Are the "Boys" at Pixar Afraid of Little Girls?

Abstract

Abstract Christian Metz’s observation that "a film is difficult to explain because it is easy to understand" (69) appears particularly evident when one is teaching an undergraduate course on the animated feature films of Disney and Pixar. In a recent class taught in Chicago,1 many students were taken aback when they learned that the course involved historical, sociological, and theoretical framing and analysis. The students, it turned out, expected little more than discussions of the animated films’ plot events, some character and stylistic analysis, and the role of hand-drawn versus computer-generated (CG) animation in a film’s popular appeal. In addition, a refrain began to emerge--namely, "I love Disney films, but I never thought of them as being ideological." In some instances, I sensed a hint of disapproval that the course would subject Disney and Pixar to the kind of analysis that might require students to reevaluate much-loved films associated with cherished memories of childhood. I reiterated the argument I make every time I teach the course, best encapsulated by Giroux and Pollock, that the pleasures of scopophilia notwithstanding, "it is as important to comprehend and mitigate what gives us pleasure as it is to examine what elicits our disapproval" (xvi). I also make no apology for sharing those pleasures, however mitigated those may be by my own position as a film scholar (and as a parent).