engleski

The Ideological Role of Walt Disney’s Wartime Films

In his analysis of the modern American novel, Stipe Grgas, influenced by the ideas of Bill Readings, investigates the impact of literature on the Anglo-Saxon discourse, emphasizing it as the premier cultural prism in studying Anglo-Saxon culture. While works of Thomas Pynchon or Joseph McCarthy certainly lend themselves to this sort of reading, Grgas is at the same time aware that the fictional treatment of the American West is best exemplified in the works of the Hollywood studios (181). This paper will focus on another aspect of Hollywood’s dominant role in influencing American culture, namely the impact of Walt Disney’s films after Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor. While his earlier films, such as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) or Pinocchio (1940), have been deeply grounded in European artistic legacy, his post-1941 films reflect the changing political circumstances. Victory Through Air Power (1943), his neglected wartime feature film, has even influenced the change of president Roosevelt’s military strategy, convincing him of a need for strategic air campaign against Japan and Germany. Although the film can be described as an obvious wartime propaganda, it is also one of the first successful instances of Disney’s use of limited animation and the case study of interweaving film and ideology, proving that film art has an equal ontological claim to explaining the extremely diverse field of American Studies.

ideology; propaganda; animation; war; Anglo-Saxon discourse

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