Tinker Belles and Evil Queens: The Walt Disney Company From the Inside Out (40 page)

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With the songs of Elton John and an ad campaign that included cartoon characters saying that the film was “to die for” or that they would “put on a grass skirt and do the hula” to get customers into the theatre, there seemed to be plenty for gay audiences to enjoy. Contrary to the complaints of nonvisibility by women and African Americans, “gay” animals could be found quite easily in the film—gay
male
animals voiced by
white
actors. The advisor to the lion king is a fussy and pompous bird named Zazu, who seems to be modeled after actor Clifton Webb. Timon and Pumbaa, a meerkat and a warthog that the lion cub protagonist Simba befriends after he is banished from his tribe, can be easily read as a gay male couple. They live happily together, reveling in their marginalization from the rest of jungle society, and look askance at Simba’s budding heterosexual romance with a lioness. Voiced by Nathan Lane, who has played a number of gay male roles on stage and screen, Timon has the personality of a New York show queen: all patter and schtick, and ready to burst into a showtune at the drop of a hat. Pumbaa, the slower-witted of the pair, depends on Timon constantly, and the film prominently features his behind. Timon and Pumbaa would eventually star in their own animated TV series within the “Disney Afternoon,” where they would actually become even more gay-tinged. As Gael Sweeney discovered in her analysis of the program, the pair often function in episodes as a married couple and act as parents to young children in a number of storylines. Also, the two seem to enjoy dressing up in various types of drag throughout the run of the series.76

The most obvious gay figure in the film is the villainous lion Scar, voiced by Jeremy Irons, who archly portrays a physically weak male who makes up for his lack of sheer strength with catty remarks and in-vidious plotting. Animated by Deja, the character fairly swishes, disdaining the concept of the heterosexual family in his attempt to usurp the throne for himself. When Scar refers to the cub prince Simba as a

“hairball,” Mufasa (Simba’s father and king) warns “That ‘hairball’ is my son and your future king.” Scar dons a mockingly prissy gracious-ness as he responds snidely, “Oh! I shall practice my curtsy!” Later, when Simba laughs and tells Scar, “You’re so weird,” the bored villain stares him straight in the eye and intones, “You have
no
idea . . .”

While Disney’s villains have routinely veered towards camp

(Captain Hook, Cruella de Vil, Ursula, Jafar), the signifiers that seem to ally Scar with homosexuality become disturbing. After the viewer 212

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enjoys his dry gay wit in the opening sections of the film, the fey lion sings a musical solo that becomes an animated version of the Nuremberg rallies, with Scar at the podium as hyena henchmen goosestep in perfect cadence before him. The color scheme turns monochromatic during this section, furthering the similarities to the Nuremberg documentary
The Triumph of the Will
(1936). Unlike the other villains, Scar actually kills someone (not even the evil Queen in Disney’s
Snow
White
[1937] did that), when he throws Mufasa from a cliff into a stampede of wildebeests. His reign over the kingdom seems to directly cause drought, pestilence and the general destruction of the ecosystem. It is only with the restoration of Simba to the throne that the land comes back to life, in a dissolve that makes the change seem miraculously immediate.

Scar’s unforgivable sin seems to be his refusal to support the heterosexual patriarchy that Simba and his father represent. This social system is canonized during the film’s opening number, “The Circle of Life,” which was used in its entirety as a theatrical trailer for the film—

drawing in audiences through a ritual performance of heterosexual male privilege. While Scar actively defies the social order celebrated in this number, the other gay figures help the young “straight” lion and are not seen as monsters mainly because they view him as the rightful ruler of the land. Zazu, Timon and Pumbaa all aide Simba in his quest to reestablish his claim to the throne, endorsing his “divine right.” This would fit directly into how the corporations that target “the gay consumer” would like to define homosexual individuals as a market but not as a political social group.77 By buying into the society, “the gay consumer” effectively supports the hegemonic order, much as Simba’s gay friends aid his return to power. The power of the film’s endorsement of heterosexual patriarchy on audience members was made clear when the
Timon and Pumbaa
TV series began airing. Since Simba did not appear in the show, Timon and Pumbaa’s “gayness” became all the more obvious and was not used to endorse the “natural order” of heterosexual dominance. Some Internet fans of the original film voiced outrage because the series seemed to be reveling in gay camp, countering the philosophies they found valuable in
The Lion King.
78

