Magical Thinking, Fantastic Film, and the Illusions of Neoliberalism

Abstract

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“Life Isn't Some Cartoon Musical”: Neoliberal Identity Politics inZootopiaandOrange Is the New Black

“…That film's focus on the filial relationship between two female characters, together with its ironic take on the genre's conventional assumptions about heterosexual romance, led many critics to celebrate the film for its subversive sensibility. But even though Frozen 's superficially progressive gender politics were widely perceived as a radical break with the Disney brand's traditional representation of female characters, it also falls within a longer tradition of the company's reversal of stereotypes in response to shifting cultural tastes (Blouin 118). In this sense, Frozen 's “progressive” politics merely represent another step in a much longer development of incrementally “feminist” princesses, through the “independent” and “liberated” young women in The Little Mermaid (1989), Beauty and the Beast (1991), and Aladdin (1992) to the more recent variations in The Princess and the Frog (2009), Tangled (2010), and Brave (2012)…”