Notes  taken  while  reading
Problem  Frame:
-­‐ Status  quo:  Disney  cast  a  spell  on  fairy  tales,  changed  20C  understanding  of  them
-­‐ DM:  what  is  this  spell?  (list  of  questions  with  implied  costs)
-­‐ Claim:  this  spell  “reinforces  social  and  political  status  quo”  by  capitalizing  on
“American  innocence  and  utopianism”  (implied  cost:  maintaining  status  quo  is  a  bad   thing,  doesn’t  allow  for  change);  to  understand  the  “spell”  Disney  casts,  we  need  to   see  what  he  did  to  the  fairy  tale,  and  why
First  reason:  history  of  fairy  tales  (pp.  33-­‐7)  ( note:  I  read  this  part,  then  stopped  to  take   notes  before  reading  the  next  part ):
-­‐ Oral  tales,  folk  tales;  function  of  “communal  harmony”
-­‐ Move  to  print  culture:  select  appropriate  texts,   o French  aristocratic  society  (Perrault);  Italians  (Basile)   o Oral  culture  moves  to  chapbooks  (explain  what  these  are)   o 19C,  original  literary  fairy  tales  (Anderson)   o Not  approved  for  children;  vulgar  origins,  subversive  values
 But,  19C  changes  this
-­‐ Effects  of  print  culture:   o Privacy  of  reading   o Class  differences  (books  are  expensive)   o Preservation  (maybe  start  here)   o “Holiness”  of  certain  versions  of  fairy  tales,  e.g.  Grimms
 Grimms’  encourage  this  idea;  German  language  project
-­‐ Zipes’s  evidence:  alludes  to  tales  (understand  his  capacity  as  close  reader),  and   studies  by  other  critics
-­‐ Summary  of  this  part,  FT  at  beginning  of  20C   o Particular  moral  messages:  elitism,  but  also  “bootstrap  mentality   o Happy  ending   o Fairy  tale  as  property,  both  in  terms  of  reader  (owns  a  book)  and  author
(owns  a  copyright)   o Text  gains  importance  over  image
 Local  DM:  this  will  change  with  Disney,  and  the  move  to  film
Second  Part:  early  film  history  (pp.  39-­‐42)  ( again,  stopped  here  to  take  notes )
-­‐ The  bit  students  skipped:  Zipes  cites  late-­‐19C  illustrators,  and  forerunners  to  comic   books,  which  privileged  the  image  over  the  text
-­‐ Early  film  history:  recreated  fairy  tales,  which  were  familiar  to  viewers.  But  too  the   emphasis  off  the  story,  placed  it  on  the  animator’s  gimmicks   o Animation  as  a  way  for  artists  to  put  themselves  into  their  works   o Freudian  reading:  pen  as  phallus
Disney  and   Puss  in  Boots  (343-­‐4)
-­‐ Disney’s  biography:   o Zipes  grants  that  a  purely  biographical  reading  is  limited   o Disney  doesn’t  credit  original  artists  (no  citation;  implied)   o Puss  in  Boots
 Summary  of  Perrault’s  version,  then  of  Disney’s  (a  good  use  of   summary)

•
Focus  on  shift  in  who  the  hero  is
 Reads  in  terms  of  Disney’s  bio  and  cultural-­‐historical  moment:  attack   on  literary  tradition  of  FT;  technology  and  modernity  triumph  over   the  king;  Freud  again,  and  Oedipal  reading
-­‐ Conclusion,  looking  forward:  is  Disney  a  revolutionary  socialist?  No
Disney  and   Snow  White
-­‐ DM  in  terms  of  previous  section:  Disney’s   Puss  in  Boots  in  fact  emphasizes  control,   the  hero  does  nothing  to  help  the  community
-­‐ Claim  for  this  section:  Disney  repeats  this  story,  which  “strikes  a  chord”  in  American   viewers
-­‐ Film  industry  developments   o Sound  (Steamboat  Willie);  color
-­‐ Disney  bio  details   o Charles  Mintz  “steals”  employees  and  ideas;  Disney  learns  to  take  control   o Depression  era  as  historical  moment   o Snow  White  combines  Disney  bio  with  American  ethos
 Recognizes  the  importance  of  his  project
 Disney’s  process,  assembly-­‐line,  but  over  which  he  has  control
•
Evidence:  bio  of  an  early  Disney  employee,  left  out  of  th   credits
 By  1934,  Disney  is  rich,  so  the  influence  of  his  bio  is  slightly  different   o Changes  in  SW  story:  adds  the  prince
 Zipes  offers  different  interpretations  of  dwarves  and  prince,  but   focuses  on  Disney-­‐as-­‐prince
 A+R:  Gilbert  and  Gubar  rightly  emphasize  gender  roles,  and  Disney   contributes  to  this.
