put it in her work Father /
daughter relationships: Contemporary Research Issues (2012) “The contribution of fathers
is largely economic, when they are present” (2012: ix). In the American society, fatherdaughter relationships are characteristic of their lack of easy communication, and their
restricted emotional intimacy in comparison to the mother-daughter relationships (ibid: 10).
Aside from this, the limited attention expressed vis-à-vis the daughter is rooted in the
assumption that her social position has been mitigated by all the patriarchal society members.
The daughter has, unfortunately, been overtly dispossessed of her due consideration and
position on behalf of her brother who has become the primary focus of the father and the
mother. The daughter’s psychological, sexual, social, and emotional developments simply
cannot equate with those of her brother (Steven L. Danver, 2011: 189).
From the psychoanalytic viewpoint, the submissiveness of the daughter and her
unquestionable acceptance of her social position is primarily due to the fact that the Oedipus
complex has had a submerging effect on her personality: the girl is definitely persuaded that
she is already a victim of castration in relation to her relationship with her parent of the
opposite sex. Accordingly, Freud argues that the “girl acknowledges the fact of her castration,
and, with it, too, the superiority of the male, and hence develops ’penis envy’” (Michael Flood
et al., 2007: 189). Similarly, the father-daughter relationship has gained very little attention in
the family sphere. As Michael Flood put it, “This relative neglect derives primarily from the
weak position of the daughter in patriarchal society” (ibid: 189).
Among the focal points raised in L. Nielsen’s work is the fact that the understanding
of the father-daughter relationships would necessarily lead to romantic relationship not just
between the father and his daughter, but among all the family members, males and females
43
alike. It is, as a matter of fact, given to understand that their relationship or marriage will,
indeed, be influenced by the mutual cooperation between the woman and her father. This very
formative experience will surely help the girls/women to weave sensible and durable
relationships with strangers of the opposite sex (L. Nielsen, 2012: 12).
An equally important assertion relative to the family dynamic romance reveals that
people depend on families as a haven of emotional and human connection. Family members
are unconsciously responsive to the overall parents’ behavior. Their interpersonal dependence
fluctuates from positive to negative socializations which result from the ambivalent aspect of
the tension or the stress that prevails in the family environment (Murray Bowen, M. D. quoted
In Linda Nielsen, 2012).
If by any chance, the marital state is, later on, stained with abnormalities causing a
heavy atmosphere between the father and the mother, the family dynamics will surely
undergo very negative consequences. Accordingly, Murray Bowen states that in case the
parents fail to resolve their marital problems, a kind of triangulation is going to emerge. The
primary triangle, as it is referred to, consists in involving a child, usually the daughter, in the
conflict. The daughter will unconsciously be totally enmeshed with the mother, creating, thus,
an opposing front against the father, as a way for the mother to compensate for the emotional
deficiencies from the part of her husband: a kind of cold conflict sets in the family. “This
triangle enables the parents to stay married, but destabilizes and damages the father-daughter
bond” (ibid: 121).
For the sake of the family romance promotion and preservation, psychologists agree
that “parents should take time daily to communicate directly with children ‘to help them deescalate’ and resolve conflicts that can arise between family members” (Anita L. Vangelisti,
2008: ix-x). These overall implications of the family romance between the father and the
44
daughter are, unfortunately, not dealt with in Disney full-length feature films – which are now
considered as the oldest form of Disney media – probably because the image the average
American citizens of the 1920s and the 1930s had of the woman was profoundly anchored in
the Judeo-Christian moral values and in the spirit of the Victorian Era; both of which have
ultimately, caused more harm than good to the woman (quoted In Male Myth-Making: The
Origin of Feminism, by Catherine Akca and Ali Gunes, 2009: 1-2).
As stated earlier, Snow White had no actual souvenir of her biological father caring
for her or exchanging some kind of affection. This developmental condition caused by the
father’s rejection led Snow White to transfer her fatherly love and care to her prince charming
that appeared right at the beginning of the tale, foreshadowing a combination of a god-father
and a step-father. Like Snow White, Cinderella – whose father has died in her childhood –
seems fixated in her development in that she has no parent to rely on for emotional comfort.
The impetus enhancing Disney’s choice of this type of the family of step-parents and
step-children is, undoubtedly, the aftermath of the Economic Crisis which disintegrated
thousands of the American homes, creating a nation-wide state of panic. The Snow White
and the Seven Dwarfs and Cinderella animated films are an evidence of Disney’s concern
with the family relationships which tend to be his major themes. The seemingly coinciding
feature in these two tale protagonists is their descent from the modern American nuclear
family where the male element is, say, more absent than present when he is not dead. Their
ill-treatment from the part of their stepmothers is indicative of the biological fathers’
surrendering to their second wives, making the father/daughter communication impossible.
Disney’s mitigating of his heroines’ hardships
The servility to which both Snow White and Cinderella were assigned tends to be
lessened lest it would deepen its impact on the already too-mournful state of mind of the
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American audiences. Walt Disney is mindful of the slightest anodyne aspect likely to procure
relief and well-being to his film viewers, should he bring a change in his story adaptations. In
fact, the change in question is related to the fairy tale as collected by the French author,
Charles Perrault, under the title Cendrillon, in 1697. The relevant scene is the one which
shows the cellar where Cinderella retreats when she finishes the home chores. Her stepmother
and stepsisters have set her sleeping bed purposefully by the hearth side full of cinders and
ashes which give an appalling look and smell to Cinderella when she gets up in the morning.
(M. Soriano, 1968: 146). This scene upon which the etymological construction of the term
Cinderella has derived has been suppressed by both the Grimm Brothers and Walt Disney.
The reasons leading to the suppression of this scene from the part of the Grimm
Brothers and Walt Disney are different but complementary. For the former, the rejection has
resulted from their deep belief in the Christian values regulating the parents/children
relationships. The role of the parents is to love, nurture, and teach their children deep respect
and reverence, as referred to in the third and the fifth commandments of the Holy Bible:
“Every parent [be it biological or surrogate] needs to realize that he represents God to his
child!” and “God never ‘damned’ a man in the way men seem to think! This idea is an awful
heresy!” (The Ten Commandments, 1977: 41; 27). For the latter, the reason is humanistic; it
is based on the collective psychology and sociology. Disney wants to spare the alreadydistressed American family of the 1920s and the 1930s the trouble of the heart-breaking
scenes of mistreatment of children. The other intention Disney has in mind is the undermining
of the indifference, and the “laissez-faire” attitude a father exhibits towards his child as a
consequence of his utter submission to his second wife. For, Disney’s sole target in his film
adaptations is patching wounds, combating unjust oppression, and providing relief for his
audiences.
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Disney and the overall standpoint of the woman/daughter
For a deeper insight into the family romance, it would be judicious to merge the two
relationships daughter and wife into a wider one we refer to as woman. Women, as depicted
primarily in fairy tales, and, later on, in Disney’s adaptations into animated films, seem to be
burdened with prejudices mounting back to the dawn of civilization. Women have always
been the scapegoats of men all through their socio-historical evolution, as witnesses the
scholar J. Ochshorn:
Women have been burdened…by a long history of deeply unsettling, mixed
messages about themselves (1981: 243).
The passive roles, to which women have been relegated in comparison to those of the
tale heroes, make them all-time stereotypes. As a consequence, women are turned into halfwits, and always rely on the other sex to provide them with guidance, motivation, and
solutions to their problems. The defenseless characteristic of Disney’s heroines confirm their:
association with nature and primitive emotions and values, which the
narratives [books and films] ultimately depict as inferior to the civilized and
rationalized representations of patriarchal roles and values (S. S. Jones, 2002:
65).
These mixed messages about women seem to have no boundaries as Emile Durkheim,
too, affirms that women are needed to control the passions of men and the site for this was the
family. But, as paradoxical as it looks, though he also referred to women as “more primitive”,
he maintains that they are “necessary for their civilizing and stabilizing effect on men” (Celia
Winkler, 2002: 3).
With reference to Disney’s mother, Flora Call, and her agrarian social background, it
is by no means superficial to proceed to a brief retrospection in order to provide an
iconoclastic view of the woman. From the Marxist perspective, Karl Marx and Friedrich
47
Engels related the woman question and her oppression to the rise of class society during the
expansion of the Industrial Revolution. What, in fact, rang the bell in Engels’ mind
concerning the marginalization of the woman were the anthropological findings of J. J.
Bachofen, as illustrated in his[Engels’] work The Origin of the Family, the Private Property,
and the State (1979: 14). At the time of the Mother Right, Bachofen argues, women were
the surest parental link between the children and their parents as the latter did not face any
prohibitions as far as sexual relations are concerned. As a consequence, women, as mothers,
benefited from high consideration, respect, and prestige from the part of the males, and this is
what Bachofen referred to as Gyneocracy.
Reverend A. Wright, from his side, supports Bachofen’s concept of Gyneocracy by
stating that the Iroquois Family System in the United States was founded on the principle of
the woman/wife ruling the household. The woman, then, was responsible for the property
stores which were common to all the members of the tribe; and anyone violating this
regulation is “ordered to pick up his blanket and budge” (Lewis H. Morgan, 1877).
The point in this flashback resides in Disney’s depicting of the female protagonists
(Snow White and Cinderella) as mere unhelpful ordinary individuals. Their position within
their family units is devoid of any impact, just like his mother. From the materialist point of
view, the woman is of no help to her family: the bourgeois capitalists have succeeded in
making the woman believe that she is incapable of any outdoor task, confining her, thus, to
the home chores and the perpetuation of generations.
The discernible drawbacks in the original fairy tales and their adaptations into films
constitute the subject matter of various scholars whose role is to throw light on these obscure
and baseless assumptions. Claude Lévi-Strauss, for example, raises an important issue relative
to the closely interwoven social relations and economy. He argues that economic necessities
48
are given a higher predominance than sexual considerations which are not the core of
marriage, as the latter has little to do with the gratification of sexual urge (S. Rapport et al.,
1968). The introduction of the notion of marriage in these specific dual socio-economic
relationships represents the core of most fairy tales. The socio-psychological interpretations of
these narratives highlight the preponderance of sexual initiation which leads to maturity and
marriage. It is equally the task of these scholars to relieve the woman from the burden of
injustices. The division of labor among the primitive society members on the basis of sex
differentiation creates the complementarity of men and women which is consolidated in
marriage. A task one sex is supposed to do implies hereupon that the other sex is supposed to
do a different one; and the wisdom in this economic practice is the institutionalizing of a
reciprocal state of dependency between the sexes – a principle which, nowadays, has no
reason of being (S. Rapport and H. Wright, 1968: 159).
The social significance we can draw from the extrapolation of man / woman
relationships on the basis of complementarity, rather than on domination and exploitation lies
in the fact that it constitutes a cardinal pillar in the social tissue. Because Disney’s film
productions are meant to heal society ailments and promote social welfare, it is necessary to
remove haziness from elements susceptible to improve social interactions among the society
members during these hard years of the 1920s and the 1930s.
Women stereotyping still in force
Given the established social position of the woman in the Western bourgeois capitalist
society as a result of assumptions and canons issued from the Judeo-Christian culture, Walt
Disney did not bother himself to corroborate the representation of the woman as had already
been set by his fairy tales authors, the Grimm Brothers. The willingness to perpetuate the
woman stereotype has fundamentally been reinforced by the male collectors (Jacob and
49
Wilheim Grimm) and filmmakers like Walt Disney. The Grimms and Disney have been
reared in agrarian family environment where women / mothers have been reduced to mere
servants. Their appropriation of the fairy tales has resulted in subverting some elements “to
adjust to the mores and customs of the next generation.” As Kevin Yee, a Disney critic from
Florida University, put it:
The Grimms, during the course of their changes, promote a middle-class
morality and infuse it with a Christian ethos that matched their own protestant
beliefs (Kevin Yee, 2013: 4).
Subsequent to these intended alterations, the victimization of the woman (wife / daughter) is
accentuated in Disney movie scenes where they are portrayed as casual females whose role is
to tidy the house, and see to the cooking. The film heroine in Snow White and the Seven
Dwarfs appears before the audience right at the beginning of the movie sweeping the court
yard of the castle, and filling buckets of water from the well nearby. Similarly, the heroine in
Cinderella begins her new day by serving breakfast to her stepmother and stepsisters, still
lying in their bedroom, upstairs. In return for this, her stepmother ordered her to do the
laundry and the cleaning around the chateau. These scenes are suggestive and relevant of
Disney’s own family – including the audiences’ families – where his mother, Flora Call, is
utterly dominated by her husband who leaves no respite for her: she is the perfect housewife
where male domination prevails.
As a matter of fact, it seems that women representations in Disney films are the result
of his personal feelings about the American nuclear family shaped by Disney Film Company,
and his attitudes reflecting the patriarchal cultural beliefs of the first half of the twentieth
century. Disney’s image of the marginalized woman is not just limited to his mother, and his
film heroines; even his wife is not spared. It is incumbent upon her – the mother – to take care
of their newly adopted daughter. As stated in this citation:
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To Walt, the infant’s all-night crying seemed to echo the stridency of their
discordant marriage. He finally retreated to the sanctuary of his studio, the
castle where he reigned as king, able to exert the kind of absolute control over
his professional family he couldn’t manage over his real one (M. Eliot, 1993:
113).
