Brainstorming
10/27/2012
DR Williams
The Barneys window displays have generated a fair amount of criticism for their fleeting depiction of a handful of Disney mainstays as stick-thin waifs under the argument that these are role models for children.
The status of Minnie Mouse or Daisy Duck as a role model for children in an iCarly generation aside, the question becomes one of intent. The official explanation - ""this promotion is a three-minute 'moving art' video featuring traditional Minnie Mouse in a dreamlike sequence set in Paris where she briefly walks the runway as a model and then happily awakens as her normal self wearing the very same designer dress from the fashion show"" - makes things perhaps more problematic from an analytical point of view: dreaming she's impossibly-thin is one thing, but has nobody noticed that when dreaming her 'fashionable ideal' self Minnie Mouse's body changes from black to white? Or are we still all wilfully ignoring that Mickey and Minnie are supposed to be black, since that means acknowledging the outmoded racist stereotype from which they originally derive?
Having said that, I think to criticise the display kind of misses the point, and far from this being the apocalypse of childhood innocence some people are making it out to be it seems way more likely that any kid who really likes Minnie Mouse would think the model version looks weird and grotesque instead of immediately saying 'THIS. THIS IS HOW MINNIE MOUSE HAS ALWAYS LOOKED IN MY HEART HAD I ONLY HAD THE IMAGINATION TO EXPRESS IT. I MUST STRIVE TO LOOK JUST LIKE HER NOW. MAMA, SHITCAN THE ICE CREAM.'