“Ahead of the Lawmen”: Law and Morality in Disney Animated Films 1960–1998

1 Law and Morality – in real life and in the movies

The relationship between law and morality has been widely debated among political theorists, jurists, and philosophers for centuries. It is far too simplistic to say that the purpose of law is to promote “morality” or even the social good. Legal Positivism most famously expressed by John Austin and later H.L.A. Hart, ¹⁰ contends that there is no necessary relationship between law and morals. Although various jurisprudential schools take exception with this proposition, legal positivists point out that law is, at best, conceptually separate from moral and ethical values ¹¹ or, at worst, nothing more than the rules of the sovereign backed by force. ¹² At the other end of the law/morality spectrum are theorists of Natural Law who believe that just or moral laws emerge from natural circumstances. For advocates of Natural Law, laws emerge from a moral order that transcends individuals ¹³ and can therefore be discovered or elaborated by people, but not constructed by them. Our purpose here is not to argue that law is or is not coterminous with morality in the real world. Rather, we approach our project with an understanding that law and morals are not necessarily related because there can be “a contradiction between the needs of the community … and the moral duties of and toward individuals.” ¹⁴ And, even legal positivists recognize the desirability of a legal order that embodies morality for the legitimacy of the state.

Law and morals (or ethics) have relative definitions. Ethics are individual constructions of understanding harm or suffering while law requires evaluating actual social ills ¹⁵ and minimizing social disorder. Because law and morality may have different and often contradictory aims, they may conflict. And yet, in the context of a children’s movie in which the moral, just, or correct outcome is unambiguous, it is easy to analyze the role of law and its relationship to the correct moral outcome. We ask, “did law, legal institutions and legal processes aid, thwart, or have no effect whatever on the proper outcome?” Even children are likely to notice the mechanisms that produce the proper outcome: individual bravery, the power of romantic love, and even magic play a role in achieving “happily ever after,” but we are particularly interested in law.

2 Theories of popular culture analysis and influence

“All audiences … can be seduced” – Griswold ¹⁶

It is difficult to know precisely how media influences affect the world-view of individuals and, more fundamentally, what popular culture represents. In other words, “[i]s popular culture there to indoctrinate the people, to get them to accept and adhere to ideas and values which ensure the continued dominance of those in more privileged positions who thus exercise power over them?” ¹⁷ or is popular culture about resistance to the dominant order? Scholars associated with mass media theory embrace the notion that, as consumers of culture, people passively receive and incorporate ideas in the media they observe. ¹⁸ Furthermore, postmodern scholars of mass media claim that mass media are so all-encompassing and intrinsically tied to culture that people cannot escape them. Ultimately – and inevitably – the media create our view of the world. ¹⁹

We do not seek to demonstrate a direct link between how children understand law and morality; such a demonstration would require research with children. We do, however, begin with the supposition that there is some relationship between popular culture, moral development, and understandings of law. As Bandura, a social learning media theorist has shown, “children often do what they see others doing.” ²⁰ Most studies that support such a conclusion relate to smoking tobacco or drinking alcohol. ²¹ However, a similar effect may be seen in viewers’ perception of law. Bandura’s theory also suggests that people may learn passively, ²² in that one does not have to be actively trying to learn from media to take lessons away from it: “The mere absence of resistance is all that may be required for learning to occur; the substance of entertainment television may be ‘caught’ rather than ‘taught.’” ²³ Culture often is represented as a mirror to reality. Because of how pervasive media is in today’s society, “no horizon of expectations is robust enough to withstand the constant onslaught of violence and perversion.” ²⁴ As a result, postmodernism asserts that “this mirror is now the only reality we have.” ²⁵

We subscribe to a middle-ground approach that emphasizes the interrelationship between media and culture, but stopping short of the postmodernist claim that the cultural projections media reflect back at us is the only cultural reality we know. This approach is known in the literature as a dialogical theory which posits that popular culture has influence and constitutive power to help us understand the world around us, but that we also are not “cultural dopes.” ²⁶ In other words, media has “‘framing’ power that limits the range of the decoding and discussion,” ²⁷ but the theory recognizes that we can interpret what we learn from media. John Fiske ²⁸ used the analogy of mass culture being like a supermarket. ‘‘People may pick up mass-produced items from the cultural supermarket, but when they cook (make meanings) they mix these supermarket goods with whatever they have in the pantry at home, thereby individualizing and transforming the final product.” ²⁹

In addition to traditional theories of the role of popular culture in shaping individuals’ understandings of society, the study of Disney film requires us to incorporate what we know from childhood development and how they interact with media. Children consume media differently, depending on their age. For example, several studies suggest that younger children are more passively receptive to cultural messages, especially ones with legal overtones, than are older children. Carlson states, “older children are more sensitive to the requirements of due process.” ³⁰ This may mean that, in the case of Disney films, they would more commonly reject messages that promote shirking due process for the sake of raw morality.