•
Evidence:  the  dwarves  and  cleaning  their  house   o DM:  what  Disney  celebrates  is  not  the  domestication  of  women,  but  the   triumph  of  the  (male)  underdog
 The  “heroines”  don’t  play  active  roles
 A+R,  in  footnote:  Disney  actually  elevates  subtext,  downplays   didacticism,  doesn’t  talk  town  to  children.  But,  says  Zipes,  Disney   cites  Grimm,  and  this  is  where  the  focus  should  lie
 Ultimately,  Disney’s  message  is  a  conservative  one:  he  aims  not  to   spark  change  in  US  society,  but  to  maintain  power  in  the  hands  of  the   wealthy  few,  like  himself   o List  of  Disney’s  FT  adaptations  (compare  pp  337-­‐8,  other  list)
 Returns  to  public  space,  but  not  in  the  same  way  as  oral  tradition
 Disney  studio  continues  his  legacy
 Costs:  return  to  patriarchal  realms,  no  change   o Conclusion  looks  ahead:  other  people  break  the  “Disney  Spell”
 In  context  of  title,  and  original  DM:  Zipes  has  taken  a  step  towards   breaking  the  spell,  but  the  step  is  recognizing  it  exists

First  Draft  (2.5  pages)
Zipes,  Jack.  “Breaking  the  Disney  Spell.”  In   The  Classic  Fairy  Tales ,  Maria  Tatar,  ed.
New  York:  Norton,  1999.
Zipes  begins  by  stating  that  Walt  Disney  and  the  Disney  company  have  “cast  a   spell”  on  American  viewers  and  changed  our  understanding  of  classic  fairy  tales.
Zipes  argues  that  Disney  has  played  on  American  ideologies  of  innocence  and   utopianism,  but  that  Disney  films  ultimately  offer  a  conservative  reaction  to
American  culture,  and  enforce  the  political  and  social  status  quo.  The  Disney  spell   makes  us  resistant  to  change,  and  perpetuates  patriarchal  and  problematic   ideologies.
As  his  title  suggests,  Zipes  is  implicitly  interested  in  “breaking”  the  spell
Disney  has  cast  on  American  viewers.  But  he  mentions  this  only  in  his  conclusion,   and  then  only  briefly.  Zipes  task  in  this  article  is  more  descriptive:  before  we  can   break  the  spell,  says  Zipes,  we  have  to  understand  it.  The  conceptual  problem  he   addresses  is  “What  has  Disney  done  to  fairy  tales,  and  why?”
In  the  first  part  of  his  article  (which  we  didn’t  read  for  today),  Zipes  lays  out  a   history  of  fairy  tales.  He  starts  with  oral  tales  and  folk  tales,  the  goals  of  which  are  to   create  communal  harmony  and  teach  the  values  held  by  particular  societal  groups.
In  the  late  eighteenth  century,  though,  these  tales  began  to  be  recorded  in  print.  A   major  result  of  this  shift  was  that  rather  than  general  communal  values,  the  stories   that  were  recorded  and  preserved  were  directed  at  aristocratic  audiences  (they  also   moved  from  a  social,  public  sphere  to  a  private  one).  We  read  some  of  Charles
Perrault’s  and  Giambattista  Basile’s  tales,  which  are  early  examples  of  aristocratic   adaptations  of  fairy  tales  that  Zipes  cites.  Perrault  and  Basile  selected  the  tales  they   felt  were  appropriate,  and  helped  determine  our  modern  conception  of  fairy  tales.
Other  tales  –  Zipes  uses  the  phrase  folk  tales,  to  indicate  their  origins  in  a  wider,  less   exclusive  social  group,  “the  folk”  –  were  preserved  in  chapbooks,  short,  cheap  books   that  were  sold  by  foot-­‐peddlers  in  the  late  eighteenth  and  early  nineteenth   centuries.  Chapbooks  were  much  more  affordable  than  the  fancy  printed  editions  of
Perrault’s  tales.
Neither  chapbooks  nor  the  aristocratic  fairy  tale  adaptations  were  approved   or  intended  for  children:  their  vulgar  origins  (in  the  lower  classes)  and  the   potentially  subversive  values  they  espoused  meant  that  they  were  potentially   dangerous  to  child  readers.  But  by  the  early  nineteenth  century,  authors  like  the
Brother  Grimm  were  writing  fairy  tales  more  appropriate  for  child  readers.  Later  in   the  century,  Victorian  authors  like  Hans  Christen  Andersen  (whom  we  read)  wrote   their  own  original  fairy  tales.  Due  in  part  to  the  Grimms  and  Andersen,  fairy  tales   began  to  be  seen  as  “property,”  both  of  readers  (who  could  own  the  books)  and  of   authors  (who  could  own  the  copyrights).  The  consequence  of  this  was  that  certain   versions  (e.g.  the  Grimms’)  took  on  a  kind  of  “holy”  status,  as  the  official  versions  of   the  tales.
