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Whitley, David. The Idea of Nature in Disney Animation. Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing Company, 2008. 154 pp. ISBN 978-0-7546-6085-9. $65.00.
Doing Disney has always been dangerous* For decades at regional, national, and even international academic conferences, the mere mention of "Disney" provoked either laughter or outrage* The laughter arose not from the appreciation of humor in Disney films but rather from the dismissal of the idea that the "House of the Mouse," that entertainment empire created to reinforce the middlebrow dreams of suburban Americans, was worthy of any attention* The outrage arose from postmodern theorists who saw the Disney canon representing and reinforcing the racist, sexist, and classisi values that provided the ideological support for the Cold War and the conservative revolution of the late twentieth century.
But the times they are a-changin'* Recent developments in film studies, popular culture, and children's literature have encouraged new interest in the Disney films, resulting in a major reexamination of them, especially the animated features* Disney's feature-length animated films, often dismissed in the US but admired around the world by such film innovators as Sergei Eisenstein and Hayao Miyazaki, are now recognized as a unique American genre deserving of serious study* In fact, Disney studies, focusing primarily on the featurelength animated films, is now an accepted part of film studies.
David Whitley's recent study, The Idea of Nature in Disney Animation, part of the Ashgate Studies in Childhood, 1700 to the Present series, is an insightful and intelligent reading often major Disney animated films from an environmentalist perspective* The book is divided into three sections - "Fairy Tale Adaptations," "The North American Wilderness," and "Tropical Environments" - and in his examinations of Snow White, The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Bombi, Pocahontas, Brother Bear, The Jungle Book, Tarzan, The Lion King, and Finding Nemo, Whitley analyzes the various representations of "wild nature" in Disney's films as part of the changing attitudes...