Disney's Specific and Ambiguous Princess: A Discursive Analysis of Elena of Avalor

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Abstract

Bringing together discourses of Latina girlhood and ambiguity, in this article I interrogate Disney Junior’s specific and ambiguous Latinidad in three key episodes from the first season of  Elena of Avalor . This type of intersectional analysis is seldom found in Disney scholarship, despite the relative abundance of existing work on Disney-generated cultural production. By analyzing the ambiguity (Joseph 2018) and unambivalent structure of ambivalence (Valdivia 2020) present in Disney’s deployment of animated Latina can-do girlhood (Harris 2004), in this article, I provide an intersectional approach to the study of Disney Junior animated content and Latina girlhood in contemporary popular culture. I argue that  Elena of Avalor  is the result of Disney’s avowed and disavowed dedication to the construction of Latinidad and can-do girlhood. The result of this is a fluctuation and flexible navigation between specificity and ambiguity within one narrative franchise.
Original languageAmerican English
JournalGirlhood Studies
Volume14
DOIs
StatePublished - Jul 27 2021

Keywords

  • animation
  • Latinidad
  • media studies
  • postfeminism
  • representation
  • strategic ambiguity

Disciplines

  • Arts and Humanities

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