Throughout  this  section,  Zipes  supports  his  claims  with  close  readings  of   tales  (or,  more  precisely,  by  alluding  to  tales:  the  reader  is  to  assume  that  Zipes  has   read  them.)  He  also  cites  other  critics  who  have  studied  early  fairy  tales.  He  ends

this  section  with  a  summary  of  characteristics  of  fairy  tales,  as  they  stood  at  the   beginning  of  the  twentieth  century:  among  the  key  characteristics  was  that,  even   when  the  tales  were  illustrated,  the  text  took  prominence  over  the  pictures.  In  a   local  destabilizing  moment,  transitioning  to  his  next  section,  Zipes  notes  that  this
would  not  be  the  case  when  the  fairy  tales  moved  to  film.
Having  laid  out  his  history  of  fairy  tales  through  the  end  of  the  nineteenth   century,  Zipes  begins  to  discuss  the  origins  of  the  film  industry.  He  lists  several   illustrators  who  became  famous  in  their  own  right,  and  talks  about  the  rise  of  the   comic  book  industry,  which  made  the  image  as  important  as  the  text.  Early  films,   says  Zipes,  drawing  on  other  critics  and  film  historians,  recreated  fairy  tales  that   would  have  been  familiar  to  viewers.  But  they  downplayed  the  events  of  the  story,   and  focused  instead  on  gimmicks  of  the  artistic  medium.  Animation  was  particularly
open  to  this  kind  of  work,  and  early  animators  put  themselves  into  their  works  as   often  as  they  could.  In  a  Freudian  reading,  Zipes  notes  the  prevalence  of  pen-­‐as-­‐ phallus  imagery  in  early  animated  films.
Zipes  uses  this  early  film  history  to  transition  to  a  discussion  of  Walt  Disney   and  the  role  he  played  in  the  development  of  the  animation.  Though  he  grants  that  a   purely  biographical  interpretation  of  Disney’s  movies  gets  only  part  of  the  picture,   such  an  interpretation  is  an  important  one  to  recognize.  Zipes  starts  with  Disney’s   first  film,  a  version  of  the  fairy  tale   Puss  in  Boots .  He  summarizes  Perrault’s  version,   and  then  Disney  version  (this  is  an  excellent  use  of  summary).  He  argues  that  the   biggest  change  Disney  makes  is  shifting  who  the  hero  is:  he  makes  it  the  prince,  not   the  cat.  Zipes  then  reads  this  change  in  terms  of  Disney’s  biography,  and  of  the   cultural-­‐historical  moment,  as  an  attack  on  the  literary  tradition  of  fairy  tales.  The   morals  of  this  story,  Zipes  posits,  could  be  democracy,  technology,  and  modernity   triumphing  over  the  king.  He  offers  another  Freudian  reading,  with  the  Oedipus   myth.
Zipes  ends  this  section  by  asking  whether  Disney  is  a  revolutionary  socialist,   as  his  posited  reading  of   Puss  in  Boots  suggests,  then  answering  his  own  question   with  a  succinct  “no.”   Puss  in  Boots  in  fact  emphasizes  the  animator’s  control:  the   hero  does  nothing  to  effect  change  or  help  the  community.  Disney’s  fairy  tales
“strike  a  chord”  with  depression-­‐era  viewers  because  they  focus  on  the  power  of  the   individual.  He  used  film  industry  developments  (like  sound  and  color)  to  propagate
this  idea.
Zipes  continues  with  a  biographical  reading  of  Disney.  He  points  out  that  one   of  Disney’s  early  collaborators  lured  animators  away  from  Disney,  and  that  Walter   learned  from  this  experience  that  he  must  control  all  aspects  of  his  films.  Zipes  gives   the  example  of   Snow  White ,  the  first  feature-­‐length  animated  film  (Disney  himself   recognized  the  importance  of  the  film).  This  film,  says  Zipes,  combines  Disney’s   biography  with  the  American  ethos.  Disney’s  creative  process  is  like  an  assembly   line,  and  he  has  control  over  each  stage:  as  evidence  of  this,  Zipes  cites  the   biography  of  an  early  Disney  employee  who  worked  a  year  and  a  half  on   Pinochio   but  was  left  out  of  the  credits.
