Good Girls and Wicked Witches: Women in Disney's Feature Animation

by Amy M. Davis

In Good Girls and Wicked Witches , Amy M. Davis re-examines the notion that Disney heroines are rewarded for passivity. Davis proceeds from the assumption that, in their representations of femininity, Disney films both reflected and helped shape the attitudes of the wider society, both at the time of their first release and subsequently. Analyzing the construction of (mainly human) female characters in the animated films of the Walt Disney Studio between 1937 and 2001, she attempts to establish the extent to which these characterizations were shaped by wider popular stereotypes. Davis argues that it is within the most constructed of all moving images of the female form―the heroine of the animated film―that the most telling aspects of Woman as the subject of Hollywood iconography and cultural ideas of American womanhood are to be found.

Genres: Nonfiction, Feminism, Film, Pop Culture, Academic, History, Fairy Tales

280 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 2006

Reviews

[Kristen · Rating 1 out of 5]

If I could leave a 0 rating, I would. This feels like the author's attempt at completing her thesis in one all-nighter. Firstly, Davis failed to properly research her subject and makes several mistakes even a novice could pick up (Ex. Ariel's father is King Triton not King Neptune. Phoebus is not spelled 'Febus'. Check the credits). Secondly, her ideas if you could even call them that are old and re-hashed. Her bias in favor of Disney knows no bounds as she effortlessly demeans the work of every other animation studio, even Warner Bros. Finally, her writing style leaves everything to be desired. She could have made her point in a 2 pg essay, as opposed to a 200 pg. book! You've been warned.

[Diz · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book has large sections that are off topic or only slightly related to the main theme of this book, so it lacks focus. For example, there is a large section on the foundation of the Disney Animation Studios, but this history isn't really tied into the main theme. In later chapters, there are digressions into non-Disney live-action films that are also distracting.

[Sandra · Rating 3 out of 5]

For a book (or maube better said, dissertation) that claims to look at the role of women in Disney films, there's precious little analysis going on in the book. As much as I enjoyed reading up on the history of the Disney studio (though I was familiar with a lot of it already), that wasn't really why I picked up this book. I wanted analyses. I got tons of history, on movie perception, on animation, on the role of women in America. All interesting in their own right, some of it really relevant, but it took away the screentime from the Disney movies and that disappointed me.

The analyses themselves weren't particularly deep, either. Most of it are ideas I came up with myself over the years, the realizations about the characters in the movie really aren't particularly groundbreaking. That doesn't mean it's not nice to read about Disney characters, it always is. But the book didn't really offer me any new insights. I did appreciate that Davis talked about some of the less appreciated movies out there, in particular Melody Time and The Black Cauldron. I love Slue-Foot Sue from Melody Time, and Eilonwy (despite the failings of the Cauldron movie) is kind of a cool character in her own right. All the positiveness regarding Pocahontas and Kida also made me very happy. But, in the end, none of this told me anything new, though it is nice to see someone agrees with your thoughts about the movies.

As may have become clear, I, like Davis herself, am a bit of a Disney nut. As such there are two things that really bugged me in this dissertation:

- Maleficent. The name is spelled as Maleficent. Not Malificent, but Maleficent. It's Phoebus, not Febus. And more of these mistakes..
- Belle reads more than just her romance fairy tale books in Beauty & The Beast. Really, just check out the scene where she's reading with the Beast. Agreed, Romeo & Juliet may still be a romance (depending on your interpretation), but she's not reading just fairy tales. Most people would agree that reading Shakespeare actually confirms intelligence, so the argument that the books Belle reads dimish her intelligence kind of baffled me.

Little things, but they bugged me. But what really threw me off about this book was the conclusion. The conclusion of this dissertation all of a sudden starts to talk about topics never discussed in the chapters that came before, and as such the conclusion has to have its own conclusion. I'm sorry, that's bad planning, and not how you should write an essay. Isn't that one of the first things they teach you about essay writing? Never introduce new information in the conclusion.. but apparently she got away with it, as the dissertation is deemed good enough to be printed in book form. (Though, can I just say, this glossy paper is really annoying. The light reflects right off the pages, making it quite painful to read under electrical light..)

