Tinker Belles and Evil Queens: The Walt Disney Company From the Inside Out (14 page)

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das!) Although throughout the film Donald is chasing after various Latin American women with unbridled ferocity, Donald often seems to forget or get confused. During a frenzied game of “blind-man’s-bluff”

with some bathing beauties, Donald ends up eagerly embracing José.

Although Donald reacts with shock when this happens, he seems to quite enjoy it earlier in the film when José and the Mexican rooster Panchito are shown kissing up Donald’s arms while singing “And pals though we may be . . .” This line comes from the title song, which begins, “We’re three caballeros, three gay caballeros/They say we are birds of a feather.”

In the final major section of the film, sexual desire is specifically tied to the wealth of metamorphosis and surrealism, as Donald goes off into a reverie inspired by the kiss of another live-action woman.

In a very Freudian manner, Donald dreams of being a bee hovering over the woman’s face, now transformed into the center of an exotic flower. Sexual object choice gets very confused, though, for every time Donald approaches her face to consummate the relationship, his two male buddies erupt out of the flower singing “we’re three gay caballeros.” At one point during this section, the three male cartoon characters’ heads are matched up with the dancing legs of three live-action chorus girls.

The finale to this section shows Donald with the buddies again, repeatedly being struck from behind in a climactic frenzy of action. Donald Duck’s behind gains special mention here. Throughout his career, the usual retribution for Donald’s childish pranks or quick temper was a good thwack to his feathered posterior. Many of the Duck’s cartoons also delight in watching him from the back, the better to see how his butt waddles. Still, the end of
The Three Caballeros
pushes to the limits the amount of abuse that could be sustained on the poor bird’s backside, creating a sustained metaphoric representation of anal inter-course. Dressed as a bull in a fight with Panchito, José attaches a string of firecrackers to the bull’s tail. As Donald shoots across the screen while the firecrackers explode, he is further accosted by two bottle rockets in the behind that function as daggers in the bullfight. Shooting out of the bull costume he was wearing, the bull takes on a life of its own—

the better to gore Donald in the rear. Finally, as fireworks burst all over the place, Donald gets treated to a whirling circle of a fireworks that buzzes up his butt before reuniting with his two friends in one last hug of friendship.

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In its use of anarchy, metamorphosis, sexual aggressiveness and

“butt” humor,
The Three Caballeros
stands out as an example for everything that Forster and Eisenstein found fascinating in Disney. Forster’s invocation of the trickster god Bes’ gender ambiguity and playful anarchy is embodied by Donald’s sexual frenzy being directed everywhere at once (and Donald’s potential as both penetrator and penetrated).

Eisenstein’s fascination with how metamorphosis undermines the solidity and security of identities is embodied by the consistent manipulation of the characters’ bodies. While it would be difficult to state that the film is squarely and unequivocally “homosexual,” the chaos and carnivalesque nature of the film also makes it equally difficult to state that it is resolutely “heterosexual.” In keeping with Forster’s and Eisenstein’s appreciation of Disney, what is valuable about
The Three Caballeros
is exactly its
queerness.

FAIRY TALES: HOMOSEXUAL CULTURE AND FANTASY

The Disney
oeuvre
rationalized its retention of metamorphosis and anthropomorphization in its animation through a recurrent invocation of the world of fantasy. While almost every animator at some point has turned towards the world of make-believe, Disney consciously cornered the market on producing animated versions of fairy tales—so much so that literary critics at times have complained that Disney’s version of certain fairy tales have completely supplanted the literary texts from which the films were derived.37 Bruno Bettelheim, in
The Uses of Enchantment,
his famous study of the meaning of fairy tales, complains that “most children now meet fairy tales only in pret-tified and simplified versions which subdue their meaning and rob them of all deeper significance.”38 Yet, I would argue that, to use Bettelheim’s own words, even Disneyfied fairy tales are “a major agent of socialization” and “intimate that a rewarding, good life is within one’s reach despite adversity—but only if one does not shy away from the hazardous struggles without which one can never achieve true identity.”39