The idea inferred in this citation throws light on the husband-wife relationships, among other
points, after the marriage. Besides the wife’s responsibility to do the household chores, she is
expected to bring up her children all alone: the all-night crying must not disturb the all-toopowerful husband in his sleep. The stereotyping of women has its roots in the collective
Western consciousness, and it is anchored in their cultural heritage, dating from the early
Christianity up to the Great Victorian Era round the turn of the twentieth century.
Additionally, the commonly shared conviction among the bourgeois capitalists is that God,
the Almighty, has committed the woman to motherhood under the authority of her husband,
as these verses indicate:
In sorrow, shalt thou bring forth children, and thou shalt be under thy
husband’s power, and he shall have dominion on thee (Genesis: 3-16).
The reinforcement of these assumptions has been achieved through repeated
references to religion as Emile Durkheim maintains in his 1912 work entitled, The
Elementary Forms of the Religious Life. He recommends that for the society members to be
united into a moral community they need these beliefs and practices related to the sacred
which constitute the heart of religion. As a consequence, it is the male’s responsibility to
control the woman, her sexuality, and her reproductive function. And to some even reasonable
extent, the females, despite themselves, support these beliefs, helping, thus, the males to
proceed to the institutionalization of marriage and the occulting of the motherhood. These
latter elements serve the purpose of confining the woman to the four walls of her home,
under, of course, the blessing authority of her husband who had been chosen by God as the
food provider (Quoted in Catherine Akca and Ali Gunes, 2009: 1-2).
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Bearing in mind these unquestioned and unquestionable assumptions, Walt Disney has
issued his fairy tales adaptations, namely Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Cinderella
to his audiences for consolidation. The respective heroines are always assigned to their
homes, duly serving their stepparents. Even when they happen to leave their homes, it is only
to find themselves again in other homes: the homes of their husbands-to-be, the princes’. To
soften this harsh fate, Disney, just like his predecessors, the fairy tales collectors, uses his
ingenuity to conclude these resolutions with happy endings.
Though Disney’s adaptations seem to concord with the Grimms’ fairy tales, especially
about the hatred, the jealousy, and the narcissism developed among the female protagonists,
Disney has acted cautiously to adapt these features to the difficult reality of his audiences
experiencing hard socio-economic conditions during the 1920s and the 1930s. As the
American people are already enduring almost unbearable sufferings, Disney has
systematically suppressed scenes from his adaptations.
In Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the images showing the stepmother eating the
lungs and the liver of her stepdaughter, as well as those showing the stepmother, in turn,
dancing in red-hot shoes to death have been removed from the film and replaced by less
shocking ones. The stepmother has had her punishment by making her fall off a high cliff and
die (Grimm, 2002: 215, 222).
In Cinderella, the cruelty of the female stepfamily members has been punished less
savagely than the original Grimm story where the two “nameless” stepsisters’ eyes have been
pecked out by pigeons, causing them blindness for the rest of lives. Instead, Disney has just
transformed them into servants to make them pay for the hardships they have caused to
Cinderella (ibid: 103-104).
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As it turns out, Disney’s approach in his appropriation of the fairy tales is not just
limited to entertaining his fellow countrymen, but to subverting the best he can the original
literary versions. He has relied on the cinematic medium as a consistent and persuasive mode
of expression to present his own reshaped stories to the public at large (Jack Zipes, 2006:
199).
Conclusion
To conclude this first family romance embodied in the relationship between the father
and the daughter, one can say that the Grimm Brothers, the fairy tales collectors, and Walt
Disney, the filmmaker, have shared a common objective which underlies the reinforcing and
perpetuating of the nineteenth century patriarchal notions. What the critic Jack Zipes labels as
the domestication of women in both the literary and the cinematographic versions serves, in
fact, the purpose of using these female figures as means to conduct his heuristic techniques of
metaphoric and symbolic conceptualization of ideas and notions likely to prevail in the
American socio-cultural context of the first half of the twentieth century. These ideas and
notions form the basis of the so-called American civilizing process (Jack Zipes, 2006: 205).
The functions endorsed to the daughters Snow White and Cinderella encompass the
pivot of Disney’s strategy in helping the American people handle their quotidian problems
and resolve them through their identification with the fairy tales heroines. The conveyed
message, therefore, lies in fighting against problems in real life, but in case they fail, they, at
least, do it through fantasy which “is one of the essential characteristics of the fairy tales”
(Steven Swann Jones, 2002: 10).
Furthermore, one can say, from the sociological standpoint, that the overall cultural
and ethical elements in force in a given society do contribute to the shaping of this
relationship between the father and the daughter. In fact, the intellect and the maturity of the
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parents would, undoubtedly, help the children acquire a healthy behavior and consideration
inside and outside the home: this is what Durkheim referred to as primary and secondary
socializations.
Psychologically speaking, the fact that both parents exhibit mutual love and respect,
and find time to communicate with their children is a way to prevent any kind of frustration
and anxiety that might jeopardize their sound and healthy development. The formation of
identity [male or female] starts in the home and develops through a sound education and
through interaction with the other society members. However, the weaknesses which keep
clinging to these father-daughter relationships lead us to more tenacious, aggressive, and
rivalry-based relationships existing between the father and his son, as will be seen in the
following.
B- The Father-Son Relationships
Walt Disney and his father, Elias: Conflict-based Relationships
As has already been discussed in the first family romance, the father-son relationships
in Disney’s real life were rather conflictual in the sense that the child/son has to be submissive
to his parent/father no matter what the situation. Because the relationship is based on
domination and submission, it is clear that a kind of antagonism and distance are going to set
themselves between the son and the father. It is equally important to stress the fact that when
children/sons are completely dominated by the tyranny of the father, the mother, too, submits
the same fate, making her a mere spectator of the violent scenes. All of this, of course,
deepens the child’s frustrations and leads him to doubt whether these parents are really his
real parents. As this statement suggests:
Walt remained confused and frightened by Elias terrifying violence and
couldn’t understand why his mother didn’t stop the beatings (M. Eliot,
1993:5).
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Elias/Walt relationships even worsened as the beatings were complemented with the
son’s deprivation of his pocket money. Walt and his brother Roy were not bent to sacrifice
their efforts and childhood for the farm work their father was so concerned by. Walt felt even
more belittled as he could not afford paper and crayons to keep on his drawing activity; “Elias
discontinued their already meager pay” (ibid: 6).
Disney’s uprooted male characters
The family themes (Sue Langeder, 2009) Disney developed in his feature films in the
first half of the twentieth century have always some kind of common denominator with his
own private life. The prince charming that appears in the beginning of the Snow White and
the Seven Dwarfs film seems to be issued from no social background: no mention is made of
his father, or mother. He is just a wandering male protagonist at large, suggesting that he, too,
is homeless, and has no family to take care of him. Even though he is a prince, he seems to
belong to the ‘community’ of the waifs and strays.
The introduction of the prince charming in Disney’s Snow White and the Seven
Dwarfs and Cinderella is meant to depict the sex and gender issues which people tend to
associate with the persecuted maiden. Both folklore tales and religious beliefs agree to
perpetuate the female stereotype by endorsing her roles which portray her as inferior and
dependent on men in almost all situations. Like Snow White, Cinderella is fighting – in vain –
to rid herself of the malignant stepmother and stepsisters. They equally embody those old
European fairy tale features which present heroines as likable but incapable characters: they
are always given the role of the tormented damsels in distress who wait for their heroes’
help, remaining, thus, grateful to their liberation (Norman D. Willis, 2000).
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Unlike Snow White’s prince charming, Cinderella’s appears to be issued from a
known, powerful, and wealthy royal family. The latter prince gives to understand that the
relationship with his father, the king, is indicative of the son’s obedience: the king wants his
son to marry a woman; and the son obeys with no apparent comment. However, this
father/son relationship based on obedience leaves the audience somewhat perplex. One
wonders if this response really corresponds to the social morality (E. Durkheim, 1975:307311) which runs family relationships or simply a result of domination and submission from
the part of the father.
Not least amongst the personality features involved in the father/son relationships is
the implication of the feelings of abandonment, carelessness, and homelessness which
characterize both male and female protagonists. Disney’s choice of these specific elements in
his cinematographic productions is probably inspired by the hardships he experienced as a
boy and the various social tragedies befallen on the American society in the 1920s and the
1930s. It is Disney’s awareness of his country being on the brink of total disruption that urged
him to persevere in his animation production to procure his fellow countrymen some sort of
relieving entertainment: Disney “is not merely drawing; he is creating a magical
restructuration of the world according to his own fantasy and arbitrariness” (Serguei
Eisenstein, 2013:12).
Loveless parents’ suspicion of their children
His pondering about the reason why his father was beating him, not his brother, led
him to realize that Elias, his father, was not his real father. He was an orphan adopted by the
Disney family. The secret broke apart only forty years later.
It was his enrollment in the Federal Bureau of Investigation (F. B. I.) as a secret agent
in the early 1940s that suspicion began haunting him as regards his biological bond with his
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father Elias Disney. In fact, when he asked the City Hall Administration to deliver him a birth
certificate, he was shocked and despaired by the answer of the Civil Status Service:
In the bureau of records, he was informed that no such birth certificate existed,
anywhere, in any form (M. Eliot, 1993: xix).
The absence of the birth certificate added to Walt’s ill-treatment convinced him that Elias, his
would-be father, was, in fact, not his real father:
A childhood fantasy of Walt Disney, common among abused children, was
that his father treated him so badly because he didn’t love him, the reason
being Elias really wasn’t his father (ibid: xix).
The heart-breaking outcome of Walt’s life turned even worse when “he had
inadvertently uncovered a clue to a terrible secret – that he might have been, in fact, adopted
in infancy, or worse, illegitimate” (ibid: xx).
Although Walt Disney, the father, was utterly tormented and deeply anxious about the
revelations of his life, he did not give in to escapism (Bruno Bettelheim, 1989). At home he
was affectionate and understanding. “He gave love by being interested, involved, and always
there for his family and friends”. Walt’s daughter – he had no son –Diane Disney Miller, once
said:
Daddy never missed a father’s function no matter how I discounted it. I’d say,
‘oh, Daddy, you don’t need to come. It’s just some stupid thing’. But he’d
always be there on time (W. Disney Biography/justdisney.com).
Female Characters as Disney’s Main Characters
The actual fact in the film productions of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and
Cinderella in this specific period of the 20thcentury is that his protagonists are daughters, not
sons, just like his family. The existence of a male child in the bourgeois capitalist middle class
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from the eighteenth century constituted an invaluable asset for the family head, the father. The
birth of a male child in a family is seen as the availability of a second father in the same
family – the family member the father can unconditionally rely on.
Three years after the birth of his first daughter, Diane Miller, Disney felt incapable of
impregnating his wife, Lillian. During the making of the Snow White feature film, Lillian
imposed on Walt an “ultimatum: they either adopt a baby or go their separate ways” (ibid:
113). Walt Disney’s wish of having – even adopting – a son this second time vanished away
as his wife “insisted a girl was a better childhood companion for three-year-old Diane” (ibid:
113).
The socio-cultural value of a male child
The father/son relationship, much before it was seen from the family romance
perspective, had always been man’s concern in almost all societies. In black African culture,
for example, the birth of a son in a family heightens the father/mother relationships. And the
value of motherhood in this sub-Saharan culture is subject to the progeny it reproduces.
According to Barbara Christian, a professor of Afro-American Studies, and an active
member of the “Black Feminist Criticism School”, for a black African woman to be a
complete human being, she must, first and foremost, be a mother – but, unfortunately for her,
not any mother. The “A” grade mother is the woman who gives birth to sons, and she is by far
much better considered than the one who reproduces only daughters, who, in turn, out passes
the woman with no children at all (Quoted In Patriarchy and Female Representation in Buchi
Emecheta’s The Joys of Motherhood, 1979).
In antebellum America, too, having a son among his children, and especially if it is the
first born, makes the father feel a sensation of relief, and sees in his son his own incarnation.
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The father starts by naming his son after him, and then, he keeps a close eye on him as regards
his instruction, and his sexual contacts, as it is this son who will inherit all his property.
Economic and religious impact on family romance
Because the family is viewed as an economic enterprise which accumulates material
property (F. Engels, 1979), the father’s concern lies, therefore, in a son who would assure – in
case of death or handicap – the lead in relation to the private property, and the overall
protection of the family.
It seems, in fact, that the overrating of a male child birth in relation to females has
been imposed on the family of the bourgeois capitalist by the ideology and the economic
system they intend to perpetuate. As S. Gordon Wood put it in his seminal work, The
Radicalism of the American Revolution (1992), the colonial Americans often attached a
greater significance to the father/son relationships which they conceived of as the pillar and
the very foundation of their family. The spousal or the mother/child relationships are
relegated to a lower position as the quintessential preoccupation of the family heads is the
preservation, the accumulation, and the transmission of the family patrimony.
Though the earlier Americans fled the Old World to escape the religious persecutions
of the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries, they always remained faithful to their JudeoChristian beliefs and scholarly canons. Moreover, the turn of the nineteenth century witnessed
a revival of these religious beliefs, known as The Second Great Awakening, the outcome of
which was the reshaping of the American society in general and the modern nuclear family in
particular.
As has already been referred to in the previous sub-chapter, religion has found refuge
within the nuclear family; it is now extending its tentacles to interfere with the slightest
details as far as the family romance is concerned. In fact, religion’s first task, according to this
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mid-19th century awakening, consists in retrieving the father to his home and family after the
capitalist working conditions have separated him from his family members (Joseph M.
