Critical Disney

Blockseminar:
28.10. 3.DS (11:10-12:40); Raum: BSS/117
04.11. 3.DS–5.DS (11:10-16:20) ); Raum: BSS/117
05.11. 3.DS-5.DS (11:10-16:20) ); Raum: HSZ/208
18.11. 3.DS-5.DS (11:10-16:20) ); Raum: W48/101
19.11. 3.DS–5.DS (11:10-16:20) ); Raum: HSZ/208

Critical Disney

It is almost impossible to clearly delineate what we mean when we say “Disney” – the iconic signature that might appear in our mind’s eye is evocative of so many things all at once: the man, Walt, an embodiment of the American dream with his ‘from-rags-to riches’ story; the Studios that have produced many generations worth of cultural imagination; theme parks that claim to be “the happiest places on earth”; a canon of popular films with immense mass cultural impact; an ideology that has global reach. Disney’s mythology and cultural capital is dependent on and imbricated in all these manifestations and more, establishing “Disney” almost as a metonym for “America”.

Disney is especially associated with adapting well-known fairy tales and developing their own “Disney version.” But rather than contributing to a diverse and ever-growing body of fairy tale adaptations, many critics feel that Disney films dominate the form in such a way that their renditions take over and rewrite the source text and any other versions. Considering their global reach of audiences, this has immense mass cultural implications. In this seminar, we will take a look at a range of Disney movies across time from the earlier classics to more contemporary reimaginings and explore their ideological charge, reading them both against earlier versions as well as against a selection of key texts in critical theory: How do these Disney films imagine gender roles, how do they represent race? How do they use aesthetics and music to guide our emotional experiences? What imaginative spaces do they open up, and what do they make us hope and dream for? And how have these things changed over time?

DISCLAIMER: Please be aware that this course is a compact course and is structured mainly as four days of intensive class discussion. Students are therefore required to prepare for these sessions with a high degree of self-guided discipline and time management. In-depth knowledge of the reading material and the films is absolutely essential for participation in our four day-long sessions.

Course Requirements:
•             attendance and active participation

•             in-depth knowledge of the reading material
•             written reader responses engaging with the material as preparation for our sessions

•             final term paper