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Will Beaman and Scott Ferguson tease out the multiplicity of voices that shape The Little Mermaid (1989) in order to problematize racist outcries against Disney\u2019s forthcoming 2023 live-action version of the film starring singer Halle Bailey. The co-hosts answer and invert an imperative promulgated by a reactionary meme circulated on social media: \u201cDon\u2019t take away my history." The meme falsely imagines Disney\u2019s 2023 reboot displacing and replacing a past white heterosexual monoculture.

This episode, by contrast, explores the genuinely heterogeneous and contestable legibilities that inform The Little Mermaid\u2019s historical production and reception. Developing Mikhail Bakhtin\u2019s notion of \u201cdialogism,\u201d Will and Scott trace the film\u2019s significance across several registers: (1) gender representation in relation to Disney animation history and 1980\u2019s Hollywood; (2) Disney\u2019s imperialist expansions as a multinational conglomerate in the context of a zero-sum neoliberalism and expiring Cold War; (3) abstract animation aesthetics in light of an increasingly physics-oriented blockbuster cinema; and (4) queer culture\u2019s fraught popular expressiveness in the midst of an HIV/AIDS crisis dismissed and repressed by U.S. authorities.\xa0 \xa0\xa0

Note to Animation and Broadway Aficionados: In this episode, the co-hosts refer to \u201cSomeday My Prince Will Come\u201d in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) as an original example of what has come to be called an \u201cI want\u201d or \u201cI wish\u201d number in musical films and plays. Here we add a small proviso: Snow White\u2019s \u201cI\u2019m Wishing\u201d song precedes \u201cSomeday My Prince Will Come\u201d and thus represents the original \u201cI want\u201d or \u201cI wish\u201d number in the film in a very literal sense. \xa0

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Music: \u201cYum\u201d from \u201cThis Would Be Funny If It Were Happening To Anyone But Me\u201d EP by flirting.
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