It wasn't a bad read, but there are some definite things I'd have liked to see done differently.

[MasterSal · Rating 3 out of 5]

Enjoyed this but this is obviously a published dissertation. I liked the book but the writing suffers in the end as there is not as much content in the fairly slim volume. Worth reading but it does not have as much as depth as I had expected

[Octavia Cade · Rating 3 out of 5]

This study apparently developed from Davis' PhD thesis, and it shows. I did find it interesting, especially once it got onto the actual topic of women in Disney's animated films, but it took a while to get there. Barring appendices, the text is around 220 pages, and the first 90 odd pages were contextual material on the history of animation in general, or the inner workings of the Disney studio - ongoing problems with distributors and so forth. All of which is, I'm sure, very useful, but it's not always entirely relevant. Once it's all done away with, there are only three chapters that cover what the title says the book covers. In fairness, Davis' argument appears solid: women in the early animations, such as Snow White, were either largely passive (if good) or actively evil, but that as women's role in society changed, so did the representation of them in Disney films. I mean, it's not a rocket science argument, but it's solid - although, if the role of women in film is linked to history in this way, a much more in-depth study, pertaining to science fiction rather than animation, can be see in Dean Conrad's Space Sirens, Scientists, and Princesses: The Portrayal of Women in Science Fiction Cinema.

One big gap here, I think - and a surprising gap, given Davis' focus on contextualising the given narratives within the cultural and business practices of the day - is that there's no attention given to Disney's adaptation of source material. I'm not even talking about fairy tales here, continually altering as they are, but films like The Hunchback of Notre Dame and Pocahontas are so far removed from the source material (a famous novel and, more problematically, actual history) that I would have thought these deliberate changes in the way the women at the centre of these stories were represented merited discussion. Apparently not.

In summary, then, it's a fairly decent study, but a bit unfocused, and ruthlessly limited.

[Kristen · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Disney company is notoriously unfriendly about providing access to its archives, thus hindering scholarship. Despite that, Amy M. Davis wrote two books, this one and its companion Handsome Heroes and Vile Villains. For several years I have used the books in tandem in my course on the evolution of fairy tale heroines in American culture. That's code for the social history of Disney princess films! Davis provides thorough analyses of characters locating them amidst cultural trends (gender roles, for example) as they evolve through the early 2000s. It was published in 2007, which means there is no comparable source for films released after that point - Princess and the Frog, Tangled, Frozen, Moana.
The book's chronology is defined by specific eras in the Disney company's history (by studio head). That organizational structure places the evolution of films in the context of where the company was at and how the studio's leadership (Walt or Eisner) influenced story selections and production. In the section, the "Renaissance Era" (which began with The Little Mermaid and continued through the 1990s with Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast, Mulan, Pocahontas) Davis explores the development of empowered female characters - and blossoming American womanhood - as defined by the company.
Fairy tale analyses fill shelves (thank you Jack Zipes, who has his own shelf in my office!), but Davis is the go-to scholar for the animated featured films. Handsome Heroes is organized by type of character which makes it much more accessible in a course that isn't about the company. Students have responded positively to the books, but have found navigating the first to be tricky (as was constructing a syllabus around the two books). While I read them for academic purposes, Disney animated film (and princess/prince) fans will find a lot to like and learn.

