Comics Are for Everyone: Less Capitalism, More Telepathy Please

Comics Are for Everyone: Less Capitalism, More Telepathy Please

Recently, I dived back into reading comics (thereby neglecting my movie watching) and my collection of comic examples has become crazy huge, so today I’ll celebrate my 300th blog post (seriously, 300! 280,000 words! But who’s counting?) with an extra-long comic edition. And if you think “I can skip this one, I don’t care about comics”, please give it try anyway, maybe you’ll see that it doesn’t always have to be about superheroes.

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Behind These Castle Walls, Part I: Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937)

Behind These Castle Walls, Part I: Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937)

Ever since I read J. Zornado’s revolutionary important book Inventing the Child, in which he examines children’s fiction and its underlying messages, I looked at books and movies in a different way. Among all the brilliant things this book achieves, what spoke to me in a special way was how he dissected Disney movies, specifically The Young Mermaid and The Lion King. Uncovering their themes of parent authority, gender politics and identity manipulation was a big revelation to me. And ever since then I wanted to look at Disney movies, which are so beloved and popular until today, and see if I could figure out which ideas they sell to kids. So, today I’m starting a new series in which I’ll chronologically go through every major animated Disney movie and try to analyze it closely. I’m not the first one to do this, but I hope I have something new to say anyway. I have seen most of them already in the past, but I will watch them again with different eyes now.

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