A collection of comic book art versions of the Disney fairy tale ladies made the rounds yesterday in many articles. The images are full on adolescent sexual fantasies, so I decided not to post them here in the interest of letting you choose what you see. But with the intent of sharing news, here's a link to one of the many articles discussing the art where you can see the imagery, too. From J. Scott Campbell Draws Naughty Disney Princesses by Brian Warmouth:
IDW published this collection of pin-ups in time for San Diego Comic-Con in 2009.I'm actually amazed these aren't getting Disney's decency team or whatever they are called tied up in knots. I've seen upset over much less through the years. They certainly don't represent the Disney princesses in their much more innocent personas which are carefully cultivated and guarded by the Disney machine. Disney is very careful with their image. I temp worked for about two seconds for the company ten years ago writing copy for the Disney catalog and the list of no-no's was amazingly long.
If you can still dig one up somewhere, you will find that it contains post-pubescent reincarnations of Ariel from "The Little Mermaid," Snow White, and Cinderella, all dolled up with clothing that was mostly just sort of colored into the lines of their silhouettes and superhumanly flexible backs that allow for 90-degree bendability.
If you're a Campbell enthusiast, you will definitely want to see the full range of princesses put to paper by the same man that first made Caitlin Fairchild's clothes burst apart and let Sarah Rainmaker warm up to her peers by bathing nudely in front of them. This time around, he even managed to make Cinderella's evil witch-stalker Maleficent look like a competitive candidate for a gentlemen's club job opening.
I'm actually amazed these aren't getting Disney's decency team or whatever they are called tied up in knots. I've seen upset over much less through the years.
ReplyDeleteI'm not terribly amazed. Years ago, there were entire sites dedicated to nothing but sexualizing cartoon characters, particularly Disney characters. That is probably still true today and I am just not aware of such sites anymore. Also, on sites like DeviantArt, there are several artists who make themselves relatively famous through their Disney fanworks, including adult images and "original" stories. Many such artists also get paid commissions drawing copyrighted property like the Disney princesses.
Basically, Disney is a huge company with many resources, but the problem of the Disney fans wanting and supplying adaptations of the copyrighted likenesses seems to be either too big for even Disney to handle, or maybe not considered big enough to be important.
There's nothing Disney can do about it. Fairy tales like Snow White, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, etc. have been part of the public domain for ages. So long as the artist is replicating the character design as described by the author (the Brother's Grimm, Hans Christian Anderson, et al.) and not copying Disney's character design, Disney has no claim. You'll notice, for example, that in Snow White's case, the artist is very careful not to replicate the color scheme and outfit that Disney uses for her.
ReplyDelete