I'm diverting a bit from the formula today to relay the meat of a debate I had with my mother in the past few weeks about the evil, bloodsucking, corporate monstrosity that bleeds the minds of children and the wallets of parents in order to uphold a fictionalized concept of American society that its deceased creator is still channeling from beyond his frozen grave. I am speaking, of course, of Disney. Now before you all get excited and angry at me for talking about a movie rather than a book let me say that 1) this does technically belong to The Eastin Collection and 2) though they might not have pages to flip and words to read (ha!) Disney films still represent fascinating artifacts of modern American culture especially since they are often placed in settings that are not America.
Let me also offer a proper preface for this discussion since the above conspiracy-theory preface tragically derailed any productive details in my previous conversation. Though the above is true (I'll be sure to modify the Wikipedia entry for 'Disney' to comply) it still represents an opinion and opinions are things that one must at least appear to leave at the door when engaging in literary inquiry. Being such a massive economic force as Disney is it is inevitable that the entertainment media they produce will reflect the culture for which it is made and this is the main assumption with which I begin.
I first saw The Emperor's New Groove on a into-town foray on what was meant to be a camping trip and I soon discovered that it was one of the funniest and my favorite Disney film. This may have something to do with David Spade or the fact that the music-and-dance moments were kept to a minimum but in either case I thoroughly enjoyed it. In case you haven't seen it, the film is basically about a young, spoiled Mezzo-American monarch named Cuzco (voiced by David Spade) who is put in his place by an ambitious advisor (imagine a cross between Cruella DeVil and Jafar) who turns him into a llama and sends him home with a peasant. He must then find his way back to his kingdom to reclaim it with the help of the Peasant (Pacha, voiced by John Goodman) and discover himself along the way, etc, etc.
There are plenty of scenes in the film that are hilarious and quotable and my sisters and I have enjoyed doing so on many occasions but there was one scene that recently struck me as somewhat odd and the more I thought about it the more I found was happening beneath the surface of an otherwise lighthearted film.
We've all heard the stories about Disney animators inserting little goodies, often of a sexual nature, into their family films (for full discussions check out Snopes.com). While strange and controversial these little nuggets of animated tomfoolery are, for the most part, juvenile. But what I noticed in The Emperor's New Groove carried a much more prominent representation of cultural discourse.
After a classic cartoon plummet over an enormous waterfall a soaked Pacha drags the unconscious Cuzco (in llama form) to shore and begins administering CPR. Now, what got my brain turning along this vein was the strangeness of a Mezzo-American peasant being capable of performing this life saving technique. According to Wikipedia techniques of Cardiopulmonary resuscitation as it is currently practiced and as it is practiced by Pacha in the film, have only existed since the 1950's yet the supposed period of the films setting would have been during the height of the Aztec empire circa 1500. Now don't get me wrong, I don't expect Disney to portray historical accuracy especially since we are considering these settings as mere backdrops for realizations of modern American cultural discourses. But it still struck me that an emperor who should have had no knowledge of CPR would undoubtedly find it odd that his big bear-like companion was leaning in close with his eyes closed...
And Cuzco responds just as we expect him to, with the line included above. As an audience we laugh at this joke and then move on unaware of what exactly it was that just happened and I suspect that this same joke was written edited and animated with a similar chuckle. What we have here is a homoerotic moment in a Disney film but presented in such a way that it immediately becomes a homophobic scene. Despite a nearly romantic dressing to the scene both characters are quick to refute any possibility of the scene turning out differently. I imagine that if Cuzco had sighed and thanked Pacha for saving his life families everywhere would have been up in arms. But instead Cuzco's eyes go wide and he scrambles away spitting and disgusted and we as an audience think nothing else of it.
To me (and I admit I may be reading too far into it, but Disney films are just so fascinating when you really rip them apart!) the unquestioning nature of a homophobic hue is possible because of the nature of Dinsey films as cultural artifacts. It doesn't take a genius to realize that 109% of Disney's marketing campaigns are marketed to citizens who will be spending other people's money (i.e. kids). And as such it makes perfect sense for this media/consumer interchange to have no doubts about its validation of familial units. In fact it makes biological/fiscal sense for an established economic force like Disney to reinforce heterosexual units since it can probably cash in on its investment in twenty-year intervals.
Now if you find yourself thinking that I've taken this too far, you're probably right, but then again I'm just happy I've gotten you to read this far. I don't necessarily think promoting heterosexuality is an intricate part of Disney's master plan to take over the world. In fact this scene is so small that it is practically negligible. I merely wish to point it out to illustrate a small manifestation of cultural discourse within the film (and hopefully destroy some of its innocence in the process). There is so much in Disney films to read into (a professor of mine discussed Beauty and the Beast as reinforcing young American girls' need to remain in potentially abusive relationships) and I imagine I'll find another way to fit a Disney film into this blog again (if nothing else I'm sure I could get a hugely interesting racial discussion about Pocahontas, Mulan, and The Princess and the Frog).
No comments:
Post a Comment