Tinker Belles and Evil Queens: The Walt Disney Company From the Inside Out (28 page)

The Little Mermaid
was based on Hans Christian Andersen’s tale. Many today regard Andersen as having been homosexual, thus giving the story of a sad and isolated mermaid who cannot have the human male she loves added importance to gay male readers. This frame of reading was further emphasized when the renowned homosexual Oscar Wilde revised the tale in “The Fisherman and His Soul.” Wilde’s version reverses the story, depicting a human male who desires a mermaid and must pay dearly for this love.27 Cynthia Erb points out that Wilde uses his take on the fairy tale to critique “Catholicism’s constraints on expressions of love.”28

After
The Little Mermaid,
Ashman involved himself in
Beauty and the
Beast,
which had already been the subject of a famous French film adaption by Jean Cocteau, a version that emphasizes the homoerotics of the story by drawing parallels between the Beast and Belle’s human suitor.

Both parts are played in the Cocteau version by actor Jean Marais, and the film is so concerned with the beauty or ugliness of the two male characters that “the title
La Belle et la Bete
now appeared to describe the relationship between the two male characters at least as much as the love story between Belle and the Beast.”29 Many of Ashman’s changes to Woolverton’s original script involve inserting aspects of Cocteau’s

“ PA RT O F YO U R WO R L D ”

145

film version into the tale. Ashman helped fashion the ego-driven character of Gaston to function much in the same manner as the male suitor in Cocteau’s film. Ashman also “solved” the problem of the Disney film’s second half by introducing the humanized household objects in the Beast’s castle to act as comic supporting characters.30 Although these objects fit precisely into the typical Disney scheme of having dwarves or mice or birds acting as companions to the lead characters, Ashman’s solution is a Disneyfied version of the living candelabras and chairs that decorate the Beast’s castle in Cocteau’s film. Lastly, Cocteau endured severe health problems during the making of
La Belle et la Bête
and thus compared himself to the Beast in his diary.31 Although there is no proof that Ashman knew of this similarity, reports indicate that Ashman was the one who suggested more focus on the character of the Beast, who, as has been discussed, seemed to carry many connotations of battling AIDS.

Ashman’s last project for the studio was
Aladdin,
a film he never lived to see completed (and eventually contained some songs in which Alan Menken collaborated with lyricist Tim Rice). Reports of Ashman’s conception of the project link his vision of the tale to the campy appropriation of “Arabian Nights” imagery by various members of the gay community, most particularly 1960s performance artist and avant-garde filmmaker Jack Smith and Italian film director Pier Paolo Pasolini. Long before Smith made the film
Flaming Creatures
(1963) or Pasolini directed his version of
Il Fiore delle Mille e Una Notte
(1974), the

“Arabian Nights” cycle of tales had held fascination in gay male culture, describing the “Orient” as an exotic sensual environment that didn’t hold to traditional Western morality.32 English expeditionary Richard Burton in the 1800s, for example, had examined the “Arabian Nights” tales for their erotic content, in which he combined literary analysis with supposed scientific observation of Arabic peoples (including an obsession with penis size and detailed descriptions of homosexual acts).33 Camping this exotic Neverland much as Smith did in the 1960s is what Ashman seemed to find attractive in the initial discussions for making
Aladdin.

In fact, characters and situations encouraging a camp reception were a marked (and importantly, widely noticed) development in this new “Golden Period” of Disney animation. Janet Maslin, writing for the
New York Times,
commented that this new period created animation

“not only with an eye toward pleasing children but also with an older, 146

“ PA RT O F YO U R WO R L D ”

savvier audience in mind.”34 In-jokes and sly winks that most children would not catch or understand suddenly started popping up in these fairy-tale musicals. For example, the studio animation department acknowledged modeling Ursula (the villainess in
The Little Mermaid
) on the cult transvestite star Divine.35 Most (if not all) young children would have had no knowledge of Divine; many adults seemed to make the connection, or at least admired Ursula as “a fabulously campy creation” or a “wonderfully campy villain.”36 Contributing to the increasingly overt camp value of these films, Ashman wrote for each production at least one major show-stopping number that parodied Busby Berkeley extravaganzas. “Under the Sea,” in
The Little Mermaid,
contains a fish done up to look like Carmen Miranda, while other undersea creatures samba with abandon. “Be Our Guest,” in
Beauty and the Beast,
recreates bathing beauties diving in synchronization into a pool—but with spoons leaping into a tureen.
Aladdin
contains two such numbers:

“You’ve Never Had a Friend Like Me,” in which the Genie puts on a Vegas-inspired display (complete with “Applause” sign at the end); and “Prince Ali,” in which the over-the-top presentation inspires the Genie to view the sequence as the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade (“Don’t they look lovely, June?”).