3 Why Disney?

Disney movies receive much attention and analysis from scholars in a variety of disciplinary and interdisciplinary fields. Disney movies have been critiqued by critical race scholars for employing racist stereotypes, ³¹ by feminist scholars for their use of outmoded gender roles, ³² by scholars of sexuality studies for promoting and even naturalizing heterosexist norms, ³³ and by many scholars and public thought leaders for being culturally insensitive and stereotypical. ³⁴ These critiques might be predictable because the moral absolutism that makes Disney movie consumers so comfortable and which give the movies such mass appeal necessarily over employ standard cultural norms, making Disney films a rich source for analyzing the relationship between law and morality. Because Disney movies follow relatively predictable moral tales, the law nearly always plays a formal or informal role in ensuring or resisting the unambiguously correct moral outcome. Further, Disney movies enjoy a tremendous market share, and have lasting impact on loyal audience members. ³⁵

Disney movies, which are made for children, follow clear thematic and narrative patterns. The films are formulaic enough to be familiar and yet innovative enough to be interesting. Once a “magic box office formula” has been discovered, “films recycle themselves in a number of sequels.” ³⁶ Disney films are not always strict sequels, but they follow remarkably similar character development lines, as well as analogous portrayals of morality and law. Indeed, the prosaic and perhaps comforting moral themes, such as the triumph of good over evil and right over wrong, likely provide impetus for parents to buy Disney films for their children.

Like their parents, children also have reason to identify with moral absolutism over relativism because it is less philosophically complex, leading children to unquestioningly view a protagonist’s rejection of the law, for the sake of “morality,” as acceptable. Disney is a cultural staple because many people have seen the animated movies that Disney produces. In a previous study, 96 of the 103 students in the class had previously seen The Little Mermaid, a film that, “generated $84.4 million in the United States in 1989” when it first opened in theaters. ³⁷ Children in Disney’s target demographic often view movies repeatedly in the theater and at home on video, DVD, or now, streaming online, as opposed to older audiences who only rarely view a movie more than once or twice. ³⁸ The frequent viewing patterns of youths would suggest that they might absorb such films more deeply than older audiences would of other movies. In fact, Disney has become such a shared cultural force that one study asserted, “These films to [sic] inspire at least as much cultural authority and legitimacy for teaching specific roles, values and ideals than more traditional sites of learning such as public schools, religious institutions, and the family.” ³⁹ That Disney’s influence has been placed on par with that of the family clearly demonstrates its immense cultural power.

1 When Law Is at Odds with Morality

Law and morality are most often and most emphatically presented as at odds one with the other in the Disney films that make up our sample. The Little Mermaid contains perhaps Disney’s most troubling representation of the discontinuity of law and morals. In The Little Mermaid, the protagonist, Ariel, a young mermaid, falls in love with a human, Prince Eric and wants to marry him. In a fit of teenage angst involving resisting her father, King Triton (the King of the Sea), Ariel seeks the counsel of Ursula, the Sea Witch who collects shriveled shells of mer-people that she enslaves body and soul. Ursula offers to help Ariel telling her that in order to get Eric, Ariel will have to “become human herself.” Ursula is willing to use her magic to transform Ariel’s fins into legs but only in exchange for Ariel’s voice and a contractual “bet” that if Ariel is unable to obtain Eric’s kiss of “true love” in three days, Ursula will ultimately own Ariel, body and soul.

This arrangement is sealed with 16-year-old Ariel’s signature on a contract drawn up by Ursula. Ariel is unsuccessful in receiving the kiss due, in no small part, to Ursula’s interference (including using Ariel’s acquired voice to trick Eric). When the three days are over, Ursula exclaims, “She’s mine!” snatches Ariel (whose legs have magically become fins again), and scurries off to her sea cave followed by Flotsam and Jetsam, Ursula’s loyal henchmen in the form of electric eels. King Triton is waiting at the Sea Witch’s cave to get his daughter back. As Ariel begins to shrivel, King Triton points his powerful trident at Ursula commanding, “Ursula, Stop!” The Sea Witch stops only to produce the golden contract with Ariel’s signature. King Triton attempts to destroy the contract using a powerful force of nature visibly represented as lightning bolts from his trident whose powers have been demonstrated earlier in the movie. The lightning force ricochets off the contract with such power that it pushes Ursula back violently, though the contract remains intact. Ursula recovers and chides King Triton, exclaiming, “See! The contract is legal, binding, and enforceable. No one can [invalidate the contract] … not even you, Triton.”

