Abstract
In viewing fairy tales, and in particular, Disney’s animated versions of the mid-twentieth century, through an ecofeminist lens informed by postructuralism allows me to theorise girlhood as a socially constructed category and invites a reading of ‘the girl’ in fairy tales as less a static figure than as a contested character whose representation engages with competing discourses of femininity. Girls are often depicted visually and in verbal narratives as ‘objects to be rescued’ (Hesford, 2011: 130); in other words, their vulnerability permits the heroism of others while they remain stubbornly stuck in material conditions of danger, wherein these ‘narrative practices … habituate audiences to see this as their inevitable fate’ (Marshall & Gilmore, 2015: 95). Expanding on this concept of audience manipulation an exploration of visual images within fairy tale narratives reveals that these are not neutral, nor are they merely elements of documentation. These images materialise the social fact of girlhood and violence through visual techniques: the use of scale to map and complicate gendered relations of power, the practice of retelling fairy tales to contemporary settings, or forwarding ‘feminist’ narratives, which habituates audiences to seeing girls’ endangerment as typical (regardless of the outcome). As such, my creative craft in reimagining seven ‘Disney-fied’ fairy tales is directed to challenge the techniques of omission and oblique references (through visual metaphors) that manipulate audiences to overlook the social fact of violence against, and oppression of, girls and women.