Between 2001–2011, Disney Channel produced several sitcoms aimed at tweens that featured female protagonists with extraordinary abilities (e.g., celebrity and super/magical powers). In this book, Christina H. Hodel argues that, while male counterparts in similar programs openly displayed their extraordinariness, the female characters in these programs were often forced into hiding and secrecy, which significantly diminished their agency. She analyzes sitcom episodes, commentary in magazine articles, and web-based discussions of these series to examine how they portrayed female youths and the impact it had on its adolescent viewers. Combining close readings of dialogue and action with socioeconomic and historical contextual insights, Hodel sheds new light on the attitudes of the creators of these programs (mostly white, middle-aged, Western, heterosexual males) and the long-term impact on women today. Ultimately, her analysis shows, these blockbuster sitcoms reveal that despite Disney’s progress toward creating empowered girls, the network was—and still is—locked into tradition. This book is of interest to scholars of Disney studies, cultural studies, television studies, and gender studies.

Since the early 2000s, Disney Channel has been dominated by original live-action programming popular among tween girls. The shows’ successes rely not only on their popularity among girl audiences, but also on the development of star personae by girl performers, such as Raven-Symoné, Miley Cyrus, and Selena Gomez. In addition, these programs and their performers have spawned lucrative media and merchandising franchises for the Walt Disney Company. This book includes analyses of this Disney Channel programming, as well as Disney corporate reports and executive statements, together with Disney Channel stars’ performances, promotional appearances, media production, philanthropic efforts, and entrepreneurism. Analyzing these texts, performances, activities, and personae, it considers the ways in which they reproduce celebrity, visibility, and feminine performativity as central to successful twenty-first century girlhood.

An impassioned homage to the divas who shake up our world and transform it with their bold, dazzling artistry. What does it mean to be a “diva”? A shifting, increasingly loaded term, it has been used to both deride and celebrate charismatic and unapologetically fierce performers like Aretha Franklin, Divine, and the women of Labelle. In this brilliant, powerful blend of incisive criticism and electric memoir, Deborah Paredez—scholar, cultural critic, and lifelong diva devotee—unravels our enduring fascination with these icons and explores how divas have challenged American ideas about feminism, performance, and freedom. American Diva journeys into Tina Turner’s scintillating performances, Celia Cruz’s command of the male-dominated salsa world, the transcendent revival of Jomama Jones after a period of exile, and the unparalleled excellence of Venus and Serena Williams. Recounting how she and her mother endlessly watched Rita Moreno’s powerhouse portrayal of Anita in West Side Story and how she learned much about being bigger than life from her fabulous Tía Lucia, Paredez chronicles the celebrated and skilled performers who not only shaped her life but boldly expressed the aspiration for freedom among brown, Black, and gay communities. Paredez also traces the evolution of the diva through the decades, dismayed at the mid-aughts’ commodification and juvenilizing of its meaning but finding its lasting beauty and power. Filled with sharp insights and great heart, American Diva is a spirited tribute to the power of performance and the joys of fandom.

Social Order and Authority in Disney and Pixar Films contributes to an essential, ongoing conversation about how power dynamics are questioned, reinforced, and disrupted in the stories Disney tells. Whether these films challenge or perpetuate traditional structures (or do both), their considerable influence warrants careful examination. This collection addresses the vast reach of the Disneyverse, contextualizing its films within larger conversations about power relations. The depictions of surveillance, racial segregation, othering, and ableism represent real issues that impact people and their lived experiences. Unfortunately, storytellers often oversimplify or mischaracterize complex matters on screen. To counter this, contributors investigate these unspoken and sometimes unintended meanings. By applying the lenses of various theoretical approaches, including ecofeminism, critiques of exceptionalism, and gender, queer, and disability studies, authors uncover underlying ideologies. These discussions help readers understand how Disney’s output both reflects and impacts contemporary cultural conditions.

This volume examines changing boundaries between childhood and adulthood in British society and culture at the beginning of the twenty-first century − where these age boundaries are widely debated, policed, and contested − to investigate alternatives to conventional ideas of growing up. Building on observations, especially in children’s literature criticism, that human growth is shaped by a grand narrative that privileges adulthood, and on terminologies of non-normative growth, particularly in queer theory, this monograph develops growing sideways as a concept that queers this grand narrative by destabilising childhood and adulthood, and the boundaries between them. The concept is refined through close readings of twenty-first century British children’s literature, television series, film, and participatory events, troubling age boundaries via specific strategies in three conceptual areas: appearance, play, and space. Exploring power structures around age and gender, this monograph traces growing sideways as a distinct and important alternative discourse of human growth.

A powerful female, pre-adolescent, consumer demographic has emerged in tandem with girls becoming more visible in popular culture since the 1990s. Yet the cultural anxiety that this has caused has received scant academic attention. In Tweenhood, Melanie Kennedy rectifies this and examines mainstream, pre-adolescent girls' films, television programmes and celebrities from 2004 onwards, including A Cinderella Story (2004), Hannah Montana (2006) and Camp Rock (2008). Her book forges a dialogue between post-feminism, film and television, celebrity and most importantly; the figure of the tween. Kennedy examines how these media texts, which are so key to tween culture, address and construct their target audience by helping them to 'choose' an appropriately feminine identity. Tweenhood then, she argues, is transient and a discursive construct whose unpacking highlights the deification of celebrity and femininity within its culture.

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