Disney Dystopia

We live in cynical times, as Jerry Maguire once noted – before voicing his Lacanian dream of completeness (You Tube Clip). The American Dream lies in tatters, the future seems bleak, trust in government is at an all-time low and the Millenials, forgoing for a moment their sometimes unrealistic expectations, could soon become the noveau Lost Generation (Salon). The situation in parts of Europe is even worse, with 30 to 60 percent of young people unemployed and out of school. We see the vision of this pessimism across the popular culture landscape from dystopian fantasy novels for youth like The Hunger Games to the zombie apocalypse craze to endless media stories about a dim future or a youth culture without morals or hope.

Yet this vision is still largely absent from the wonderful world of Disney, that place of ideologically-driven dreams, trapped in a past where women knew their place, non-whites were servants or evil antagonists and natural hierarchies of the middle ages or animal kingdom reign supreme. Canadian artist Dina Goldstein is taking on that erstwhile dream though … providing visual fictitious sequels to the stories we love so well. It’s not an accident that Disney films end with the kiss or the wedding, just as romantic comedies do. We don’t want to see what happens next, when the honeymoon is over and real life sets in with its overdue bills, fading love, affairs, divorce and sexual dysfunction (that is for art house fare to consider). Goldstein has married this new fatalism with some of our favorite stories, providing a more realistic, if depressing vision of what might happen next. Here are a few examples (see the rest of her work here).