jeff apfel asks a good question:
 
 
> On Thu, 29 Feb 1996, Mike Frank <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> >with reference to my comments on "correct" readings of disney's "b & b,"
>
> >. . . my own cynical guess is that the bettleheim explanation works best . .
> >. but wouldn't it be lovely if in fact disney has really missed the boat on
> >the kind of politics these films actually articulate for their main
 audiences?
> >
>
> May I ask why you feel it would be "lovely" for the film not to act as a fairy
> tale would, as a kind of emotional instruction manual to the art of growing
 up?
> Is there another hegemony you would find preferable, and therefore support
> subversive texts as a means to create a new order, and in turn a new set of
> fairy tales?  Or do you just like subversion?
>
> Jeff Apfel
>
 
 . . . and it's not only a good question but a fair one and, a little
surprisingly, a disconcerting one . . . but i think there is an answer . . .
 
 . . . the question is based  [i think]  on the paired premises a) that there
is "AN art of growing up" that is more or less single, unified, coherent, and
constant [as opposed to multiple arts or processes of growing up] . . . and
[more troubelsome to me] b) that the guys at disney have some kind of
authority or control vis-a-vis this process . . .
 
         . . . and while it's  probably true that i do have a kind of
residual taste for certain kinds of subversion,  i think that my argument
here is based on the possibility that, despite box office stastistics and
comercial success certain comercial interests do NOT have the public
completely in thrall and ready for a complacent acceptance of disney's
sanitized notions of the good life . . .
 
. . . to put it differently . . . some might view the "authority" of disney
[or of fairy tales] as supporting the insipidity of his resolutions . . . the
alternate view sees the texts as "authorizing" the subversion of the problem
rather than the complacency of the solution . . . and this, in opening up the
range of possibilities available to us, seems most likely a good thing . . .
 
        . . . but as so often, i have a sense that i'm overlooking
 important dimensions . . .
 
 
mike frank
 
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