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Abstract

Scholarship has long traced antisemitic stereotyping in European fairy-tale traditions, yet its refraction in Disney’s globally influential adaptations remains contested. This article investigates how narrative and visual conventions in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) and One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1961) can afford readings that intersect with antisemitic tropes. Using a qualitative, media-specific content analysis, we develop a coding rubric for recurrent markers: disguise/deception; poison/contamination; physiognomic or sartorial othering; commodification and greed; and eliminationist aims and introduce a two-step test that distinguishes baseline villain coding from plausibly antisemitism-relevant signification. In Snow White . . . , key motifs (the peddler disguise; the poison apple) align primarily with pan-European witch iconography yielding ambiguous connections to antisemitic traditions. In . . . Dalmatians by contrast, Cruella de Vil’s spectacular wealth, explicit commodification of living beings, and an articulated eliminationist plan co-occur within a single scene, producing stronger affordances for antisemitism-relevant readings while remaining understood within the broader grammar of animated grotesque villainy. We do not infer authorial intent; rather, we show how historically sedimented codes become recognizable under specific conditions of co-occurrence and audience interpretation. The study clarifies analytic categories for interpreting harmful representational codes and outlines pedagogical and curatorial applications aimed at critical media literacy.

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