Jul 11
To begin, we saw Brave a couple of weekends ago.
While having a discussion about boy heroes versus girl heroes and gender appropriateness, I made the comment, “Up is the boy version of Brave…. Only that it’s about an old man and a boy scout instead of a mother and daughter.”
The Hubs stared at me blankly.
So I continued: “both films are about a generational relationship… Continue reading
Jun 26
First, a couple disclaimers:
One, I have not seen Brave or any of the new Snow White features as of the time of this writing. I intend to see Brave this weekend, but we’ll have to see what this weekend brings.
Two, as a future parent, I’m not disturbed by the Disney Princesses as they appear in film. They all represent a young woman who is trying to… Continue reading
Jun 7
It is probably no surprise to the passive reader of this blog (all two of you) that I am a fairy tale enthusiast. It’s a topic I keep returning to time and time again, and it’s a topic that provides hours of academic muddling for this mythologist. That’s what scholars such as the Jungians find so fascinating about fairy tales. In their simplicity, they speak archetypally, deeply, meaningfully… They can become… Continue reading
Jul 28
Just a little background: I am a child of post-modern popular culture. I could identify Mickey Mouse, Ronald McDonald and similar animated, branded characters before I could recognize the religious and political iconic images of my family and country. I am one of many such youths. Corporations have received criticism for programming entire generations to “worship” their logos, but these same logos have molded and shaped how these generations look… Continue reading
Jul 27
Working my way through the Disney cartoon canon, it’s interesting to note how the Disney characters don’t only work in concert to entertain us, but they seem to function as components of myth/psyche (depending on how you want to approach this). Furthermore, at any given time, any one of them can function as a hero (especially Mickey, Donald and Goofy) or a group… Continue reading
Jul 18
There are two directions to go with this. One is an extension of this post I made about Mickey Mouse as Everyman. The other is literally about dreams. So I’ll start with the first:
1. Since that previous post, I scored the Walt Disney Treasures box set and have been working through the Mickey cartoons. The more of… Continue reading
Jul 7
Consumption: the act of consuming. Americans lead the world in consumption (in many different ways) and we consume just about everything. Even those who think they aren’t consumers actually are. There are the commodities we consume, the food we consume, entertainments, education, office supplies, clothing, cleaning and beauty products, and we could probably argue that we even consume our pets.
In writing a dissertation about Disney, the Consumption Myth… Continue reading
Jul 5
I know I’m a little late on the bandwagon, but I finally started playing Epic Mickey last month. This is a Wii-console game (only) about a land constructed by Yin Sid for the forgotten Disney characters. Except that it’s called Epic Mickey and not Disney’s Forgotten Characters. So here’s the plot: Mickey Mouse is playing around in Yin Sid’s lab (an… Continue reading
Jun 29
There are some scholars that, as much as I would like to try, I just cannot avoid. They are the ones that add conversation and dialogue to my research, taking it to a deeper level. Sure, it would be easy to ignore them, but then I’d be just as shallow a researcher as the Shallow Researcher “archetype” at the core of my academic shadow projections. Today’s unavoidable researcher: Jack Zipes.… Continue reading
Jun 15
After my last inspired post, I went semi-consciously offline for awhile – literally and figuratively. I’ve spent the last couple weeks delving into the core research for three dissertation chapters, and have come to the conclusion that too much reading is not conducive to either writing or blogging. But every now and then a question pops up that I feel a need to address, in large part because… Continue reading