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Subliminal Messaging and The Disney Corporation |
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Maryanne Tucker |
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Aladdin |
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In March, 1995 ALL received a call from a concerned Christian. The caller had read in the March issue of the Christian entertainment magazine, Movie Guide, that the movie Aladdin (1993) contained a subliminally sexual message (Bannon, 1995). The article claimed that Aladdin whispers to Jasmine “Take off your clothes”, and also urged the readers to write letters to the head of the Disney Corporation, Michael Eisner, to have the “subliminal message” removed (Bannon, 1995). Disney denied any insertion of a subliminal message and spokesperson Rick Rhodes claimed that the line was “Scat, good tiger, take off and go” (Bannon, 1995). He also stated that “If someone is seeing something, that’s their perception. There’s nothing there” (Bannon, 1995). The magazine later ran a retraction after it was contacted by the head of Disney who informed the editor of the actual line from the film. This however did not stop ALL from using this to gain further momentum in their fight against Disney. Instead, they mailed out “one million post cards urging a boycott” (Pinsky, 2004). In September, 1995 ALL went even further when they asked Disney to pull from the shelves of its distributing stores not only the movie Aladdin, but also The Little Mermaid (1989) and The Lion King (1994) and demanded an apology from the Disney Corporation (Ostman, 1996). |
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Disney © 1993 |
1993 |
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Sexual Message |