By  1934,  when  Disney  started   Snow  White ,  he  was  already  rich.  The  biggest   change  he  made  to  the  story  was  to  add  the  prince.  Zipes  offers  a  few  interpretations   of  the  dwarves  and  the  prince,  but  the  one  he  favors  is  the  prince-­‐as-­‐Disney,

dwarves-­‐as-­‐workers.  He  addresses  Gilbert  and  Gubar,  granting  that  Disney’s  film   does  emphasize  gender  roles.  But  what  is  most  important,  says  Zipes,  is  not  the   glorification  of  the  domestication  of  women,  but  the  triumph  of  the  (male)   underdog.  The  heroines  of  Disney’s  films,  he  says,  don’t  play  active  roles  in  the  story.
The  “heroines”  don’t  play  active  roles.  Ultimately,  Disney’s  message  is  a  conservative   one:  he  aims  not  to  effect  change  in  US  society,  but  to  maintain  the  power  in  the
hands  of  the  wealthy  few,  like  himself.
Zipes  concludes  with  a  list  of  the  adaptations  Disney  made  to  fairy  tales,  a  list   that  works  in  comparison  with  his  earlier  (pages  337-­‐8)  list  of  characteristics  of   fairy  tales  in  the  early  nineteenth  century.  Of  particular  interest  here  is  that  the  shift   from  book  to  film  returns  the  fairy  tale  to  the  public  space  it  had  occupied  as  in  an   oral  culture.  But  this  repetition  has  a  serious  difference,  and  the  movie  maintains
the  individualistic  characteristics  of  the  written  texts.
Zipes  claims  that  the  Disney  studio  has  continued  Walt’s  legacy,  even  after   his  death.  The  costs  inherent  in  “the  Disney  spell”  are  the  maintenance  of  a   patriarchal  ideology  and  the  impossibility  of  social  change.  In  his  conclusion,  Zipes   looks  forward  by  mentioning  that  some  works  do  challenge  this  spell.  He  has  taken   the  first  step  by  discussing  what  the  Disney  spell  is  and  why  it  is  a  problem,  but  he   leaves  the  next  step  for  another  paper.

Final Draft (one page)
Zipes, Jack. “Breaking the Disney Spell.” In The Classic Fairy Tales . Maria Tatar, ed. New York: Norton, 1999.
Jack Zipes, professor of German literature and folklore, argues that Walt Disney changed Americans’ understanding of the classic fairy tales. According to Zipes,
Disney’s interpretations of fairy tales are conservative and patriarchal. As his title suggests, Zipes is interested in “breaking” the spell Disney has cast on American viewers.
But he mentions this only in his conclusion. His task in this article is more descriptive: before we can break the spell, says Zipes, we have to understand it. His main questions are, “What has Disney done to fairy tales, why did he do it, and what values does it promote?”
In the first part of his article Zipes lays out a history of fairy tales, focusing primarily on the shift from oral tales to written. He supports his claims with allusions to particular tales: the reader is to assume that Zipes has read them, but is not provided with textual evidence. Zipes also cites works by critics who have studied early fairy tales. He ends this section by listing the state of fairy tales at the end of the nineteenth century.
Even though early fairy tales were often illustrated, the text took prominence over the pictures. This would change when fairy tales were adapted to film. Drawing on other critics and film historians, Zipes argues that early films depicted fairy tales that would have been familiar to viewers, but downplayed the events of the story, focusing instead on gimmicks of the artistic medium and on glorifying the animators. Zipes turns to
Disney’s film Puss in Boots , summarizing Perrault’s version and then the Disney version, and argues that the biggest difference is that Disney makes the prince the hero, not the cat. According to Zipes, Puss in Boots glorifies the individual: the hero does nothing to effect change or help the community, a parallel of Disney himself.
Even more than Puss in Boots , Snow White , the first animated feature-length film, links details of Disney’s biography to the Depression-era American ethos. As evidence of
Disney’s control over all aspects of his films, Zipes cites the biography of an early
Disney employee who worked a year and a half on Pinocchio but was left out of the credits. Zipes interprets the prince in Snow White (whose role Disney greatly expanded) as Disney himself, and the dwarves as other workers. He addresses Gilbert and Gubar, granting that Disney’s film does emphasize gender roles. But what is most important, says Zipes, is not the glorification of the domestication of women, but the triumph of the
(male) underdog.
Disney was already rich by 1934, when he started Snow White . Ultimately, his message is a conservative one: he aims not to effect change in US society, but to maintain the power in the hands of the wealthy few, like himself. Zipes claims that the Disney studio has continued Walt’s legacy. “The Disney spell” perpetuates a patriarchal ideology and resistance to social change. In his conclusion, Zipes mentions that some works do challenge this spell. He has taken the first step by discussing what the Disney spell is and
why it is a problem, but he leaves the next step for another paper.