[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":-1},["ShallowReactive",2],{"doc-detail-135364-en":3,"doc-seo-135364-105":30,"detail-sidebar-cat-0-en-105":92},{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":6},0,"success",{"doc_id":7,"user_id":8,"nickname":9,"user_avatar":10,"doc_module":4,"category_id":11,"category_name":12,"doc_title":13,"doc_description":14,"doc_content":15,"file_id":16,"file_url":17,"file_type":18,"file_size":19,"view_count":20,"is_deleted":4,"is_public":20,"is_downloadable":20,"audit_status":20,"page_count":21,"language":22,"language_code":23,"site_id":24,"html_lang":23,"table_of_contents":25,"faqs":26,"seo_title":27,"seo_description":14,"update_tm":28,"read_time":29},135364,4398048949847,"Eliana","https://ap-avatar.wpscdn.com/avatar/400002536579ef2da7f?_k=1778318612642679267",8,"Research & Report","A Beauty But a Funny Girl - A Queer Investigation of the Broadwayfication of Disney - Introduction and Case Study","This paper examines how Disney’s Beauty and the Beast moves from animated film to Broadway stage, framing that process as “Broadwayfication” and analyzing its impact on gender and sexuality in American mainstream culture. It explains “queer” as a flexible framework for dismantling and rebuilding gendered and sexual identities, drawing on Alexander Doty’s ideas of queerness as produced through acts of production and reception. Using early reviews by Dan Rather and Frank Rich, it shows how AIDS-related readings and authorship claims created openings for queer interpretations beyond heteronormative expectations.","A Beauty But a Funny Girl:  \nA Queer Investigation of the Broadwayfication of Disney  \nThe term“Disneyfication” often implies that substance, edge, and thematic depth have been removed and replaced with childish, censored, and heteronormative story lines, in the form of mindless spectacle. Politically, the term implies values which range from“simplistically rightist- moderately conservative to those who barely tolerate Disney, [to] cryptofascist for those who perceive his work as insidious, even dangerous.” (Douglas, xi) Therefore, to refer to the period in the mid-1990's, when Disney acquired real estate in Times Square and opened musicals on Broadway, as the “Disneyfication of Broadway” is to imply an invasion of a corporate, heteronormative culture into a Broadway culture which is historiographically represented as a sophisticated, leftist refuge for the outsiders of American culture, particularly the LGBTQ community. However, in Making Things Perfectly Queer, Alexander Doty asserts that “unless the text is about queers ...the queerness of most mass culture texts is less an essential, waiting-to-be-discovered property than the result of acts of production or reception.” (xi) Thus, this paper traces the production and reception of the Disney property Beauty and the Beast from animated film to the Broadway stage in order to uncover the ways in which its creators utilized a traditional musical theatre form to present an anti-essentialist treatment of gender and sexuality in American culture to the mainstream public. I refer to the influence of musical theatre culture on Walt Disney Company films as its“Broadwayfication.” Since one of the major deterrents of a queer reading of Disney musicals is the “Disney” brand name, my goal in justifying my own queer reading of Beauty and the Beast is to bring this musical out of the “closeted” categories of code, camp, and connotation and to provide another voice for the queer community.  \nThe AIDS Metaphor  \nBefore I proceed in reading Disney's Beauty and the Beast as a queer text, I must clarify the word 'queer' as adhering to the idea that gender and sexuality are fluid constructions which can be dismantled and rebuilt in unlimited variations. In exploring the queer spectatorship and authorship of the film and stage texts, this term expresses what Doty calls “cultural common ground between lesbians and gays as well as other nonstraights”while allowing the idea that straight-identifying audience members can also experience queer interpretations of seemingly heterocentric texts. (2-3)  \nTwo film reviews of Beauty and the Beast from 1991 prove the possibility of queer, in this case gay male centered, readings of a Disney text from heterosexual individuals. Dan Rather, in writing a review for the Los Angeles Times, first opened the door to alternative readings of Disney musicals when he challenged his readers to:  \n“Think of the [witch's] spell as AIDS...you feel the Beast's loneliness and desperation a little more deeply...That means that millions of Americans, most of them children, are looking at a Person With AIDS with a new kind of compassion. We're crying when he's sad, cheering for him when he wins... can you possibly imagine that we'd identify with him?”(“The AIDS Metaphor”)  \nFor a white, heterosexual, and powerful man like Rather to articulate the “AIDS Metaphor,”which would otherwise remain a queer subtext of the film, the heteronormativity of the Disney product had been officially challenged. The second earth-shattering review came from  \nFrank Rich of the New York Times who argued,  \n“The best Broadway musical score of 1991 was that written by Alan Menken and Howard Ashman for the Disney animated movie 'Beauty and the Beast.' Mr. Ashman, who died of AIDS this year, and Mr. Menken were frequent collaborators Off Broadway but had never worked as a team on a Broadway musical.” (“The Year in the Arts”)  \nThese two reviews, connecting lyricist and producer Howard Ashman's AIDS relat","cbCaivylxb5CrexL","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCaivylxb5CrexL","pdf",144971,1,10,"English","en",105,"# Introduction\n## Disneyfication and Broadway context\n## Queer spectatorship and authorship\n# The AIDS Metaphor in film reviews\n## Dan Rather’s AIDS reading\n## Frank Rich’s AIDS-related Broadway framing\n# Howard Ashman and authorship\n## Dedications and auteur influence\n# Obstacles and prospects for queer readings\n## Heteronormative endings and Sondheim comparison","[{\"question\":\"What does “Disneyfication of Broadway” mean in this paper?