The Postfeminist Princess: Disney’s Curricular Guide to Feminism

• In Event: 46.053 - The Disney Curriculum: Pedagogies of Being and Buying

Abstract

Disney’s latest animated film, Frozen, has become a smash blockbuster, recently grossing over a billion dollars in ticket sales, and thus, by surpassing every other animated movie, was just named the number one animated film of all time. Frozen, some say, finally catches up to the 21st century and depicts strong women who carry the story and do not need men to get what they want. Users on the large, general-interest social media site, reddit, have praised the film for its feminist depictions and have commented extensively on it through user-generated “subreddits” of r/disney and r/frozen. The comments from participants on these social media websites and blogs reveal a certain and collective understanding or construction of feminism that suggests its goals or objectives have been achieved, accomplished, or idealized, as evidenced by the story and characters of Frozen.

These comments, however, also reveal a different story, one which suggests that these individuals are influenced by “a range of cultural discourses” (Butler, 2013, p. 41) across popular culture in particular (including the Disney megaverse) which suggests that the idea and very construct of feminism is no longer needed, that it is a “thing of the past” in light of the many “celebratory narratives proclaiming feminism’s ‘success’ in bringing about gender equity in education, work, and the home” (Butler, 2013, p. 43). This sensibility (Gill, 2007), coined postfeminism (e.g., McRobbie, 2007), replaces – and to a certain extent undermines – earlier feminist goals for the neoliberal auspices of individualism, empowerment, and choice. As such, it promotes a limited and normative notion of femininity that essentially renders feminism as a diluted, apolitical “slogan or generalized ‘brand’” (Banet-Weiser, 2007, p. 208).

This essay takes a multimodal approach as it analyzes comments from users on reddit, film sites, and feminist-oriented blogs, and reads the film Frozen-as-text to explore the relationship among Disney, Frozen, and the notions of postfeminism and to show how these users negotiate their own (feminist) identities through and with their engagement with the film. As such, it also identifies the ways in which the film’s female leads are complicit in performative (Butler, 1990) tropes of traditional Disney princesses in order to call for renewed feminist critique – of the curricula that come into being through the cultural uptake of Disney and its films – to reinvigorate feminist epistemology. Included in this analysis is a brief overview of the ways in which feminist critique has been leveraged with and against past Disney films.

Author

• Michael Macaluso, Michigan State University