The Illusion of “Identity”: Gender and Racial Representation in Animation

In the article it talks about how animation goes from shape shifting like effects, or transmogrification (one of the advantages of working in animation rather that live action) to a new tradition in animation, which began in the 1930s, rendering the human form in motion in a “realistic” manner. Disney studios championed by showing “believable” humans and animals making “natural” movements.

A few theorists have taken a “social constructionist” stance towards the idea of “identity” and that “identity” is created through social situations rather than through a biographical inevitability. In social constraints feminists writers tried to begin to use this concept to free women. However, masculinity, heterosexual, and racial identity has been challenged.

Looking at one of Disney’s animated featured films Aladdin (1992) the films construction of “appealing”, yet “realistic”, characters, it draws into question issues of “identity”, especially related to masculinity and ethnicity. Appeal of at character is where your eyes are drawn to the figure that has appeal, and , once there, it is held while you appreciate what you are looking at. Many employees at Disney used rotoscoping or tracing to capture the human figure while working on the film Snow White, rotoscoping was always “improved” upon to give the character more appeal. At this point in time Disney had not done many male characters that had appeal like Snow White, in fact they’ve only done Pinocchio and Peter Pan but there masculinity was problematized, the appeal of Pinocchio is more in his wooden form, and the sexual ambiguity of Peter Pan’s persona has been discussed by many. Disney were struggling to find Aladdin’s appeal because the character Jasmine was becoming more of the lead character and vice president Jeffrey Katzenberg was noted saying “I can see what he sees in she, but what I don’t see is what she sees in him”. So Aladdin went back to the model sheets and was then noted that the appeal was then taken form actor Tom Cruise.

The genie on the other hand has no gender but appears on screen mainly male but does dress up in women clothing, and the genie also transforms into animals like a goat and a bumble bee. The genie draws on a lot of traditions of comic transformation in animated cartons, and who is also reminiscent of Bugs Bunny’s predilection for drag. The genie perfectly embodies Mary Ann Doane’s theory of “masquerade”, in which subjects put on different personae rather than having on stable subject position. A large portion of gay and lesbian studies has been on the culture of drag, subjects enacting female or leather personae, becoming both subject and object simultaneously, consciously performing subjectivity, much like the genie.

It seems that in some ways, Aladdin is an enlightened feature, using traditions in animation to further the decentering of the white heterosexual patriarchy. Yet in attempting to over throw the system and deconstruct identity. By contrast, when a scene of lesbian or gay identity is lost, the straight world finds it easier to ignore social and political issues that directly affect gays and lesbians as a group.

Disney’s tradition of creating “ the illusion of life” perfectly exposes this problem. Although, the illusion sacrifices attempts at realness in favor of appeal, the end effect doesn’t call attention to lack of real. Where as the genie, in Aladdin, thrusts performativity in the viewer’s face, it is often easy to forget the performance of masculinity and femininity in Aladdin and Jasmine.