“Where All Dreams Are Good Dreams”? The Dramatic Function of the Lullaby in Disney's Animated Feature Films and the Trope of the Romantic Mother

Abstract

This article demonstrates (1) how Disney's animated films follow a long tradition of connecting lullabies to loss and death; (2) how an analytical approach toward lullabies can correct established opinions on the representation of mothers in these films; and (3) how both phenomena draw on a specific perception of childhood and motherhood modeled by Romanticism.

Introduction

In the 2019 Disney film Frozen II, Queen Elsa sings an extract from the lullaby her late mother used to sing to her about the enchanted river Ahtohallan: “Dive down deep into her sound / but not too far or you'll be drowned.” Then, her companion Honeymaren begins to sing, and asks: “Why do lullabies always have to have some terrible warning in them?” With this, she addresses a question that no doubt many viewers are by this point asking themselves: why is it that this lullaby—a recurring motif within the film—is sold as soothing and comforting when its lyrics are actually extremely disquieting?

Honeymaren puts her finger on an important paradox within the Disney brand: while not all lullabies sung in Disney animated films sing of mortal danger, they are all sung in extremely sad or traumatizing situations. The term lullaby refers here to scenes where someone sings to someone else in a bedtime-related context. There are also scenes where no sleeping is shown, as for example in Lilo and Stitch and Brave. However, as they both show a nocturnal moment between a mother figure and a child—and the singing serves to comfort the child—they can be classified here as lullabies. There are also two lullabies—“Trust in Me” and “Pooh's Lullabee”—where this narrative context is reversed. Although both songs sing of sleep, the singer is not a mother figure but an opponent, and the lulling does not serve to comfort but to deceive the addressee.

Of course, lullabies are not only defined by their narrative contexts. Researchers have identified recurring musical traits characteristic of this genre. Generally, lullabies are “highly repetitive in terms of their individual sounds, words, verbal and melodic phrases, and rhythms.”¹ Other features of lullabies, which were identified by studying the four most commonly recorded lullabies in the English-speaking world (“Rock-a-bye baby,” “Hush little baby,” “Brahms's Lullaby” and “All through the night”), are a smooth melodic contour and generally descending intervals.² Moreover, lullabies are usually in the triple meter or 6/8 time, imitating the movement the baby experiences in the womb.³ As the lullabies used in the Disney films are newly composed songs, they deviate, of course, from these traits. Still, these characteristics can serve as benchmarks to understand the composers’ approach toward the genre.

Table 1 gives an overview of the lullaby scenes in Disney's feature-length animated films between 1941 and 2019.⁴ The table makes clear that each of these lullaby scenes is profoundly sad, either because the situation is already desperate (as in Dumbo and in The Lion King II: Simba's Pride) or because bad things are going to happen—and the lullaby scene acts as a retrospective event with the viewer already aware of the tragic outcomes (as in Frozen II, Coco, and Brave). In Dumbo, the elephant mother is incarcerated and sings to her son, from whom she is separated. In Simba's Pride, Kovu's vicious mother Zira—who abuses her son as a means to regain the power in the Pride Land—sings the song in a threatening manner to her frightened child. In Frozen II, Elsa remembers how her late mother used to sing to her and her sister as children. The same is true in Coco, wherein the titular character recalls her late father's singing. In Brave, Merida's mother is still alive but is estranged from her daughter. Merida remembers how her mother sang to her as a child, and how close she felt to her back then. In Lady and the Tramp, the situation seems happier, but the viewer already foresees how the dog will be cast away in favor of the baby. In Peter Pan, Wendy is singing to the Lost Boys while simultaneously mourning the absence of her own mother. In Lilo and Stitch, Lilo's older sister Nani has been caring for her little sister. However, their social worker is not satisfied with Nani's care and threatens to separate the sisters. In this situation, Nani sings to Lilo the traditional Hawaiian song “Aloha Oe,” meaning goodbye. In Tarzan, the situation is seemingly happy, but overshadowed by the preceding traumatic loss of Tarzan's parents and Kala's Gorilla baby. In The Tigger Movie, Pooh is lulling the bees to sleep in order to steal their honey. While this is, of course, a humorous scene, it nevertheless transforms the lullaby from a source of comfort to a means of deceit. The same is true for the Jungle Book, where the python Kaa tries to hypnotize Mowgli in order to eat him.

