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Absent Patriarchs and Persuasive Enforcers of the Future Nation: A Contextualized Reading of American Wartime Fathers in Walt Disney’s Pinocchio, Dumbo and Bambi

Absent Patriarchs and Persuasive Enforcers of the Future Nation: A Contextualized Reading of... This article discusses the portrayal of fatherhood and paternity in Walt Disney’s benchmark features Pinocchio (1940), Dumbo (1941) and Bambi (1942) through a contextualized historical and cultural analysis. The author aims to provide a coherent study of how the father figure is constructed in each of these films and why the tone of this presentation varies considerably within the short time span between the theatrical releases. The article proceeds to demonstrate how, with their prominent father characters, these features exhibit metaphorically the transitional and challenged sentiments regarding fatherhood and masculinity in early 1940s America. The immense societal crises, the Great Depression and the Second World War, destabilized prevalent gender roles and, as a response, sparked ideologically charged discourses that were pretentiously spread in contemporary mainstream film, and which sought to restore the former patriarchal order. This article intends to discover to what extent the Disney studio participated in these popular discourses or used them for its own interests. Finally, the article investigates how these films contribute to the construction and understanding of ‘reality’ of this past and the role of fathers within it. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Animation: An Interdisciplinary Journal SAGE

Absent Patriarchs and Persuasive Enforcers of the Future Nation: A Contextualized Reading of American Wartime Fathers in Walt Disney’s Pinocchio, Dumbo and Bambi

Animation: An Interdisciplinary Journal , Volume 14 (1): 15 – Mar 1, 2019

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References (2)

Publisher
SAGE
Copyright
© The Author(s) 2019
ISSN
1746-8477
eISSN
1746-8485
DOI
10.1177/1746847719833308
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

This article discusses the portrayal of fatherhood and paternity in Walt Disney’s benchmark features Pinocchio (1940), Dumbo (1941) and Bambi (1942) through a contextualized historical and cultural analysis. The author aims to provide a coherent study of how the father figure is constructed in each of these films and why the tone of this presentation varies considerably within the short time span between the theatrical releases. The article proceeds to demonstrate how, with their prominent father characters, these features exhibit metaphorically the transitional and challenged sentiments regarding fatherhood and masculinity in early 1940s America. The immense societal crises, the Great Depression and the Second World War, destabilized prevalent gender roles and, as a response, sparked ideologically charged discourses that were pretentiously spread in contemporary mainstream film, and which sought to restore the former patriarchal order. This article intends to discover to what extent the Disney studio participated in these popular discourses or used them for its own interests. Finally, the article investigates how these films contribute to the construction and understanding of ‘reality’ of this past and the role of fathers within it.

Journal

Animation: An Interdisciplinary JournalSAGE

Published: Mar 1, 2019

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