From the Busy Basement

During a fit of compulsive link-clicking on Copyranter, which often has some very insightful and extremely funny insights on advertising, I noticed something about "Disney Princesses as Sin City characters".  Thinking it must be an exercise in humorous, critical juxtaposition, I found the following images:

On face value, I saw the images themselves as somewhat in line with my expectation.  In particular, the recasting of Jasmine (an Arabian character) as Miho (a Japanese character) struck me as interesting and amusing on a variety of levels - the interchangeability of people of "Oriental" descent in the Western mind (as evidenced by the seemingly frequent indifference of Hollywood to casting actors of the same nationality as the characters they are to be playing), the sexy-dangerous trope in portrayals of foreign, and particularly Middle Eastern and/or Asian, women, etc.  Pairing Belle with the "you just gone and done the dumbest thing of your life" tagline fits with the analyses of patterns of abusive relationships in Beauty and the Beast.  The portrayal of Snow White, one of Disney's most virginal, pure, and innocent Princesses EVER, as Sin City's violent madame Gail is definitely funny, but it also seems to point to some of the hypocrisy of the way Disney Princesses sell a certain brand of femininity and sexuality just as does a character as obviously sexualized as Gail.  If this is what the author had in mind, I think many kudos are in order (and I wish I'd thought of it first).

However.....the text that accompanies the images doesn't quite jibe with the notion of I had of the artist's intentions:

There's just something so incredibly awesome about the idea of juxtaposing something brutal, harsh, sexy & violent, like Sin City, with something wholesome, fun, and child-friendly, like Disney.

 ..."incredibly awesome"?  If with a critical eye, in a culture jamming sort of way that reveals something deeper about the continuities present between the creations of Miller and Disney, then I agree.  But it seems more like the "awesomeness" is supposed to stem from putting together two things that have nothing in common at all - it's just amusing.  That's fine.  I enjoy a frivolous mash-up - listening to the vocal of Iron Maiden's "The Trooper" over the music and backing vocals of The Monkees's "I'm a Believer" was the highlight of my yesterday.  The place where I start to scratch my head is the "wholesome, fun, and child-friendly, like Disney".  I admit that Disney films were a large part of my childhood and I still enjoy watching them, but any critical eye turned toward the company reveals that they are far from wholesome.  The racism, sexism, heterosexism, violent masculinity, etc etc promoted in and by the films is something that many critics and academics have addressed, but the fact that Disney is seen as something simply fun, fluffy or child-friendly is a large part of why those themes persist and go unquestioned in their products.  An exercise that could have been a cultural critique ends up simply reinforcing prevailing (and largely problematic) ideas.

Part of me is somewhat concerned about having misread/read too much into the artist's brief comments.

Then the other part of me takes another look at the header image on the site of a nearly nude woman with a hand print on her ass and a pinup girl/blow up doll expression on her face.