Homosexual culture (particularly gay male culture) has long held a fascination with fantasy. The close association of gay men to the world of fantasy has contributed to some of the most common epithets for homosexuals in Western culture: “fairy,” “queen” and “princess.” Michael

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Bronski, elaborating on what constitutes a “gay sensibility,” stresses the importance of imagination to this sensibility: “Imagination is especially threatening to a culture that repressively and rigidly defines gender roles . . . because it can provide an alternative vision to the ‘real’

world.”40 Hence, fantasy contains a possibile critique of dominant society, as well as a picturing of an alternative. With self-identified lesbians and gay men living every day as an alternative to dominant culture, ties to fantasy seem logical.

Although not necessarily evoking a world of polymorphous perversity, fantasy is often described as a method of escape from the trials and tribulations of everyday reality. Living in a society that has outlawed homosexual desire, categorized it as a medical disease, labeled it as a sin against God and allowed (and often encouraged) violent retribution against homosexuals, homosexual culture has unsurprisingly embraced the potential for escape that fantasy and fairy tales provide. Heroes or heroines rise above their station—rewarded for all their hardship and vilification by finding Prince Charming and/or being crowned as royalty. Others leave their drab and shabby existence and find a fascinating other world in which anything is possible. This second scenario is the basis for one of the key texts in homosexual culture, the film version of Frank L. Baum’s
The Wizard of
Oz
(1939). In the narrative, an underappreciated adolescent girl in the barren Midwest is whisked away to a fabulous land filled with color and spectacle where she finds friends who value her more than her biological family seem to do. Although Dorothy, the main character, consistently declares her desire to “go home,” almost every viewer (gay or otherwise) enjoys the film not for the sepia-toned representation of Kansas but for its breathtaking creation of a three-strip Technicolored Oz.

Disney’s films often evoke this narrative of fantastic worlds. Walt himself was a large fan of Lewis Carroll’s
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
and
Alice Through the Looking Glass,
which Baum’s works on Oz often resemble. Walt’s first series were the “Alice Comedies”; a Mickey cartoon has the mouse go
Through the Mirror
(1936); an animated feature based on the stories was in planning during the 1930s and was finally made in 1951. After completing the film, the studio’s next animated feature went from Carroll’s Wonderland to homosexual author J. M.

Barrie’s Neverland in
Peter Pan
(1953). Yet, even without explicitly invoking Carroll’s or Barrie’s texts, Disney’s animation often creates an 64

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environment similar to Wonderland or Neverland. The Silly Symphonies are filled with examples of plants’ coming to life (
Flowers and
Trees
[1932]), musical instruments’ ruling kingdoms (
Music Land
[1936]), china shop figurines’ throwing parties (
The China Shop
[1934]), and an insect Harlem nightclub where they “jitterbug” for hours (
Woodland
Cafe
[1937]). Although all of these cartoons contain a narrative of heterosexual courtship (as mentioned in chapter 1), it is quite possible to ignore or skip over the hoary clichés of the romance and focus on the in-ventiveness and originality of the imagined world. Much as gay subjects often ignore Dorothy’s reaffirmation of home life on the farm in favor of Oz’s Technicolor dazzle, they can ignore the predictable

“straight” romance in favor of an environment that seems to hold out a promise of radical possibilities.

Another narrative strand in Disney’s films that would have a great appeal to homosexual subjects is the tale of the “outsider.” Throughout the studio’s history, Disney has consistently returned to stories about characters who don’t “fit in” to society. Unlike the heroines of Carroll and Baum, these characters do not find another world to escape to and must confront their ostracization. Rebuffed by the upholders of what is normal and decent, these “rejects” eventually find acceptance and happiness by finding a use for those aspects of themselves that were originally thought to be deficient or “abnormal.” Hans Christian Andersen, now recognized as homosexual himself, provided what is probably the archetypal version of the story, “The Ugly Duckling,” which was filmed by Disney twice—in 1930 and again in 1939. Other versions of this type of story can be found in
Morris, the Midget Moose
(1950),
Lambert, the
Sheepish Lion
(1952),
Goliath II
(1960), and the very popular feature film
Dumbo
(1941).

