Introduction
When I told my dad that I was going to take a Disney class, he was horrified. “Why?” he asked, disgust tinging his voice. “What are your other options?”
I ignored his comments and took the class anyways. When I told Ms. Rolater that he was a “Disney Hater,” she told me to ask him why. His answer surprised me. He said, “It shaped my idea of masculinity in ways I can’t undo.” There was something about his response that hinted at a deeper resentment.
Masculinity and Disney
Many are aware of the effect of Disney on girls– the classic Disney Princess Effect– but what message are the boys getting?
Before we address this question, it is first important to understand what masculinity is. The National Democratic Institute defines masculinity as the “social expectations of being a man.”
So, what are the social expectations of being a Disney man? In many Disney movies, especially the older ones, princesses are damsels in distress. For example, Snow White must be kissed by Prince Charming in order to be saved. Prince Eric kills Ursula, saving Ariel. On the flip side, this sets the expectation of masculinity that in order to get the Disney Princess, men must swoop in and take charge. In addition, there are often certain kinds of men portrayed in Disney. According to a thesis analyzing men in 22 Disney animated movies from 1930 to 2007, most central male characters were white, heterosexual, slender and fit, and likely to engage in hand to hand fighting (Hibbeler).
This reinforces the idea of more aggressive, boys-will-be-boys, types of male performances. In several studies, boys have been shown to be more likely to be physically aggressive than girls. While it is unfair to pin this solely on Disney, it is true that Disney is contributing to these social expectations, and thus, the idea of aggression as integral to masculinity.
However, not all Disney men are so traditionally masculine. There is a long history of queer-coded men, especially villains. While the study cited above mostly brushes past this, it does say that “evil characters [are] more likely to be well dressed.” This is linked to the Hays Code, when openly gay characters were not allowed on screen, but queer-coded characters could be shown only if they were portrayed in a negative light, and were punished at the end of the movie. This code led to a long tradition of queer-coded villains that continues into more modern Disney.
However, there was also a level of subversive messaging going on. Howard Ashman, a gay man, was responsible for the lyrics of many queer coded men in the films, notedly in Beauty and the Beast and the Little Mermaid. However, many of the young boys watching Disney can miss this messaging. Instead, they see that a softer form of masculinity is villainous.
Raj Mankad, Disney, and Masculinity
I sat down across the kitchen table, set my recorder, and we began to talk.
My father started off by expressing his resentment that he is like “a fish in water.” He went on to clarify:
“I’m the fish, and there’s this giant cultural milieu that I exist in that I can’t control, and Disney is like one of the dominant forces that I don’t have any control over.”
He feels like Disney is a major force on his life, and his perception of himself, but he had no choice in choosing that influence. Disney is so pervasive in society, that it by default forms people’s ideas of their own masculinity. He goes on to further categorize this resentment:
“It’s kind of like when you resent your own religion, or you resent your mother, or something like that.”
This was a surprising statement to me. I didn’t know he held such tenderness towards Disney, but he described childhood memories of watching TV, going to Disney world, and imagining with Disney characters. The same aspects of Disney that provide warm childhood memories are the ones that form a child’s societal expectations, creating a complex, hard to interpret mix of emotions.
He goes on to describe the ways he consumed Disney. Whenever a family member from India would visit his hometown of Mobile, Alabama, they would all drive 8 hours to visit Disney World. In addition, he watched a lot of Scrooge McDuck after school as a young child. When he was in middle and high school, the Disney Renaissance occurred, further impacting his mental development in these formative years. Disney, he says, “was a big part of my identity.”
He also describes positive associations with the movie Aladin, which he said had “way more positive… representation[s] of South Asian adjacent people than anything else while I was a kid that was mainstream.” This shows the power Disney held, both nationally and in my dad’s Alabama hometown. Representation, even if imperfect, was important.
However, as he grew older, and became more of “somebody who’s thinking and trying to figure out [his] own gender and sexuality,” he became more aware of the impact Disney had on his ideas of masculinity.
