Rediscovering Atlantis

It was very appropriate, and most likely unknowingly so, that Disney set 2001's Atlantis: The Lost Empire, in 1914. Indeed, in many ways it could not truly have been otherwise: the middle Victorian era saw the beginning of an explosion of interest in the lost continent that would not subside beneath the waves again until the 1960's. In the decade spanning 1895 to 1905, there were no less than 16 fiction novels, standing alongside countless ostensibly non-fiction pseudoscientific and spiritualist explorations, which solidified the Atlantis we know today: not as a holdover of ancient myth, but as an artifact of Victorian cultural anxieties.

Trailer for Disney's Atlantis: The Lost Empire

Feminism and the Disney Princesses - Part II: Tropes vs. Men in Disney

In my original article Feminism and the Disney Princesses, I set out to address specific claims about how the canon of Disney fairy tale films represents its female protagonists. My approach was academic, engaging in a close viewing of the films to determine if these claims had any justifiable basis. While that article examined – and, I believe, ultimately refuted – claims that Disney's animated films present a negative image of women, the other side of the coin is whether they carry an otherwise patriarchal message.

Just as my previous analysis attempted to examine the films without intending to ignite a debate about feminism as a social construct, my discussion of male image in Disney is not intended to ignite debate about male advocacy and men's rights movements. I am a proponent of women's rights, freedoms, and social and economic justice, as well as unequivocally denouncing misogyny, violence towards and oppression of women, and thus am not throwing my fedora into the ring on any particular side. My goal is to employ academic analysis to answer the academic question of how male image is represented in Disney films. Do they reinforce a positive image of male domination and patriarchal power relationships? And more particularly, can the same lens of negative interpretation be brought to bear on them that is frequently brought to bear on Disney's representation of female characters?