The Disneyfication of Pop

The Disneyfication of Pop: With the Beatles, Beyoncé, and Taylor Swift shatters the mirrors of music’s brightest stars—and reassembles them to present a new theory of hypercommodified pop.

In the first-ever book of its kind, Katie Kapurch reveals unseen relationships between the Walt Disney Company and pop icons. Much like the fairy-tale media they interpolate and inspire, Disneyfied artists create and market music that is thrilling and comforting, sexy and safe, controlled and consoling.

As if dusted with the Studios’ own sparkle, the Beatles, Beyoncé, and Swift use Disney techniques to become “princely auteurs” and “princesses adored.” Occupying two roles at once, the artist is a hero worth imitating and a damsel deserving attention and rescue. These melodramatic dynamics let audiences see themselves reflected in pop superstars, whose dreamworlds are safe spaces as protected and storied as Sleeping Beauty's castle.

Disney’s looking glass offers new ways of seeing the Beatles, Beyoncé, and Swift and uncovers unprecedented links between them, too. While these phenomena exemplify Disneyfied pop, Kapurch’s insights have wide-ranging applications to mediated wonderlands and the engagements they demand throughout the broader pop cultural landscape.