#disney channel original movies

Family Business: Labor, Capital, and Family as an Economic Unit in Brink and Horse Sense

Analyze the different roles horses inhabit in Horse Sense. How does the film use the horses to comment on or represent the humans who interact with them?

So, you can calm down a frantic horse just by petting it, but only if you’ve undergone significant character growth? Is that how horses work?

How does our extratextual knowledge of the actors (i.e., our awareness that two lead actors are brothers) affect our reading of Horse Sense? Contrast with our knowledge of the lack of a second Lohan sister in The Parent Trap.

And the Crowd Goes Wild: Gender as Performance for an Imaginary Audience in Genius

It’s Not the Scar, It’s the Story: Bodies as Texts and the Trauma of Experience in Genius

What exactly are the rules of hockey? Can you just switch jerseys because you feel like it? Can you put your equipment manager on the ice because you feel like it? Have the writers of Genius ever seen a game of hockey?

It’s Not the Scar, It’s the Story: The Semiotics of “Bad Boys”

The Other Me: Swapping Twins, Alter Egos, and the Fluidity of Adolescent Identities in Disney's The Parent Trap and Genius

Why does Genius, like Brink, give its protagonist a father with a back injury? Consider the two films’ treatment of disability in the context of the father-as-provider archetype. In what ways do these films’ fathers subvert or uphold traditional economic and literary conceptions of masculinity?