Again, how much of this is due to Ashman needs to be placed in context with others working on the films. For example, Andreas Deja obviously did his share in adding to the camp value of these projects.

Ashman himself probably had little say in the model sheet for Ursula.

Yet, her campy nature is due at least in part to the words that Ashman gives her to perform. In
The Little Mermaid,
Ashman provided Ursula with a solo number, “Poor Unfortunate Souls.”37 In the number, Ursula uses various methods to convince Ariel the mermaid to sell her soul—

from looking penitent and saintlike to shimmying madly in excitement.

“In its use of vocalist Pat Carroll’s ability to slide up and down the musical register, from shrieks to baritones, ‘Poor Unfortunate Souls’ is an unmistakable sendup of the campy female impersonation number.”38

Similarly, although Deja must share credit, Ashman not only helped conceive Gaston in
Beauty and the Beast
but emphasizes his campiness through the lyrics of
his
solo number, “Gaston,” a hysterical “
male
impersonation” number! As was discussed in chapter 2, the tradition of reading Disney villains as “gay-tinged” reaches much farther back than Ashman’s involvement with the studio. Ashman’s creation of musical numbers for the villains, though, underlines this position, allowing

“ PA RT O F YO U R WO R L D ”

147

mainstream audiences and reviewers to positively revel in the campiness of their villainy.

Nowhere is this camp perspective more apparent than in the character of the Genie in
Aladdin.
Just as critics noticed that some aspects of these new Disney animated features were for “savvier” audiences, they wondered “What will children make of a film whose main attraction—

the Genie himself—has such obvious parent appeal? They [won’t] . . .

know precisely what Mr. Williams is evoking.”39 While Robin Williams’

impromptu recording sessions contributed mightily to the final character of the Genie, Ashman’s songs for the Genie had been written long before Williams was signed, and the character that Ashman creates through his lyrics definitely portrays him as an overblown, larger than life “gay-tinged” figure. The Genie first appears in a huge production number centered around him telling Aladdin, “C’mon whisper what it is you want / You ain’t never had a friend like me.” Throughout the song, the Genie zips from one metaphor to another in endless enthusiasm, sprinkling his speech with phrases like “true dish!” and a lisping

“you big nabob!” Later, as Aladdin enters the palace disguised as

“Prince Ali,” the Genie promotes him shamelessly by pointing out

“That physique! How can I speak? Weak at the knee,” and describing how he “got all dolled up and dropped by.”

While these examples tend to promote reading the Genie as a “gay male,” the character’s manic nature often spills beyond this simple category, becoming a truly “queer” figure.40 While casting Williams makes the Genie ostensibly male, “he” rapidly shifts into a number of caricatures of famous people (William F. Buckley, Groucho Marx, Ethel Mer-man, Jack Nicholson and Arsenio Hall amongst others) as well as cross-dresses (a flight attendant, a harem girl, a cheerleader) and even becomes different species (a goat, a sheep, a bumblebee). He displays

“mucho-macho” male heterosexuality one second as Arnold

Schwarzenegger, then a caricature of homosexuality in the next second as a swishy tailor measuring Aladdin for his Prince Ali outfit. Everything is overemphasized (the Hirschfeld-inspired drawings, the hyper-kinetic voice of Williams) and paced lightning fast. The overabundance of transformation flaunts the instability of identity in the viewer’s face, hilariously critiquing theories of essentialism in the process. It is all just another costume for the Genie to put on and discard.

