Tinker Belles and Evil Queens: The Walt Disney Company From the Inside Out (46 page)

64. Judith Butler, “Imitation and Gender Insubordination,”
Inside/Out:
Lesbian Theories, Gay Theories,
Diana Fuss, ed. (New York: Routledge, 1991), 21, 28.

65. Jon Adams, “Critiquing the Cartoon Caricature: Disney, Drag and the Proliferation and Commodification of Queer Negativity.” Paper presented at 246

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Society for Cinema Studies Conference, Dallas, 1996. Reference to Leonard Maltin,
The Disney Films
(New York: Crown Publishers, Inc., 1973), 183.

66. Harry M. Benshoff,
Monsters in the Closet: Homosexuality and the Horror
Film
(Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1997), while looking at the horror genre specifically, also notes how the monsters or villains in traditional horror films are figured often as “queer” outcasts who somehow threaten the security of the normalized heterosexual couple.

67. Russo, 75.

68. Such a representation of pirates can be linked back to the social structure of pirate life, where male-only crews unable to dock at established ports of call often turned to each other (and to those males kidnapped during raids) for sexual favors and sometimes formed emotional ties. For further comment on this topic, see B. R. Burg,
Sodomy and the Pirate Tradition: English Sea Rovers in the
Seventeenth-Century Caribbean
(New York: New York University Press, 1984).

69. The common association of cultured British male characters with homosexuality in popular culture is analyzed in Robert Dickinson, “Anglo Agonistes: English Masculinities in British and American Film,” diss., University of Southern California, 1996. Although not referring specifically to
The Jungle Book,
George Sanders’ place in this tradition is discussed on 89–90. Discussion of Jeremy Irons playing the villainous fey lion in
The Lion King
is analyzed on 176–178.

70. Discussion of the racial makeup of the orangutan, voiced by jazz great Louis Prima, is outside the scope of this book’s topic. Yet, the blatant racial stereotyping of this character does not seem to have bothered African Americans who were effective in keeping
Song of the South
(1947) out of rerelease (and video release).

71. Henry Jenkins, “‘Going Bonkers!’” 190.

72. Ibid.

73. Ibid.

74. Armistead Maupin,
28 Barbary Lane: The Tales of the City Omnibus, Vol. 1

(New York: HarperCollins, 1990), 393.

75. In 1997, the Gay Men’s Chorus of Los Angeles performed the title song from the film in one of their concerts. As a prelude to the concert, the chorus was shown clips from the movie—to the delighted howls of all who were present.

My thanks to Richard Dupler and David Cobb for bringing this gay reading to my attention.

76. Taylor Harrison’s paper on the “Annette” serial, “How Will I Know My Love? Annette Funicello and the Screening of Transgression,” presented at the Console-ing Passions Conference, University of Madison at Wisconsin, 1996, discussed precisely her shock and recognition of the implications of Jet when re-watching the serial on the Disney Channel.

77. Posted to “rec.arts.tv.soaps.abc” newsgroup by Ashley Lambert-N OT E S TO C H A P T E R 3

247

Maberley on Apr. 4, 1996. The newsgroup is focused on TV soap operas, and the subject was raised on its own within the group.

78. Posted to “rec.arts.tv.soaps.abc” newsgroup by Rob Hartmann on Apr.

4, 1996. My knowledge of this poster’s sexuality is based upon personal correspondence.

79. Chris Cuomo, “Spinsters in Sensible Shoes:
Mary Poppins
and
Bedknobs
and Broomsticks,
”
From Mouse to Mermaid: The Politics of Film, Gender, and Culture,
Elizabeth Bell, Lynda Haas and Laura Sells, eds. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995), 212–223.

80. Cuomo, 222.

81. Ibid., 221–222.

NOTES TO CHAPTER 3

1. Quoted in Martin Duberman,
Stonewall
(New York: Dutton, 1993), 208.

2. Eric Marcus,
Making History: The Struggle for Gay and Lesbian Equal Rights
(1945–1990)—An Oral History
(New York: HarperCollins, 1992), 171–172; and John D’Emilio,
Making Trouble: Essays on Gay History, Politics and the University
(New York: Routledge, 1992).

3. Duberman describes the collapse of the coalition quite vividly in the last section of his book, particularly in recounting the experiences of the drag queen Sylvia, 235–239.

4. Quoted in Signorile,
Life Outside,
53, who makes the same argument as I make here. Signorile points out that one of the most popular gay male clubs in New York City during this period, the Mineshaft, enforced a dress code of conventional masculinity (jeans, boots, etc.) that effectively kept out transgendered persons or effeminate males.