Hawes, 2001). The second task consists in endorsing new functions to the father inside his
home: he is the family’s moral overseer and its religious leader; he must start his sons – not
his daughters – in a career; and, finally, keep everything under his rule (Quoted In L. Davidoff
& C. Hall, 1987).
Relying on this religious indoctrination, family heads met no contending force from
the part of their female family members who were confined willy-nilly inside their homes. It
is this situation, therefore, that drove the wives/mothers to the state of hysteria and deep
anxiety. And it is obviously these same hysterical and anxious women who persuaded the
Psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud to affirm that, indeed, the bourgeois capitalist middle-class
homes were “breeding grounds of neurosis and sexual perversion (The Modern Nuclear
Family).
From both the sociological and psychological perspectives, being the father of a son
seems very stimulating as far as the individual’s social status is concerned. Satisfying man’s
greed both socially and psychologically proves to be too demanding as the more he has, the
more he would like to have. It is a truth observed in various cultures – and to some extent it is
legitimate. Marriage outcomes are threefold: 1- married couple with no children; 2- with
daughters only; and 3- with daughters and sons. The overall tendency is that the third type is
“believed” to be socially the most blessed couple.
The psychological impact of the first type above is well illustrated in Disney’s feature
film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs where the king and his first wife had no children;
and so the wife formulated a wish to cosmogony power to bless them with a child. Although
this reports solely to fairy tales and the world of imagination [which is Disney’s objective],
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such cases do exist in real life where such a couple – depending on their instruction level –
either make use of traditional practices or ask for the help of physicians to find a solution to
their infertility (Josef Woodman, 2011).
As the aforementioned social instructor, Sue Langeder, stated Disney film themes
were family themes; it is not surprising to come across similitudes between his own life and
that of his film protagonists. Following the 7th February, 1940 release of his second full-length
feature film Pinocchio, a great deal of critical reactions ensued as regards its obscure
contents. The introduction of a variety of evil forces in the film is very suggestive of the long
American social unrest of the first half of the 2Oth century. Additionally, it is felt that the
poor childless Geppetto, the puppet maker, expressing his inner wish through his wood
puppet, Pinocchio, to be a real living boy is relevant of Disney’s life. Disney did, in fact, long
for a boy (M. Eliot, 1993: 83).
The obscurity lingering around the film theme is probably due to Disney’s
extrapolation of the simple original fable version as presented by its Italian author Carlo
Collodi, into a more complex story imbued with highly didactic aspects of this adaptation
(ibid: 124). The philosophical embodiment of values like supplanting rottenness by newness,
and old and decayed life by a new one, in not just the film Pinocchio, but also in Snow White
and the Seven Dwarfs highlights Disney’s strong will in restoring hope and capability in the
disrupted American nation to start life anew.
It is equally alluded that Disney’s private life is typical of a fairy tale with the
exception that no Blue Fairy or Godfather came to his rescue (ibid: 124). More importantly
in Disney’s case, however, it is his prior assimilation and conviction that the core of fairy
tales and fables resides in assisting a distressed individual in finding a safe way through
overwhelming difficulties (B. Bettelheim, 1989).
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The moral, amongst others, we can draw from Pinocchio is the fact that even though
our wish is fulfilled, its fulfillment is not without difficulties. The puppet, boy-to-be, has to
struggle courageously (ibid, B. Bettelheim) to give meaning to his life. Another moral as
regards Disney’s “unfulfilled wish”, to have a son lies in the individual’s acceptance of his
real situation and make the most he can out of it: one has to be satisfied with what he has.
From the sociological point of view, the value of having at least one son among his
children exceeds all sorts of enchantment. In fact, empirical surveys related to the
Determinants of Divorce conducted by scholars such as Lynn K. White and Philip S.
Morgan, and others; reveal that families with female children are more prone to face a family
disruption than those where there is a son: “Parents of sons are less likely to divorce than
parents with daughters” (Harrison C. White, 1990: 907).
Furthermore, when the father/son relationship is characterized by frequent
involvement and actual presence, it is reported that the sons – as well as the other children –
especially obtain good grades in their education, and are more likely to succeed in their life.
The presence of the father in the family does consolidate what E. Durkheim calls the primary
socialization. It is, in fact, in the home that children first acquire the rudiments of education
and social interactions. These would, later on, develop in the secondary socialization when the
sons/children get detached from their family bonds (E. Durkheim, Social Theory ii).
It is, indeed, worthy of drawing an analogy between Durkheim’s social development
of an individual and Freud’s psychosexual development stages in that both processes deal
with prerequisite conditions of successful development. Social integration and adjustment, for
the former, depend on the success of the primary/home socialization which serves as an
incentive and an imperative basis for the secondary socialization – a stage that will enable the
individual to grasp self-awareness and selfhood. This self-realization conveys the following
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feelings: “this is me”; “I exist”; “I live and I will die”; “I think, I act and I am the object of
other people’s actions” (Joel M. Charon, 2009: 33). To these feelings, Durkheim adds other
elements to the bonding of the social unity such as religion, law, morals, education, rituals,
the division of labor, and even crime (ibid: 5).
Social integration, for the latter, depends on not being fixated in any one of the five
stages of the psychosexual development: the oral stage (from birth to one year of age), the
anal stage (from one year to three years), the phallic stage (from three to six years), the
latency stage (from six to eleven years), and finally the genital stage (from twelve years
onwards). These stages, as a matter of fact, were not accepted by a host of fundamentalists as
they found the infant sexuality merely beyond belief. Failure to passing these stages leads to
severe psychopathologies like not having confidence in people, showing aggressiveness, and
exhibiting unusual habits (Quoted in Nathan Driskell, Psychoanalytic Theory and Freud:
Main Points).
The sociological view of Durkheim and the psychological view of Freud as regards the
socialization and/or adjustment of the individual – mainly the son – within his society
underpin the complementary relationship between sociology and psychology. The
introduction of the term selfhood by Durkheim to convey the meaning embodied in the notion
of socialization is threefold: first, it helps us “understand the effects of our actions, and the
effects of actions of others on us”; second, it “brings us the ability to judge ourselves”; and
third it “means self-control” (ibid: 34). This endeavor is analogous to what Freud terms
briefly as the personality constituents, namely, the Id, the Ego, and the Superego.
It is, for Freud, these personality aspects which make the individual think twice before
he actually does anything. Freud explicitly defined the role of the individual in this
constraining and repressive civilized society in this very symbolic image: “a man on the
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horseback…often the rider…is obliged to guide [the horse] where it wants to go” (The
MacMillan Center, Yale University; “The Ego Relationship to the Id”, 1923: 19).
As it turns to be, the maintaining and the preventing of the marriage and the family
from falling apart depends upon the male progeny of the couple. This unravels the reasons
why fathers favor their relationship with sons more than with daughters. For the father to
attain his goal, he has to watch every detail in his son’s childhood, boyhood, until his
maturity. The deduction is that the father’s watchful eye over his son represents his only
guarantee to obtain a faithful and trustful son that would likely assure the perpetuation of his
multifarious wishes (Philip J. Graven, 1970).
With the advent of the twentieth century, and the introduction of Freud’s
psychoanalysis in the field of child rearing, the father-son relationships which were
characterized by subordination and tyranny on behalf of the child, veered to another mode of
relations full of rivalry and aggression (ibid: 190). Subsequent to the illuminations formulated
in this new scientific endeavor, this gradually led to substantial changes in the father-son
relationships beginning with Elias Disney’s sons, Herbert, 21, and Raymond, 20, who decided
to venture outside the family home, and build their own future as they had enough of farm
life:
Their departure in the fall of 1907 put an even greater burden on 14 year-old
Roy and 6 year-old Walt, both of whom were required by Elias to spend their
days working the farm to earn their keep. He used corporal punishment to
enforce maximum productivity (M. Eliot, 1993: 5).
It becomes clear in this quotation that the rebellion of the sons has started; it
foreshadows the departure of the younger sons, Roy and Walt, as soon as they grow older. In
a nutshell, this is what Sigmund Freud refers to by family romance from the psychoanalytic
perspective. In a way, it underlies a somewhat denial to the patriarchal right, and the children,
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especially those marginalized, create a fantasy which appeals to better living conditions and
more opulent parents outside the family sphere (Webster New World College Dictionary).
Equally important, as regards this phenomenon, is Emile Durkheim who expresses his
disagreement with scholars who support the assumption that “family, school, and State as
agents of socialization” (Quoted in Mary Ann Lamanna, 2002: 124). For an individual to
achieve a sound social development, and socialization, Durkheim maintains that:
Separation from the family is necessary, and the State must play a role,
because the warmth of the family and its indulgence are very likely to abort
this difficult mission (ibid: 124).
Though the field of research of Emile Durkheim differs from that of Sigmund Freud,
the objectives they are striving to attain are convergent in that they recommend the family
members, especially the males who are more prone to adventure than females, to consider the
positive results of this separation from the family.
It is, indeed, commonplace that most, if not all, of the distinguished scholars who, at
varying degrees, delved into the family romance and institution to wring meaning from
various perspectives, are issued from rather tormented social milieus. As we have already
scrutinized Walt Disney’s relationship with his father, Friedrich Engels, too, seems to have
experienced exceedingly unsettling hardships with his father. What turned the father/son
relationship into murk was Engels’ insubordination to his father. Engels was, by no means,
bent to follow the steps of his father, and the mold he has been assigned to:
It may be assumed that his father was pressing him to join the family firm
while Engels was hoping to make a name for himself as a writer or a journalist
(William O. Henderson, 1976: 13).
Furthermore, contrary to Walt Disney whose father was a tyrant, Freud’s father was
rather submissive, due, perhaps, to his life-long poverty, as reported in these two citations:
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1- Sophie Freud (Freud’s granddaughter): My grandfather grew up in
extreme poverty. The family was all the time worried about money, and
that pervaded the atmosphere (Young Dr. Freud, a Film by David Grubin).
2- Ethel Specter Person (a well-known clinician and psychoanalytic
educator): This was a major disappointment for Freud. He was hoping that
his father would have done something dramatic and grand. Freud [wanted]
a father who was defiant, not someone who was submissive (ibid, Young
Dr. Freud).
Even though Freud’s father’s description did not meet his son’s expectations, it should
not be taken for granted that poverty and submission reduce the value of a father. The
symbolism embodied in the father is, for Freud, invaluable no matter how and no matter what:
“I cannot think of any need in childhood as strong as the need for a father’s protection”
(Quoted In ‘Father-son relationship quotes’/dictionary.com quotes).
And, contrary, still, to Disney’s mother who is utterly submissive to her husband, and
unable to protect her persecuted children, Freud’s mother, Amalie, is somewhat assertive,
very protective, and above all tyrannical. Peter Gray, an emeritus professor, and Freud’s
biographer, said:
He [Freud] was close to her [his mother, Amalie.], she was certainly
close to him. She was very strong. We know from comments by other
relatives that she was domineering and dictatorial. I think he was a
little afraid of her (ibid, Young Dr. Freud).
Conclusion
As a conclusion to this family romance between the father and his son, I would reckon
that the possibility of not having a son in a man’s family has always haunted the very
existence of the father, and will probably keep doing so indefinitely. The dread this represents
to the father is similar to the dread of incest to the primitive societies.
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The crux of the matter, as Hilary Mantel seems to suggest in her On Royal Bodies, is
the fear that a father reproducing only females would end his bloodline, leading him, thus, to
oblivion. However, this assumption is baseless and would only contribute to worsen the daily
hardships of family life. Sinking in such a belief and reasoning would drive the father to
hysteria and a neurotic state. It is high time people put an end to discrimination among
children, and start, instead, thinking of improving the living conditions, and enlivening the
family romance and the overall atmosphere. The father/son relationship is, for sure,
preponderant in the family unit, but ought not to spoil the other relationships. Its challenging
characteristic is just important, not more. Lewis Yablonski (1982) describes the father/son
relationship as “the most challenging of all family relationships.”
The challenging aspect of these relationships reveals the impact of the scientific
findings of scholars of the rank of Sigmund Freud whose psychoanalytic theory based on the
Oedipus complex – among other points – has impacted at varying degrees the male and the
female infants. The former has struggled to acquire his identity and impose his personality in
the family scene, and later on in society, whereas the latter has only accepted her fate, letting
herself sink in inferiority. These personality features characterizing the male and the female
infants will contribute to the understanding of the family romance between the brother and the
sister. The following part of the dissertation will show how the technological development of
the fairy tale films, and sometimes their recorded versions, as initiated by Disney “expanded
the horizons of viewers and led to greater understanding of social conditions and culture,”
deconstructing, thus, the perennial taboos surrounding the male-female relationships.
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C- The Brother-Sister Relationships
Family Romance Adapted to Actual Social Unrest
It has always been reported that Walt Disney cinematographic productions revolve
around social themes which depict the modern American nuclear family as a praiseworthy
institution in the consciousness of the American citizens. As has already been discussed,
Disney’s handling of the fragile family life of the first half of the twentieth century is meant,
first and foremost, to alleviate the sufferings of the population and assist them in making a
step forward to regain what they have been dispossessed of: reconquering their disrupted
homes, and restoring social stability inside and outside the family spheres (aftermath of the
economic crisis, 1929).
The dialectic strategy Disney has adopted in describing the relationships among the
family members represents only partially the overall notion of the family romance as
explicated by Sigmund Freud. The long years of economic and social unrest must have,
undoubtedly, led Disney to interpret the light side of the family romance which, in this case,
is only limited to awakening the people’s awareness of the hardships they are experiencing.
