Discussing Disney

Amy M. Davis, Amy Davis

• Publisher: John Libbey Publishing
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780861969616
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Popular Culture
• Index: Social Sciences

These scholarly essays examine Disney's cultural impact from various perspectives—including film studies, history, musicology, gender and more. The academic field of Disney Studies has evolved greatly over the years, as the twelve essays collected in this volume demonstrate. With a diversity of perspectives and concerns, the contributors examine the cultural significance and impact of the Disney Company's various outputs, such as animated shorts and films, theme park attractions, television shows, books, music, and merchandising. By looking at Disney from some of its many angles—including the history and the persona of its founder, a selection of its successful and not-so-successful films, its approaches to animation, its branding and fandom, and its reception and reinterpreted within popular culture— Discussing Disney offers a more holistic understanding of a company that has been, and continues to be, one of the most important forces in contemporary culture.

III.

Gender

Chapter 7

Perfect Brides or Beautified Baddies: Characters’ Use of Cosmetics in Disney’s Feature Animation

Lauren L. Smith

Throughout recent history, cosmetics have been inexorably linked with women’s identities. As Kathy Piess says in Making Up, Making Over: Cosmetics, Consumer Culture, and Women’s Identity, “the early-twentieth-century discourse on cosmetics, as articulated by producers and consumers of these commodities, shifted the burden of female identity from an essential, interior self to one formed in the marking and coloring of the face”.¹ As early as the 1920s, cosmetics were already being packaged and marketed “on the basis of personality types”.² In this way, not only did cosmetics become an integral part of the way women’s identities are constructed (both as a group and as individuals), but likewise this connection between cosmetics and identity became central to – and further promoted by – the marketing strategies of the cosmetic companies. That cosmetics should be used in the films made by the Walt Disney Animation Studio (from here on referred to as Disney) in order to construct meaning for its characters is not, therefore, particularly surprising. This chapter looks specifically at the ways in which the use of cosmetics is depicted in particular scenes within Disney’s animated features in order to create meaning for its characters and the situations surrounding them.

Of the five scenes within Disney’s feature films in which obvious attention is drawn to makeup and cosmetics, three revolve around villains: Ursula in The Little Mermaid (1989), Madame Medusa in The Rescuers (1977), and Yzma in The Emperor’s New Groove (2000). The two relevant films showcasing “good” characters who use cosmetics are Mulan (1998), in which there is a key scene involving Mulan’s face being made up, and The Princess and the Frog (2009), where we see Tiana’s best friend, Charlotte La Bouff, use make-up. In all of these cases, the use of cosmetics as a means of artificial enhancement or even as a means for obtaining beauty, is used to highlight the artifices present in either the characters or the situations being depicted.

In the cases of both Ursula and Madame Medusa, the emphasis on their use of makeup occurs during scenes in which they are being the most manipulative and artificial in their use of language. In both cases, the characters are hiding their true natures and feelings towards other characters; in other words, they are creating artificial identities in order to manipulate other characters into doing their bidding, following their advice – to trick good characters into giving the villains what they want. Deceit plays an important part in Ursula’s evil plans throughout the film, from her initial encounter with Ariel, in which she convinces the desperate girl that she really does want to help her, to her transformation into Vanessa, a beautiful girl with Ariel’s voice. It is in this initial encounter with Ariel that Ursula’s use of cosmetics is highlighted. When Ursula is shown applying her lipstick and using product to style her hair, it is just as Ariel has entered her under water cave, thereby allowing Ursula to begin implementing her plan to overthrow King Triton (Ariel’s father). In this scene, Ursula attempts to portray herself as a “saint” who lives “to help unfortunate merfolk”, posing as someone who only wishes to help others (for the appropriate fee, of course). As has already been shown in previous scenes in which she is shown plotting her revenge on King Triton, the audience is well aware that she certainly does not intend to help Ariel in her quest to become human and be with Eric (indeed, Ursula wishes to add Ariel to her garden of trapped souls). We see that Ursula is playing a part – putting on the mask of a kind, helpful person who just happens to “fortunately know a little magic”.

Wearing red nail varnish, and with her lips already painted a matching crimson red, the first thing Ursula does when Ariel arrives is begin applying her makeup and fixing her hair; effectively, she is applying her mask. The use of a clam-like shell brings connotations of violence to her makeup; she not only traps sea creatures (specifically “merfolk”) with her artificial niceties, but also uses them to create her artificial looks as well. As she squeezes out her “lipstick” from the shell, it is shown in close up, and having applied it to her lips, the exaggerated pout she does to ensure it is properly applied draws even further attention to her ritual and its artifice. Throughout this, she lays the foundation for her entrapment of Ariel, painting her face as she paints a metaphorical picture of herself as the kindly stranger who just wants to help, calling Ariel endearing (or possibly, in her case, saccharine) terms such as “my child” and “angelfish” whilst pretending to empathise with Ariel’s situation and love for Eric.

Similarly, in The Rescuers, when Medusa is shown taking off her makeup (a comic affair, especially when one of her fake eyelashes proves particularly difficult to remove), she is speaking to Penny in a falsely sweet voice, trying to convince the child to try harder in her search for The Devil’s Eye, a large diamond that is hidden somewhere at the bottom of a small cave prone to flooding, which she has been using the girl to try and find since only a small, thin child would be able to fit down the hole where the diamond has ended up.