“[I realized that] the Disney movies are such a dominant force that you don’t even realize how much it shapes you, and so you can’t even undo it. It’s hard, even once you figure out what it’s doing and what it did, you think you can deconstruct it intellectually, but you can’t.
It’s always there, the person you were raised as not just by your parents, but by the culture or the culture around you. You can’t totally undo it.”
This shows the life long effects growing up in a Disney saturated culture can have. Once it affects your development, as he describes, it is nearly impossible to completely remove from your ideas of social expectation, morality, and masculinity. In his eyes, Disney has permanently shaped who he is, and the lack of choice is upsetting.
It’s important to note that the other cultural influences my father was receiving from Mobile, Alabama, likely influenced his development as well. He describes the culture as full of “super toxic white masculinity… wrapped up in white supremacy.” As such, Disney cannot be fully blamed, but it didn’t serve to truly break the narrative he was receiving of what it could mean to be a man.
When asked how Disney affected his idea of masculinity, my father found it difficult to respond. Eventually, he said it was defined by “violence and physical domination,” traits very uncharacteristic of my father. He had more to say about women’s depictions, though. He describes them as “hyper feminine,” with a move towards more agency in the 90s to 2000s, but with “a limit to how much could change.”
“There was always a limit to how much could change. For black and brown people and nonstandard males and females or non standard gender and sexuality, there was a limit to how much they could be represented.”
We went on to discuss queer coding in Disney, which he knows exists, but says he totally missed as a child. He didn’t get the subtext, only the negative “text.” It took him until college to truly start considering what kind of person and what kind of man he wanted to be.
“The thing is, the reason it’s liberating to think about queer people, even if you’re not queer queer, is that there are so many different ways to be, say, cis.”
This is the message he needed, but did not get from Disney.
Raj Mankad, Disney, and Family Expectations
As I dug deeper into the interview, I discovered that Disney also held strong, emotional connections to the expectations of his family. As some background, my father’s entire family are doctors. He went through college and one year of medical school, before quitting and becoming a writer. This event is probably one of the most impactful, painful, and powerful moments of his life, and Disney is connected to it.
“I guess the one of the things about Disney is that since I went to Disney World with my family, and I got upset with my family eventually about how limited I thought their conception of what life should be like and what I should do with my life, that all got wrapped up with Disney too.
I just felt like Disney was like this hyperreal where you spend all this money and time and you go to Disney World, and then you end up in these fake versions of urban life that are cleansed of all the complicated things, and more interesting, more beautiful things.
This displays a fundamentally different view on life than the rest of my father’s family. It’s also a fundamentally anti-Disney view. He says that Disney is like “paying to have your… view of life and what you should do with it set up in a super constrained consumeristic way,” which mirrors the way he believes his family wants him to live. In actuality, his life is completely opposite of these Disneyized expectations. He is an opinion editor, and there is nothing he loves more than finding the urban life of Houston full of “complicated things.” He describes all the choices in his life that go against these Disney/family expectations: not becoming a doctor, marrying my mom, vacationing in Mexico city. All of these major decisions and values that define his life are also intrinsically related to Disney. Even if they seem to oppose the Disney ideas, the whole framing of life and values that he is resisting is shaped by Disney. I can see why he’s resentful: he really can’t escape.
Finally, we moved onto the topic of our family trip to Disney World that we took around 10 years ago. He describes being badgered by his family into taking a family trip:
“I told them I didn’t want to go and I didn’t want the family to do it, but I love them, and I cared about them. And they insisted. So I said “I will go, but I won’t go on the trip and spend time with everybody because everybody will be there.” I just absolutely will not go to Disney World.”
Instead of coming to Disney World with us, he studied alone in the hotel room for his comprehensive exams for his pHD.
I thought that was the end of the story– my father hates Disney because it permanently impacted his ideas of gender and sexuality, as well as his values and goals in life, in ways that he cannot change.
