An Analysis of "The Peace Seeker" - a Disneyfication
“The Peace Seeker” Analysis
The Diary of Anne Frank is a tragically beautiful account of a teenage girl experiencing racial persecution. Anne’s diary was her best friend, her most trusted confidante, and our invaluable portal into her reality. Because Anne Frank’s story is relatively close to the general population in time and memory, its mention still conjures twinges of sorrow coupled with anger regarding injustice and racism. Therefore, Anne’s story is prime subject matter for revealing the hidden atrocities of Disneyfication. In choosing to rewrite Anne’s story through the lens of Disney, I strip down the process of Disneyfication and reveal its hidden, distressing potential. By impressing the Disney-approved themes of innocence, hierarchy, monarchy, racial encoding, and skewed gender roles onto Anne’s story, I hope to deliver a disturbing simulacrum of a Anne’s life story.
According to Giroux and Pollack, the term “Disneyfication” refers to the reconfiguration of a cultural narrative, object, or space in accordance with Disney’s own core values” (164). In order to simulate this reconfiguration, I spent a minimal amount time researching Anne’s world before starting the writing process. I merely read a condensed summary of her diary on Wikipedia, then inserted several Disneyfication themes into my initial creative plot. I revised repetitively, removing and adding and modifying the characters and themes until little to no resemblance to the historical account existed. Thus, the simulacrum was created.
My first form of Disneyfication involves Anne’s Dreambook. The object represents Anne’s innocence along with her extreme utilization of escapism to find peace. According to Giroux and Pollack, Disney’s innocence ideal is “stripped of the historical and social constructions that give it meaning...innocence in the Disney universe becomes an atemporal, ahistorical, apolitical, and atheoretical space where children share a common bond free of the problems and conflicts of adult society” (32). By replacing Anne Frank’s painfully honest record of her world with a sketchbook that allows the Disneyfied Anne to escape reality, I cheapen her emotional strength, maturity, and suffering.
My Disneyfied Anne, as opposed to the Anne of history, does not examine “social conflict, sexuality, and the moral difficulties associated with adulthood,” which are aspects of entertainment from which children should be shielded, according to Disney (92-93). When the Disneyfied Anne retreats into her daydreams and drawings, she voluntarily chooses an escapist form of innocence. As long as she can daydream and create, she can forget the criticism, the loneliness, and the terror of being hunted by the Nazis.
When Peter burns Anne’s Dreambook, however, her carefully constructed shell of innocence cracks. No longer emotionally aided by the Dreambook’s magic, Anne, in despair, allows the weight of her situation to slowly crush her. When the façade of the ideal society in her mind vaporizes, Anne feels the truth of reality deep in her bones. I purposefully depict this anti-innocence event negatively. Pondering the suffering of an entire people group is not an innocent activity. When the Dreambook is restored to Anne and she regains the ability to daydream, the world is right again in her eyes, and she can begin to live again. Comparatively, the historical Anne Frank did not have a magic book to bring her peace. Her group in the Annex is betrayed, transported to a concentration camp, and everyone except Anne’s father dies in the camp. Anne dies just a month or two before the English liberated Auschwitz. History’s account of Anne Frank’s life is painful, real, and not at all innocent. The story of the historical Anne Frank was not one of “fantasy and escape” (127). The historical Anne felt real loneliness, frustration, and fear, and she dealt with them (Frank). The Disneyfied Anne survives by avoiding these feelings, making her a detestable depiction of the real life human beloved by the world.
The second way I Disneyfied the story involves hierarchy and monarchy. The value of hierarchy in the Disney Corporation is evident in the way they treat their employees at the Disney theme parks (Giroux and Pollock, 50). If rules are not strictly followed, employees can be terminated, and suggestions are not appreciated (50). This theme of hierarchy is threaded throughout three particular sections of the story.
Firstly, when Anne and Peter encounter Ansell, the Nazi officer, their responses show strong evidence of the presence of hierarchy. Peter runs away in fear due to his awareness of the Nazis’ authority over the Jews, and Anne keeps her head bowed and speaks to Ansell with the utmost respect. Secondly, Ansell’s respect of his commanding officers is originally blatant, reflecting the hierarchical structure of the Nazi regime. He obeys without question until the magic of the Dreambook cleanses Ansell of his brainwashing. Thirdly, the theme of hierarchy is depicted positively in the relationship between Ansell, Anne, and the magical monarchs. Anne and Ansell gladly join the Kingdom without question, thereby submitting to the King. By respecting his decisions and his authority, they step into a subservient role in the kingdom’s hierarchy.
Interwoven with the idea of hierarchy is Disney’s value for monarchy. Anne’s initial drawing for Ansell depicts a kind king and queen welcoming diverse subjects into their kingdom. Ansell, even though still brainwashed by the Nazis at this point in the story, is deeply touched by the image. Anne’s daydreams often involve a loving monarch as she imagines a world where she can feel safe, where she can be free to make art beautiful enough to adorn palaces. Lastly, and most obviously, Anne and Ansell’s happy ending involves being welcomed into the family of royalty, who reveal to her the purpose of her skillful daydreaming and artistic talent.
The last area of Disneyfication in my retelling of Anne Frank’s story involves gender and ethnicity. According to Lopenzina, in the American colonies, it was considered heinous for a European woman to have sexual relations with a native man. She “renounces her whiteness” by being with a non-white man, which displays white exceptionalism and gender inequality (73). However, it was acceptable for a native woman to love a European man. In order to be consistent with Walt Disney’s anti-Semitic views, we see a similar pattern in my retelling. The ethnically non-European person in the love relationship is the woman. Anne desires a white man who is trained to exterminate her race, but she cannot help falling in love with him. The book’s magic leads her to Ansell, then she willingly chooses him. In The Diary of a Young Girl, the all the boys Anne likes are Jewish (Frank).
Another exclusion from history involves heteronormativity. In The Diary of Anne Frank, Anne muses about homosexuality (Frank). In once instance, Anne recalls having a strong urge to kiss a female friend at school (Frank). Also, she explains what a thrill she feels upon seeing images of naked women (Frank). Due to the heteronormative culture of Disney, however, these details were excluded from my story, and all romantic relationships are strictly heterosexual.
Giroux and Pollack strongly emphasize the need for society to choose “meaningful critical engagement instead of passive absorption” (126). The goal of Disneyfying The Diary of Anne Frank was to display how Disney can distort histories in order to promote their own agendas, which include innocence, hierarchy, monarchy, white exceptionalism and heteronormativity. The Nazis would have never come to power if it weren’t for blind surrender and obedience to their dominant force. Ansell, the Nazi in my story, overcomes the Nazi brainwashing, only to submit to the next leader he meets, which is depicted as good, his happy ending. Do Americans blindly submit? If not with leaders, than with the entertainment we consume? For many people, the answer is yes. Before taking this class, I never encountered a critical analysis of Disney. A society that cannot think on its own or appreciate the dignity and beauty of hardship is not a society in which I want to exist. Hopefully, in seeing how the Disneyfication process can strip away the dignity of a beloved historical figure, the reader will be more inclined to look at Disney’s products with a new awareness and desire to critically analyze the media they consume.
Works Cited
Frank, Anne. Anne Frank: the Diary of a Young Girl. Trans. B.M. Mooyaart. New York: Bantam, 1993.
Giroux, Henry A., and Pollock, Grace. The Mouse That Roared: Disney and the End of Innocence. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2010. Print.
Lopenzina, Drew. “The Wedding of Pocahontas and John Rolfe: How to Keep the Thrill Alive after Four Hundred Years of Marriage.” Studies in American Indian Literature Winter 2014: 59-77. Print.
