Disney

Dissertation--MA; East Tennessee State University, 2021.
Walt Disney Studios possesses a checkered past in how its films dealt with racism and representation. Some of the earliest films involved songs and characters that go against modern sensibilities. In recent years, the studio's films have attempted to go against their forebears' racist connotations. Racism, however, proved a constant problem for the company. This paper shall explore the various ways Disney feature films addressed (or did not address) themes of racism and discrimination in its films from 1990 to 2018.

Dissertation--M.S.; Drexel University, 2022.
This thesis explores the history of Disney films, analyzing diversity and racism concerns in the media giant’s children’s and family films for nearly 100 years and researching how the company is making changes to overcome its negative image in this specific regard. This body of research also reviews The Walt Disney Company’s evolving leadership, with a particular focus on the many initiatives that have worked, as well as those that have not proven successful, for the company. As the researcher details Disney’s evolution of leadership, patterns emerge, showing how quickly things shifted in the 1990s and how diversity in Disney’s films and characters have developed and become more common in the last decade.

Dissertation--MA; 2014.
This paper explores how ethnic character representations in Disney films have changed in response to changing cultural attitudes and historical context over time in response to variations in the broader American sensitivity to race and ethnicity.

Dissertation--PhD; University of Cambridge, 2020.
This dissertation deconstructs Disney’s corporate commodification of multiculturalism and diversity to examine the impacts versus the stated intentions of a US-centric corporation with conservative roots to become more diverse and multicultural in its depiction of race and ethnicity in a more globalized world.

Dissertation--PhD; University of Michigan , 2000.
The ideological power of popular culture, and especially of movies, has always prompted public dispute. Arguably the leading producer of popular culture today and a corporate global giant, The Walt Disney Company has mass marketed animated features since 1937. While some of these films are still remembered for their racist elements, the company took a new creative turn in the 1990s, producing three animated features depicting racial Otherness: Aladdin (1992), The Lion King (1994), and Pocahontas (1995).

Dissertation--M.A.; University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, 2018.
The Brothers Grimm and the Walt Disney Company have produced popular fairy tales for large audiences. In this work, cluster criticism—a rhetorical criticism that involves identifying key terms and charting word clusters around those terms—is applied to four Grimm fairy tales and four Disney princess films. This study aims to reveal the worldview of the rhetors and explore how values present in Grimm tales manifest in contemporary Disney films. Disney princess films in this study have been categorized as “White/European” and “Non-White/Cultural ‘Other.’” Because film is a form of non-discursive rhetoric, an adaptation of cluster criticism designed for film was been applied to the selected animated features. This study reveals that many patriarchal values present in Grimm fairy tales appear in contemporary Disney films, and while Moana (2016) features far fewer displays of these values, intersectional feminism should be kept in mind, with more diversity in princesses needed.

Dissertation--MA; Georgetown University, 2020.
Fantastic stories offer new ways of dreaming, yet even in magical worlds race remains the “unspeakable thing unspoken.” In this thesis, the author analyzes the racialization of Black female characters positioned as protagonists in early 2000s mainstream fantasy media, looking primarily at Gwen from BBC’s Merlin, Tiana from Disney’s Princess and the Frog, and Cinderella from Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella. By only incorporating Black female actors through “colorblind” casting, writers and producers make Black female characters visible but fail to incorporate the necessary cultural specificity of representation. Consequently, the adaptation of fantasies defined by white cultural values resist the new centrality of the “Dark Other” and instead re-inscribe oppressions of the racial past.

Journal of Teaching in Social Work., 2012, Vol.32(1), p.46-61
Utilizing the basic tenets of critical race theory, the authors draw upon the expertise of multicultural scholars to raise consciousness and facilitate BSW classroom dialogue about microagressions perpetrated in Disney animations.

Popular communication, 2004, Vol.2 (4), p.213-229.
This article analyzes what may be referred to in Said's (1978) terminology as the orientalization of women of color in five of these six Disney animated films and posits how these representations of gender and cultural difference operate within Disney's consumerist framework, which provides "dreams and products through forms of popular culture in which kids are willing to materially and emotionally invest" (Giroux, 1999, p. 89). Using a critical lens, the author interrogates the unity of images regarding gender and race that these Disney texts offer and the ways in which these meanings operate within the larger socio-historical framework regarding women of color and the notion of Whiteness.

Journal of Children and Media, 2021, Vol.15 (2), p.218-232
This article explores Disney's production and circulation of specific and ambiguous Latinidad by focusing on the Disney Channel television series Stuck in the Middle (2016-2018). Bringing together discourses of girlhoods and Latinidad, and elaborating on post-feminism through ambiguity, the article employs three overlapping units of analysis: the family, the main character, Harley Diaz, and four purposefully selected episodes, to investigate how mainstream cultural producers attempt to represent and reach out to a newly acknowledged diverse audience.

[...]there would be an easy transition from a real world situation to a stylized world of animated fantasy, and the short tales would be integrated thematically within the larger plot structure. [...]the Studio decided that it should be permanently withdrawn from circulation, and it would not be released on VHS or DVD in the United States (although European and Japanese versions were released).