However, my grandparents, his parents, unexpectedly popped into the house. I asked if I could interview them, and their contributions added unexpected depth.
Firstly, they confirmed the extreme level of Disney messaging my father was getting, and their disinterest in questioning it. They told me that when my father was very young, around 2 years old, he loved Disney. They took him to Disney when he was very young, and when he was a few years older, he had forgotten that he had gone and insisted on going again. At one point, they said, “Who doesn’t want to go to Disney?” Apparently, my dad and his brother visited three times in one year.
They also expanded upon their tradition of taking guests from India to Disney World. My Dadi explained how she would pack a trunk full of Indian food so they could eat familiar food while experiencing the Disney magic. This layered, multicultural experience is quintessential of the immigrant American experience.
When they explained this, I realized something. My grandparents see Disney as the epitome of American culture, in a way to aspire to. When my grandmother was pregnant with my uncle, they visited Disney World, back when it was a newly opened park in a hotel-less town called Orlando. Disney World was literally one of their first impressions of the US, and as immigrants, that shaped how they lived their life. It represented their American Dream.
My dad also sees Disney as the epitome of American culture, but in a terrible, sinister way that was harmful to him growing up. He sees expectations to follow along the same path as his parents, the pressure to follow money, and the suffocating societal norms he suffered in Mobile, Alabama. It represents his American Nightmare.
Disney is symbolic of their entire relationship, both to America and each other.
Interview 1: Lila Mankad and Raj Mankad
Lila Mankad
Hello, please state your name and who you are.
Raj Mankad
My name is Raj Mankad. I am the child of Vipul and Aparna Mankad, the husband of Miah Arnold and the father of Lila and Vishwa Mankad.
Lila Mankad
All right, excellent introduction. I’m Lila Mankad, your interviewer today, and I’m here to ask you about Disney. So, would you classify yourself as not a fan of Disney, an anti-Disney person, or a Disney hater…?
Raj Mankad
It reminds me of when people ask me if I’m Hindu. My short answer is that I think it’s a little bit like being a fish in water. Like the fish doesn’t even know it’s in the water. I mean, I know that I’m in the water. But I guess I have some resentment because I feel like a fish in water. And I don’t really have a choice about it.
Lila Mankad
You’re the fish and Disney is the water?
Raj Mankad
Yeah, I’m the fish, and there’s this giant cultural milieu that I exist in that I can’t control, and Disney is like one of the dominant forces that I don’t have any control over.
So I guess I have some resentment. But it’s kind of like when you resent your own religion, or you resent your mother, or something like that. I have very dear memories with Disney. I can remember seeing movies, I can remember jokes, or being with people when I was watching the movies. I also grew up in Mobile, Alabama, which is within driving distance of Disney World. And anytime anybody visited from India, to Mobile, which was basically every year, sometimes twice, we would drive the 8 hours from Mobile to Orlando, and go to Disney World.
Lila Mankad
Wow, I didn’t realize Mobile was so close.
Raj Mankad
Yeah, so it was like a big part of my identity. Because of the movies of course. But also there were a lot of Disney cartoons that were playing on TV when I was growing up, and unlike now, there wasn’t an infinite sort of Borgesian level of access to any kind of culture that I wanted or got directed to by an algorithm. There was just one thing that was on TV, there was one channel that had cartoons. And it had Disney cartoons on it, like old Mickey Mouse stuff, old Donald Duck stuff.
But also this new thing at the time with Scrooge McDuck, which I watched for years, and it had a big place in my imagination. Then when I was in middle school and high school, there was this big new wave of Disney movies, when it kind of came back to life and they shed their old way of doing things. People started watching Disney cartoons in a big way again.
Lila Mankad
The Disney revolution.
Raj Mankad
Is that’s what it’s called? Yeah, so like, what is the one with Prince Ali? Aladdin was a big deal. The Little Mermaid was a really big deal.
