The Strange and Not So Strange About Disney’s Strange World: A Visceral and Social Semiotic Analysis

Disney is well-known for producing entertainment contents that engage equally children and adults. However, some of the messages conveyed in many of Disney’s productions involve a sense-making that young children cannot attain due to a lack of pre-existing knowledge-based structures. This paper presents a semiotic analysis through a brief and synthetic deconstruction of animated film by Disney, Strange World. Social Semiotics is used to speculate on the possible strategies the creators had when having to communicate through a digital medium grounded on moving images. Using concrete examples, it is possible to observe how the content created follows a series of good practices to better communicate through an engaging and attractive narrative with the target audience, both children and adults. However, there is much information at different layers within the movie that children cannot reach, which leads to a discussion on what may prevail and what may be left out in a message that ought to be passed out to the younger generations.