It also becomes evident that lullabies are not exclusively sung by biological mothers, but also by such non-biological othermothers as siblings, adoptive mothers, or alternative kin.⁵ The lullabies’ dramatic functions vary according to who is singing: lullabies sung by mothers are mostly used in movies that feature the loss of the mother as an important narrative device (either via death as in Frozen II or because of a strained relationship as in Brave). The othermother mostly sings a lullaby when the realization of the absence of the “real mother” becomes crucial, as in Peter Pan or in Lilo and Stitch. In only one case (Coco) is the lullaby sung by the biological father.

In the following sections, I will lay out my analysis of four selected lullabies from feature-length animated Disney films: “Your Mother and Mine” from Peter Pan (1953), “Noble Maiden Fair” from Brave (2012), “All Is Found” from Frozen II (2019), and “My Lullaby” from The Lion King II: Simba's Pride (1998). It is important to note that this article focuses on Disney animated films. Thus, whenever the terms “Disney film” or “Disney movie” are used, they refer exclusively to the studio's animated films. I will demonstrate (1) how Disney—despite claiming to be the “happiest place on Earth”—follows a long tradition of connecting lullabies to topics such as loss, separation, and death; (2) how an analytical approach to lullabies in Disney animated films can add to and correct established opinions on the representation of mothers in Disney movies; and (3) how both phenomena draw on a specific perception of childhood and motherhood modeled by the aesthetic movement of Romanticism.

Traumatized Children and Motherless Families

It is astonishing to see how closely lullabies are connected to tragedy and trauma in the Disney context, especially when one considers Disney's marketing of lullabies outside of the films themselves. Lullaby compilations such as Disney Sleepytime Lullabies and Disney Junior Music Lullabies play an important part in Disney's merchandising. Mostly, they feature such traditional lullabies as “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” and classic Disney songs transformed into lullabies through new instrumental arrangements such as “The Bare Necessities.” In 1986, Disney even released the video compilation, Disney's Greatest Lullabies, a two-volume collection of lullabies and songs from Disney films that are suitable for bedtime. The compilation was marketed as songs from a land “where all dreams are good dreams.” However, very few of the twenty-six featured songs on these videos are real lullabies. Instead, they show especially joyous film scenes, featuring calm soothing songs like “Sing Sweet Nightingale” from Cinderella as well as uplifting ones like “Little April Shower” from Bambi.

Besides these close connections to trauma and tragedy, the identified lullaby scenes reveal Disney's deeply ambivalent attitude toward the figure of the biological mother: in a study examining twenty-six Disney films released between 1937 (Snow White) and 2000 (The Emperor's New Groove), Litsa Tanner and colleagues found that between 1989 and 1995, only one of six Disney movies released had illustrations of mothers.⁶ Lynda Haas comes to a similar conclusion when she points out that there are numerous families in Disney movies where the mother is either dead or not mentioned, as for example in Snow White, Pinocchio, Cinderella, Alice in Wonderland, The Rescuers, The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, Pocahontas, and so forth. In many cases, the source material features a mother, but Disney chose to not include it for the film adaptation.⁷ Moreover, according to Tanner and colleagues, the majority of the films that present fathers either completely leave mothers out or marginalize them, with little to no explanation. Thus, the positive image of the nurturing father is developing at the expense of the mother, and “fathers are elevated, while mothers are marginalized.”⁸ According to Haas, the Disney-mother “has no identity of her own. . . . [T]his lack of identity exists because the mother and the mother-daughter relationship are, as yet, unsymbolized in our cultural imaginary.”⁹ Instead, mothers are stereotypically drawn as “absent, generously good, powerfully evil, or a silent other, a mirror, that confirms the child's identity without interference from hers. In this way, mothers are either sentimentalized or disdained; in either case, their identity and their work are simultaneously erased, naturalized, and devalued.”¹⁰

More recent films and studies also support Tanner's and Haas's observations of the mothers’ marginalization and devaluation: Anthony Guerrero examines ten popular Disney movies, released between 1941 (Dumbo) and 2010 (Tangled), eight of which portray families who have suffered the loss of a mother.¹¹ Berit Åström demonstrates how the depiction of postfeminist fathers is strengthened at the expense of mothers, who “may be allowed, if they remain in the background, supporting their husbands. But it is best for everyone if they are removed, leaving father and son to create their own family.”¹² In a humorous way, this absence of mothers is commented on in the 2018 Disney movie Ralph Breaks the Internet: On her journey through the Internet, deuteragonist Vanellope meets a group of iconic Disney princesses. When she tells them that she does not have a mother, Pocahontas, Elsa, Anna, Jasmine, Cinderella, Belle, Snow White, and Ariel concordantly proclaim, “Neither do we!” Jeanne Holcomb, Kenzie Latham, and Daniel Fernandez-Baca, who looked at fifteen films released between 1937 (Snow White) and 2009 (The Princess and the Frog) argue that basic, mundane, day-to-day caregiving is mostly left to the mothers, while the fathers teach the children actions.¹³ Moreover, Haas's categorization, although developed in 1995, also fits the three more recent examples chosen for this essay, with Elinor being “generously good,” Zira “powerfully evil,” and the late Iduna “absent” and “a silent other.”