Law is represented in two ways in this scene. There is a powerful rule of law message in this scene because what is presented as binding “law” cannot be overturned by the will (or force) of the King. In this way, an important principle of law is reinforced – no one, not even the most powerful leader, is above the law. Unfortunately, this Rule of Law principle is completely at odds with the correct moral outcome. At the same time, “law” (in this case contract law) is presented completely formalistically. If the contract is executed, it is binding, regardless of whether the contract is morally bankrupt.

Assuming the legal code of the Disney audience, Ariel signs – and is bound by – an illegal and immoral contract. Under US law, the contract is illegal both because Ariel is 16 years old (not old enough to enter into a legally binding contract) and also because the contract is one in which she is selling body parts (in the United States, there are strict prohibitions on selling body parts). ⁴⁹ It may be that, in the presumably imaginary mer-world, sixteen is the age of majority and that no ban on the sale of body parts exists, but the contract is also illegal because it is unconscionable, which resonates clearly with the audience due to the extreme conditions of the contract. Even first-year law students understand the doctrine of unconscionability, the common law standard for invalidating contracts because they violate some shared sense of moral standards. ⁵⁰ Exchanges made when the conditions of power are such that one person has no real choice, a contract is unconscionable. A contract is also unconscionable if a person is enslaved or conscripted into indentured servitude. Even if slavery is formally “legal” in the mer-world, the audience is not given a sign that this is accepted practice among the “good guys” of the sea, and is morally questionable, particularly given the (assumed) audience aversion to slavery. Thus, even if undersea law is not identical to the legal code a Disney audience is bound by, the dramatic moral implications of the contract were undoubtedly drawn explicitly to resonate with the audience as morally reprehensible.

While there is a so-subtle-as-almost-not-to-be-noticed message about law in The Little Mermaid in which law and morality are in sync (the rule of law, not of men is observed), the abject immorality of the contract is not questioned. Indeed, the contract is blindly enforced with no mediating party to assess the morality of the contract. Meanwhile, the primary symbol of authority and morality, King Triton, is powerless in the face of the binding nature of the contract. When King Triton’s intervention which clearly is on the side of justice fails to produce a just outcome, the mer-world is reduced to violence. The reader unfamiliar with the movie will not be surprised to find out that the good guys prevail, Prince Eric manages to destroy Ursula, the evil Sea Witch, a reflective Triton decides to allow Ariel to be human, Ariel and Prince Eric enjoy a lavish Disney princess wedding complete with an enormous white gown (with tiara), rainbows, singing dolphins, and the promise of living happily ever after.

Another example of law being at odds with morality can be seen in the film Aladdin. Princess Jasmine is bound by traditional law found in many cultures of having to marry royalty. This tradition is justified by the desire among elites to make the ruling class more powerful and by the social desirability of marriages that result in financial security. Prince William’s choice of Kate Middleton exemplifies the class-based characteristic of “normal” mate selection in modern society. Even in contemporary American society such customs persist. For instance, current President Barack Obama’s choice to marry Michelle Obama – a Harvard Law School educated attorney – exemplifies the social desirability of marriages resulting in financial security. It is difficult to imagine that someone who marries a low-wage worker would be seen as a desirable President of the United States. Despite Americans’ love of “ordinary folk,” we expect our leaders to be married to other educated, upper-class people. These dominant cultural norms of “like-marrying-like” reflect the pervasiveness of norms, whether they be informal customs or formal laws.

In contrast to formal laws and social customs, an ethical view of Aladdin compels us to look at the narrative for Aladdin and Jasmine as individuals. Aladdin and Jasmine’s feelings for each other make the moral case for marriage (based in love, not dynasty) the correct moral outcome; children know that Aladdin and Jasmine should be married. And, in Aladdin’s conclusion, morality (or the importance of a Princess wedding) trumps law. More broadly, in our analyses of Disney films, Disney consistently takes this side, in which the ethics applied to a personal circumstance trump both formal legal and social rules established in these fictional societies (be they under the sea or in faraway Middle Eastern lands). ⁵¹

Aladdin contains other morals-over-law narratives in addition to the main Jasmine–Aladdin romance storyline. For instance, Aladdin’s decision featured at the beginning of this article to steal food from the market is made moral because of individual personal necessity and the morality of sharing – he and others are able to eat – over the social good of maintaining the necessary standard of having to pay for goods. As a result, Aladdin portrays stealing food as moral, even when the stealing is in direct contradiction with the law.

