Disney films: reflections of the other and the self

In the last decade of the 20th century most Disney animated features focused on the depiction of cultural otherness. Despite an apparent interest in spreading the knowledge of distant cultures, these films rely almost exclusively on conventional cultural metonymies to build the representations of the Other. More significantly, references to otherness are overwhelmed by the countless visual and verbal elements which belong to the narrating culture. If the «biased» nature of the cultural encounters which take place in these Disney films can be easily evinced from an analysis of the original screenplays, it is only by taking into account their Italian translations that it becomes fully evident. Thus, by comparing excerpts from the original and the Italian versions of the films, this paper sets out to explore the threefold cultural encounter which takes place in them, ultimately highlighting the complexity which lies in the transfer of all-specific American references rather than the generalized, universally-known visual and verbal clichés which are used to evoke the Other.