Footnote #45 - The Disney Renaissance (with Peter Kunze)
The Fantasy/Animation podcast takes listeners on a journey through the intersection between fantasy cinema and the medium of animation. Available via Apple Podcasts, Spotify and many of your favourite podcast hosting platforms!
Chris and Alex once again draw on the expertise of Dr Peter Kunze (Tulane University) for this discussion of the form and function of the period critically and culturally known as the Disney Renaissance. Listen as they reflect on the complex and often contradictory place of the Renaissance as a crucial phase of renewal within Disney’s own internal history; the contribution made to the studio’s animated features by the repeating presence of key creative personnel; the influential role of Broadway upon Disney’s corporate synergy and the formal interplay between a ‘Broadway style’ and 1980s and 1990s cartoon aesthetics; and the cultural politics of the Renaissance as a phase of Hollywood animation that can be mapped onto Disney’s own multicultural negotiation of diversity and inclusion.
**Fantasy/Animation theme tune composed by Francisca Araujo**
**As featured on Feedspot’s 25 Best London Education Podcasts**
Suggested Readings
Anjirbag, Michelle Anya. 2018. “Mulan and Moana: Embedded Coloniality and the Search for Authenticity in Disney Animated Film.” Social Sciences 7, no. 11: 1-15, available here.
Mollet, Tracey L. 2020. A Cultural History of the Fairy Tale. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Pallant, Chris. 2011. “The Disney Renaissance.” In Demystifying Disney: A History of Disney Feature Animation, 89-110. London: Continuum.
Miller, Marc. 2000. “Of Tunes and Toons: The Musical in the 1990s.” In Film Genre 2000: New Critical Essays, ed. Wheeler Winston Dixon, 45-62. Albany: State University of New York Press.
Mittermeier, Sabrina. 2021. A Cultural History of the Disneyland Theme Parks: Middle-Class Kingdoms. Chicago: Intellect and University of Chicago Press.