5. Browning, 41.

6. Quoted in Signorile,
Queer in America: Sex, the Media, and the Closets of
Power
(New York: Doubleday, 1993), 316. Although people outside the Shrine Auditorium, where the Awards were held, did protest, the invasion of the proceedings never materialized.

7. Quoted in Ryan Murphy, “Out of the Closet, Onto the Screen,”
Out
17

(Nov. 1994): 141–142.

8. Signorile,
Queer in America,
319–320.

9. Quoted from a personal interview with Marc Eliot in Eliot’s
Walt Disney:
Hollywood’s Dark Prince,
138.

10. This anecdote was relayed to me by Walt Disney Company assistant archivist Robert Tieman. It has been impossible to verify this in some form of official writing. The list of actors and actresses is compiled from mainly from the interviews done by Boze Hadleigh published in such works as
Conversations
With My Elders
(New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1986),
Hollywood Lesbians
(New 248

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York: Barricade Books, 1994) and
Hollywood Gays
(New York: Barricade Books, 1996).

11. Stephen D. Moore, “Disney Downfall, or Whatever Happened to Tommy Kirk,”
Frontiers
13:13 (Nov. 4, 1994): 68.

12. Ibid., 70.

13. Ibid., 68–70, suggests this reading. It is impossible to verify exactly how the studio dealt with Tommy Kirk’s last days at the studio, for all records relating to Tommy Kirk during this period have mysteriously disappeared from the Walt Disney Archives according to Walt Disney Company assistant archivist Robert Tieman. In contrast to the hushed-up homosexual “scandal,” the press played up Kirk’s arrest the following year for smoking marijuana at a Hollywood party with headlines such as “Former Disney Child Star Arrested for Pot.”

14. Moore, 70.

15. Ibid.

16. Ron Grover,
The Disney Touch: How a Daring Management Team Revived
an Entertainment Empire
(Homewood: Business One Irwin, 1991), 12; the phrase is also mentioned in Joe Flower,
Prince of the Magic Kingdom: Michael Eisner and
the Re-Making of Disney
(New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1991), 53. Douglas Gomery’s article, “Disney’s Business History: A Reinterpretation,” in
Disney
Discourse,
78, acknowledges that “All sought to ‘do what the founders might have done.’”

17. Flower, 58.

18. Ibid., 96.

19. Grover, 190, describes that the company negotiated to invest only $2.5

million on the park, agreeing to receiving only 10 percent of admissions, 5 percent of food and merchandise sales, and 10 percent of corporate sponsorship agreements. Mitsuhiro Yoshimoto’s “Images of Empire: Tokyo Disneyland and Japanese Cultural Imperialism,”
Disney Discourse: Producing the Magic Kingdom,
Eric Smoodin, ed. (New York: Routledge, 1994), 181–199, while not explicitly commenting on this business arrangement, analyzes Tokyo Disneyland not as American culture colonizing Japan, but with Japan as the imperial power, importing exotica from the areas under its control.

20. Flower, 188.

21. Ibid., 96. Flower states that this quote was in a magazine interview but does not mention the source, and the quote contains no citation.

22. A number of sources describe the following few months in the company’s history. The most thorough of these is John Taylor,
Storming the Magic
Kingdom
(New York: Knopf, 1987). Flower and Grover also cover this material.

23.
New York Magazine
(Mar. 10, 1986): 42, quoted in Grover, 100. This same anecdote is also related in Flower, 200.

24. These box-office figures are from Grover, 101.

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249

25. Steven Gaines, “Will the Mouse Come Out?”
Buzz
6:4 (May 1995): 68, makes the same point.

26. Personal interview with Thomas Pasatieri, Los Angeles, CA (June 30, 1996). Amongst the projects Pasatieri has worked on are
The Little Mermaid
(1989) and
Dick Tracy
(1990).

27. Gaines, 68.

28.
Out
17 (Nov. 1994) devoted thirty-four pages to three different articles and a photo spread dealing with gays and lesbians in the entertainment industry. Hollywood Pictures debuted as a third filmmaking subsidiary within the Walt Disney Company in 1990.

29. Personal interview with Jeff Kurti, Burbank, CA (July 31, 1994).

30. Quoted in Stephen D. Moore, “A LEAGUE of Their Own: Dragging Disney into the Gay ’90’s,”
Frontiers
13:13 (Nov. 4, 1994): 60.

