Branding the Disney Princess: Femininity, Family, and Franchising

• Main Author: Leader, Caroline F
• Format: Dissertation
• Language: English
• Published: ProQuest Dissertations & Theses 01.01.2019
• Subjects: Communication; Film studies; Gender studies
• ISBN: 1687920745; 9781687920744

The Disney Princess is most popularly known as the dominating force in princess culture, where girls’ identities are subsumed under a pile of pink tutus, plastic jewelry, and sparkling crowns. It is associated with antiquated feminine cultures that encourage girls to be passive, focus on looking pretty, and attract a “prince” who will marry them and facilitate a “happily ever after.” A powerful criticism, this evaluation of Disney Princesses often precludes legitimate study of the characters’ history and their significance today. I analyze the discursive, cultural, and economic power of the Disney Princess brand by investigating them as industry intertexts, icons of feminine cultures for audiences young and old, and a product and text within family consumer cultures. From this exploration I argue that the Disney Princess franchise evolves, reboots, and recycles in a careful dance between industry opportunism and ambivalent middle-class discourse. While Walt Disney Company producers work to retain legacy characters and create new characters for changing cultural contexts, they rely on the cyclical and vague promise of empowerment through girl-power consumer culture. My project builds on interdisciplinary literatures, including franchising, branding, intertextuality, feminist and girls’ media studies, kids’ media studies, and consumer cultures to contextualize a girls’ media icon. In doing so, I have discovered how discourses of the “can-do” girl are central to the contradictory brand management of these characters and their intertexts. Chapter 1 explores how discourse and cultural change shapes the evolution of the Disney Princess franchise and the relationship between its heroines. Chapter 2 illustrates how Disney Princess dolls reflect the negotiated significant of feminine cultures and the limitations of race and gender in the retail space. Chapter 3 explores how families and kids consume Disney Princess texts and the parental anxiety around this consumption. Finally, Chapter 4 explores the integration of the Disney Princess into the larger universe of Disney’s transgenerational franchises, dominated by masculinized media content. The overall project shows the inextricable links between industry practice, audience reception, and ideologies of gender that produce this feminine franchise.