Disney‐Mediated Images Emerging in Cross‐Cultural Expression on Isla Mujeres, Mexico

This paper points to the appearance of Disney characters in popular expression on an island developed for tourism over the last 25 years off the coast of Quintana Roo in southeastern Mexico as an illustration of the process of appropriation of Disney characters by people for their own sake and ritual, in a folk culture context, as well as for increasing market value to tourists with the use of icons and images of international popular culture. Without international mass marketing of popular film and television, such a debunking of Maya cultural heritage for images manufactured in the U.S. could not have occurred. Artists employed by Disney to the north certainly did not initiate this process of cultural imperialism, whereby the art and cultural forms of one culture take precedence over those produced by another, or eclipse the local arts on their own terrain. However, one would hope those benefiting in the industry might care to learn of their own impact beyond closed studio walls and protected national borders as such "globalization" occurs. A real island off the coast of Quintana Roo with the intriguing name Isla Mujeres (Island of Women) is situated in the context of a Maya present and past, and in a multicultural society identifiable as typical of polyethnic countries (Coulder). But the island also locates itself in the context of a currently fluctuating but booming tourist industry. Hence, a variety of culturally placed visitors, workers, producers and readers demonstrate the complexity of the problem of the dialectical influences of interactive cultures upon each other. The onlooker permanently impacts the subject or object observed. Calling upon the use of post-colonial hybridity theory, a "polycentric multiculturalism" (Shohat 46) can readily be observed, with a mix from more than one non-hierarchical center creating "multilayered identities" (Shohat 41). But Disney corporate culture is becoming more widespread in the cultural void left by the destruction of historical markers which led to the naming of the island. An image in particular, Ariel, from the mermaid series, for reasons I will discuss, is reproduced more often than other mermaids and hence begins to dominate in lending visual meaning to the island's name. A closer examination of this phenomenon can lend insight into the complex ways discussed by van Elteren in which U.S. popular culture forms are appropriated and mediated abroad, which became newsworthy during the GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade) discussions in which the reception of influences of the U.S. culture industries was indicted for contesting the basis of national cultures (47-49). The island I examine here is located in the Caribbean. It may or may not be the island on which Columbus reported sighting Sirens, the Spanish term for mermaids (Columbus). It may or may not be the island of women of which Columbus reported hearing in his conversations with "the Indians." It may or may not have been the report of this island that inspired the creation of an island of women in early Renaissance Spanish romantic fiction (Rodriguez de Montalvo). It may or may not have been named such based on those who discovered it having read that fiction (Cavin, Ibanez, Leonard). The most simple, direct and straight-forward account of the naming that I have found is that of Bernardo Diaz del Castillo as translated by Maudslay, discussed by contemporary scholars on the Cozumel Project as part of a list of examples of coastal shrines occurring in groups at some distance from the settlements along the east coast of Quintana Roo (Freidel and Sabloff 45): We stayed in that bay (at Isla Mujeres) for a day and we lowered two boats and went on shore and found farms and maize plantations, and there were four Cues which are the houses of their Idols, and there were many Idols in them, nearly all of them figures of tall women so that we called the place the Punta de Las Mujeres. Diaz del Castillo 104-OS All that can be said, really, is that the stimulated replaying of these and similar narratives, either real or projected, influences those who go there today. …