Of Mice and Brides: Surrealism and the Uncanny in Walt Disney's Fairytale Cartoons

Was Walt Disney a surrealist? And did his popular forms of fantasy actually possess a secret avant-garde affinity reaching out beyond Hollywood's model of the fantastic? This paper re-examines some of the famous full length animated feature films adapted from European literary fairy tales such as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), Pinocchio (1940) and Cinderella (1950) in relation to Surrealist aesthetics and the Freudian Uncanny. The paper will consider how the re-evaluation of Disney as a 'sentimental surrealist' sits with the prevailing academic notion of 'Uncle Walt' as the philistine promoter of bourgeois conservative American ideology based around the suppression of sex, violence and political struggle. By teasing out the Surrealist and uncanny content of the films (which is often masked by their deceptively ‘comforting’ surface aesthetic), the paper will seek to bring to light some of the ideological and aesthetic contradictions embodied in many of Disney's best-loved films