Not all homosexual individuals willingly bought into the messages that
The Lion King
seemed to be sending. While some were entertained by Timon and Pumbaa, and identified with the “father issues” that YO U ’ V E N E V E R H A D A F R I E N D L I K E M E

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Simba had to work through after being cast out by his community, others noticed the “lasting impression” of Scar (to coin a phrase). Writing for the gay periodical
Christopher Street,
John E. Harris noted how: On a deep level,
The Lion King
dramatizes the danger of single “affected” males to any society, implying that they have the power to destroy an entire civilization. This is, of course, the message that Pat Robertson and Pat Buchanan routinely sign-off on in order to scapegoat homosexuals for such heterosexual problems as abortion, single mothers, and the high divorce rate.79

Harris also noted in his review the possible racist implications of the hyenas, an aspect that Todd Hayward analyzed in great detail for an article in the West Hollywood gay ’zine
Planet Homo.
Unlike the film, which conceives of race, gender and sexuality as mutually exclusive concepts, Hayward links the negative racial and gender connotations with issues of sexuality: “Disney’s moral hierarchy has implications which are damaging for all of us who lie outside the ‘mainstream.’”80

Hayward’s analysis explicitly displays how “queer” activism and theory counters concepts of “the gay consumer” with the recognition that not all homosexuals are white upscale men with the money or the inclination to support Disney’s product.

Readers may be asking themselves, “But if you substitute Disney’s simplicity with relativity, and if you make good characters physically indistinguishable from bad characters, or if you do away with all
The Lion King
’s polarizations of good and evil, then everyone in the theatre has to come to his or her own conclusions about the film’s content.” To objections of this nature, I respond with a re-sounding, “
Good!
” Films that set up neat systems of good and evil—

do’s and don’ts—are part of the pervasive simplemindedness that posits heterosexuality and queerdom as irreconcilable opposites which cannot co-exist respectfully.81

By arguing against easily understood narratives based on “black-and-white” concepts of good and evil, Hayward’s challenge to Disney and the entire Hollywood film industry proves that sometimes being a

“queer subject” places one outside “the gay market.”

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CONCLUSION

Disney’s acknowledgement of the lesbian/gay audience that exists for its product can neither be dismissed lightly nor cynically criticized.

Such a development is one of the many steps necessary for further social acceptance in American society of homosexuality (and other non-straight sexualities). It is precisely developments like these that worry conservative political and religious forces that try to keep homosexuality stigmatized. Yet, while giving credit where it is due to the Walt Disney Company, one must not be blinded from seeing what else is going on. As Disney and its advertising seem to encourage homosexual viewers to “do” gay readings of their product, such advertising also regulates how that reading is supposed to be done and who is authorized to do it, turning a subversive strategy into a potential for more profit.

As some of the responses from lesbians and gay men in this chapter show, though, such target marketing is not completely effective. The ongoing power struggles between the media industry and audiences is just that—
ongoing.
While the media may consistently have the upper hand, audiences have in the past and will continue at times to play David to the entertainment industry’s Goliath. The positions are continually in flux. Just as this work has provided a corrective to the sometimes overly optimistic pronouncement of some reception studies, this doesn’t mean that the audience is yet again trapped into passive acceptance of the marketing strategies that have been developed. Just as various groups found ways to negotiate and resist the “preferred” subject positions that Disney created in the past, there is no doubt that it will happen again—and that the studio will try once again to bend that resistance to its own gain.