Medusa’s deceit in this scene is apparent right from the start, before the audience even sees her. As Penny is getting dressed for bed, Medusa shouts out in a sweet, motherly voice, “Penny dear, aunty Medusa wants to talk to you”. Medusa’s use of “dear” and “aunty”, and the sickly-sweet voice are as artificial as the false eyelashes Medusa will later remove – by this stage in the film, we have already met Medusa, and we are well aware of her negative attitude towards Penny, so we are equally aware of the falseness of her behaviour in this scene. If one needed further clarification of the hollowness of these words, that Medusa is playing a role and masking her true feelings as she masks her face with makeup, then the dialogue provides it. When the scene cuts to Medusa’s bedroom from Penny’s, where Penny cannot hear, she says to herself, “High tide or not, that little brat’s going to find me that diamond tomorrow or else!” As Medusa pulls off her eyelashes, removing her “mask” of makeup, continuing to talk to Penny in her sickly sweet voice, her face is pulled into comedic, elastic positions, almost as though she really is wearing a plastic mask, completely separate from her real face. Her “mask” is not as good as Ursula’s, however, and Penny leaves the room in tears after Medusa asks “who would want [to adopt] a homely little girl like you?” Medusa is not as practised as Ursula in the art of the artificial caretaker. Indeed, it is interesting to note that while Medusa is shown taking off her makeup, and indeed is struggling with this task as though she is battling with her makeup mask, Ursula, by contrast, is seen applying her makeup flawlessly, and does so effortlessly as she speaks.

Both of these scenes explicitly draw attention to the way these women use cosmetics to change the way they look; both are shown to use artificial means (makeup) in an attempt to enhance their appearance, whilst simultaneously showing the artificial nature of their performances of friendliness to the other characters. As the artificial nature of both Medusa’s and Ursula’s appearances are emphasised, they are echoed in the artificial nature of their words.

Just like Ursula and Medusa, their fellow villain, Yzma, wears heavy makeup (including oversized false eyelashes) throughout The Emperor’s New Groove, as well as an array of extravagant outfits, all with equally-extravagant matching hats or headdresses which serve to hide her baldness. In fact, Yzma is perhaps the most “made up” of all the female Disney villains, wearing eye shadow, extremely long false eyelashes, lipstick, and nail varnish, and always in dramatic colours, usually purple. Purple has come to be a colour that is often associated with female villains (think of Ursula and Maleficent, for example), but likewise has had a long association with royalty; Yzma has strong designs on seizing Emperor Kuzco’s throne, and her use of purple is no doubt a nod to her royal aspirations.

Yzma is not the only character to wear makeup in the film; in one scene, Kuzco (by this point having been transformed into a llama by one of Yzma’s potions) disguises himself with cosmetics in order to get something to eat in a restaurant in which llamas are banned. Here, the power of cosmetics and costuming is used so successfully in creating a new artificial outward identity that it successfully creates the image of a human woman on the body of a male llama (at least for the characters in the scene; to the audience, he is still unmistakably a llama disguised – rather comically – as a woman). Indeed, after Kuzco removes his makeup, although he wears the rest of his costume still, he feels he cannot go back into the restaurant because he is no longer disguised; his costume relies almost entirely upon his makeup, thereby emphasizing its heightened importance for shaping a character.

Throughout the film, emphasis is put on Yzma’s age; indeed, when she is first introduced, she is described as “living proof that dinosaurs once roamed the earth”. In a later scene in which Yzma is presented with a cake for her “birthday”, there are so many candles that some are even stuck into the sides of the cake. There is one scene in particular in which Yzma’s age is highlighted, and indeed this is used to illustrate further Kuzco’s distaste for her: as close ups of Yzma’s face are shown, effectively dissecting her into pieces to be analysed (and found wanting), her voice fades out in favour of Kuzco’s criticism of her (which comes in the form of internal thoughts/voice-over narration) of the way she looks. Despite her obvious attempts at mimicking youth and beauty, Kuzco says to himself (and by extension the audience), “Woah, look at those wrinkles! What is holding this woman together?” Her age, and the fact that she is “past it”, are highlighted once more when Kuzco says, “Everybody hits their stride; you just hit yours fifty years ago”. There is a suggestion in all of these scenes that it is through Yzma’s use of extravagant outfits and heavy makeup that she tries – albeit unsuccessfully – to emulate or create the allusion of youth.

Yzma is a highly exaggerated character, most definitely functioning as a “caricature”, a word previously used by Ollie Johnston and Frank Thomas to describe two of their other female villains, Cruella DeVil of 101 Dalmatians, 1961, and Medusa from The Rescuers.³ Although even as a caricature she is clearly supposed to be wearing cosmetics, the fact that her appearance is created artificially is shown starkly in one particular scene. The illusion is perhaps not a brilliant one, and she might not be fooling anyone, but the artificial nature of this illusion is still shown starkly through the use of cosmetics in a particular scene. In this key scene, Yzma is not shown removing or applying her makeup, but rather is shown without her makeup or extravagant clothes on; awakened by her henchman, Kronk, in the middle of the night, her face is covered in some form of beauty cream, her bald head clearly showing, and her eyes covered in slices of cucumber which fall off to reveal that she is completely lacking in eyelashes (just like Medusa after she has removed her false eyelashes in The Rescuers). That Kronk recoils in shock and horror emphasises that the image of this woman, without her makeup on yet still trying desperately to improve her looks through the use of a cream while she sleeps, is a terrifying thing to behold. Likewise, throughout the film, there is a running gag that has various characters describing Yzma as “scary beyond all reason”, thereby emphasising Yzma’s failure to achieve an attractive physical appearance despite the time and effort she invests in her looks. The scene in which we see Yzma’s face slathered with her night-time “beauty” cream, unlike those scenes in which we see Ursula’s and Medusa’s “beauty” rituals, does not reflect any particular or immediate artifice in Yzma’s words or acti...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Contributor Biographies
• Introduction
• I. History
• II. Inside the Studio
• III. Gender
• IV. Outside the Studio
• Index