\",\"answer\":\"It describes the perceived replacement of Broadway’s more complex, outsider-refuge identity with a corporate, heteronormative culture linked to Disney.\"},{\"question\":\"How does the paper define “queer” for its analysis?\",\"answer\":\"It treats gender and sexuality as fluid constructions that can be dismantled and rebuilt in multiple variations, supporting queer interpretations from both LGBTQ and straight-identifying audiences.\"},{\"question\":\"Why are the 1991 reviews by Dan Rather and Frank Rich important here?\",\"answer\":\"They demonstrate that mainstream heterosexual critics produced queer readings, especially through AIDS-related metaphors tied to Howard Ashman’s death and the musical style of the film.\"}]","A Beauty But a Funny Girl - A Queer Investigation of the Broadwayfication of Disney - Introduction and Case Study | PDF",1787310279,25,{"code":4,"msg":31,"data":32},"ok",{"site_id":24,"language":23,"slug":33,"title":13,"keywords":34,"description":14,"schema_data":35,"social_meta":87,"head_meta":89,"extra_data":91,"updated_unix":28},"a-beauty-but-a-funny-girl-a-queer-investigation-of-the-broadwayfication-of-disney-introduction-and-case-study","",{"@graph":36,"@context":86},[37,54,69],{"@type":38,"itemListElement":39},"BreadcrumbList",[40,44,48,51],{"item":41,"name":42,"@type":43,"position":20},"https://docshare.wps.com","Home","ListItem",{"item":45,"name":46,"@type":43,"position":47},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/","Document",2,{"item":49,"name":12,"@type":43,"position":50},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/research-report/",3,{"item":52,"name":13,"@type":43,"position":53},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/a-beauty-but-a-funny-girl-a-queer-investigation-of-the-broadwayfication-of-disney-introduction-and-case-study/135364/",4,{"url":52,"name":13,"@type":55,"author":56,"headline":13,"publisher":58,"fileFormat":61,"inLanguage":23,"description":14,"dateModified":62,"datePublished":63,"encodingFormat":61,"isAccessibleForFree":64,"interactionStatistic":65},"DigitalDocument",{"name":9,"@type":57},"Person",{"url":41,"name":59,"@type":60},"DocShare","Organization","application/pdf","2026-08-24","2026-08-21",true,{"@type":66,"interactionType":67,"userInteractionCount":20},"InteractionCounter",{"@type":68},"ViewAction",{"@type":70,"mainEntity":71},"FAQPage",[72,78,82],{"name":73,"@type":74,"acceptedAnswer":75},"What does “Disneyfication of Broadway” mean in this paper?","Question",{"text":76,"@type":77},"It describes the perceived replacement of Broadway’s more complex, outsider-refuge identity with a corporate, heteronormative culture linked to Disney.","Answer",{"name":79,"@type":74,"acceptedAnswer":80},"How does the paper define “queer” for its analysis?",{"text":81,"@type":77},"It treats gender and sexuality as fluid constructions that can be dismantled and rebuilt in multiple variations, supporting queer interpretations from both LGBTQ and straight-identifying audiences.",{"name":83,"@type":74,"acceptedAnswer":84},"Why are the 1991 reviews by Dan Rather and Frank Rich important here?",{"text":85,"@type":77},"They demonstrate that mainstream heterosexual critics produced queer readings, especially through AIDS-related metaphors tied to Howard Ashman’s death and the musical style of the film.","https://schema.org",{"og:url":52,"og:type":88,"og:title":13,"og:site_name":59,"og:description":14},"article",{"robots":90,"canonical":52},"index,follow",{"doc_id":7,"site_id":24},{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":93},[94,98,102,106,111,116,121,124,129,132,135],{"id":20,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":46,"category_name":95,"show_sort_weight":96,"slug":97},"Story & Novel",90,"story-novel",{"id":47,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":46,"category_name":99,"show_sort_weight":100,"slug":101},"Literature",80,"literature",{"id":53,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":46,"category_name":103,"show_sort_weight":104,"slug":105},"Exam",70,"exam",{"id":107,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":46,"category_name":108,"show_sort_weight":109,"slug":110},5,"Comic",60,"comic",{"id":112,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":46,"category_name":113,"show_sort_weight":114,"slug":115},6,"Technology",50,"technology",{"id":117,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":46,"category_name":118,"show_sort_weight":119,"slug":120},7,"Healthcare",40,"healthcare",{"id":11,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":46,"category_name":12,"show_sort_weight":122,"slug":123},30,"research-report",{"id":125,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":46,"category_name":126,"show_sort_weight":127,"slug":128},9,"Religion & Spirituality",20,"religion-spirituality",{"id":127,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":46,"category_name":130,"show_sort_weight":127,"slug":131},"World Cup","world-cup",{"id":21,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":46,"category_name":133,"show_sort_weight":21,"slug":134},"Lifestyle","lifestyle",{"id":136,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":46,"category_name":137,"show_sort_weight":107,"slug":138},19,"General","general"]