Gender and Ideology in Disney\u27s Beast Fables

Abstract

The Walt Disney Corporation is one of the dominant ideological state apparatuses of the last eighty years. One of the ways in which the Walt Disney Corporation naturalizes a particular ideological value system is in the animated feature film’s representation of gender. Using Judith Butler’s work on gender representation as the critical framework, along with Louis Althusser’s concept of ideology, and Michel Foucault’s definition of cultural discourse, I analyze and interpret key representations of gender in anthropomorphized animal protagonists within the Disney “Beast Fable” films, Bambi (1942), Lady and the Tramp (1955), and The Lion King (1994). My analysis of Disney’s beast examines moments of ideological consensualization and resistance within the films’ narratives with regards to the representation of sexuality and gender in anthropomorphized animal characters