In Beauty and the Beast, the illegal detention of Belle’s father in an insane asylum is another instance where law and morals are at odds. The villain Gaston and his conspirator, Monsieur D’arque, devise a plan to detain Belle’s father, Maurice, in an asylum. After Maurice claims to have seen the 10-foot tall beast, Gaston decides to use Maurice’s story to argue that Maurice is insane and needs to be institutionalized. Gaston and Monsieur D’arque go to Maurice’s house and ask Maurice to recount his story of the beast in front of skeptical villagers. The villagers heckle Maurice, and two of Gaston’s thugs grab Maurice. As he tries to struggle away from his captors, Maurice is taken away to the asylum. Gaston then tells Belle that the only way to save her father is for Belle to marry Gaston.

This situation presents yet another instance in which law is at odds with morality. Under the law, a declaration of insanity is one of the only legal ways to indefinitely detain a person against his or her will. ⁵² The rule of law, therefore, is understood as the basis of Maurice’s imprisonment in the asylum. Gaston and Monsieur D’arque act as executives with the power to apprehend Maurice. Because the rule of law seems to be behind the villains, the villagers do not challenge the villains’ abduction of Maurice. Indeed, the law of insanity is blindly enforced.

“Law” (in this case, law’s execution) is presented as a normal mechanism for exercising power; if a person is insane, s/he belongs in an asylum, even if the basis for the determination of insanity is deceptive and immoral. This scene portrays the message that law cannot be overturned by the will of an individual (Maurice). In this way, the rule of law is reinforced: no one is above the law, and the law validates forceful incarceration if decision-makers conclude it is necessary. Furthermore, Gaston’s efforts to woo Belle into marriage are accepted in Western culture as part of a man’s attempt to court a woman. Historically, legal marriage began with a proposal, and the proposal was – and often still is – expected to come from the man.

Here, the Rule of Law is at odds with the desirable moral outcome. Gaston’s ultimatum invalidates the law of contract because Belle’s decision to marry Gaston is made under duress and a marriage under such conditions legally is invalid. Furthermore, Gaston’s misrepresentation of Maurice’s mental state makes Maurice’s forced incarceration illegal. Before being indefinitely detained, Maurice could expect a judge or third-party to independently determine his sanity or insanity. And yet, in the fantastical time and place of Beauty and the Beast, the heckling villagers constitute the trier of fact, and their “jury decision” solidifies Maurice’s fate in the asylum. No one (except protagonist Belle) challenges Maurice’s institutionalization. As a result, Belle is left on her own to be the sole champion of morality struggling against the rule of law, and moral resolution is not reached until the film plunges into violent conflict.

Disney protagonists often break the law at the end of films to vanquish the villain (as was the case with Prince Eric exploding Ursula in The Little Mermaid). In these instances, the protagonist’s evaluation of the situation leads toward punishment of the villain that necessarily goes well beyond reparation. These two circumstances differ with respect to who engages in judgment, how the agent and his or her acts are understood (in terms of the assignment of responsibility), and the target of enforcement or punishment. In each of these cases, “the differences are not merely a matter of focus or stress. They involve fundamental incompatibilities.” ⁵³ Hogan describes the contrast in punishment, based on the nature of the harm, saying:

Legal evaluation and action involve principles that push toward reducing our empathic responses to agents (thus, at the extreme, dehumanizing them and substituting a general calculus for the individual focus of humanizing empathy), toward increasing punishments beyond basic reparations (since basic reparations would not provide a disincentive for future crime), toward foregoing forgiveness. Ethical evaluation and action, in contrast, involve principles that push toward enhancing our empathic response to agents (thus humanizing them, and substituting this empathically individualized humanization for broad calculative concerns), toward reducing punishments to basic reparations (except in the case of the ethical self-evaluation by the agent), and toward genuine forgiveness. ⁵⁴

He goes on to place this contradiction in the context of Aristotle’s works:

