When you watch an animated film by Disney (& lots of other studios), do you ever get the feeling of being utterly transported out of your life & brought somewhere else? It’s not an accident! Let’s talk about a powerful literary device called “ekphrasis” —thread time! (1/33)

Ekphrases are points in a work of literature where the author pauses the narrative for a detailed description of a work of visual art or stunning landscape. They’re old as Homer’s Iliad, which includes a famous ekphrasis of Achilles’ shield, and appear all over the place (2/33)

One reason ekphrastic descriptions of art are so powerful: art is “special,” it’s loaded w/ significance, & it’s different from the everyday. When an author takes time to describe art, they’re telling you, “This isn’t *just* a tapestry or vase. It matters. It means.” (3/33)

Most importantly, an ekphrasis stops time and encourages you to slow down and focus on that moment, to grapple with why it may be important to you, and to process what it may mean for the surrounding narrative when you leave the ekphrasis and return to “normal space” (4/33)

Disney does this *again and again*! Their most frequent use of ekphrasis is the old “open the book” trope. Snow White (1937), Cinderella (1950), Sleeping Beauty (1959), and The Sword in the Stone (1963) all do this in clear but memorable ways (5/33)

The book is a common enough technique that films like Chicken Little (2005) poke fun at it and The Princess and the Frog (2009) uses it as a meta-commentary on its own source material. But for all its (over)use, it remains a very effective tool for immersing the audience (6/33)

Ekphrases often announce that you’re leaving normal life and entering fantasy space: once upon a time, in a far off land, there’s a legend — all appear in Disney films & in literary ekphrases to create distance between where you are and where you’re going (7/33)

In literary ekphrases, the separation is b/w the main narrative & work of art or landscape. In Disney films, it’s b/w your “reality” & the reality of the film. It pauses the narrative of our life so we can travel through these beautiful books into this work of animated art (8/33)

The books often close at the end, signaling time inside this art space is done & we have to return to “reality.” It’s a reminder that what we saw was loaded w/ more significance than an everyday experience, an encouragement to reflect on where that art fits in our life (9/33)

Sometimes the books seem to transport you physically — Pinocchio (1940) and The Jungle Book (1967) both skip using text altogether and serve as direct visual portals to the Italian Alps and the Indian jungle (10/33)

And sometimes Disney uses a “disobedient ekphrasis” — a description of a work of art (which traditionally doesn’t move) that comes to life in a way that static visual art physically can’t. The illuminated miniatures in Robin Hood (1973) start walking and talking (11/33)

The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh (1977) plays with this idea regularly, making you feel that the book and art have totally merged with real life. It’s almost as if these animated characters are interacting with each other and us inside Christopher Robin’s real room (12/33)

And Treasure Planet (2002) literalizes the movement of the art inside the book by using technology to depict Captain Flint’s pirate ship coming off the page — a nod to the film’s source material and preview of the same ship we’ll be on towards the end of the film (13/33)

But ekphrases aren’t always books in Disney! Take The Aristocats (1970): the film’s opening credits show Toulouse painting a landscape that morphs into 1910 Paris, taking us through the painting as if it were a portal into the film we’re about to watch (14/33)

Beauty and the Beast (1991) uses stained glass as the medium for its ekphrasis, bringing us from reality into this fantastical story through a window that seems to transform (another “disobedient ekphrasis”) and ending the film by taking us back out of the glass (15/33)

Pocahontas (1995) uses a framed pencil sketch, which transforms into London at the start of the film — and at the end, we morph out of Pocahontas’ overlook and back into the pencil sketch, giving us the sense that we enter and leave the film via art (16/33)

One of Disney’s neatest ekphrases is Hercules (1997), which takes us into museum & a vase, where the Muses come to life and then walk out. We get the sense that art and animation can enter our world and become “real” — and we return to “reality” again through another vase (17/33)

And sometimes it’s not entirely static art that we’re dealing with! The Hunchback of Notre Dame’s (1996) ekphrasis occurs via Clopin’s puppetry—performance art that transports us into this fantasy space and then takes us back out again. Was the entire movie his show? (18/33)

Zootopia (2016) does something parallel, beginning with a school talent show and ending with Gazelle’s professional show, again taking us into and out of the world of the film through pieces of performance art that constitute versions of the “disobedient ekphrasis” (19/33)

But as I said at the start, a work of art is only one kind of ekphrasis. They also happen with vivid descriptions of natural landscapes, especially those that are either especially beautiful (locus amoenus, “charming place”) or scary (locus horridus, “terrifying place”) (20/33)

In ancient literature, landscape ekphrases depict places that are otherworldly — not only beautiful, but normally off-bounds to humans. They’re a little awe-inspiring, their lighting tends to be ethereal, and often there are signs that magic and divinity infuse the place (21/33)

We see this in the openings of Bambi (1942) and The Fox and the Hound (1981) (22/33)

It also shows up in a different variation in the endings to The Jungle Book (1967) and Robin Hood (1973), as well as the opening and closing of The Rescuers Down Under (1990), which is framed by meaningful spaces of Uluru and Marahute’s cliff home (23/33)

Similar natural landscapes appear at Tarzan’s (1999) opening and closing, and the openings of The Emperor’s New Groove (2000) and Home on the Range (2004) (24/33)

Alice in Wonderland (1951) is a neat example of this, b/c we begin by transitioning immediately into a semi-controlled, semi-magical garden space that will lead to dreams in Wonderland, and when we return to “reality” we cross a bridge back to a space with buildings (25/33)

There are also several examples where the sky is treated as an ekphrastic landscape — remote, usually off-limits to mortals, & infused with a sense of magic or divinity. Pinocchio (1940) and The Princess and the Frog (2009) both begin this way with magic wishes and stars (26/33)

And Peter Pan (1953) and Treasure Planet (2002) both start with a nighttime skyscape of stars and close with clouds that have taken on both magical and threatening auras in the form of Captain Hook’s pirate ship and Long John Silver’s winking face (27/33)

And seascapes — another space where the boundary between mortal and the divine, the “real” and the magical” is thin — are used in this way also. The Little Mermaid (1989) take us fathoms below and Atlantis (2001) puts us in the middle of the ocean (28/33)

There are also some neat examples where Disney combines artistic ekphrasis and landscape ekphrasis. Moana (2016), for instance, begins with grandmother Tala’s tapa cloth stories *and* magical seascapes at the same time (29/33)

Mulan’s (1998) opening landscape ink paintings are simpler versions of this combo, and Brother Bear (2003) likewise morphs old Denahi’s rock paintings into mountainous landscapes under the magical aurora that will transform Kenai (30/33)

Notably Brother Bear (2003) opens with Denahi’s paintings and closes with Kenai painting his paw on the same rock face, framing the film with an artistic ekphrasis like many of the films I talked about above (31/33)

There are other variations on this device, & obv. Disney doesn’t have a monopoly on it (though these are the films I know best and can most easily screencap for this thread), but I’ll leave it there for now (and may return later with a thread on ekphrastic cityscapes) (32/33)

If you’re still here, I hope you enjoyed this! An ekphrasis is a beautiful, versatile literary device, and I think it’s pretty neat to see how Disney deploys it again and again, using art and natural beauty to pull us into meaningful spaces separate from our daily lives (33/33)