Aladdin was also a really big deal because it had brown people in it, who kind of looked like me and my friends. I know it has a bunch of stereotypes and things but it was way more positive than any representation of South Asian adjacent people than anything else while I was a kid that was mainstream. So that was good.
But as I got older, I became more of an intellectual, and more of an adult, and more of somebody who’s thinking and trying to figure out my own gender and sexuality. [I realized that] the Disney movies are such a dominant force that you don’t even realize how much it shapes you, and so you can’t even undo it. It’s hard, even once you figure out what it’s doing and what it did, you think you can deconstruct it intellectually, but you can’t.
It’s always there, the person you were raised as not just by your parents, but by the culture or the culture around you. You can’t totally undo it.
And since I grew up in Mobile, Alabama, in this super toxic white masculinity that was wrapped up in white supremacy, at the same time, I was surrounded by all this Disney stuff, so it’s all sort of a giant jumble to me.
Lila Mankad
Could you describe further in what ways Disney shaped your idea of gender and sexuality?
Raj Mankad
Yeah. The relationships, at least outwardly and to my knowledge, were all heterosexual. The masculinity was generally physical. I mean, there’s a certain level of cleverness that some of the male characters have but it’s….. hmm.
I liked Prince Ali actually. There’s Little Mermaid, there’s not even very many men in it. There’s the prince who’s like a non-character.
Lila Mankad
Yeah, he technically comes in at the end and kills Ursula.
Raj Mankad
Oh, right. But basically there’s a lot of violence and physical domination. What were the other ones that came out? In the 90s and the 80s?
Lila Mankad
Lion King.
Raj Mankad
Oh yeah. Lion King.
Lila Mankad
Lion King’s got some interesting stuff going on. There’s Simba who you see grow up. And in that one, it’s like the status quo wins.
Raj Mankad
Right.
Lila Mankad
I mean, I was rewatching some of [Lion King] for this project. Scar is just ridiculed. There’s one scene where Mufasa’s advisor says “There’s one of those in every family..”
Raj Mankad
And he might be queer.
But then the female characters are hyper feminine. They have really long hair and really narrow waists. They are a little bit assertive, so like, there was some rethinking of agency. But I think what happened in the 90s to the early 2000s, was that there was always a limit to how much could change. For black and brown people and nonstandard males and females or non standard gender and sexuality, there was a limit to how much they could be represented.
I have to say I still think that Aladdin did a pretty good job in terms of agency. But they’re pretty tried and true, standard representations of gender and sexuality.
Lila Mankad
Aladdin’s also got some interesting things going on with them, with Jafar and the genie. We read an article about them, a queer reading. I mean, almost all Disney villains have a queer reading of them. That’s another thing. It’s like, all the non-standard performances of maleness are villains and sending subtext.
Raj Mankad
They could be counter read, at least they have a presence. Which maybe as a kid, I kind of detected and internalized but not really.
Lila Mankad
So it’s like, that [messaging] was hitting some people but not really the boys [like you] growing up with it?
Raj Mankad
Yeah. I mean, I had a vague idea that I wanted to be accepting and tolerant of different kinds of people. But it wasn’t until college that I gave real thought to gender and sexuality. I had to change my assumptions in thinking.
The thing is, the reason it’s liberating to think about queer people, even if you’re not queer queer, is that there are so many different ways to be, say, cis. Like that language of just cis and trans is just, is actually not nearly good enough. But at least it’s a step forward, it’s a step away from a binary.
Lila Mankad
Then there’s Beauty and the Beast.
Raj Mankad
Yeah. For some reason, I didn’t really watch that.
Lila Mankad
Beauty and the Beast has this hyper masculine representation with Gaston, who is the villain. Do you remember the song? It’s like, no one fights like Gaston, no one bites like Gaston! I mean, he’s kind of ridiculed for that level of hyper masculinity.
Raj Mankad
Yeah.
Lila Mankad
And there’s the beast.
