Tinker Belles and Evil Queens: The Walt Disney Company From the Inside Out (35 page)

This scenario in which the primary texts may remain somewhat oblique, but the marketing more directly addresses a homosexual subject position, is not unique to Disney. For example, reading Disney’s latest animated features from a “queer” viewpoint, or finding a

“gay appeal” in the various “boy toy” films may be amusing and enlightening, but such readings are mainly consigned to the realm of connotation rather than denotation. As D. A. Miller notes in his analysis of Alfred Hitchcock’s
Rope
(1948), “Defined in contrast to the immediate self-evidence of denotation, connotation will always manifest a certain semiotic insufficiency.”6 Yet, one
can
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by looking beyond the primary texts themselves (films, TV series, theme parks), and towards the marketing and publicity the studio has created—the press releases, interviews, trailers, TV commercials—seeing
them
as texts in of themselves. Interviews with Jeffrey Katzenberg, as well as studio animators, purposefully indicate that Disney’s animated features are made for more than just a “kiddie”

market.7 When joined by press recognition of both the campy villains as well as the openly gay employees working on these features, these interviews begin to address a viewing strategy that once “dared not speak its name.” Chon Noriega’s survey of journal reviews of “closeted” homosexual films like
Tea and Sympathy
(1956) and
Cat on a Hot
Tin Roof
(1958) also sees the importance of the discourse of “nonfilmic events.” The contemporary reviews alerted potential ticketbuyers about the homosexual content that was present in the original plays, but had been censored in the films. Noriega writes that “since these

‘events’ preceded actual film viewing, the censored subject could be reintroduced back into the theatre in the body of the reader/viewer, creating the possibility for authorized ‘subtexting.’”8

This chapter will examine how Disney marketing works to “au-

thorize subtexting” from lesbian or gay male consumers. While not denying the positive aspects of a major conglomerate acknowledging a homosexual subject position, this chapter will also analyze how such “authorization” poses a challenge to much of the theoretical work done on audience reception. To simply celebrate lesbian/gay readings of Disney as a type of fragmented reception is to ignore how contemporary audience research increasingly capitalizes precisely on this fragmentation in an attempt to control and regulate the reading (
à la
Foucault).9 After examining the variety of ways in which the Walt Disney Company reaches out to the potential gay market, analysis of specific advertisements and public relations events will theorize how advertising constructs subject positions and toward what ends.

By examining how advertising works to “commodify” the subject, this relatively new development by Disney in targeting gay audiences becomes more complex and problematic. Before doing so, though, a short history of Walt’s own savvy in cross-promotion and merchandising will display the studio’s history of being on the cutting edge of marketing and show how its leadership in the newest developments in advertising research and theory would lead it toward addressing homosexual consumers.

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MARKETING THE MOUSE: A SHORT HISTORY

OF DISNEY ADVERTISING AND PUBLICITY

Historians have noted that modern mass production made it necessary to create mass consumption and that this was primarily accomplished through advertising. In the mass production of 1930s Hollywood filmmaking, Walt Disney learned quickly how to differentiate his shorts from the rest of the pack through the use of merchandise as a form of advertising. Walt’s first major contract with a Hollywood distributor was animating Oswald, the Lucky Rabbit. Oswald’s success spawned product tie-ins such as a chocolate-coated marshmallow bar, buttons and a stencil set.10 Charles Mintz, who distributed the cartoons through a contract with Universal Pictures, owned the rights to Oswald, so Disney did not share in the monies received from this merchandising. Yet, when Walt and his brother Roy broke from Mintz and started their own studio with their new character Mickey Mouse, the popularity of the Oswald items (as well as their impact on box-office revenues) was not forgotten.

In January of 1930, Mickey began appearing in his own nationally syndicated comic strip, and, in February, Roy signed a contract with Geo. Borgfeldt and Company, which would license manufacturers (both domestic and foreign) to produce specified Disney character products, import and distribute them and then share the profits with Disney. The enormous success of Mickey Mouse cartoons resulted in a landslide of licensing contracts that helped keep the studio financially afloat. As Walt continually pushed for better “quality” in the cartoons, the budgets often ballooned beyond what most short subjects could expect to make at the box office. Consequently, the company needed the merchandise profits to stay in the black.

Yet, Roy and Walt seemed to initially perceive the relation between the shorts and the merchandise as only flowing one way. The merchandise served to publicize the films, not the other way around.11 This mindset is evident in the strategy that the studio devised for circumventing their contract with Borgfeldt when the Mickey Mouse stuffed dolls that Borgfeldt was distributing didn’t measure up to Walt and Roy’s high standards. The studio simply released to the public (through the McCall Company) the pattern of the stuffed doll that
they
approved of and let people make their own dolls. The studio hired Herman “Kay”

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$50,000 a year and split half the profits from the licensing agreements that Kamen arranged.12 Unlike the Disney brothers, Kamen saw the reverse potential of the relationship between the films and the merchandise. Just as the merchandise could generate increased revenues at the box office, the films could generate increased revenues at the store counter. Consequently, Kamen energetically licensed Mickey and other Disney characters on watches, handkerchiefs, mugs, trains, underwear, tea sets, books, silverware
ad infinitum.
When Disney realized that millions were being made from licensing and they were only receiving half of the profits, the studio’s philosophy changed. In 1948, when Kamen’s contract came up for renewal, the studio cut his participation in merchandising to only North and Central America and created a Character Merchandising Division to handle foreign markets. A year later, Kamen died in a plane crash, and the studio assumed total control of merchandising.

At about the same time the studio reevaluated its relationship to merchandising, Disney rapidly expanded into a number of other areas.