This absence of the mother as the primary caregiver is, of course, due to narrative reasons. As Marina Warner argues, the “dead-mother plot is a fixture of fiction, so deeply woven into our storytelling fabric that it seems impossible to unravel or explain.”¹⁴ In dramatic storytelling, the child that either leaves their parents’ home or is an orphan and embarks on adventure to eventually come of age is a common model, as Holcomb, Latham, and Fernandez-Baca observe.¹⁵ As Disney movies mostly present coming of age stories, these protagonists often endure difficulties on their journeys that require emotional support and guidance. With the biological mother not present, the young protagonists look to othermothers, such as fairy godmothers, adoptive parents, or alternative kin such as human or animal friends for emotional care and guidance.¹⁶ Researchers have praised Disney's positive portrayal of alternative kin as very progressive, as it suggests “that young characters can develop into well-adjusted adults despite the absence of two biological parents. In many ways, this is a narrative that is highly contested in the United States today, yet it has been included in Disney films for more than 70 years.”¹⁷

While the mother's marginalized role has been widely agreed upon,¹⁸ no research has, to this date, taken the musical aspect into account. This is even more astonishing as the musical level in the form of the lullaby can add to and correct the established opinions on the representation of mothers in Disney movies. Indeed, Tanner found that eleven of the twenty-six films examined include representations of both parents, and that in four of them (Bambi, Peter Pan, The Lady and the Tramp, Tarzan), mothers are more central to the family unit.¹⁹ It is noteworthy that all these mother-centric films feature a strong lullaby scene—with the exception of Bambi, where all songs are background songs and not sung by the characters. Moreover, most of these scenes represent key scenes in their respective dramatic contexts, featuring the mother-child relationship as a central point.

It becomes evident that a close reading of Disney lullabies can lead to a new perspective on Disney's portrayal of motherhood through the ages. The following case studies represent four very different types of lullabies, highlighting the versatility and multiplicity of connotations linked to the genre, with emphasis on the height of its use as an artistic genre in the nineteenth century.

“Your Mother and Mine”

In Peter Pan, when the Lost Boys ask Wendy what a mother is, she replies: “Well a mother, a real mother, is the most wonderful person in the world. She's the angel voice that bids you goodnight, kisses your cheek, whispers, sleep tight.” Wendy then very softly starts to sing the song “Your Mother and Mine” (music by Sammy Fain, lyrics by Sammy Cahn). By this, she not only lulls the boys to sleep but also moves the eavesdropping pirates to tears. While this is the only time in the movie that the song is sung, parts of it occur also in a varied instrumental version in the titles “Last Night at the Nursery,” “Just When I Brought You a Mother,” and “Good-Bye Peter,” making it one of the score's central leitmotifs.