This primary family romance – if primary can be called – seeks to simplify and shed light on
the system of relationships within a family group.
Even more specifically, in certain critical moments as the ones the American people
are living in the 1920s and the 1930s, it becomes the duty of an artist to bring about changes
in his art to reduce the ailments of his fellow-countrymen. As a result, Disney has eluded the
deep psychological meaning of the Freudian family romance as, for the time being, it runs
counter his social objectives. Disney is struggling against the disintegration of the family
homes and the scattering of the family members. The young Americans running away from
broken homes is very symbolic and indicative of Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey which is
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inspired from the problem resolutions conveyed in myths, folklore, and fairy tales. The then
Disney animated films are duly charged with symbolic and metaphoric meaning the audiences
of the stories are expected to wring from their identification with the heroes and the heroines
(B. Bettelheim, 1989).
Even though a large body of studies from both sociological and psychological
perspectives claim that the father-son relationships are the most challenging of all the other
family relationships (Lewis Yablonski, 1982), I would reckon this challenge is only relative in
comparison with the brother-sister relationships.
The Reasons for Underrating the Brother-Sister Relationships
It should be noted that from the Marxist point of view and the historical materialism,
the stakes implied in the father-son relationships are very high. Because the modern American
and Western nuclear family is the outcome of the bourgeois capitalist middle class economic
growth, it is specifically stated that the only family member likely to second the father, the
breadwinner, is the son. The bourgeois capitalists, as Engels argued in his work The Origin of
the Family, the Private Property and the State (1884), proved even greedier, and supplanted
the collective property (L. H. Morgan, 1877) by the private property which they secured with
the establishment of the State. And, of course, the role of the son in this “fomented” economic
overgrowth underlies the transmission of the father’s wealth and property to his son through
inheritance. These purely economic and egotistic practices were backed up by the ready-made
Judeo-Christian beliefs which managed to confine the mother in her four walls thanks to her
innocent faith in religion.
Another challenging characteristic of the family romance bonding the father to the son
results from the neurotic and overwhelmingly anxious father who disregards and steps on the
social morality by grooming his child into sexual molestations, complemented, at times, by
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beatings, just like Walt Disney’s relationship with his supposedly caring father (American
Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry).
According to Shelley A. Haddock and Toni Shindler Zimmerman from the Colorado
State University, who co-authored a rather lengthy work entitled Images of couples and
families in Disney feature-length Animated Films, their subsequent study concluded that the
family romance as tackled by Disney only reveals and supports the already “gender-based
power differentials between the husband and wife, and the heroines who love princes at first
sight.” However, the study confirms that the Disney Corporation’s contribution in the
education of children and the rearing formation of the adults remains unequalled by any other
filmmaker or school up to the present day (ibid: 356).
The introduction of the heroines Snow White and Cinderella as daughters without
brothers appears relevant enough to Walt Disney’s daughters themselves. Relevance, still, is
to be pointed at the conception of these two characters’ tattered costumes full of dirt and ashes
which remind the audience of the outrageous Great Depression, and all the evils – the poverty,
the unemployment, and the lack of food – it caused. The longing of Snow White and
Cinderella as helpless daughters struggling against the injustices and lack of consideration
from the part of their stepmothers and the stepsisters (for Cinderella) is quite analogous to the
overall feeling of the American people fighting courageously and “hoping for that thrill of
true love that would get the heartbeat going again and lead the country out of the dark times”
(Maria Tatar, 1987).
Fairy Tales and Religion at the Rescue of “Brotherless” Daughters
The actual fact of not having a brother who symbolizes love and protection, especially
when the father is absent or dead, is not a reason to despair; for all the male presence around
us can be seen as brother figures, transforming thus loneliness and helplessness to a real
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family support and nurturance. Folklore and fairy tales are means for breaking abandonment
anxiety. Snow White starts her day standing by the wishing well formulating a wish to meet
somebody she would love. Cinderella, too, comforts herself by dreams – dreams which will of
course liberate her from the tyranny of her stepfamily. These scenes suggest implicitly the
need of an individual to have faith in God who responds to calls sooner or later (Durkheim:
religion as a social force).
Religion, according to Durkheim, helps the society members to resolve unsettled
matters which represent a hindrance to their socialization. Though he does not labor in terms
of religion equating society, he insists on the open-mindedness and the toleration of religion.
Consequently, the core of religion for him is simple as it is viewed as a social force; if it does
not help heal social ailments and worries, it cannot harm, as inferred in this statement of his:
“The religious can be social without everything social being religious” (E. Durkheim, 1913b:
8. In, Stephen P. Turner, 1993: 63).
The fairy tales as remodeled by Walt Disney and the overall impact they have on his
audiences have overtly given him credit for their revolutionizing through the technology of
the cinema. Additionally, as has already been noted earlier, Disney’s empire has expanded its
power to practices of consumerism, and to the founding of the book and the DVD publishing
industry, all of which center his interest about the civilizing process.
The complementarity observed between Disney’s film production, the printed, and the
recorded material throws more light on his socializing process all through the twentieth
century. In effect, Disney’s appropriation of the original Grimm Brothers’ fairy tale Hansel
and Gretel– a recorded, not animated version- reveals explicitly enough his enterprise
preconception of the “patriarchal symbolic order based on rigid notions of sexuality and
gender” (Jack Zipes , 2006: 194).
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Indeed, this is illustrated in the family romance between the male protagonist Hansel,
and his sister Gretel. This recorded version of the tale pertains to the rare works of the Disney
production where male and female protagonists perform together. All through this 19 minute
recorded version of the tale, Hansel and Gretel, Disney has proceeded to the deconstruction
of his formerly patriarchy-based views of the relationships between man and woman. The
issuing of iconoclastic images of the heroine Gretel has been carried out smoothly and
gradually lest this would shock the sensibilities of the Western society, making Disney’s
approach converge with that of the Grimm Brothers (Kevin Yee, 2013: 4).
Given the reproaches directed to Disney, and to a similar extent to the Grimm
Brothers, concerning their willingness to be in favor of the female stereotype in their filmic
and / or literary productions, substantial changes have ultimately forced their way, and are
discernible in their appropriation of the fairy tale, Hansel and Gretel. Among the reasons
which have led the two scholars to alter and sanitize the original plots of the stories –
especially the one under study – is the feeling of incongruity that they both have in relation to
the world views of their times (ibid: 4).
The brother-sister relationships which were formerly based on the social inferiority
and the helplessness of the female, and on the male superiority and domination seem to merge
into a new type of family bonds, this time, on more or less equitable affinities. The female,
who was made to look unable to rid herself of quotidian difficulties, and dependent on the
male’s ability to rescue her, appears to undergo a twofold metamorphosis: on the one hand, it
eradicates the socially-acknowledged assumption of the Damsel in Distress, as referred to in
this quotation:
When at last they awoke, it was already dark night. Gretel [the sister] began to
cry and said: “How are we to get out of the forest now?” But Hansel [the
brother] comforted her and said: “Just wait a little, until the moon has arisen,
and we will soon find the way” (Grimm, 2002: 67).
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And, on the other hand, this assumption is abrogated and supplanted by a more liberating and
emancipating one, as illustrated in this other quotation:
Gretel, however, ran like lightning to Hansel, opened his little stable, and
cried: Hansel, we are saved! The old witch is dead!” Then Hansel sprang like
a bird from its cage when the door is opened. How they did rejoice and
embrace each other, and dance about and kiss each other (ibid: 72).
Except for some slight discrepancies that might appear in this endeavor, Disney and
the Grimm Brothers have opened up new horizons to the tabooed brother-sister relationships.
This has, indubitably, given rise to a new set of configurations likely to alter the perspective
and meaning of socialization through both reading books and watching films. The perfect
handling of the art of subversion of the fairy tales – in their various forms – reflects the
possibility of positively changing the constraining social conditions and presenting the males
and the females as interdependent and complementary society members, rather than as
dominant and dominated ones (Jack Zipes, 2006: 187-188).
Disney’s ability of addressing this tale to the category of prepubescent children
invokes his eagerness to reinforce his civilizing process and socialization from the early age.
This approach fits the principles Emile Durkheim issued in his primary socialization where a
child is guided by the family members to acquire the rudiments of life within, first, the family,
and later on, their development in the wider social sphere which is the society where he
belongs.
The psychological interpretation Bruno Bettelheim makes of these fairy tales is that
they “give a symbolic representation of the psychic life of the children, the relationships with
their parents and rivals in an imaginary world.” These tales equally contribute to their
awareness of the progressive mastery of their psychic development, and provide them with
views encompassing love, friendship, and solidarity. According to him, too, the dependency
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of the brother and the sister, as in Hansel and Gretel, will unconsciously pave the way for
their initiation to pubertal and mature sexual life.
The brother-sister relationships thus featured by Disney in Hansel and Gretel are
meant to bring together again the family members who had been scattered as the result of the
severe economic depression of the 1930s and the 1940s. His objective underpins the
reconstruction of the basis of the modern American nuclear family under new principles of
equity and morality. He seeks to persuade his fellow countrymen to retrieve what they had
been dispossessed of: the family unity, the morals underlying this unity, as expressed in
Claude Lévi-Strauss’s work The Family (1968), and finally perfecting the family romance
among the family members, using the scientific and sociological findings (Freud’s and
Durkheim’s).
Bonding Hints to Preserve and Consolidate the Brother-Sister Relationships
It is of paramount importance to complement this sensitive family romance with
aspects the objective of which is to seal the bonding relationships between the brother and the
sister, and attain their consolidation through situations likely to safeguard the morality-based
unity of the nuclear family. The well-being of the nuclear family is not, and cannot be
restricted to the American or to the Western world; it is the concern of all human kind. With
the new technological developments in the fields of psychology and sociology, it becomes the
duty of all to prevent the disintegration of this family unit by providing it with appropriate
illustrations.
The brother-sister relationships have mostly been associated with the haunting dread
of incest even in families where the overall atmosphere appears to be healthy and free from
father-children misunderstandings. The possibility of incest, whether real or only
metaphorical, permanently lingers in the homes where there are brothers and sisters. It is
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sometimes just enough for any one of these children to yield to temptation for the irreparable
deed to happen. As Freud explicates in one of his letters to Fliess, dated June 20, 1898:
The young phantasy-builder can get rid of his forbidden degree of kinship
with one of his sisters if he finds himself sexually attracted by her (S. Freud,
1909: 204).
To reinforce this tragic temptation, Bernardin de Saint-Pierre warns his readers of the
risk of incest among their family members, as illustrated in his work, Paul et Virginie (1984):
Oh, my brother!... You ask me why I love you; but all things that have been
raised together love one other. Look at our birds; they are always together like
us. Yet Virginie senses a problem: the unfortunate girl felt troubled by the
caresses of her brother (1984: 158).
The dread of incest, it should be emphasized, is not only limited to the family level. In
fact, the wandering child – daughter and/or son – “at large” in search for a strayed family
member, usually the father, or solely for his or her own identity as an independent and a
capable society member may sometimes come across individuals who are actually very close
to him, and with whom sexual relations are forbidden. If friendship ties come to be made, he
or she falls in the trap of incest. This random incest which, to some extent, is not so blamable
as the aforementioned one, is referred to in L. A. Hunt’s work, The Family Romance of the
French Revolution:
The threat of incest, in this view, necessarily lurks behind every attempt of the
adventurer to establish social relationships, because he or she does not know
his or her true origins (L. A. Hunt, 1992: 35).
Though it has clearly been made explicit that incest is a crime on both the family and
the social levels - for the former it is disastrous for its honor; for the latter, it is a stark
violation to its regulating rules - some scholars still exhibit some willingness to mitigate the
deed as it was done without any premeditation. Seeing that the incest deed is of a paramount
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importance on both the family and society, and for the sake of awakening the audience’s
consciousness to avoid endless psychopathologies for their authors, it would not be
exaggerating to back this social fact with as many citations as necessary:
As in virtually all pre-Sade [the eighteenth century French author, Marquis de
Sade] novels about incest, the lovers are not guilty because they did not know
of their family relationship before the deed was committed (ibid: 35-36).
Because family romance is the essence of the family system which is bound to a strict
compliance with kinship organization, it would not be surprising that failure to respect these
family ties gives rise to suspicion and worry from the part of the audience. If we proceed to an
extrapolation of the Disney animated films where Snow White and Cinderella establish ties
and then marry the two princes, and then transpose these two fairy tale families to real life
ones, one would undoubtedly wonder if the relationship between the wives and the husbandsto-be would not be that of a brother and sister. The reason which fuels this assumption derives
from the fact that fatherless families – due to absence or death – and scattered family
members make lineage and paternity unknown through time, rendering, thus, brothers and
sisters, potential lovers, and possibly, fathers and mothers (ibid: 35).
Some Instances of Brother-Sister Relationships outside the Western World
The seemingly abnormal characteristics that still veil the brother-sister relationships
are, without any doubt, rooted in the primitive societies living in various parts of the world,
especially in the Pacific Islands. It is reported in Freud’s Totem and Taboo that in New
Caledonia, for instance, “if brother and sister meet, she flees into the bush and he passes
without turning his head towards her” (S. Freud, 1913: 15). In New Britain, too, “a sister
beginning with her marriage may no longer speak with her brother, nor does she utter his
name” (ibid: 16).