Disney moved boldly into television when major studios were still wary, seeing the new medium’s cross-promotional advantages. The series
Disneyland
(1954–58) won an Emmy its first season for a program that was basically an hour-long advertisement for the new feature
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
(1954). Disney agreed to produce the program for ABC only when the network agreed to help finance the building of Disneyland, the theme park. Although the series promoted the park relentlessly, the studio did not look on television simply as an advertising medium. Now each division mutually supported the other.

The success of “Davy Crockett” on TV, for example, spurred the selling of merchandise, promoted the “Frontierland” section of the new park and was eventually released as a live-action feature, but also spurred further television production by the studio.

Other studios rushed (and are still rushing) to adapt to Disney’s strategy of “synergy,” creating TV series, licensing characters and investing in theme park attractions that encourage further consumption of studio product. (Even non-film corporations such as Coca-Cola, McDonald’s and Marlboro have moved into licensed merchandising.) In the 1960s, after the major film studios had divested themselves of their domestic exhibition branches, various multimedia conglomerates took over most of the studios. The talent agency MCA came from within entertainment and began the acquisition fervor when it acquired Univer-YO U ’ V E N E V E R H A D A F R I E N D L I K E M E

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sal as well as Paramount’s vault of films for licensing to television and Decca Records. Many came from non-entertainment areas though, such as Gulf + Western’s takeover of Paramount or Transamerica’s acquisition of United Artists. The effect of these mergers and acquisitions on filmed entertainment was a growing cross-interest. Conglomerates now used the assets of their filmed entertainment to help invigorate other branches (and vice versa). Sony’s acquisition of Columbia ensured the production of titles for home video consumption, which also furthered Sony’s interest in VCRs, laser discs and TVs. Time, Inc.’s merger with Warner Bros. provided a system in which Time’s cable network HBO

helped finance Warner films by buying the cable rights, in turn providing product for HBO to broadcast. Other studios have followed Disney’s lead in diversifying media outlets by becoming involved in theme parks (i.e., Universal’s Studio Tour, Time-Warner’s interests in Magic Mountain) and in merchandising (i.e., Warner Bros. Stores). In this way, the iconography of the original films can be sold dozens of times over in different contexts.

Although Disney led this trend in the 1950s, other studios surpassed Disney’s “synergetic” abilities during the stagnant years after Walt’s death. Eisner, coming from Paramount, and Wells, having worked at Warners, took the corporate lessons they learned and updated Disney’s older concepts. Taking advantage of the instant recognition of the Disney name and characters, all aspects of the corporation aggressively sold each other in a hyperefficient model that became the envy of the industry. For example, the popularity of the theatrical feature
Aladdin
was tied to a number of other related areas: miniature action figures of the film’s characters; tie-ins with Burger King, which put images of the characters on plastic soft drink cups; the score from the film released on CD, as well as a children’s album narrating the story; the release of the feature on home video, and eventually on the Disney Channel; a new show/restaurant in the “Adventureland” section of the theme parks, as well as “Aladdin” parades down Main Street; Little Golden Books’ picture book of the story; an animated TV series based on the characters; the selling of original cel work done for the feature; and a CD-ROM based on the film. A more recent example of Disney’s continued strategy of synergy between various corporate arms was the acquisition of the American Broadcasting Company in 1996. Almost immediately, a number of the families of different ABC series made pil-grimages to Walt Disney World.
Roseanne, Step by Step
and
Second Noah
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all created “special” episodes that hoped to attract more viewers by their trips to the park but also effectively worked to advertise the place as well. ABC’s daytime series
All My Children
publicized a “Cinderella”-themed wedding in May of 1996 to increase its audience but also made explicit reference to the Disney film version, which just happened to have been released on video the month before.

Disney was also one of the first to capitalize on the concept of target audiences, a key development in the eventual attempt to woo the homosexual customer. In the first half of the century, marketers followed the ideas of many social scientists of the time who conceived of the population as an undifferentiated “mass.” Sociologists from the Frankfurt School conceived of mass media as a “magic bullet” or “hy-podermic needle” which was injected into the passive unconscious minds of the masses.13 Yet, marketing and public relations firms quickly realized that if potential buyers passively accepted sponsors’ messages, every advertising campaign would be inordinately successful. After World War II, target marketing was developed by advertisers as an implicit admission that some potential customers were not “getting the message” that their clients were communicating. W. R. Smith introduced the idea of “target research” to marketing in 1956, which was defined as a shift from product differentiation (the “attempt to bend demand to the will of supply”) to consumer differentiation (“bend[ing]

supply to demand by identifying lucrative segments of the market and developing products to specifically fit those segments”).14 By moving from advertising the benefits of the product itself to advertising the benefits of belonging to a certain audience segment which used the product, segmenting moved to increasingly isolate specific groups from this ill-defined mass, hopefully including those groups which had spending power but had not been addressed effectively in marketing heretofore.

Disney had already proven the viability of Smith’s ideas two years earlier. With the broadcast of the weekly
Disneyland
series, and especially the daily afternoon episodes of
The Mickey Mouse Club
(1955–58), the studio helped to create a culture of “children’s television” and dominated what became an increasingly lucrative children’s market.15 These Disney TV shows promoted the theme parks and the new film releases, as well as a plenitude of tie-in products, by aiming their discourse directly at the child consumer. This trend continues in the present, as the success of the syndicated “Disney Afternoon” attests. Eisner began his career in children’s programming for ABC and, immediately upon tak-YO U ’ V E N E V E R H A D A F R I E N D L I K E M E

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ing over at Disney, moved to create children’s series. The phenomenal response to such syndicated series as
DuckTales
(1986–92) and
Chip n’

Dale’s Rescue Rangers
(1989–93) proved the company’s ability to target and capture the younger consumer.16

In the Eisner era, such target research has gone beyond simply breaking up the audience into children and adults. Some ads for the film
Pretty Woman,
for example, were created to sell men on a