Aristotle wrote that we have tragedy when the hero falls due to some action of his or her own, but not due to an evil character. If the hero’s character is evil, then we may simply view his or her fall as deserved, thus not tragic. If the hero falls through no fault of his or her own, that "shocks our feelings". We do not experience tragic fear and pity, but anger. We feel the fall to be tragic only when the hero is guilty, yet not so guilty that we desire the punishment. Punishment goes beyond any given act – for an act, as such, cannot be punished – to the character, which, in this case, is not fundamentally bad. In that way, such punishment goes beyond what is morally necessary. Indeed, from a moral point of view, punishment – at least punishment beyond reparation (which is a sort of undoing of the harmful act) – is always excessive. ⁵⁵

This “fundamental incompatibility” exists in many Disney-imagined conflicts, especially those which involve vigilante justice. Often, the Disney-protagonist in some way punishes the villain for his/her actions, in a way that exceeds what most Americans would consider the “moral” response. However, when it suits the protagonist to do something that is immoral, no legal response is issued. In both cases, the protagonist is portrayed as being in the right and the outcome, therefore, is suitable and just.

One interpretation is that Disney takes a legal view of punishment, but an ethical view of transgressions. The punishment in this generation of Disney films is almost always death, which goes far beyond the villains’ transgression. The only clear exceptions to villain death come in the two earliest films in our sample. In 101 Dalmatians (1961), Cruella de Vil crashes her car when she swerves off the road and into a small ravine with her two goon-sidekicks as passengers. The final scene shows Cruella standing amongst the wreckage yelling, blaming her sidekicks for the crash she caused, and crying that the Dalmatians escaped. In the second earliest film, Disney’s 1967 The Jungle Book, viewers last see the villain Shere Khan being burned in a fire and running away for his own survival. That the non-fatal punishments come in the earlier films may demonstrate a general move by Disney that simply comports with social changes about representations of violence in film and toward more serious and exorbitant punishments. In the later films such as Beauty and the Beast, the villain Gaston falls to his death during the final fight with the protagonist Beast. In The Little Mermaid, Ursula explodes at the hands of Prince Eric. In The Lion King, Scar is handed over to the hyenas (to be severely maimed or killed, the consequence of which is of no further concern to the protagonist). In Hercules, after acting as a lawyer making contracts to acquire people’s souls, Hades is pushed into the pit of condemned souls.

In each instance, Disney’s narrative presents the protagonist’s actions (his crimes and the punishments he metes out) from his view only. This individualized view creates a situation in which the excessive punishment to the villain is seen as acceptable. Thus, Disney engages in a fundamental distortion of both categories (morality and legality). Instead of following the definitions and implications of each, Disney picks and chooses the elements that are most convenient for its protagonists (and their storylines). When the protagonist makes the ethical choice, legal punishment is invalidated; however, when the protagonist makes unethical choices (that often permit harm to another, usually the villain), legal punishment – even in excess – is validated.

2 When Law and Morality Are Unrelated

Law’s tenuous relationship to morality in Disney films perhaps is most palpable when the law is unrelated to protagonist’s moral decision-making. In our sample of Disney films, the protagonist uses the power of law when convenient; when not convenient, the protagonist eschews the law. The violent outcomes in Disney films demonstrate the weakness of law as a social control mechanism. For instance, in The Lion King, after a physical battle with protagonist Simba, villain Scar is cornered and presumably eaten by famished hyenas. In another instance, Jaffar, villain of Aladdin, is indefinitely trapped in a Genie bottle and later explodes at the hands of the protagonists. ⁵⁶

Consequently, often law fundamentally has nothing to do with dictating the final resolution of the films. ⁵⁷ In the most significant final scenes, protagonists ignore the role of law in dictating the villains’ proper punishments. The acts of the protagonists – by definition of their goodness – are justified, even if the protagonists intend to do harm to the villains. In the case of Ursula’s death in The Little Mermaid, where Prince Eric impales Ursula, the protagonist intentionally causes suffering – and death – to the villain. Yet, this direct harm seamlessly is part of, indeed crucial for the moral resolution of the film.

Two conclusions emerge from these portrayals of law. First, law-abiding behavior is unrelated to the identity of protagonists and villains (whose identities are determined by who Disney presents as the ethical protagonist and immoral villain). Second, law is irrelevant in determining a just punishment for the villain; instead, the punishment is determined solely by the moral choice of the protagonist, even if that choice is to kill or assault the villain. In both situations, law is not in direct opposition to ethics (as is the case with Aladdin stealing food as policemen chase him); rather, law is irrelevant and unnecessary. Morality alone determines the outcome, and that moral determination rests solely with the protagonist.