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The totem and taboo-based social organization has impacted so much the primitive
society that remnants of it are still discernible in the present day “civilized societies”. The
sister’s oversized marginalization is due to the fact that she is seen as a sex-symbol, or rather
merely a sex, not a human being. Evidences of this are numerous. In order to provide the
audience with ample instructive knowledge, it is imperative to sway back to anthropologists’
field works to retrace and comprehend the riddle-like kinship system, so fundamental for the
family construction.
According to Claude Lévi-Strauss, these kinship terms, as explicated in his seminal
work, The Family, are not presented as isolated words, but as integrated relationships which
regulate the family system as a whole. Dealing with polyandry proper, it is perhaps the oldest
social custom in the Western Pacific Islands, namely, the Toda tribe. Lévi-Strauss argues that,
due to the scarcity of women in that region – scarcity caused voluntarily by adult males
through the process of systematic female infanticide – brothers, for instance, shared one
woman during their marriage. And the mutually acknowledged father of the ensuing children
was the one who had performed the ceremony of marriage, the others being only active
participants in the family thus built. The outcome of the female offspring of this polyandrous
family is crystal-clear as the family members are faithful to their social and cultural heritage
which, in this case, consists of the physical elimination of the daughters (Claude Lévi-Strauss,
1968: 147).
The birth of a daughter has always been conceived of as the family jinx who embodies
the dread of incest and family dishonor. This conception of the daughter is, of course, not
unique to the Pacific Islanders, it is found in various regions of the world. In the Middle-East,
for example, historians and religious people have reported that Arab tribesmen proceeded
systematically to the burial of the daughters – alive. And this, they said, prompted the coming
of the Islam religion to end this savagery.
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In the course of the seventh century, the advent of the Islamic religion forbade the
practice of the female infanticide, rescuing, thus, the daughter from the ordeal of her savage
parents. Though daughters have retrieved their position in the Islamic society, they are still
viewed as a sex image, rather than human beings. Even presently, man is not allowed to shake
hands with a woman for fear of arousing his libidinal energies; and a sister cannot even greet
a brother with a kiss, and still less with a hug. This constitutes, “in the case of the taboo the
nucleus of the neurotic prohibition of the act of touching, whence we derive the
psychoanalytic term of touching phobia (S. Freud, 1913: 38).
Following the relative liberation of the moslem daughter, the Toda female was saved
and liberated by the British administration during the European wave of colonization in the
nineteenth century. The female infanticide was promptly prohibited, letting thus, freeway to
the restoration of the natural sex ratio. This allowed, a few decades later, the Toda tribesmen
to marry not just one woman, but many. The Toda family structure had shifted from
polyandrous to polygamous system of the family as of that date (Claude Lévi-Strauss, 1968:
147).
A Psycho-Sociological Awareness to Prevent Unhealthy Brother-Sister Relationships
The psychoanalytic preponderance of the dreadful incest and the phobia of touching
constitute primordial elements for a neurotic state. The libidinal energies of which the
pleasure of touching and sexual fascination for a forbidden kinship is integral part would,
indubitably, lead to disastrous consequences if the author fails in sublimating these drives and
impulses. The possible healthy way out of this overwhelming emotional trauma underlies the
ability of the individual to proceed to the repression, or better still, to the displacement of
these love longings towards substitute objects wherein existing tension will be discharged and
lessened, and will lead to delayed sexual gratification (S. Freud, 1913: 42).
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The
sociological
dimension
of
these
libidinal
energies
directed
towards
“inappropriate” society members result in the infringement of laws which regulate life and
social interactions among people within society. As anthropologists witness the existence of
boundaries in primitive societies, Freud, too, argues that civilization – which he qualifies as
repressive – imposes its laws on the individual’s sexuality: any individual whose defense
mechanisms have not helped him refrain from his wish of instant sexual gratification is
subject to authority repression (S. Freud, 1929). Equally important is E. Durkheim’s belief
that “all societies have boundaries and that the most precious bound is law: a society is a
bounded system”, where individuals have to behave accordingly to prevent anarchy and
anomie (E. Durkheim, 1896).
It is often commonplace to relate the brother-sister relationships, albeit partially, to the
actual consideration of the woman as a whole. The reliability of the family romance between
brother and sister is conditioned by the amount of sincerity and devotion man is likely to
accord to the woman as an equal partner; for, willing to perpetuate the exclusion of the
woman from family life and social life “would fatally undermine the principle of equality of
rights”, as argues the eighteenth century French philosopher, Nicolas de Condorcet:
Either no individual of the human race has true rights, or all of them have the
same ones; and he who votes against the rights of another, whatever his
religion, his color, or his sex, has from that moment abjured his own rights (L.
A. Hunt, 1992: 43).
Conclusion
As a conclusion, we can say that the surest way to thrive healthy relationships between
a brother and his sister lies in the conscious striving of the individual to fully understand the
essence of the kinship organization, and to bear in mind the incurrence of social and
psychological disasters due to our ignorance and stubbornness. Through all the images that
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have been discussed so far, it has become evident that the crux of the matter in this specific
family romance, as invoked in the works of Walt Disney, Emile Durkheim, Sigmund Freud,
and other scholars, revolves around the multi-dimensional principle that healthy brother-sister
relationships are delimited by boundaries that shall not be crossed.
No matter how the family life may appear as choking and problematic for the
individuals, the latter are much better off than those children who, for various reasons, find
themselves abandoned, homeless, and no one to care for them. Although the adventures of the
tale protagonists Hansel and Gretel do serve the purpose of the waifs and the strays, they do
not give in to fatalism, but fight courageously till they overcome their hardships. The lack of
parents, Disney maintains, should by no means constitute a hindrance for success in life, as
will be developed in the following chapter.
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Chapter Three
The Orphan Issue in Disney
Feature Films
The present chapter will be devoted to throwing light on the problematic posed at the
beginning of this work. The immense body of the literature and the cinematographic critiques
of the Disney fairy tales adaptations into full-length feature films have dealt with a great
variety of themes relevant of the psychology and the sociology of the individual as the
fundamental element of the modern American nuclear family. In fact what seems to be given
a flat attention in the almost entirety of Disney’s film productions in the first half of the
twentieth century is the theme of the social integration and adjustment of the orphans and the
maladjusted children in general. Considering the heroines of the animated films as only casual
orphans would be synonymous to denying the formative characteristics of the centuries-old
fairy tales.
I do believe, therefore, that my endeavor in handling such a multifaceted social
phenomenon as the orphan does not, and cannot consist in doing justice here in this relatively
short study, but I do intend to delve more into the subject for a better comprehension, and
especially think of ways of helping these poor orphans in adjusting themselves in society.
Facing the First Waves of Orphans in the American History
The release of Disney’s animated features Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937),
Pinocchio (1940), and Cinderella (1950), all symbolized the sanctity of the family (M. Eliot,
1993) which, at this very moment of its history, is experiencing the deadliest socio-economic
difficulties. As has already been noted, Disney’s choosing these specific fairy/folk tales is no
coincidence. Well before Disney’s birth, the American family has witnessed a number of
social catastrophes: the 1770s American Revolution and the 1860s American Civil War broke
thousands of homes, and drained greater numbers of orphans. As a consequence of these
tragedies, the American government, together with religious associations, has set, hand in
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hand, the establishment of both public and private institutions known as orphanages to house
the poor orphans and the needy children (Matthew A. Crenson, 1998: 17).
These charity-based orphanages which consisted, at first, of miscellaneous gatherings
of this deprived social category began their decline till they were completely supplanted,
round the turn of the century, by what the government authorities called the social welfare, as
illustrated by Matthew A. Crenson’s work, Building the Invisible Orphanage: A Prehistory
of the American Welfare System:
There was another strand in the relationship between the nineteenth
century charity and the twentieth century welfare. Welfare was shaped
by the evolution of the orphanage, and was born out of its decline
(1998: 28).
Disney’s handling of the Orphans in Fiction and in Reality
The accentuation of the already shaken American society by the new social tragedies
of the twentieth century, namely World War I, the Great Depression, the Dust Bowl, with its
Westward migration, and World War II, got Walt Disney to contribute – the best he can – to
the saving of not just the children but the adults as well; for even the latter had suffered a lot
from the loss of all that was precious and invaluable for them: their home, their children, and
their ability to sustain what remained.
The peculiarity in Disney’s animated films is the fact that he was not given to
denouncing or condemning the selfish and the insatiable appetites of the despotic bourgeois
capitalists in their no refrained rush for the accumulation of property (Engels, 1884), he has
only adopted his own philosophy to reduce the sufferings of his fellow country-men. This
philosophy consists, in fact, in creating moments, albeit ephemeral, for the American people
to relax and forget. Disney’s appropriation of the famous American saying: “a laugh a day,
keeps the doctor away”, has virtually served as the basis for all his cinematographic
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entertainment (Serguei Eisenstein, 2013: 20). Thanks to his anthropomorphous protagonists
and his exceedingly charming and lovable fairy tale heroines, Disney has succeeded, with no
difficulty whatsoever, in erasing the mournful traits from his audience’s faces and replacing
them with laughs.
Disney’s therapeutic strategy as regards his film orphans appears unique and efficient.
Disney characters appeal to the world of fantasy and imagination where humans merge with
animals in harmony. Disney’s enchanted world underpins the profundity of his philosophy
where animals are substituted to humans (ibid: 46). The dehumanization of the human beings
through the era of industrialization and modernization created anxiety and neurosis among the
population, and deprived them of all hope to make ends meet. Disney characters living in treetrunks, bushes, tiny dwellings, and nests is very pertinent and relevant of the real life of the
American people of the 1920s and the 1930s who found shelter in what they called
Hoovervilles and Hooverblankets (Russell Freedman, 2005: 23).
This strategy of making his audience aware of their socio-economic worries is quite
analogous to Sigmund Freud’s psychotherapeutic treatment of his anxious and neurotic
patients through the talking cure and the free association methods. The patients are made
aware of their submerging repressed wishes of infancy which they learn to understand in
order to reconstruct a healthier personality, so necessary for their social integration (Douglas
A. Bernstein, 2011: 513).
Within the same strategy, Disney retraces the origins of the orphans in relation to their
respective families. The family type Snow White is issued from consists in the heterosexual
coupling of man and woman (the king and the queen). The family members live under the
same roof just as defined by the anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss (1968) till the death of
the mother. After the remarriage of the father, Snow White feels abandoned, as her father is
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completely dominated by his second wife. Snow White is so young and so beautiful that her
stepmother cannot stand her:
Whenever she [stepmother] looked at Snow White, her heart heaved in her
breast, she hated the girl so much (Grimm Brothers, 2002: 215).
The same scene in Disney film version is expressed through the household chores
which her stepmother orders her to do: she is washing and cleaning the yard stone tiles. The
company of animals all around Snow White is meant to heighten the notion of work and it is
directed to the orphans who may be among the audience. Anyone assigned to a job, no matter
how hard it is, should not despair, but should instead accept it light-heartedly because work is
a noble activity which helps transform a dirty place to a clean and healthy one; and above all,
it helps concentrate on the work and forget for a moment our worries.
The notion of work in Disney’s philosophy is deep, but simple for his audiences to
grasp: work helps forge the personality, as suggested by the following:
People often asked me [Walt Disney] if I know the secret of success and if I
could tell others how to make their dreams come true”, he wrote, “my answer
is, you do it by working…the way you get started is to quit talking and begin
doing” (Steven Watts, 1997: 59).
This quotation, evidently, requires no comment as Disney had himself achieved his
professional success through constant doing, and doing non-stop. Disney learned from the
fairy tales his life lessons which consist in never giving in to despair, no matter how life
harshness persists. He is now urging his audience, especially the orphans, to behave equally.
The value of work is the individual’s safety valve; it is so fundamental in the shaping of selfhood that the philosopher Herbert A. Applebaum compared it to the “spine which structures
the way people live, and how they make contact with material and social reality, and how they
achieve status and self-esteem” (1992: ix).
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Moreover, the characteristic of orphan is not just limited to Disney’s female
characters, but extends even to male ones. The huntsman in Snow White and the Seven
Dwarfs, for instance, is another case of orphan: he seems to have no one with whom to share
his life, and has no home of his own. He is housed and fed by the Queen; this is why he is so
responsive to her orders and complies with her wishes without any comment. The murderous
mission he is charged to accomplish is very indicative of his unconditional submission, as
illustrated in this short conversation:
The Queen: Take her far into the forest where she can pick wildflowers.
The huntsman: Yes, Your Majesty.
Q: And there, my faithful huntsman, you will kill her.
H: But, Your Majesty, the little princess,
Q: Silence!
From the psychological point of view, the huntsman’s behavior vis-à-vis the Queen is
quite symbolic of a dependent person’s attitude and of the slave-master relationships. The
huntsman’s personality, according to Freud, seems to have been fixated at the anal phase of
his psychosexual development (Wayne Weiten, 2011). As a result, this has hindered him
from grasping the idea of independence and personal power. He has a somewhat negative
image of himself, and this is why he is an executioner. The scene of the planned murdering of
Snow White definitely stamps the huntsman not only as a submissive and servile creature, but
as a coward character: he is incapable of killing Snow White and begs her, instead, for
forgiveness. Hadn’t the huntsman been an orphan, he wouldn’t have behaved in such a
blamable way. The presentation of the huntsman as a troubled individual, living in the
Queen’s castle as a servant, suggests, undoubtedly, the difficulty of an abandoned child to
grow up healthily and have the opportunity to found a home and have offspring of his own.