Raj Mankad
Yeah, who’s kind of allowed to be sensitive and vulnerable, but he’s still a gigantic beast.
Lila Mankad
And then the climax of the movies is when the two men are fighting, and Belle is just watching, yelling “Noooo!”
Raj Mankad
I guess the one of the things about Disney is that since I went to Disney World with my family, and I got upset with my family eventually about how limited I thought their conception of what life should be like and what I should do with my life was like, that all got wrapped up with Disney too.
I just felt like Disney was like this hyperreal where you spend all this money and time and you go to Disney World, and then you end up in these fake versions of urban life that are cleansed of all the complicated things, and more interesting, more beautiful things. And in all the time you’ve paid to go there, there’s all these product placements. So like, the Hall of Life is brought to you by Exxon or GM, or something like that. You’re spending all your money and time, basically paying to have your symbolic order and your view of life and what you should do with it set up in a super constrained consumeristic way.
And that was all pointing towards this path of becoming a doctor, and marrying the kind of person that my parents wanted me to marry, and chasing money. All that, to me, is wrapped up in Disney. So like marrying somebody who isn’t like a Disney-like beauty– like your mom is really beautiful, but she’s not a Disney character “beautiful.” Or choosing to be a writer, instead of a physician and making a whole bunch of money.
Or even if I have leisure time, going to an actual place with my family like Mexico City, where there’s real streets full of actual vendors and street life and street performers and indigenous people and artists and food stalls and it’s messy, and you get inconvenienced sometimes, and sometimes it’s dangerous. But weirdly, it’s like a lot cheaper and more fun than going to Disney World. All of that, to me is wrapped up in Disney.
I don’t know if you remember but my parents insisted that my whole family all go to Disney World together. That we went and Mehul and Vaishali and them all went. I told them that I just absolutely was not going to go to Disney World. I told them I didn’t want to go and I didn’t want the family to do it, but I love them, and I cared about them.
And they insisted. So I said “I will go, but I won’t go on the trip and spend time with everybody because everybody will be there.” I just absolutely will not go to Disney World. One of the reasons I was able to do that in a way that didn’t hurt everybody’s feelings is that I was in the middle of my comprehensive exams for my PhD. And so I was able to say, “Look, there’s no way I can do this. I have to spend all my time right now like reading this list of 80 books.” So it was pretty crazy. We all rented this condo house thing. You all went to Disney World and I just sat in a room by myself reading, that’s how much Disney bothers me.
Lila Mankad
Were you bothered that Vishwa and I were going or not?
Raj Mankad
No, I mean, it’s like I said, you’re in the world and Disney is part of the world.
Lila Mankad
Is there anything in there you don’t want me to share with Ms Rolater and the class?
Raj Mankad
No. I mean, I think that the latest round of Disney movies like Frozen and all the other ones, it’s always kind of enervating at first and you feel like the world is changing. Because these norms are changing, and the Disney movies move the world’s norms in a certain direction.
And basically, Ron DeSantis tried to take on Disney and they crushed him. Yeah, because people aren’t gonna give up like that allure and encompassing symbolic order that Disney World has created for them. It’s just so powerful.
So like, I guess there’s a part of me that’s like, “yeah, Disney!” Like when you get confronted with how bad things can be, and then you realize how powerful a force Disney is to norm people into something that’s not that bad. Then you think like, “okay, Disney is good. I’m glad it’s around.”
But then it’s sort of like NPR, I just get really, really mad and frustrated and upset that like this is as far as it goes. It takes the edge and real revolutionary potential out of the work that artists do for decades and then it smooths it over and robs it of its full potential.
Lila Mankad
All right. Anything else?
Raj Mankad
No.
Lila Mankad
Okay, thank you so much.
Interview 2: Lila Mankad, Raj Mankad, Vipul Mankad, Aparna Mankad
This interview includes Raj Mankad, previous interviewee, and his parents Vipul Mankad and Aparna Mankad. It functions like a family conversation, so there is some interrupting going on, especially from Vipul.
