I seem to recall invoking High School Musical awhile back, which some might say is the antithesis of pulp decadence a la Jaime Hernandez. In one way that is so, but one has to give Disney credit for the revivalist theme of 'togetherness through difference' that vibrates through the swinging sequences.
The only problem is that revival comes from the murkiness that Disney makes a point of steering clear of. It's a fairy tale version that tries not to get into the darkness, though there are often hints of European gargoyles in the best offerings, such as Pinicchio's Stromboli.
By murky, one really means the original fairy tale influence that sees Red Riding Hood as akin to Red Sonja in her titillating appeal (see Roy Thomas story.)
There is a weird mixture of naive innocence with the randy and the sultry that is evocative of Margaret Brundage's Weird Tales. Sleeping Beauty, for instance, was not awakened by a kiss but with the bestial lust of copulation.
In Disney, despite its cartoon origins, the animal side of things is warily traversed, which is the murkiness of the forest glade where animals scuttle and forage, satyrs dance.
Disney could be basically slimier and darker and more bestial while still preserving the old values. Troy Bolton and Gabriella Montez could be less squeaky clean and they'd still have a heroic sheen. In the animal cartoons, there is often a subtext that leaves little difference between frolicking and fornication.
Also, that's a type of Black sensibility that later became associated with Elvis Presley. The carnal lust that is lacking in modern Disney is the murkiness that inhabits the pulp ecosphere, largely by way of the naturalistic milieux.
Conanesque murk is the woodland situation where the savagery and lustiness expose ancient instincts of primal combatitiveness and protectiveness of the fertile and precious, men over women.
This physical side also invokes reactionary values. The values were espoused by Sean Connery, who was known for insisting on a sharp slap as a reasonable retort to feminine wiles!
The fertility of women predisposes power and wiles that men combat with a physicality that is restrained and manly. The lust that women inspire was skillfully satirised by BWS in The Pizza Story (prev), featuring Princess Adastra and the worshipful Aran Kashan.
By the end he is so aroused he is dreaming of the velvety down of her backside. R. Crumb had another unstoppable force of nature in Devil Girl, who vibrates with salivating lust to Flakey Foont's demise (the French film P'tit Con, based on the strip by Lauzier who also directed, has a similar theme of the formidable female.)
The murkiness of lust has primeval insistence that song and dance invoke. The sacrificial dancing maiden on Stravinsky's Rite of Spring is a case-in-point.
So, murkiness is really the absence of light and the places where satyrs frolic in hidden glades. Where light is dominant, one gets the situation of the dual-note of Jirel Meets Magic (prev), the confusion and distortion of endless reflections (SR9).
In other words, where there is no murkiness, light distorts with reflections; where there is murkiness, light is destroyed and converted into leaves (photosynthesis.)
The conversion of light is the cyclical system of Earth (Gaia) or Earthspin. Antagonistic motions, or snake-rhythm, is a celebration of primal fertility. Dance, the celebration of invariable time of which we are part (as opposed to a cog in variable machine-time.) Primeval, sensual and archetypal; the snake as a symbol of the active body in nature, which is easy to relate to Jung, as distinct from Freud. Put another way, sex symbolizes the active principle in nature - see discussion of Freud and capital P218.
With the conversion of light, the cycles of decay and revival are set. The murky and feminine fertility is where one can find fault with Disney.
Dankness and foul-smelling waters and the decadence of bleak woods make the revival that sustains spirit and the freedom from routines of endless reflections.
The Disney ideal needs a bit of dirt and smell to retain this type of primal invocation - one could also invoke Moore/Gebbie's Lost Girls as the Dionysian side to lusty and circular living that machine living denies, prev. The political, neutral, numerical zone of words of neutral value - the neutral zone of sex - machine as opposed to bodies-in-motion within a social milieu (nature, cycle of planet.)
"France is a veritable powder keg, that's nothing new", said Guy Groux, social movement specialist at Cevipof, the centre for political research at Science Po. "There is a sort of magic to social anger. It's hard to say how all the ingredients come together. During the first student demos in 1968, some commentators said: 'It's just a few rag parades'. We saw how that ended."
Present day French protests are about money; student protests were about the world view and philosophy of living. Lauzier's film (made 1984) harks back to the hippy era with the guy hanging out with a 'babba cool' in his loose communal home, talking filth at the table, acting loosely in a communal situation.