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The terrified Snow White following the murdering threats is highlighted by Disney’s
genius as a film maker. The designing of an equally terrifying score to accompany the
despaired orphan through the forest, pushes the scene to its most dreadful and bearable limits.
The orphan’s helplessness is intensified by a sort of hallucination – everything in the forest
seems to reinforce the enmity of the stepmother. Snow White’s cries, the piercing noises of
the forest, and the hair-raising music created a sort of panic – a panic revealing much of the
state of mind of the lonely fleeing child/orphan. This panic is also intended to the audience to
get them to realize how miserable the life of an orphan can be.
Disney’s fairy tale adaptations into films are metaphoric of the government
orphanages where housing, care, and education are granted for “the destitute, neglected,
unsupervised, and orphaned children” (Matthew A. Crenson, 1998: 18). A highly important
social contribution in the establishment of these orphanages worthy of mention is the longterm policy of the government to invest in such infrastructures to create reliable and selfsufficient fellow-citizens (ibid: 22).
Public and Private Institutions, and the Orphans
The government’s awareness of the high risk of forming life-long assisted people, as
is the case in several other societies, and the authorities ruling the orphanages proceeded to
their [orphanages] gradual supplementing by other institutions like “probation, parole,
mainstreaming, foster homes, old-age pensions, and welfare” (ibid: 18). America is always
referred to as a country of high renown, dating from the Jacksonian era of the mid-nineteenth
century. The era is characterized by a socio-economic stability following the Revolution of
Independence. The abled people are encouraged by government credits to invest in
agriculture, and especially in industry which has reached full expansion in the Northwest of
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the country; the disabled, or rather the smoother term dependent people are taken in charge
by both public and private facilities for their housing, feeding, and education.
The American government has so heavily invested in the construction of a powerful
nation, and in giving all possible chances of success for needy people that the prevailing
conviction and the pragmatic vision of the population as a whole warn that “people who
fail[ed] to be self-supporting in a country as bountiful as America, must have some fault
within themselves” (ibid: 45). Broken arms, as the French singer Charles Aznavour says, are
not needed, and they are considered as “excess baggage”.
Specialists in sociology and psychology of the rank of Talcott parsons, Franz Boaz,
John Bowlby, Mary Ainsworth, and others, have offered their knowledge and services to
reconstruct a sounder and healthier society, where the dependent citizen will be accompanied
gradually, but surely, to reach his integration in the quick-evolving society. John Bowlby and
Mary Ainsworth, as has already been referred to, have elaborated invaluable measures as to
the handling of the orphans, and the abandoned children. The key of success and socialization
depends imperatively on the very onset of confiding an orphan to his or her surrogate father or
mother, or both.
According to Jeremy Holmes’s seminal work, John Bowlby and attachment theory
(1993), the attachment-based relationship between the care-giver and the care-seeker
underlies high and sincere emotional links that determine the conclusive assuagement or
dissuagement: the former case is indicative of the satisfaction of the attachment needs, the
latter, its opposite, in which case the substitute father or mother does not meet the
requirements of nurturance, and must therefore yield this position for a better qualified “older,
stronger, and wiser individual” (ibid, 1993).
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Moreover, the failure of attaining strong emotional bonds between the infant and the
surrogate parent is usually due to the lack of stability and cohesion in these relationships, as
illustrated in this quotation:
/…/ an inability to form deep relationships with others may result when the
succession of substitutes is too frequent (Susan Goldberg et al, 2000: 56).
Even if scientific findings in the field of child rearing, especially in the case of the
orphans, prove highly positive; their application and effect on society would be vain if the
government fails to back them up. Because of this, John Bowlby warns the society as a whole,
and the authorities in particular that: “if a community values its children, it must cherish their
parents” (J. Bowlby, 1951: 84).
The solutions and improvements brought about by scholars, in the field of sociology
and psychology, as regards the handling of the every delicate case of the orphans and the
needy children, and their future integration in the society, are various and substantial. The
nationwide campaigns of sensitizing the population, especially the fortunate families, and the
creation of the media broadcasting information concerning this social phenomenon have had
an unexpected echo.
The issuing of pamphlet-like articles from the part of the “Delineator” magazine, for
instance, with monthly, long and detailed lists of orphans with their photos and case histories,
has facilitated the task of the families interested in adopting and fostering children. A couple
of articles about The Child without a Home, and The Home without a Child, issued by the
magazine have gained success beyond all expectations. The magazine’s editor, Theodore
Dreiser, could hardly believe the extent of success of their “Child Rescue Campaign”:
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Can it be that the homes of America will open up wide enough to let all the
homeless children in? It looks as if they might” (Matthew A. Crenson, 1998:
10).
The result of the formative campaigns led the majority of the American families to
consider the concern of the disrupted ones their own. The government was fighting from one
side, the families from the other, and Walt Disney made it his challenge to relieve society
from this weighty burden.
What seems to be unique in Disney’s ingenuity of creating an enchanted world (James
B. Stewart, 2011) for the children, and therefore deserves to be called “Disneyian”, is his
amazing way in contributing in what D. Chandler named as the oral-written continuum
(1994). It has, indeed, taken decades and centuries for the writers like Charles Perrault, and
the Grimm Brothers – to mention only these – to collect from hundreds, if not thousands of
people the fairy and folk tales which belonged to the oral literature and culture. After so many
great efforts, the tale compilations could only reach the privileged and the literate portion of
the population: illiteracy, then, acted like a barrier between the voluminous books and the
people.
In a wink of an eye, Disney broke the barrier of illiteracy, and presented the formerly
inaccessible culture and literature on the tray to people, with no consideration of level of
instruction. Disney’s cinematographic – continuum – has definitely stepped on the weird
books and novels: the eyes and the ears are just enough to discover their ancestors’ cultural
heritage in a moment’s time.
Furthermore, Walt Disney is not the person to content of surpassing the written
literature and culture, but has equally proceeded – his own way – to help the audience realize
the seriousness of the orphan phenomenon, and, therefore gets them to roll up their sleeves to
resolve the problem.
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The Dwarfs’ Cottage: a Disneyian Orphanage
The notion of the welfare system, the probation, and the foster homes as initiated by
the American government authorities, together with private associations, appears to have
obtained a much more straightforward application. Disney’s devoting a rather long sequence
to the cottage of the dwarfs in his animated feature film, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
is twofold: on the one hand, Disney is presenting another type of the family with dead or
absent parents. The dwarfs in the cottage symbolize another aspect of individuals detached
from society. They are victims of the marginalization and the careless attitude of society,
compelling them to retreat to a faraway dwelling. Though the dwarfs have no one to care for
them and nurture them, “Doc”, the eldest dwarf, decides to take the lead and act as a
substitute father for the other members.
On the other hand, the dwarfs’ cottage acts just the same as the country orphanages,
asylums, and shelters for the strayed and the waifs. The abused and homeless Snow White
has finally found refuge in the cottage of the dwarfs who have offered their protection in
return for her care and nurturance, as shown in this [film] quotation:
And if you let me [Snow White] stay, I’ll keep house for you. I’ll wash and
sew and sweep and cook…
The life in the cottage has changed with the coming of Snow White. The morosity has
been supplanted by cheerfulness, and the new home atmosphere has awakened the mothering
instinct in Snow White. The discernible cleanliness and orderliness of the cottage is
indicative of real mother-children relationships. The harshness of her stepmother which has
transformed the orphaned daughter into a vulgar servant has turned out to be a blessing in
disguise, as Snow White is now running a home [the forest cottage] and responding to all the
vital needs of its members [the dwarfs].
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The vanishing of the frightful life of Snow White and the grimness of the dwarfs
represent the crux of Disney’s message to his audience: mutual help and support are the key
elements which lead to the triumph over the life hardships and the consequences of
abandonment and separation from parents. Snow White and the dwarfs have proved to the
audience that good family life is still possible in families where there are no fathers and no
mothers. And this is the message Keith M. Brooks wishes to transmit through his seminal
work, Disney, Pixar, and the Hidden Messages of Children’s films, (2010):
Indeed, the family is the key theme of various Disney films /…/it features
absent parents, but proves that parents are not necessary in order to have a
family (2010: 70).
Distinguishing Two Orphan Categories
Given the diversity and complexity of the orphan issue, one ought to draw the
distinction that lingers on this social phenomenon due to the binary opposition embedded in
its deep structure. The concept of orphan hood can be comprehended only if we proceed to its
vulgarization by means of the social theory based on structuralism. The latter does not limit
its function to defining and explicating concepts, but opposes one to another. The social
theme orphan, therefore, which embraces all sorts of abandoned and needy children may seem
plain to everybody; but in order to pretend to master its nuances and subtleties, it is
imperative that one defines and opposes the different constituents inherent to this global
entity, orphan.
Orphan children, according to social specialists, are those children whose parents –
one or both – are dead or lost, and have, therefore, no home and no one to care for them. This
first category of children must be opposed to the second one which refers to those children
whose parents are still alive, but for one reason or another have been expelled from their
homes. The commonly agreed reason for this phenomenon is related to boundless sexuality
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the outcome of which is the reproduction of illegitimate children. And, logically, the families
in question get rid of these children who are the source of dishonor for all the family
members. And the common practice for this usually lies in taking these children in babybaskets and leaving them in porches of other people’s homes, or especially in front of church
gates. Children pertaining to this second category are “labeled” as foundling children, to
distinguish them from those of the first category (Laura peters, 2000: 32). It ensues that this
situation gives rise to a severe social fact based on the discrepancy between the entities
orphan hood and illegitimacy which people, unconsciously, merge together.
As regards the negative connotation of the term illegitimate, it is important to mention
those child welfare advocates who have struggled against the government authorities for the
definitive removal of this derogatory term from birth certificates. They have also succeeded in
“inventing the amended birth certificate to shield children from public opprobrium of their
adoption” (Joseph M. Hawes, 2001: 26). To these people we express due gratitude, and urge
other societies to proceed accordingly.
Disney’s Cinderella and Freud’s The Uncanny
The skill with which Disney has conducted the theme of the orphan in his 1950
animated feature film Cinderella is worthy of mention as being the social application of the
Freudian psychoanalytic article The Uncanny (1919). Among the reasons which kept these
dependent children as eternal orphans, we can focus our attention on this new family type
where Cinderella lives with her stepmother, Lady Tremaine, and her two stepsisters, Drizella
and Anasthasia. Right after the death of her father, Cinderella has been made to feel that she is
indeed a stranger in her own family home. The stepfamily’s appropriation of the home of the
stepdaughter seems to have cast a spell on the whole family life. Though Lady Tremaine,
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Drizzela, and Anasthasia have both beauty and wealth to lead a joyous life in a gigantic
dwelling, the family atmosphere is just hardly bearable.
Despite the enslavement of Cinderella from the part of her stepmother and her
stepsisters, Cinderella’s presence appears to be disturbing the placidity of the family life. This
very case of Cinderella’s being dispossessed of her belongings and then turned into a servile
housemaid is only another proof that the fairy tales told in the Western cultures equate, to a
large extent, with those told in the rest of the world: they both deal with societal conflicts and
attempt to bring a remedy for them; hence Cinderella’s social situation is not unique. A
female orphan has always been the scapegoat of the family which normally ought to provide
care and love. With reference to Freud’s psychoanalytic metalanguage, Cinderella embodies
the spirit of the unheimlich, which, according to Freud, creates the feeling of not belonging to
the home, heim, and is, therefore, strange and unfamiliar (Quoted In Laura Peters, 2000:19).
The situation of the uncanny seems settled within the heroine’s stepfamily. The inclusion of
Cinderella among the members of her step family appears more like an intruder than an
orphaned child who does need their affection and care to find a way out of her miserable life.
The repulsive attitude of the family members is indicative of the case of the uncanny where
novelty merges with fear and anxiety (ibid: 19).
Another not less convincing interpretative consideration comes from the part of
Jacques Derrida whose deconstruction theory throws more light to unravel the mystery of the
orphaned children:
The unheimlich orphan comes to embody the foreigner [the outsider]; a
dangerous supplement that comes to disturb the structure of home, identity,
nation, and discourse (Derrida, 1976: 149; in L. Peters, 2000: 19).
The assimilation of the orphaned children to the notion of supplement, and an adjunct
subaltern instance is relevant of the unwelcome intrusion in these foster homes. Accordingly
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an orphan is an exterior and an alien individual who has been added to an already existing
family with her proper offspring (ibid: 19).
The unheimlich Cinderella, in effect, constitutes a dreadful hindrance for her family to
achieve her objectives. The stepmother’s as well as the sisters’ awareness of the dirt and
cinders concealing the beauty of Cinderella jeopardizes their sexuality at this very moment of
their being invited to the King’s ceremony, wherein the prince is choosing his wife-to-be.
Isn’t this situation a convincing justification for repressing Cinderella, and reducing her to the
hardest household chores?
Transforming Fairy Tales to Address New Concerns to New Audiences
Although Disney is referred to as a proponent of the oral-written continuum, it must be
noted that the discrepancies discernible in this formative mission have been necessary to meet
his cinematic requirements, for, adapting written literature into animated films, or simply
films, demands these changes. As Jacques Zipes argues in his referential work, The
Enchanted Screen: The Unknown History of Fairy-tale Films (2006), it is just not possible
to remain faithful to an original oral or written hypotext simply because no one can pretend to
reproduce exactly the thought of another individual given the nuances and subtleties it
embodies. Besides, the quintessence of adapting is not just for the sake of adapting; on the
contrary, the adapter’s purpose in appropriating some other author’s work is definite: the rehandling of an existing work is meant to “re-new, re-create, and re-present a commonly
shared tale [or any subject matter] from one’s own perspective” (2006: 11).