[Ellisnoblebooks · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quando ho scritto la mia tesi sulla Disney, questi due volumi sono stati un frequente e validissimo riferimento in fase di ricerca.
Due letture che mi hanno aperto gli occhi su nuovi orizzonti e nuove interpretazioni di film che hanno fatto la mia infanzia, attraverso lo studio del periodo storico, i paralleli con il cinema live-action dell'epoca, l'analisi dei dettagli e dei punti in comune tra personaggi simili, Disney e non.
Il primo volume, dedicato ai personaggi femminili (che si ferma purtroppo agli anni 2000), comprende anche una parte dedicata alla storia del cinema d'animazione e in particolare dell'evoluzione del ruolo della donna nel cinema, mentre il secondo (più recente, si ferma al 2012), dedicato ai personaggi maschili, sostituisce alla presentazione cronologica una presentazione per punti in comune tra i vari eroi e cattivi.
Purtroppo i personaggi animali o antropomorfi non sono stati analizzati, ma ne vale veramente la pena: non guarderete più ai film Disney con gli stessi occhi!

[Shant · Rating 4 out of 5]

At first, I was a little regretful for checking out this book because of the broadness of the topic/chapters combined with my lack of Disney knowledge, but the book was a good read. At first, it started out too broadly with the history of animation, but the scope soon narrowed (Shout out to the part which said 'Essentially Walt Disney viewed all women as either mothers or potential corrupters, although that viewpoint was not exclusive to him at the time' [I can't find the exact quote now]). I liked reading about Disney's financial status/reputation. As someone who never understood the industry talk for Disney on TV Tropes, I liked the breakdown of the classic/middle/Eisner eras. I liked the examples of the middle era Disney having good female characters but watered down through acceptable forms like 12 year old girls or anthropomorphic mice, or the Eisner era having less misogynistic villain portrayals.

Also, this book made me realize that Atlantis and Treasure Planet were separate movies.

[Christine · Rating 2 out of 5]

So the book was published 2007 so certain films aren't dealt with because they were not released yet (i.e. Frozen and the Princess and the Frog).

The book is also very general. I can understand the reason for including the background. It does lay somewhat of a groundwork for how the studio's view of women was important and had more of an impact. That said, there really isn't any deep or meaningful criticism. In fact, if you are an adult, you pretty much know what Davis says. It's not bad, but it's surface. Additionally, I have to wonder about the "reading" of Mulan because the story choices there are in part an aspect of the original poem and point (for a really good discussion of that read Women Warriors: An Unexpected History). Also how can you mention Disney's Beauty and the Beast and not mention Robin McKinley is a weird choice.

[Kevin Haar · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good Girls and Wicked Witches offers a short history of the Walt Disney Animation Studio from its early Silly Symphonies through the release of Mulan. It looks at Walt and his own practices and biases as well as the cultural and political landscape of each era as it considers how Disney Studios depicts women in their movies. This condensed history is an intriguing read and frequently insightful. Davis makes many great connections between Disney characters and relates them to classic fairy tale tropes such as the hagiographic virgin or the dutiful daughter. For anyone interested in the intersection of feminism and Disney, this is a great read. Many know that if I had the time and capacity to write a dissertation on any topic, this would be my exact topic as well. I was thrilled to find this book and enjoyed it very much. At times, I wished the author offered more historical and cultural context, but for what her goals were, she certainly accomplished them.

[Marta · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book has very interesting points about Disney films, the princesses and the role they develop, as well as the analysis of the stories and the behaviour of the characters. It was so useful for my essay about Disney and Pixar and I will try to read too 'Handsome Heroes and Vile Villains' for my personal interest.

[Gemma · Rating 1 out of 5]

The writing is awful and overtly repetitive, there are a lot of serious incongruences in the text like the very conclusion in relation to the whole study and there are some elemental basic errors like calling The Jungle Book's Shere Kahn a panther or spelling Cinderella as "Cinderalla". It reads more as an assignment of an undergraduate than as a proper published book.

[Books and the Bronx Gurrrrlll · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loved this book. So thoroughly researched and interesting

[Kamilla Peter · Rating 2 out of 5]

Read for my MA thesis.

[Tamara Štofková]

I finally finished this book and got my Bachelor's degree !!!
The book was fine but there were many grammatical and textual mistakes which shouldn't be there if it's a dissertive paper.

