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Subliminal Messaging and The Disney Corporation |
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Maryanne Tucker |
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The Little Mermaid |
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The Little Mermaid was one of the originally discovered subliminal messages and contained not only one but two findings. The first was a clear sexual subliminal message a penis had been draw as a tower of the castle on the original box cover of the movie. The image was first rumored in the July 20th, 1990 issue of Entertainment Weekly section News and Notes. The article wrote that the phallic image and an implication of a disgruntled employee had been a topic of discussion for a group of Burbank, California radio gossip team known as the Hollywood Kids (Entertainment Weekly, 1990). The story behind the phallic art work is that a disgruntled employee drew the image in because he was going to be laid off after the project, but this was untrue (Snopes). Instead the artist and Disney claim that the drawing was unintentional and considered it as an “insult to the artist and the animator who created this” according to the Disney spokesperson Steve Feldstein (Ostman, 1996). After the radio incident, a Mesa Arizona woman by the name of Michelle Couch filed a compliant to the Disney Corporation and Basha’s, a Phoenix super mart chain where she viewed the offensive artwork (Snopes). Feldstein insisted that nothing was intentionally done by Disney to harm their viewing audience stating “this is the Walt Disney Company. Why would we do something like this?” (Ostman, 1996). He also went on to say that “If you want, you can find something phallic in anything. If you want to see that tower as something other than what it is, you’re going to” (Ostman, 1996). The second of the accused subliminal messages consists of an erected penis, by the minister performing the wedding ceremony of a disguised Ursula as Vanessa and Prince Eric. One of the scenes shows the side profile of the minister and a bulge can be seen, the image could be mistaken for an erection and that is exactly what happened (Snopes). In the next scene, a front profile, the minister erected penis shows to actually be his knees bent (Snopes). The animator for the minister, Tom Sito humorously disregarded the allegations stating “If I wanted to put satanic massages in a movie, you would see it. This is silly” (Bannon, 1995). |
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Disney © 1989 |
1989 |
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Phallic Artwork |