Knowing that Disney’s adaptations are first and foremost destined to children, and to a
lesser extent to the whole American community struggling against their harsh fate in this part
of the century, it is more than necessary to proceed to a better refinement, albeit partially, of
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the story content to supplant the nationwide misery and contempt by joy and hope to combat
the life morosity. Disney’s transformations, therefore, are within scholarly limits.
The Grimm Brothers’ original version of Cinderella has, at no time, mentioned the
death of the heroine’s father; on the contrary, he is rather depicted as being closer to his
stepdaughters, Drizzella and Anasthasia, than to his real biological daughter, Cinderella. As
this quotation indicates:
It happened that the father was once going to the fair and he asked his two
stepdaughters what he should bring back for them. “Beautiful dresses”, said
one, “pearls and jewels”, said the second. “And you Cinderella”, said he,
“what will you have?” (Grimm Brothers, 2002: 98).
The first change Disney has made is to adapt this fairy tale family to the actual modern
American nuclear family by “killing” Cinderella’s father, as many of the family fathers have
been killed, or have been made to abandon their homes by the social tragedies of the
beginning of the twentieth century. The second one is about replacing the better-off dead
father by a god mother who comes to the rescue of Cinderella, and helps her accomplish her
wishes and make her dreams true. As Cinderella has actually been ripped off of all her homely
rights and relegated to servility, she comforts herself by saying: “Well, there is one thing: they
cannot stop me dreaming” (Disney’s version).
The compliance of Disney’s depiction of orphans in his adapted stories with the real
social life in America has brought the audience to an unconscious identification with the film
protagonists as a step towards the resolution of their critical living conditions (Bruno
Bettelheim, 1989). Moreover, another gist embodied in Disney’s work is that relative to the
teachings of rudimentary principles which help the individual attain his socialization and
integration within society. Although Disney’s cinematic world is imaginary and equally
enchanted, having one’s wishes and dreams fulfilled, is, by no means, enough to consider
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oneself as freed and liberated. These wish fulfillments, as referred to in the 1940 animated
film Pinocchio are always subject to prerequisite conditions. The wooden puppet which sees
its wishes come true, finds ultimately itself burdened with a host of prerogatives to really
become a real living boy.
The primary ambivalent story plot in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, which
revolves about praising the good and punishing the evil, has developed into a much more
complex “conflict between two opposing father figures, the ‘good’ puppet maker Geppetto
and the ‘evil’ puppeteer Stromboli in the film Pinocchio. The plot involves the intervention of
the Blue Fairy who grants Pinocchio’s wish, but only partially (M. Eliot, 1993: 123).
Pinocchio, the boy-to-be, is a half-real individual as he is just a body without soul.
And it is this which represents the crux of the story: what sensible and socially-accepted deeds
Pinocchio is expected to do in order to appropriate soul, so necessary for wringing meaning
out of his life. The ability of the individual, mainly the orphan, to resist giving in to escapism
and life temptations constitutes the strikingly didactic aspects of Disney’s formative mission
(ibid: 124).
The vivid concern of Disney in re-establishing social virtues among his disrupted and
even corrupted society has made him venture in almost illegal practices of adapting the
nineteenth century Italian fable Pinocchio to fit his society needs. He definitely thinks this
“adventure” is worthy of its risk, as Marc Eliot witnesses in this quotation:
Indeed, Disney made so many changes to the original fable the author’s
surviving nephew, Paolo Lorenzini, tried and failed to sue the studio for libel
(ibid: 124).
Disney’s life has so much been impacted by the maltreatment within his family, and
the pitiless aspects of the work circumstances in his Burbank Studio, that all his
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contemporaries believe that the presentation of the animated film Pinocchio is the
representation of Disney’s own life with the difference that he hasn’t had the chance to be
rescued by the Blue Fairy (ibid: 124).
Sex and Gender Versus Disney’s Orphaned Woman
An aspect of Disney animated movies which seems to be misinterpreted – not to say
misunderstood – lies in the critics’ consideration that the gender images contained in them
convey the perpetuation of the female stereotyping (R. L. Tanner, 2003: 357). The reproach
thus made to Disney results from overlooking his priority themes schedule. Of the top priority
themes, therefore set by Disney, we can insist on the fact that this female protagonist, whom
feminists consider as mere sex and gender, is primarily a human being whose parents are
either dead or absent in these difficult times of the first half of the twentieth century America.
When the female protagonist, according to Disney, has retrieved what she has been
dispossessed of, and resolved her abandonment and separation anxiety, then, and only then,
can she pretend to struggle for her rights as a woman equal to man. The present priority is,
above all, survival.
The Orphan’s Future Conditioned by Fostering Methods
Disney views the social fact of the orphaned children as an overwhelming handicap
which engenders a real hindrance to their emancipation and adjustment in the overall social
system. Depending on the way this social fact is handled, its outcome can be either beneficent
or maleficent to society as a whole, as illustrated in this citation:
The orphan class may turn out among the very best, if properly educated. If
neglected, they will, with tolerable certainty, become the worst (L. Peters,
2000: 9).
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The social points Laura Peters has raised in her exceptional work entitled, Orphan
Texts: Victorian orphans, culture, and Empire (2000), are not merely directed to the
government or to the large-scale orphan institution authorities, but to all those families with or
without children who volunteer to bring their assistance and fostering services to this deprived
portion of society. These points must only be viewed as complementary, not supplementary,
to the advice and directives brought forth by the scholars in the fields of sociology and
psychology, such as E. Durkheim, Talcott Parsons, Sigmund Freud, and the authors of the
Attachment Theory, John Bowlby, and Mary Ainsworth.
The notion commonly termed as dissuagement to describe the dissatisfaction of the
attachment process needs to be investigated on. The fact that some orphaned children do get
attached to their surrogate family members, and are therefore “able to use the attached figure
as a secure base for the exploration of the environment and as a safe haven to which to return
for reassurance, raised the question of the inability of the other foster families which fail in
this mission (Susan Goldberg et al. 2006: 63).
Failure to really scrutinize deeply the socio-cultural background of the surrogate
fathers and mothers together with their psychological predispositions to pretend to give love,
care, and education to these orphaned children would, indubitably lead to these abominable
evils that we know only too well.
Most of the recurring problems orphaned children face in their fostering families from
infancy till the end of their pubertal development are various in form and in gravity. It starts
with enslaving the orphan, especially the girls, to beatings whenever the surrogate father or
mother feels thwarted, and finishes with sexual abuse. It is true that the first two behaviors
can mark the infant – boy or girl –for a certain time in his/her life and sink later on in
oblivion; though, according to Freud, no such forgetting is possible: they are only repressed
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into the unconscious. As regards the third behavior – sexual abuse - it marks the individual for
life. If it is not clearly denounced, and then treated by qualified psychoanalytic therapists, it
will always haunt the spirit of the abused, and it will force its way to the conscious, causing
serious damages in the personality of the victim. Pretending that an individual is capable of
erasing unwanted souvenirs from his memory is just like pretending that a dry river bed will
remain eternally dry. Some day will come when it floods and swallows everything in its way.
This is the image we can have of repression when the personality of an individual is
overwhelmed (Freud’s psychoanalysis).
The reason why orphans and all young people in general, are prone to sexual
molestations is due to the fact that we, by nature, like to feel considered and loved, as Evan
Stark witnesses in his work, Everything you Need to Know about Child Abuse (1988):
Everyone wants to be loved. We want our parents to cherish us, and our
teachers to recognize our work. We want our friends to like us. Affection and
love can be expressed in many different ways (1988: 6).
Being loved and appreciated is not evil in itself. However, it is the persistence of the adult
male author who takes advantage of the child’s innocence that leads to the fatal outcome of
the sexual molestation, aided by the strategy of grooming.
Among the lessons Evan Stark issues to awake children’s awareness to avoid being
sexually abused, we can mention situations like: “when someone touches or treats you in a
sexual way that makes you feel uncomfortable, it’s called sexual abuse; “don’t be afraid of
saying no and cry”; and as a general rule, some of the good people can do bad things (1988:
25). The endlessness of this trend takes dreadful dimensions as a result of a study conducted
by the Journal of Traumatic Stress. It found that “80% of perpetrators were themselves
abused” (Ebony Magazine, Jun.2003: 128).
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For a safer fostering and adoption, it is, indeed, primordial to demand of the families
their detailed case histories as they demand those of the orphans. Proceeding to take other
people’s children has always been “a factor in human social existence”, as declares Lori
Askeland in her referential work, Children and Youth in Adoption, orphanages, and foster
care (2006).
Though the United States has always based her practices of adoption and fostering on
the principles of the “ best interests of the child” (ibid: iv), this has, unfortunately, been
incapable of preventing ailments as those mentioned above, especially where extended
families outnumber the limited nuclear families. The nineteenth century orphanage and the
fostering practices were, without any doubt, carried out in conformity with “the social
contract existing between the placing agency and the receiving family”. It was also
commonplace that Christian Charity interfered with the overall supervision of these
procedures (ibid: IV).
Reversely and, without any doubt, the then prerequisite criteria – if there were any at
all – were not thought of thoroughly. As Lori Askeland reported in her above-mentioned
work, “those asking for a child were not required to explain their motives” (ibid: IV).
Consequently, it is only common sense to review the principles of adoption and fostering
from top to bottom, and reinforce them with the new scientific methods, namely through
Freudian psychology, to dissect the very personality of any society member expressing a wish
to adopt or foster a child. The traditional way of choosing a care-giver through his physical
appearance, no matter how opulent, educated, and sociable, has proved unsatisfactory. As
Evan Stark put it, good people can do bad things. It has become an imperative necessity to
put a care-giver, man or woman, under strict scrutiny to analyze the real personality, as a
good-looking individual can hide a monster within him.
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Placing an orphaned child in a foster home is not synonymous of resolution of the
problem of the care-seeker. It becomes the duty of the relevant authorities to proceed to
regular checks/visits to the foster homes to provide their respective institutions with actual
child development reports. The resulting healthy evolution of the reared child is indicative of
the positive caring methods being used by the surrogate family. Another incentive measure to
help this delicate task of caring for these “other people’s children” would be granting a sort of
financial tip, albeit symbolic, to these families, especially in cases of handicap or mental
disability of the child (Joseph M. Hawes, 2001: 57).
Ultimately, recent assessment results have proved that many infants who have
followed these attachments measures and others, or have lived in a care-giving environment
have succeeded in regaining a positive self-image of themselves and expecting positive
reactions from others. A brief account of a survey conducted by the ministry of civil affairs in
Russia declares that out of 100 orphans leaving orphanage institutions at the age of sixteen,
40% remain homeless, 20% turn to crime, and 10% commit suicide. It looks quite evident that
the 30% of the saved orphans represent a relatively successful rescue operation. The efforts of
the different scientific figures involved are not vain. And this is only the beginning.
Conclusion
I do wish this lengthy chapter I have produced bears some insight into this topic which
requires skillful handling. I do wish equally that the modest propositions I have suggested
would, albeit a little, contribute to the resolution of the problematic which, in fact, is the
reason for the production of this work. Sensitizing people about society ailments such as this
is not an easy task. Even though there is a host of literature, some of which denounces the
way orphaned children are treated, others merely depict them as fictitious protagonists to
whom specific roles have been attributed.
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The emergence of a great deal of interested scholars contributing in the treatment of
this deprived portion of society has demystified this social phenomenon, but still the results
are far from being satisfactory.
It is true that what has been done in this field is not negligible, but, who, better than
Walt Disney, could possibly be nearest to these orphans? It would not be exaggerating to
affirm that it is only given to the orphans – and, at least, to those who feel like them – to
really realize the profundity of their sufferings and the burden of humiliation that weighs on
their shoulders. Disney has been through this all. Disney has spent his entire life searching for
his identity. Research has still not stopped even after his death:
In 1967, one year after Walt Disney’s death, still another contingent of
investigators came to Mojacar [Spain] in search of any documents to link
Isabelle Zamora Ascensio to Walt Disney (M. Eliot, 1993: 167).
Disney’s worldwide success in getting his audiences to identify themselves with the
orphaned protagonists in fairy tale adaptations is only relevant of his just appreciation and
consideration of these little citizens who are usually qualified with an endless list of “less”
adjectives: fatherless, motherless, homeless, helpless, etc. The secret of the survival of the
fairy tale over these centuries lies in the teachings of the successive generations. The ever
good deed of the Grimm Brothers, Charles Perrault – to mention only these – in
immortalizing the fairy/folk tales, and the social remedies they embrace, is complemented by
the ingenuity of Walt Disney through his adapting them into animated films. The
geographically-limited fairy/folktales before the turn of the twentieth century have now
become the property of all the humans, and they have been made accessible for the literate
and the illiterate alike.
My other wish would be that the following verses with which I close this conclusion
would bring some relief to all the orphans:
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Say not he has no father’s love;
There is one who dwells in heaven above,
Whose love is love beyond all others,
Stronger than the love of mothers,
Father’s and mother’s may forsake,
But his will never, never break.
(Smith, 1842: 9. In L. Peters, 2000: 34).
103
General Conclusion
The most marvelous fact, with which to conclude this paper, I should say, is,
indubitably, the miraculous survival of the fairy tales through the very long span of time.