“The Circle of Life”

Most of Disney’s animated features end with some version of the words

“And They All Lived Happily Ever After.” Yet, “The Circle of Life,” the song that opens
The Lion King,
describes life as a constant movement between “despair and hope.” On a more theoretical level, relationships and balances of power continue to shift back and forth in an unending pattern, as various discourses impact upon individuals or groups of individuals, and they in turn react, adapt or resist. Nowhere is this more evident than in the interactions between the Walt Disney Company and social discourse on homosexuality in the past few years. Since 1994, there have been marked changes both in the company’s management and in popular opinion towards the company. Now, certain sections of heterosexual society no longer implicitly trust Disney’s traditional

“wholesome” image and have actually begun to demonize the corporation and its output.

In early 1994, Frank Wells died in a helicopter crash during a ski vacation. In August of that year, Jeffrey Katzenberg and the Walt Disney Company parted ways, leaving Michael Eisner to reign over the empire that the three had rebuilt over the past decade. At the time, many felt this would effect the close of one more era in Disney’s history and the start of another. Since Katzenberg held a firm commitment to lesbian/gay issues, some employees worried that his departure would end the more open and accepting atmosphere at the studio and that the company would backtrack from its increasingly overt ties to lesbian/gay culture and consumers. Certain early signs seemed to indicate this possibility. Two film projects dealing with homosexual themes were in development when Katzenberg left: an adaption of the stage musical
Falsettos
and a fictional reworking of 215

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the documentary film
Chicks in White Satin.
Both these projects were dropped after Katzenberg moved on.

Disney had reason enough to justify a scaling back. In the summer of 1994, just before Katzenberg’s departure, some fundamentalist Christian groups became aware of the “lesbian/gay weekend” at Walt Disney World and mounted a media campaign against the event. While protesters did not appear in front of the park’s gates, David Caton, director of the American Family Association, told reporters that they had sent “non-confrontational observers” possibly in an attempt to intimi-date some patrons, as well as to take notes on how Disney itself dealt with the “homosexual element.” While the park did place signs in front of ticket booths informing uninformed heterosexual customers of the gay and lesbian group attending the park that day, spokespeople for the company made certain to reiterate that such an event was not sponsored by Walt Disney World. Still, the park did receive some complaints from customers who had not known that the event was going to take place, and Caton contended that Disney was giving tacit approval “by allowing organizers, including a group called Digital Queers, to hand out literature on Disney World grounds.”1

With glimmers of controversy finally appearing on the horizon, it would have been understandable if Disney had pulled in its wagons.

Yet, such thinking had held the company back in the 1970s, and Team Disney had brought the corporation out of the economic ashes by aggressively pursuing markets and projects even when stockholders and board members complained that such strategies tarnished the Disney name. Instead, in October 1994, the American Family Association’s

“non-confrontational observers” would read in newspapers that the Walt Disney Company had extended employee benefits to domestic partners of lesbian and gay male employees. The decision sparked the letter from Florida legislators that opened chapter 1. In it, they announced, “We strongly disapprove of your inclusion and endorsement of a lifestyle that is unhealthy, unnatural and unworthy of special treatment.”2 The Florida Baptist Convention passed a resolution in November of 1994 expressing “our high degree of disappointment” with Disney’s move and asked that Florida’s Southern Baptists “prayerfully re-consider their continued purchase and support of Disney products.”3

While not directly calling for a boycott, the American Family Association’s leader Donald Wildmon interpreted it as such and urged that the national Southern Baptist Convention vote to join the movement when E P I L O G U E

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it convened in the summer. Although 1995’s convention did not take up the war cry, the battle lines had been drawn, and a number of conservative groups now began to eye Disney warily. Alarmed by Disney’s

“anti-family, anti-Christian drift,” Reverend Wiley S. Drake of the First Southern Baptist Church in Buena Park, California, weekly faxed letters to Eisner and was infuriated when they were ignored. A report from the Baptists’ Christian Life Commission complained that the company “not only ignored our concerns but flagrantly furthered this moral digres-sion in its product and policies.”4