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The Disneyfication of Pop

The Beatles, Beyoncé, Taylor Swift, and their Fairy Tales

The Disneyfication of Pop cover

The Disneyfication of Pop

The Beatles, Beyoncé, Taylor Swift, and their Fairy Tales

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Description

The Disneyfication of Pop: The Beatles, Beyoncé, Taylor Swift, and their Fairy Tales 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 the often-invisible links between the Walt Disney Company and pop superstars, demystifying their enchantments in the process. Much like the fairy-tale media they interpolate and inspire, Disneyfied artists create and market hypercommodified music that is thrilling and comforting, sexy and safe, controlled and consoling.
Disneyfication is a postmodern mythmaking phenomenon that accounts for the intensely personal attachments pop musicians inspire and the near-religious status they occupy as cultural institutions for multigenerational audiences. As if dusted with the Studios' own sparkle, the Beatles, Beyoncé, and Swift use Disneyesque storytelling and visual tropes to become “princely auteurs” and “princesses adored.” Occupying two roles at once, the artist becomes a creator-hero worth imitating and a damsel deserving attention and rescue. These melodramatic metaphors encourage audiences to see themselves reflected in pop, 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, while also uncovering unexplored links between them. Kapurch's insights have wide-ranging applications beyond these icons to other mediated wonderlands and the engagements they demand throughout the broader pop cultural landscape.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Disney Plus Pop and/as the Disney Mirror
1. Disney Mythmaking: Sparkle and Space, Eras and Eternal Returns in Disney Plus Pop
2. The Disney Version: Re-Innovating the Disneyfied Fairy Tale in Disney Plus Pop
3. Disney Melodrama: A Drama Set to Music, Music Set to Drama in Disney Plus Pop
4. The Disney Brain: The Dreamworld of the Princely Auteur, the Princess Adored, and the Fan Activist in Disney Plus Pop
5. Disney Icons and Backstage Passes: Cute-Sexy Characters and the Disneyfied Studio in Disney Plus Pop
6. The Disney Vault: Safe Spaces and the Distribution of Disney Plus Pop
7: The Disney Doll Finale: Housewives, Barbie, and Brand Collaborations in Disney Plus Pop Ever After
Bibliography
Notes
Index

Product details

Bloomsbury Academic Test
Published 28 May 2026
Format Hardback
Edition 1st
Pages 368
ISBN 9798765100035
Imprint Bloomsbury Academic
Dimensions 229 x 152 mm
Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing

About the contributors

Author

Katie Kapurch

Katie Kapurch is Professor of English at Texas Sta…

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