'I'm Wishing'

Coming home for Christmas, I stumbled upon a box of my old Disney cassettes, and decided to watch my first Princess film - Snow White and the Seven Dwarves (1937). As I watched, I began to consider the gender presentations not apparent to me as a child. From academic sources such as Megan S. Lloyd's 'Unruly Alice: A Feminist View of Some Adventures in Wonderland' and Nicole Sawyer's Feminist Outlooks at Disney Princess's, published by the James Madison University, to other blogger's Disney Princesses, Capitalism and Feminism and Disney Princesses and feminism , it seemed Disney Princess films were ripe for critque. Gender identities and roles projected through the Princesses of Disney films mirrored the attitudes of Walt Disney’s 1940s patriarchal culture, the beliefs of the roles women should play in this society (O’Brien, 1996), and ultimately a phallocentric order in which male characters hold power. From the first Disney Princess, movie, Snow White... these films have ‘set forth standards for girls on how to grow up into proper women’ (Sawyer, 2011) – ultimately, as attractive, passive and victimized. From a study constructed in 2011 by Towbin, Haddock, Zimmerman, Lund and Tanner, three themes emerged from these princess films in relation to what it means to be a girl or woman – that females are domestic and likely to marry, helpless and in need of protection, and valued more for appearance than intellect (2011).

'I'm Wishing', (2012) details, knitted cassette tape

'I'm Wishing', (2012), knitted cassette tape, cassette, Disney video case

With mass media a hugely influential teacher of social norms to young viewers, consideration must be given to the values and ideologies projected by media produced for the use of children; it has been claimed once children own a video or DVD, they will watch repeatedly (Lin, 2001), a fact very true of my own childhood. However, rather than taking comfort in knowing the story “off by heart”, I would reach the pivotal scene, in which Snow White would take a bite of the fatal apple, and rewind the cassette back to the beginning. I would tell my mother that she might not eat it this time. What may at first appear as a humorous anecdote of childish naivity and imagination in hindsight offers us room for analysis; I genuinely believed this film was “real”, that it had, to a degree, a life of its own, that the ending was not already set in stone, and, most importantly, that I somehow had the power to change it. For me, this ability to “play” with gender conventions is incredibly exciting. Could it be claimed I could foresee the ‘compulsory and naturalized heterosexuality’ (Butler, 1990), founded upon the need for fulfillment? Was I hoping that, if Snow White should not choose the apple, a fate would await her different from that of playing object to her Prince Charming? Though I’m certain non-such feminist theories entered by head at this an age, I feel the piece above, 'I'm Wishing', explores such themes - the repetitive action of knitting the tape mimics the action rewinding, yet now I am physically manipulating the work itself. The unknitted tape not only signifies the ending I as a child would refuse to watch, but the chance for an alternative conclusion I hoped for both as a child, and as an adult.