[Rems · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this for my dissertation, which is a very similar topic to Davis - looking at what the heroines do, followed by the influence of fairytales/their surrounding culture into influencing that portrayal to begin with.

It is, in all, a good analysis. Some of it seems stretched a litle, and some of it seems that she has to repeat her point for a page or so until she summarises it - however, given the critique Disney has gained over the years, it's not surprising that she has had to do that! Everything has to have substantial evidence, otherwise you won't be taken seriously. She is one of the few academics which seems to have actually watched the films and not made up incidental plot details to fit her argument, or deliberately miss some out (she does make some mistakes in names but I have seen worse mistakes). She clearly knows the topic she is discussing. Whilst not all of it is relevant to what I am discussing, some of the ideas she presents I myself overlooked in analysis of the textual resources (the films), so as a result, I will now have a good springboard to go from. And, given my actual topic, whilst there is a lot of background information on American women and history surrounding the films, this is important to understanding their context and I can appreciate what she has given, though I suppose some of it would have done to be cut down.

I think I can summarise this as being: I've read worse. It's not fantastic, but it's getting there.

[Alise Quynh · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had to choose a book for class that I could write a synthesis essay with Jerramy Fine's memoir and this had seemed to be the perfect one when I read the description but then I read the reviews here and on amazon and began to doubt it. It's true that there is actually very little analysis content of the women in Disney's films, it only makes up about a fourth of the book. Though they were little, they were helpful to me since I haven't read much analytic works for Disney. But some parts that I really got into would suddenly turn into a psychoanalysis for how Walt's past affected the characters (which helped at first but then became repetitive) or would just be a small statement to introduce the next section. A majority of the book is about Walt's state of mind, women's evolution, and how Disney's studio revolutionized animation. It could possibly be because the author seems very reverent of Disney's work and of Walt himself, since it's obvious through much of the author's work. But even though I had to skim and filter the book to find the sections I needed, this did help me some in my essay and was interesting for me to read since I don't typically read non-fiction and actually do love Disney.

[Rebecca Dunbar · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this book as part of my background reading for my dissertation (which will have a section on how the 'Southern Belle' crops up in Disney in the recent The Princess and the Frog. Whilst it was interesting in parts, Davis seemed unsure of her own ability and kept referring to her book as being a 'small contribution to Disney scholarship.'

More attention could have been paid to the place of women historically over the course of Disney's animated history, in relation to their representations on film, but, overall, it is an interesting read and I have managed to find some quotes and comparisons to use in my dissertation.

I'm sure this book would appeal to big Disney fans who wish to delve a little deeper into the plots of Disney films - there is a particularly interesting section about The Little Mermaid and its capitalist/bourgeois feminist influence - although I think this is gleamed from an article in From Mouse to Mermaid, a collection of essays about Disney films and their influence.

[Stephanie · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is an answer to the princess phenomena. The author argues that Disney's princesses are not all damsel's in distress who need saving. She acknowledges that the early princesses, most notably Snow White, are not active participants in their stories, but the more recent princesses and heroines are.

Reading made me want to re-watch a lot of movies. Her argument makes sense if you are actually watching the movies and not the Disney marketing machine that emphasizes the princesses' hair, dress, and accessories.

[Krystal · Rating 3 out of 5]

A decent look at women in Disney animation up to Lilo and Stitch. I would have liked more in-depth analysis of the films/characters themselves but appreciated the time the author took to establish how Disney's female characters fit into the larger context of women in film and in popular culture at the time they were created.

[τλιϓλ · Rating 5 out of 5]

What an awesome book, totally different from my expectation yet it's an important one for those who likes to know many details and various information about era, features, themes and all that, I enjoyed it fully.

[Heather Downs · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting analysis of gender in Disney films.

[Ishy · Rating 4 out of 5]

More history than analysis, but still a good read. Very informative.

[Melanie]

I've been reading parts of the book as I sit in on my colleague's course on Disney heroines and princesses.