Daniel Goldmark

Locating America: Revisiting Disney's Lady and the Tramp

By studying the diegesis and music of the film Lady and the Tramp, the authors describe a specific form of American social membership that continues to define social politics today. In the film, dogs, cats and rats represent human archetypes, their needs, desires and activities, and provide a narrative that secures an American ideal about the place of race and nation. The argument is put forth that this representation defines a politics of whiteness that not only uses the threat of formal exclusion and elimination from society to define ethnicity and race, but also seeks to eliminate the likelihood of a successful radicalization of the border. This is a nation where even the idea of difference is defeated and domestication is total. Against this narrative, the authors contend that the absence of an adequate description in the film of the class politics and racial practices that support this vision raises serious questions as to the social coherence of Disneys America.