31. Moore, “A LEAGUE of Their Own,” 60.

32. Personal interview with Jeff Kurti.

33. Personal interview with Garrett Hicks, Burbank, CA (May 25, 1994).

34. Ibid.

35. Personal interview with Tina Shafer, Burbank, CA (Aug. 12, 1994).

36. Moore, “A LEAGUE Of Their Own,” 60.

37. Quoted in Mark Stuart Gill, “Never Say Never-Never Land,”
Out
52

(Mar. 1998):113.

38. LEAGUE’s “The ABCs of Domestic Partner Benefits” (April 1994) explicitly handles the question, “Should domestic partner benefits cover same-sex partnerships only or also include opposite-sex partnerships?” on 2–3. Although granting that “the Company retains the choice of recognizing same-sex and/or opposite-sex couples in their Domestic Partner definition,” they also conclude with a quote from Catherine Iannuzzo and Alexandra Pinck’s analysis “Benefits for the Domestic Partners of Gay and Lesbian Employees at Lotus Development Corporation” (paper for the Simmons College Graduate School of Management, November 1991): “Choosing not to be married is not the same thing as not being able to marry.”

39. Janice Radway’s “Ethnography Among Elites: Comparing Discourses of Power,”
Journal of Communication Inquiry
13:2 (Summer 1989), makes similar remarks, pointing out that “ethnography is produced by the collision of two social worlds, the previously erased home-world of the writing ethnographer, and that distant world in the field inhabited and made meaningful by the group the ethnographer wishes to understand” (3).

40. James D. Woods and Jay H. Lucas,
The Corporate Closet: The Professional
Lives of Gay Men in America
(New York: The Free Press, 1993), examine this strategy of homosexuals separating “work” from “personal life” in chapter 5, entitled “Maintaining Boundaries.”

41. This was expressed to me by the female and African-American 250

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LEAGUE members that I interviewed and is also expressed in Woods and Lucas, 211–212, 256.

42. Also, taking into account the predominance of white men working within the entertainment industry, it is not inconceivable that the proportion of male to female employees or white to non-white employees at Disney approximates the number of female or non-white employees that show up at LEAGUE

meetings.

43. Personal interview with Garrett Hicks.

44. Amongst the other employee groups are LEAGUE MGM/UA, EAGLE

(Universal/MCA) and Gay Men and Lesbians of Time/Warner. As of this writing, Universal/MCA, Paramount, MGM/UA, Columbia/TriStar/Sony, Time/Warner and Disney all grant domestic partner benefits, with 20th Century-Fox the only remaining studio holding out.

45. In Jane Keunz, “Working the Rat,”
Inside the Mouse: Work and Play at
Disney World
(Durham: Duke University Press, 1995), 153–155, there is a good description of the social and corporate environment that faces homosexual employees at Florida’s Walt Disney World.

46. Personal interview with Garrett Hicks.

47. Reps. Bob Brooks, et al., “An Open Letter to Michael Eisner and the Walt Disney Board.”

48. Quoted in Grover, 58.

49. Flower, 188.

50. All the comments by “Kent” are from a personal interview with the author, Burbank, CA (Sept. 12, 1994).

51. Personal interview with Garth Steever. Long Beach, CA (July 8, 1994).

52. Ibid.

53. David Koenig,
Mouse Tales: A Behind-the-Ears Look at Disneyland
(Irvine: Bonaventure Press, 1994), 212.

54. Personal interview with the author, name withheld by request.

55. Disneyland decided to tone down the jocular presentation of rape presented in the Pirates of the Caribbean ride in 1996 by altering the scenes to intimate that the pirates were after the food the women were carrying. Certain customers complained about the change, claiming that chasing women was what pirates did historically. None of these complainers seemed to want the historical accuracy to include pirates’ chasing after young boys as well.

56. “The ‘Disney Look,’” published by the Walt Disney Company (1987), 3.

57. Ibid., 6. Looking at the pictures that accompany the brochure, it is evident that the bias is not only, or even predominantly, against homosexuals. A strong sense of ageism is apparent in those chosen to embody the “Disney Look,” and there is a strong emphasis on white European-descent faces. Also, there are no photos of overweight or physically challenged people.

58. Eddie Shapiro, “Gayety in the Magic Kingdom,” 12–13. The lesbian/

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251

gay appeal of “Ellen’s Energy Adventure” in the EPCOT Center’s “Universe of Energy” exhibit is also described in Gill, 74, 113.