In addition, keep in mind that Vipul and Aparna are English as a Second Language speakers, so some of their language might be grammatically strange.
Mehul: Raj’s brother, Vipul and Aparna’s son.
Nehal: Raj and Mehul’s cousin.
Raj Mankad
Can you tell the story about how I wanted to go to Disney?
Aparna Mankad
When we visited Disney first time, Raj was like two year old. He enjoyed the teacup ride and Small, Small World and all the other kiddie rides. At the end of the day, he was so happy and fell asleep on his shoulder and we walked out of Disney. We thought, wow, Raj had a great time too. And then he grows a year or two later when he understands what is Disney.
We told him we we did go to Disney, but he said, “But I don’t remember, we have to go again!” So then we went again, second trip for Raj. And I mean, of course Mehul was happy, who doesn’t want to go to Disney? So we went second time.
Vipul Mankad
Almost every guest that would come to our home in Mobile, we would take them to Disney. So our parents, my sister, I think a couple other people.
Aparna Mankad
In those days, Disney pass was so affordable, I would say like $100 for a whole year. Annual pass. So that year we went two times. And then we had a meeting in Fort Lauderdale or somewhere– Daytona. So Raj and Mehul went by themselves to Disney.
Raj Mankad
By the time Mehul and I went to third time that one year, we knew the layout of Disney World so well– which lines were long at what time of the day– that even though we just had like five hours, we nailed all our favorite rides.
Aparna Mankad
And then they were back.
Raj Mankad
What about Disney movies? What do you remember about us watching Disney movies?
Aparna Mankad
Oh all the Disney movies on TV?
Raj Mankad
Do you remember when Aladdin came out?
Aparna Mankad
Aladdin, and there were some other Disney movies too? Little Mermaid and some stories.
Raj Mankad
Do you remember how I used to watch the Donald Duck and Scrooge McDuck after school?
Vipul Mankad
Disney is not just Disney World, right? Because there is a whole Disney brand, like the Mickey Mouse hat. There’s one picture where you have it, Raj.
Raj Mankad
Did I get that in Disney World? Wow.
Aparna Mankad
I remember one other thing. When Mehul was young and we had to go back to India, I bought a Donald Duck toy for him. And Mehul loved that toy, and then–
Vipul Mankad
But one interesting thing is that when Mehul was not yet born, when Dadi was pregnant with Mehul, that’s the first time that we went to Disney World together.
Disney World had just opened. Orlando was just like this small village. I mean, there were no big hotels. We stayed in a bed and breakfast.
Aparna Mankad
I have some picture of me pregnant with Mehul in Disney. They have a picture.
But the Mehul’s Toy, The Donald Duck, made it to India, and he used to play with it. Then comes around Nehal, and we just had one. So Mehul had to share with Nehal and that was a very difficult thing. You can’t make two Donald Ducks out of one.
Vipul Mankad
Alright, so now we have to plan a trip. Vishwa will be like Raj, he’ll say “What? What Disney?”
Raj Mankad
Yeah. Yeah.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
Interview 3- a brief note with Aparna Mankad
In this, Aparna is talking about her process when they would bring family from India to visit Disney World.
Aparna Mankad
They enjoyed Disney but they were not really used to American food, because they just arrived and then they are at the home so they get to eat Indian food. So both times, I packed trunks of Indian spices– dal, rice, pressure cooker, pappard, lots of chapati– and then we would rent a condominium like thing. Then, every morning I cook the Indian dinner for evening.
And everybody would shower and eat the breakfast– fried rice and some Indian stuff. Then the lunch they could handle with ice cream and fries and things like that. But by evening, they were all ready for the real thing.
Discussion Questions
- Has Disney affected your idea of masculinity?
- Do you feel like it is possible to “undo” the norms Disney perpetuate?
- Is Disney improving in it’s portrayals of masculinity and/or femininity?
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