Jack Zipes Response

Jack Zipes' "Breaking the Disney Spells" takes quite the anti-Disney viewpoint as he attempts to describe Walt Disney's rise to power and the conservative views the company tries to spread. Although the argument itself is interesting, the way he went about proving it is ineffective and many points weren't developed well.

To begin, there were two distinct parts of the academic article, the first of which discussed the more general development of fairy tales while the second introduced Disney's role in its evolution. I found there was very little overlap between the two and a lot of the information was just unnecessary, thus representing my first piece of beef I have with the paper. It's nice and all that he writes about traditional fairy tales in medieval England but I frankly couldn't care less. And where's the tangible relationship of that to Disney?

Complaint number two deals with the over-analyzing, too-much reaching claims that Zipes made throughout the paper. Most ridiculous was probably the description of phallic objects in a number of early Disney movies that supposedly represented the male writers and the gender views they were promoting. Cat tails and pens (which somehow appeared left and right in these films according to Zipes) provide us with some examples. There really isn't much to say about that other than ridiculous. A few claims were less outrageous but still noteworthy. Zipes states, for example, that the purpose of Disney films was to celebrate the greatness of Disney and that the picture, sounds, and dialogue were simply means to this end. This just flat-out does not seem sensical. Lastly, some film analysis seemed like he was trying too hard. The idea that Puss In Boots represents the "deepest oedipal desire of every young boy," although novel, is pretty comical to me.

Finally the extended metaphor of breaking the Disney spell came off as unprofessional. Like him or not, what Disney was able to do with his company is truly remarkable and he should be given some credit. By referring to it as "his magical rise" and a "magical spell," Zipes completely discredits all of Disney's success as pure luck, simply as if he was conning America. This could have been done much more tastefully and would have improved the work as a whole.