Book Review - Disney Gothic, Dark Shadows in the House of Mouse, edited by Lorna Piatti-Farnell and Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock
Disney Gothic, Dark Shadows in the House of Mouse, edited by Lorna Piatti-Farnell and Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock, 2024
Book review by Angelica Kalika
Disney Gothic, Dark Shadows in the House of Mouse is an edited collection from scholars around the world giving us a glimpse into the morbid, villainous, and charismatically chaotic Disney characters starting from its Walt inspired shorts to more recent iterations of full-length antihero films. It’s theme park attractions and Disney television analysis are sure to delight the senses as well. It’s editors Lorna Piatti-Farnel is the Academic Dean and Professor of Creative Industries at SAE Ackland University and Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock is a media scholar and professor of English at Central Michigan University. Together they have given us a magically gloomy collection of ghoulish reading that leaves one haunted.
The editors give us a foundation of what Gothic is, and how it connects to our humanity - tapping into our deepest fears. In contrast to what Disney itself embodies - giving us our happy place on Earth. Yet, Disney needs it’s antagonists that feed into the fears of our leads. Here, the book focuses on how Disney uses the Gothic to drive narrative, exploit social identities, and reuse thematic evil. The use of hybrid species, physical transformation, and alienation live under the banner of family entertainment. Disney is shaping our collective meaning of the Gothic - what it looks like, what it feels like, it’s impact on reality, and visualizing society as a whole.
Here horror and the Gothic exist in the same universe. This Gothic universe is a modified version of our own, reflecting our biases all through the lens of the writer, director, and the Animator. What they think of society, who they think are the villains, and how a story should be told.
Three sections of spookiness await… ”Dark Beginnings and Gothic Technologies” has highlights on the comedic Gothic image, “Monsters and Magic” analysis on the villainous and and types of horror, and lastly, “Something Wicked” focuses on the embedded patriarchal narrative work in othering. Each section builds on the next - how the Gothic transform us to seek it instead of the shallowness normalcy.
It’s unclear why the authors have excluded the contributions of Tim Burton’s gothic flair and impact on/at Disney. However, this book does cast a wide enough net that even a mermaid could be caught in its tentacles. All things so wicked, that we don’t leave unsatisfied.
The chapters bring us closer to the origin of Disney spookiness, the use of the Gothic, and even our collective image of Halloween, macabre, and ghoulishness. A cobweb of Greek mythology, westernized images of the devil, and European folklore (among others) are used by animators to bring on a chill or catch us in their claws.
Quick highlights include Terry Lindvall’s commentary on how Disney showcases madness and a nonexistent moral code. With the goal of the characters bringing a humanistic view to the world. How skeletons are linked to our humanity and Disney’s use of gothic comedy indulged in animating the dead, especially in The Skeleton Dance (Iwersk, 1928).
Nancy Johson-Hunt and Lorna Piatti-Farnell give context not just to Dr. Facilier as an animated Black dandy queer-coded antagonist, but also dives into the cultural annihilation of voodoo’s true origins/use and its reinterpretation through a WASP lens. The Princess and the Frog (Musker & Clements, 2009) others his entire identity as a queer Black voodoo witch doctor in a colorblind narrative that structured the Black female protagonist to spend the majority of the film as a frog.
Antonio Sanna talks of solitude horror for Tarzan and Moguluik and Christy Tidwell discusses horror-adjacent in the Right of Spring segment in Fantasia (James Algar et al., 1940), as animated dinosaur extinction gives the viewers an ecogothic moment.
Joan Ormrod considers the notions of truth in reestablishing backstories of villains as the antiheroine, specifically Maleficent and the recent live-action films. Otherness flipped.
Simon Bacon lays out a discussion of Ursula’s queerness, from her vampiric traits/teeth to a “gothicization of her body” (220). As well as her origin villains like Cruella, Maleficent. Most importantly Ursula’s full being based on the iconic drag performer - Divine. Giving us a glimpse into the process of creating a Disney female villain - finding the othered in society and replicating it.
Ideal classroom reading as it engages us to look beyond the screen and consider the sociocultural commodification of Disney Gothic driven properties.
Before we part: Reclaim the Gothic. Banish the Norm. Seek its slithery shoulder for a sense of purpose as we lurk in the dark and wait for the worst. Truth hides in the shadows.
Byline:
Angelica Kalika, University of Colorado Boulder
Angelica Kalika, PhD, is a Assistant Teaching Professor at the University of Colorado Boulder, Journalism Department, in Boulder, Colorado. Her research interests include nonprofit media, media business models, and news influencing.
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