Introduction

Everyone likes to dream. Hoping and wishing for our dreams to come true is something we all have in common, myself included. Disneyland and the Disney brand prizes itself on making "dreams come true" so its no wonder that we all cannot help but be captivated by its magical charm. As young kids we all had our favorite Disney characters that we idolized. We dressed like them, talked like them and acted like them, sometimes even refusing to respond to any other name than "Buzz" or "Mulan". Road trips always seemed to go that much quicker when "The Little Mermaid" soundtrack was playing in the car, all it took was my dad to read the Lion King story at bedtimes and I was out like a light and watching Santa Clause the movie on Christmas Eve was always a given.  However, the sparkly tiaras, the pink dresses and Minnie mouse bows were just not for me. I preferred to be outdoors, kicking around a soccer ball or playing any sort of game that involved competition for that matter, climbing trees and going on adventures with my brother and sister. It's no surprise then that "Cool Runnings" and "Finding Nemo" are two of my favorite Disney movies, both full of adventure and excitement. Despite watching my fair share of Disney movies growing up, I never seemed to be able to find a strong female character that I could relate to. Cinderella or Sleeping Beauty both seemed so passive and helpless and even Mulan had to pretend to be something she wasn't.  Like any young kid, I was curious and inquisitive, always wondering why all the strong heroic characters were guys, Buzz in Toy Story, Simba in the Lion King, Peter Pan, Robin Hood,....the list goes on.All I wanted was for one strong Female protagonist to rise up and make her mark, seizing the day with both hands.That said, there is one Disney movie that I can especially relate to, The Parent Trap. Having an identical twin sister, like Annie and Hallie, we always were getting up to mischief and confusing people as kids. Needless to say that this movie and also the TV show "The Suite Life of Zach and Cody" provided us with even more inspiration to the previous tricks we had up our sleeves, much to our parents dismay.
But why Decoding Disney? I guess as I begin this new chapter of my life at Duke, now is as good a time as any to remove my rose-tinted glasses and look at Disney from a new perspective. In my senior year at high school we looked at how the stories behind Up and Pinocchio both had so much more to tell than what originally appeared ,when we delved beneath their sugar coated centers. Picking classes for my fall semester during the summer was a fairly daunting and stressful task that involved a lot of to-ing and fro-ing of emails back and forth between my athletic adviser Kenny and I but I can definitely say choosing this writing101 class was the easiest decision I had to make. Its likely that all the ideological perceptions that I have of Disney movies will be shattered in this process but I'm excited for the whirlwind journey ahead.