It’s Not the Princesses: A Reading of Three Disney Classics

The article provides a queer reading of three Disney classics. While acknowledging the popular dichotomy opposing the damsel in distress and the villain with queer features, this analysis highlights a third element: the queerness of secondary characters. By focusing on three princess classics from the Walt Disney era—Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Cinderella, and Sleeping Beauty—the article focuses on the secondary characters (the dwarfs, the mice, the fairies) as the real defining element of the Disney landscape, investigating how their positive presence as outsiders is the defining element shaping Walt Disney’s poetics.