Wish
Disney’s latest film draws heavily on the studio’s history in its vision of a multiracial society and condemnation of demagoguery.
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This post is part of the ‘One Take’ weekly series analysing the politics of a film currently showing at the cinemas.
Note: Given that, at time of writing, Wish is still showing in UK cinemas, this analysis only lays out as much of the film’s scenario as is necessary so as to avoid spoilers. It is therefore suitable to be read either before or after watching the film, while hopefully still enriching the viewer’s appreciation of it either way.
Wish focuses on 17-year-old protagonist Asha (Ariana DeBose), who lives with her widowed mother Sakina (Natasha Rothwell), grandfather Sabino (Victor Garner), and pet goat Valentino (Alan Tudyk) in the island kingdom of Rosas in the Mediterranean Sea. Rosas was founded by the sorcerer Magnifico (Chris Pine), who rules over it with his wife, Amaya (Angelique Cabral). Magnifico is much beloved, and is entrusted to take the wishes of its residents when they turn 18, on the premise that he will one day grant them. Asha aspires to be Magnifico’s apprentice, but is disillusioned when she realises how selective and controlling he is about whose wishes he grants. Yet when she herself wishes on a star, that star comes down to Earth and puts the power to make wishes come true in the hands of Asha and her friends – much to Magnifico’s chagrin.
Rosas’s multiracial society
The setting of Wish in the Mediterranean, depicting a multiracial society and with a biracial heroine, seems a deliberately specific choice. Rosas was set up as an island kingdom where people can come from anywhere to be safe and have their wishes come true. This is a stark contrast with the contemporary reality of Southern European states adopting aggressive tactics to repel migrant crossings from Africa and the Middle East, with the number of refugees who have drowned in the Mediterranean over the past decade conservatively estimated at 25,000.
There are parallels here with another recent Disney film, the live-action version of The Little Mermaid (2023), which was similarly set in a multiracial early modern Caribbean, in which the colonisation and Atlantic slave trade that accounts for the racial diversity (and hierarchies) of the region were conspicuous by their absence. Both adhere to a strategy of using the children’s fantasy film to displace real histories of oppression and in their place imagine alternative ways of living and having lived. Rosas’s melting pot society and foundational myths also nod to the US’s self-image.
Magnifico as a demagogue
Magnifico, on the other hand, offers a cautionary tale of the charismatic hero turned demagogue. We learn early in the film that he was inspired to establish Rosas because of the (only vaguely disclosed) greed and selfishness that ruined his own society. Yet his obsession with order, his self-image, and the people of Rosas’s perceived lack of gratitude drives him to administer it in a covertly controlling manner, hidden behind a cycle of ritual spectacles. As his grip on power weakens, the nature of his rule becomes more visible, more dependent upon a policy of divide-and-rule, bribing the ‘loyal’ to help him crush ‘traitors’.
The parallels with real-life would-be and actual dictators (and with biblical kings?) again seem fairly apparent, but this is also a story of how idealism can be soured through a particularly patriarchal insecurity. Wish’s warning, then, is against creating Magnificos. When young people reach adulthood, they ought not to collapse their personal aspirations into those of a powerful sovereign, but rather pursue those dreams themselves and together.
A film about Disney itself
The film’s politics are also inherently bound up with a huge helping of self-referentiality, something that has long been a component of Disney’s films (and spinoff sequels and television series), but is laid on particularly thick here. Wish is self-consciously about Disney itself, as the studio celebrates its centenary. It is evident from its storybook opening – a motif discussed recently on the Fantasy/Animation podcast – through to its closing credits. It is manifest in its animation style, which melds the CGI that has dominated Disney films since the turn of the millennium with an older fashioned watercolour style. It is present in deliberate quotations from other Disney films, and even cameos of familiar characters.
The film’s central concept, of wishing on a star, is explicitly a nod to this theme as it was articulated in classical Disney films such as Pinocchio (1940) and Cinderella (1950), later updated for the yearning heroines of the 1990s. At the same time, Asha as Wish’s protagonist takes upon it herself to try and ensure the wishes of others can come true, and in this bravery, selflessness, and communal-mindedness also echoes other recent Disney heroines from the Global South, such as Pacific islander Moana from the eponymous 2016 film, and Colombian Mirabel from 2021’s Encanto.
Magnifico, by contrast, begins by resembling the well-intentioned but overprotective father/ruler of many a Disney Renaissance and post-Renaissance film, such as Triton in the Little Mermaid (1989 and 2023), King Agnar in Frozen (2013), or Chief Tui in Moana. Yet as the film progresses and his moral descent begins in earnest, he comes to much more resemble a classical Disney villainess such as the Queen in Snow White (1937) or Ursula in The Little Mermaid. In toying with these tropes, in ways that address the problematic nature of gender and racial representation in earlier Disney films, Wish overtly continues a tendency more implicitly visible in the studio’s other recent output, of seeking to reclaim its heritage and canon for more progressive ends.
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