There are two Disney texts about outsiders, though, that are more easily read as specifically “gay” texts and delightfully affirming of “otherness.” The first of these is the Oscar-winning short
Ferdinand the Bull
(1937). With backgrounds depicting a constantly sunny Spain, the cartoon tells the story of a young bull who is content to spend his life “just sitting quietly and smelling the flowers” rather than pursuing other more conventionally masculine pursuits. While Ferdinand is never shown having sexual interest in another bull, the character’s quiet affection for flowers associates him with images of homosexuals then current in American culture. In the 1920s and ’30s, gay men were frequently referred to as “pansies” or “buttercups,” and certain flowers,

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such as green carnations, had been secret symbols of one’s sexual interests since the days of Oscar Wilde.

Interestingly, the short never seems to suggest that Ferdinand is somehow depraved or deserving of contempt for his desires. Although his mother wants to know why he doesn’t want to run and leap and butt heads like all the other young bulls, she accepts her son’s “lifestyle”

without much second thought. Ferdinand is never shown racked with guilt over his implied homosexuality or worried about what others may think of him. On the contrary, the cartoon continually shows close-ups of him batting his long eyelashes and sighing slowly and contentedly.

Neither the narrator nor the visual design of the cartoon ever judge Ferdinand as somehow wrong in his choice. Rather, there is a bemused acceptance and delight in Ferdinand’s attitude.

The film becomes even more intriguing when Ferdinand is taken to the Madrid bullring in the mistaken belief that he is a ferocious warrior.

In yet another example of butt humor, Ferdinand’s manic reaction to sitting on top of a bee creates this impression on the talent scouts. The toreadors are all caricatures of Disney animators, and the matador is a winking parody of Walt himself. “Walt the matador” has an angry fit when Ferdinand would rather smell the bouquet that some senorita threw into the ring than fight a “manly” fight. Finally, even “Walt’s”

masculinity is challenged by the bull when in frustration he tears his shirt open, revealing a flower tattoo on his chest which Ferdinand excitedly licks. As Walt, the toreadors and the entire crowd curse, boo and howl, Ferdinand is carted back from whence he came. The cartoon ends with a long shot of Ferdinand back under his tree on his sunny hill, smelling the flowers. He turns and offers us one last drowsy smile, showing that none of this has affected his self-worth in the slightest . . .

and the film irises out to black.

This delight and acceptance of an effeminate male reoccurs in
The
Reluctant Dragon
(1941). If anything, the effeminacy of the Reluctant Dragon in the title segment of the anthology film is even more pronounced than Ferdinand’s. Like the bull, the dragon sports long emotive eyelashes and contains not an aggressive bone in his body, with the dragon prancing and pirouetting throughout the story. Yet, unlike the bull, the dragon has a voice—a high-pitched masculine voice with the accent of an English dandy. In fact, the dragon’s long black fluffy ears often droop around the sides of his face in an approximation of
the
English dandy Oscar Wilde. Rather than fight battles with knights, this 66

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dragon wants to play music, hold high tea and write poetry. At one point, the dragon is specifically referred to as a “punk poet,” at a time when the common slang definition for “punk” was “homosexual

male.” (This phrase is repeated about five times in one fifteen second period of the film.) One of his poems, “Ode to an Upside-Down Cake,”

is fraught with double entendre about sexual reversal:

Sweet little upside down cake, cares and woes—you got ’em
Poor little upside-down cake, your top is on your bottom.

Alas, little upside-down cake, your troubles never stop.

Because, little upside-down cake, your bottom’s on your top!

A young lad who fancies himself an expert on knights and dragons warns the dragon that a knight has been hired by the town, thinking that the dragon is as ferocious as the legends tell, but both the lad and the dragon are surprised to find that the knight, Sir Giles, is as much a tea lover and poetry writer as the dragon is. The cartoon introduces both figures similarly—caught taking baths by the lad, and their figures contrasting sharply with the manly heroic illustrations contained in the lad’s book.