[David Whitley]The Idea of Nature in Disney Animation (Ashgate Studies in Childhood, 1700 to the Present)(pdf){Zzzzz}

Given that Disney's animated films are an important part of many children's viewing experience worldwide, the messages movies such as "Bambi", "The Jungle Book", "Pocahontas", and "Beauty and the Beast" convey about the natural world are of crucial importance, and never more so than today. David Whitley's compelling study examines a range of Disney's feature animations, from "Snow White" to "Finding Nemo", in which images of wild nature are a central aspect of the narrative. Whitley challenges the notion that the sentimentality of the Disney aesthetic prevents audiences from developing a critical awareness of contested environmental issues. Rather, he argues, even as the films communicate the central ideologies of the times in which they were produced, they also express the ambiguities and tensions that underlie these dominant values. Differentiating among the effects produced by particular films, therefore, produces a more complex understanding of the classic Disney canon.Whitley's exploration of the way images of nature are mediated in Disney animation produces greater understanding of the role popular art may play in shaping feelings and ideas that are central to contemporary experience.

Publisher: Ashgate (February 1, 2008)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0754660850
ISBN-13: 978-0754660859

Editorial Reviews
Review
'In this welcome new and expanded edition of his 2008 book, David Whitley makes a major contribution not only to Disney studies but to film/media studies and to studies of environmental representation. Packed with persuasive close readings, well-researched, and engagingly written, his book offers fresh perspectives on the Disney canon and its place in popular and academic culture.' Kenneth Kidd, University of Florida --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

About the Author
David Whitley is Lecturer in English in the Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge, UK.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

An important and engaging study.
By Allan G. Hunter on February 23, 2008
David Whitley's excellent book is remarkable for many reasons, chief amid which is that he is supremely sensitive to the way Disney-made animated movies (and he usefully differentiates between later movies made by the Disney studios and those overseen by Walt Disney himself) have shaped our ways of seeing nature. He takes the trouble to observe not only what the movies present but precisely how they do so - and in the process reveals some fascinating insights into the ways we have seen and continue to conceive what `Nature' might be.

It's not a small point - as Whitley remarks, Bambi was in 1990 the third highest grossing movie of all time, having had a run of nearly 50 years at that point, and it has shaped attitudes in adults and in children alike. As those children became adults they carried their prejudices into a modern world that has been less than sympathetic towards nature in any guise.

Whitley's analysis is especially illuminating when he comes to look at Pocahontas and to untangle for us the cultural evasions that the movie embodies on both sides of the arguments about colonization. While the Europeans tended to see America as a place to gather wealth so they could return home, the attitudes of the Native Americans were hardly as simple or as naïve as they have been presented to us over the centuries, and so in Pocahontas we see an attitude critical of the colonists but also surprisingly unquestioning of the peoples they discovered. Gently, Whitley brings us into contact with our own blind-spots about what we imagine our history to be and how we tend to look at the natural world, shaping it in ways that say a great deal about our human capacities for delusion.