Acknowledging the “queerer” nature of the Genie, though, it is much easier to appreciate him (note gender identification) from a gay 148

“ PA RT O F YO U R WO R L D ”

male viewpoint than, say, a lesbian viewpoint, particularly in his relationship with Aladdin. As mentioned, at one point the Genie transforms into a prissy gay tailor mincing as he advises snippily, “Those rags are much too ‘3rd-century’—work with me here!” During one emotional high point in the narrative, the Genie tells Aladdin, “I’m getting kind of fond of you too, kid . . . not that I want to go shopping for curtains or anything.” The final tearful clinch at the end of the film is not between Aladdin and the princess Jasmine, but between Aladdin and the Genie.

The “gay male” aspects of
Aladdin
go much farther than just the presence of the Genie, though. Deja’s admitted conception of the villainous Jafar as gay (making his relationship with his male parrot cohort Iago all the more intriguing) is almost in direct juxtaposition to the Genie.

Both are tied directly to the hero Aladdin—one trying to help him, one trying to destroy him—and both are constantly concerned with how Aladdin looks.

In fact, the studio itself worked endlessly to create a visually pleasing body and face for Aladdin—a development that would obviously interest more gay male customers than lesbians. Having worked mainly on stories with female leads (Snow White, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Ariel, Belle), Disney’s animators were accustomed to creating beautiful (read: fetishized) female figures (large eyes, small waists, pleasing soft curves). Yet, the animation department also had a history of less success in creating visually pleasing male characters. With
Aladdin
then, Disney’s animators were faced with creating an objectified male body.41

Most critics agree that the various princes accompanying Snow White, Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty seem “wooden” and are usually absent from the screen due to their lack of “appeal.”42 In fact, until
Aladdin,
only
Pinocchio
(1940) and
Peter Pan
(1953) had been successful in presenting male figures that came close to the “appeal” of Snow White or her counterparts. (It is interesting that while both are ostensibly male, their masculinity is problematized; the appeal of Pinocchio is more in his wooden puppet form than as the human boy he becomes, and the sexual ambiguity of Pan’s persona has been discussed by many.)43

Initially conceived as yet another adolescent boy, Glen Keane modeled the first version of Aladdin on Michael J. Fox. Katzenberg was not pleased and demanded that Aladdin go back to the model sheets. By all accounts, Katzenberg wanted Aladdin to be modeled on Tom Cruise; Keane supposedly kept photos of Cruise pinned to his bulletin board because “Jeffrey wanted the hunk side of him present.”44 The final

“ PA RT O F YO U R WO R L D ”

149

model of Aladdin has a much taller frame with an overemphasized smile and an ever-present (though not overly muscled) chest exposed.

Furthermore, Aladdin constantly puts his body on display. As “Prince Ali,” Aladdin flexes his biceps, flashes his smile and Ashman has harem girls sigh, “I absolutely love the way he dresses.” (The link between Prince Ali and the spectacle of Rudolph Valentino’s “sheik” persona is very strong.)

Ashman’s involvement in
Aladdin
was cut short by his death, and certain concepts he held for the project ended up dropped or modified by the studio. One major change was the elimination of the character of Aladdin’s mother, for whom Ashman had written a song, “Proud of Your Boy,” declaring her love for her son no matter how he lives his life.45 This song of love attempted to tell Aladdin not to be ashamed of himself or want to be someone other than himself. The song’s message to homosexuals obviously lies close to the surface. Although Aladdin became a loner in the final version of the film, his self-hatred and desire to become someone else still figures strongly in the narrative. He pretends to be “Prince Ali” in order to find a new life in which he is welcomed and adored by society instead of being labeled a “street rat.” Aladdin must learn to accept himself for who he is before the narrative can reach its conventional happy ending.

While Ashman’s work predominantly expresses gay male culture, the need for Aladdin to take pride in himself reaches out to all non-straight individuals. It also ties directly to the last major thematic motif in Ashman’s work: fantasizing a world where one can find acceptance.

Obviously, this fantasy motif works well with Disney, as mentioned in chapter 2. In
Aladdin,
the Genie manifestly invokes Disney as an escape to fantasy when he mimics the ad campaign for the Disneyland theme park by asking,”Aladdin, you’ve just won the heart of the princess, what are you gonna do next?” Ashman always made certain to include in each of his scores what he referred to as a “wish song,” in which the lead character expresses his or her desire to find a different life or to escape to a new world. What marks Ashman’s songs as different from the