They have belonged to very remote civilizations, and they have been transmitted orally from
one generation to another without any major alterations. Their perpetuation is no secret at
least until the seventeenth century onwards when Charles Perrault and the Grimm Brothers,
among others, started to collect the tales from different people from different regions in
Europe. The sole convincing reason for this longevity is the nature of the message the
innumerable generations have not refrained from transmitting: the formative and instructive
mission intended to educate and socialize the primitive communities. The point for the then
peasants was that the fairy tales always conveyed morals as to how to behave with the other
community members, and overall advice necessary to awaken their awareness as to how to
struggle in life to overcome hardships. The fairy tales have contributed in the reinforcing of
the peasant wisdom which says that “you’re never really safe, so be on your guard at all
times”.
Even more importantly, the survival of the fairy tales has, as of the emergence of the
above mentioned scholars, been immortalized through the process of the oral-written
continuum. This process has, of course, not consisted in following the fairy tales verbatim; on
the contrary, they have introduced some transformations as a result of their appropriation of
the story, and its interpretation from their own perspective.
The emergence of Walt Disney in the twentieth century has carried on the continuum
process from written material to audio-visual entertainment: he, too, like his predecessors,
proceeded to changes to suit his objective of helping the distressed American population find
a way out of the successive tragedies they have experienced.
104
The fairy tales have never been intended solely for children, they have pertained to the
collective cultural heritage of the primitive societies, and adults have used them to teach
morals and behaviors to children and adults alike. It is only around the turn of the twentieth
century that the tendency has shifted towards children, especially with the advent of the
audio-visual facilities and Disney’s creation of the animated films and cartoons. This said, it
should not be given to understand that the comic representation of the theme core undermines
the universally-shared characteristic of reflecting the societal views and mores. Disney fairy
tales adaptations which seem to be directed solely to children entertainment give, in fact,
more vigor to the primacy of socialization and integration of the American people.
Subsequent to the release of the Disney’s fairy tales adaptations, namely Snow White
and the Seven Dwarfs, Pinocchio, and Cinderella, a host of intellectuals have made it their
challenge to contribute in the reconstruction of the American society both socially and
psychologically. Reuniting the dispersed family members and patching the wounds caused by
the socio-economic panic of the 1920s and the 1930s was not an easy task.
The scientific findings of Sigmund Freud in the field of psychoanalysis proved
salutary to the depressed American youths. The mapping of the human’s mind and the
explicating of the functions of the various constituents of the personality has helped the
American citizen to rebuild a healthier and a sounder self. The primal effects of psychology
on the American citizen have increased and quickened the woman’s emancipation which led
to the liberation of the family romance in the modern American nuclear family from the
outdated and constraining Judeo-Christian assumptions and canons. The ensuing banalization
of the oedipal complex has elucidated the mysteries of the father-children relationships as
well as the mother-children relationships. For the purpose of forming a healthy society and a
healthy individual, psychologists find it necessary to inculcate the mastery of the individual’s
libidinal drives and impulses to help him solve his stress and anxiety through a set of defense
105
mechanisms which underlie the imperatives of civilization. Among these mechanisms we can
mention [the ones developed in this dissertation] repression, denial, displacement,
sublimation, and delayed sexual gratification. And failure to take heed of these features, the
individual becomes subject to intense neurosis and anxiety and is likely to encounter severe
repression from the part of society conventions and constraints (Quoted in Nathan Driskell,
2009).
Because fairy tales embody psychological symbols and metaphors, psychotherapists
have always referred to them while treating their patients. Overall, psychologists insist that
reading and/or watching fairy tales is important to de-escalate family or society conflicts, and
to depressurize the interior anxieties. The happy endings of the fairy tales teach the
reader/viewer not to give in to despair and escapism, but fight, and always fight until the
worries are overcome (Bruno Bettelheim, 1989).
Equally important is the introduction of the contents of Claude Lévi-Strauss’s social
anthropology. The attempt to explicate and define the family on the principles of the kinship
network has thrown more light on the family constitution and construction. The
epistemological distinction between family terms such as father versus mother, brother
versus sister, and maternal uncle versus nephew, all help unravel the riddle-like origins of
the family. These kinship terms are not isolated, but integrated relationships which regulate
the family system as a whole, and act for the prevention of the dread of incest (Samuel
Rapport et al., 1968).
Furthermore, the results of the anthropological field work highlight the evolutionary
process of cultures and explain the diversity among the peoples of the world. The sociocultural evolution from a simple primitive state to a more complex civilized one has logically
led to the evolution of the overall family system. Our present family system is no better or no
106
worse than the old ones they are only, as Emile Durkheim says, different (Emile Durkheim,
1912: 322).
As regards the Durkheimian sociology as introduced to America by sociologists of the
rank of Franz Boaz and Talcott Parsons, its role reinforces and complements the
psychological approach whose aim, as has already been noted, is to create a new and modern
American citizen. This psycho-sociological complementarity is meant to first rescue the
disrupted American citizen, and then set him on the new track leading to modernity and
power.
Given the immense expanse of the Durkheimian sociology, it would be pretentious to
be willing to reduce it to just a few points. At any account, points which appear, at least to
me, to embody the crux of his entire social theory are the social facts which form the
collective consciousness based on different points such as ideas, values, norms, beliefs, and
ideologies. These represent invaluable assets in the social structure, and are “internalized in
the individual members of the culture” (Quoted in Elwell Frank W., 2003). The two other
inseparable points are the primary and the secondary socializations of the society members;
they can be compared to the Freudian psychosexual development stages the success of which
is primordial for the future life of the individual. Finally, the social aspect which reveals that
the society is drifting away from the sound track is the notion of anomie. It is rather defined as
a deregulation (in French: dérèglement) of the State’s institutions which creates a deadlock
between the State and the people. In other words, it is the “inability of the society to impose
external limits on the potentially limitless passions and appetites that characterize human
nature in general” (ibid. 2003).
This social anomie is identical to the psychoanalytic imbalance between the
constituents of the individual’s personality. Both Durkheim and Freud are concerned with the
107
healthy relationships of the individuals with civilization. For the former, civilization is too
demanding, but cannot stop developing; for the latter, it is too repressive, but refuses to reject
it.
Now comes the severe economic situation which, according to Marx and Engels’s
historical materialism, has been caused by the bourgeois middle class capitalists in their
relentless rush towards property accumulation. The new consumption philosophy and the
emergence of the new type of the modern women, the flappers, have led the ordinary
American citizen to join this new spirit of thinking materially in order to become rich quickly
without making efforts. The resulting get quick rich formula proved fatal to the whole
society. The whole nation was made to kneel because of insatiable appetites of unscrupulous
capitalists. The late 1920s and the almost entirety of the 1930s were nightmarish for the
majority of the American population, especially when they were intensified with the natural
catastrophe, the Dust Bowl.
As the world-famous adage says, ”one man’s meat is another man’s poison”, it was
only after the declaration of the Second World War that the American disarray and misfortune
were coming to an end. It was indeed the high demands of armament and food for the allied
European forces, and the fear of the Americans to submit the same fate of invasion from the
part of the Hitlerian Nazism that pushed them to double their efforts to flood the European
markets with necessary merchandise.
Logically, therefore, the sum total of the internal as well as the external conflicts
experienced by the American people has, undoubtedly, resulted in millions of orphans who
constitute an immense burden to the whole society. However, the grandiose social project the
American society has planned to attain, as of the end of World War I, underpins the drastic
measures the government has undertaken to resolve this social phenomenon. The joint
108
investments of the public and the private enterprises in this field embracing education,
feeding, housing, and most of all, making a self-sufficient citizen, not a life-long assisted one.
And here lies the value of the American individualism which has made of America what it is
today from various perspectives (social, economic, political…).
Another not less important social phenomenon is that related to cultural evolutionism
which underpins the multifarious changes within society. The known and praiseworthy
American nuclear family which, at one time, has supplanted the extended family, is now, at its
turn, being gradually supplanted by other new types of families which are even questioning
the very foundation of the heterosexual coupling. A great deal of Western countries is
yielding little by little to the demands of the homosexuals to found families, and many of
these have actually compelled the authorities to legalize their marriages. As a matter of fact,
laboratory experiments have shown that one does not need to be a heterosexual couple to be
able to “produce” babies. Additionally, the in-vitro fertilizations have demystified the malefemale couplings: the babies who were considered as God-given gifts have now become
accessible without sexuality at all. All one needs is money. With money man can become
woman, a woman a man.
Although this looks troubling and upsetting, we have to take it easy. As Benjamin N.
Cardozo said, “Nothing is stable. Nothing absolute. All is fluid and changeable. There is an
endless ‘becoming’”. Man is just evolving as his ancestors did in the past, and family is just
getting different, not worse not better (1921: 28).
As a happy ending to the present dissertation, I would like to introduce this optimistic
reflection on the theme of the orphan. As it is said, famous men are usually the product of
unhappy childhood. Isn’t it encouraging pursuing the way paved by eminent personalities in
109
their quest of improving mankind when we know that people who were orphans have become
very successful in life?
* Nelson Mandela and Andrew Jackson have respectively become
presidents of South Africa and the United States of America.
* The Grimm Brothers have become the founders and initiators of the
dictionary of the German language.
* Walt Elias Disney has become the world’s most famous cinema artist.
* And ……
110
Selected Bibliography
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117
Résumé
Le sujet de ce travail de recherche porte sur la fonction majeure des
adaptations cinématographiques de Walt Disney des contes de fées dans la
première moitié du 20e siècle. L’un des points focaux des longs métrages de
Disney, est qu’il vise à adapter la famille américaine pour la faire intégrer
dans les changements profonds de la société américaine. Ces ajustements
sociaux sont effectués à travers les relations existantes entre les parents et les
enfants en se référant à une approche psychosociologique inspirée notamment
de Sigmund Freud et Emile Durkheim. S’appuyant sur la fonction didactique
des contes de fées, comme suggéré par Bruno Bettelheim, Disney aide les
spectateurs à se rendre compte comment les conflits à l’intérieur de la famille
pourraient être résolus. Par ailleurs, les adaptations de Walt Disney utilisent la
même stratégie éducative pour résoudre les problèmes de la famille
américaine à un moment où la majorité de la société américaine traversait
l’une des plus dures crises culturelles, socioéconomiques et politiques. D’où
l’hypothèse que même si Walt Disney est un cinéaste, sa fonction n’est pas
différente de celle de Freud et de Durkheim. La façon avec laquelle Disney a
tenté de promouvoir la société américaine dans son évolution constante est
digne de celle d’un psychanalyste et d’un sociologue.
118
A N N E X O N E - DVD S n a p s h o t s .
Snapshots from disney full-length
feature films:
1- Snow White and the Seven
Dwarfs:
a- Picture one:
Showing the magic
mirror and the overall
Disney’s magic and
enchanted world.
b- Picture two:
Showing dwarfs giving
shelter to Snow White
after she had abandoned
home / Snow White
nurturing – in return – the
orphaned dwarfs, creating
thus the Disneyian
orphanage.
Parentless children CAN
found a family.
c- Picture three:
Animals merging with
humans to create disney’s
fantastic world /all
celebrate love kiss that
resuscitated the heroine.
Happy ending:
Good doers rewarded;
evil doers punished.
119
A N N E X TWO - DVD s n a p s h o t s
2- C i n d e r e l l a
a- Picture one:
*After her father’s death,
Cinderella is dispossessed
of her belongings, and is
then turned to a servile
house maid.
b- Picture two :
*An image of Campbell’s
Hero’s Journey:
*Cinderella ran away from
home hardships and sat
sobbing on a forest bench.
*she found herself still
sobbing, but on her fairy godmother’s lap who came for
her rescue and liberation.
c- Picture three :
An image of Freud’s The Uncanny
*Cinderella became a stranger
in her home.
*She represented a hindrance
for her stepparents’ sexuality.
*The stepmother, lady
Tremaine, locked the
umheimlich Cinderella up in
her room as she disturbs the
structure of home.
120
A N N E X THREE - DVD S n a p s h o t s
3- P i n o c c h i o
Picture one :
*Fairy tales’ recurring
appeal to cosmogony
for wish fulfillment.
*Childless Geppetto
wishing his wood
puppet to become a
real boy.
Picture two :
*Disney complementing
former « good/evil » aspect of
fairy tales with conflicting
father figures.
*Antagonistic fatherly
behaviors between Geppetto
[father of Pinocchio, boy-tobe] and Stromboli [the theater
owner].
Picture three :
*Pinocchio surprised at
watching himself becoming a
real boy.
*Appropriation of soul resulting
from building conscience as
demanded by the Blue Fairy.
*Wish fulfillment is conditioned
by acquisition of humane
aspects.
121
ANNEX
FOUR - Audio CD / Pictures about theme core:
4- Hansel and Gretel
Picture one :
*Motherless Hansel and Gr etel
made to abandon home.
*Poverty drove stepmother neurotic
to behave likewise.
Picture two :
*Hansel locked up in a shack in the
deep forest.
*Gretel pushing the witch into the
hot oven.
*Deconstructing “Damsel in
Distress”: Gretel – the girl rescuing
Hansel – the boy.
Picture three :
*Hansel and Gretel overcoming the
wicked witch.
*The death of the witch metaphoric
of the death of the heartless
stepmother.
*Hansel and Gretel reintegrating
home, and re-conquering their
father.
122