What is most interesting here is Wendy's distinction between the real mother and the substitute mother, such as herself. This real mother is described by her as a saint-like figure, with an “angel voice,” comparable to a “star,” being no less than “heaven on earth” and “divine,” omnipresent and forgiving (“whether you're right, whether you're wrong”). By this, lyricist Sammy Cahn draws on the Romantic perception of motherhood that emerged in the bourgeois society of the early nineteenth century. This perception compared the mother to the Virgin Mary and was strongly marked by contemporary Marian veneration and encouraged by the Church. The mother was expected to be perfect, saint-like, loving, humble, obedient, beautiful, pure, and understanding motherhood as a calling.²⁰ This thoroughly positive portrayal differs strongly from earlier perceptions of motherhood: while the deities of antiquity were inhabited by both good and evil, the Christian mother, represented by the Virgin Mary, was idealized as a “symbol of the eternal feminine, the motherland, and the family itself as the highest social desideratum.”²¹ Because Wendy takes on the role of the mother while in Neverland, these characteristics partially apply to her, as she is caught between the role of child, teenage girl, and adult. This is mirrored in her singing style, performed by then-fifteen-year-old voice actor Kathryn Beaumont. Her singing voice is much lower and richer than her speaking voice. Beaumont does not sing in the childlike, innocent way that she employed two years previously when portraying Alice in Alice in Wonderland—the style is rather almost operatic, with a striking portamento resembling the singing style of classic Disney princesses like Aurora and Snow White.²² The music also resembles more an aria than a folk song, with numerous octave leaps and agogic accents. The orchestra produces a classic Hollywood string orchestra sound, reminiscent of iconic romantic scenes.²³ This again touches on Romantic Marian lyrics like Novalis and Clemens Brentano: they “strived on a vexing play with the identity of the adored woman, who tends to oscillate between real lover and Mother of God.”²⁴ This double-edged concept of the Virgin Mary is characteristic of the Romantic concept of femininity, which R. A. Scotti calls a “tantalizing psychological puzzle.”²⁵ At the example of the Mona Lisa, Scotti explains how the “dichotomy of Madonna and whore, mother and temptress, seductress and seduced stirred the romantic imagination.”²⁶ While Wendy is no femme fatale—unlike Zira, whose lullaby will be studied later in this essay—this oscillating between motherly and romantic love is also true for her: She gladly takes on the role of mother to the boys, while at the same time developing romantic feelings for Peter.

In her study Heroines in French Drama of the Romantic Period 1829–1848, Grace Pauline Ihrig identifies common traits of the Romantic heroine, which are not exclusive to the French tradition: youth, purity, a sweet voice, ignorance of worldly dangers, and conflict with parents’ wishes.²⁷ With her saint-like innocence—despite being on the verge of becoming a woman herself—Wendy bears all of these traits. She even wears a negligee, which, according to Ihrig, is one of the “most universal items in a Romantic wardrobe,”²⁸ as it depicts purity and charm; these qualities are emphasized by the light blue color, a celestial hue long associated with the Virgin Mary. Beaumont's expressive, alluring singing epitomizes Wendy's representation of a Romantic heroine.

“Noble Maiden Fair”

In the movie Brave, the song “Noble Maiden Fair” (also known as “A Mhaighdean Uasal Bhan” in Scottish Gaelic) appears first in a flashback scene. Merida is alone in a forest with her mother, Queen Elinor, who has magically been transformed into a bear. A thunderstorm begins, and Merida, being immediately frightened, proceeds to remember a scene from her childhood: during a similar thunderstorm, she is frightened and her mother (voiced by Emma Thompson) consoles and calms her by saying, “My brave wee lassie, I'm here. I'll always be right here,” and then singing in Scottish Gaelic the song “A Mhaighdean Uasal Bhan” with Merida (voiced by Peigi Barker) joining in. The scene shifts back to the present, where Merida, who not only frets for her enchanted mother but also regrets their strained relationship, still hears the song in her mind in a metadiegetic way. Both music and lyrics were written by Patrick Doyle, and the lyrics contain many elements which, according to Theresa Brakeley, are typical of the lullaby: lullabies say in great part “go to sleep, mother is here, you are safe, everything is all right” (in “Noble Maiden Fair”: “Little baby, hear my voice / I'm beside you, O maiden fair”), and express maternal admiration of the child or “a prophecy of his glorious future” (in “Noble Maiden Fair”: “Our young Lady, grow and see / Your land, your own faithful land / Sun and moon, guide us / To the hour of our glory and honour”).²⁹

With Brave being a Pixar-film, “Noble Maiden Fair” stands out in the line of the discussed lullabies: Pixar-films (at least prior to Coco) actively deviate from the established Disney integral musical model. Therefore, most songs in Brave are only background songs, which take place in Merida's mind and serve as “the backdrop for montages of action sequences.”³⁰ Outside the Pixar line, this technique is very unusual for Disney and has only rarely been used before (e.g., in Bambi and The Rescuers). “Noble Maiden Fair” is one of the very few songs that are actually sung in Brave, which creates an even more immediate and intimate effect. Patrick Doyle drew inspiration for “Noble Maiden Fair” from Scottish waulking songs.³¹ These songs are slow-paced working songs, traditionally sung by women while waulking cloth and are closely related to the lullaby.³² This is also mirrored in the singing style, which is simple and close to the speaking voice. Moreover, Doyle uses the Scotch snap as a rhythmic pattern, which is typical of Scottish traditional music. Also, he frequently uses cadences on the minor dominant, creating a modal and thus archaic impression. Besides its connection to waulking songs, “Noble Maiden Fair” has a solemn, lamento-like character, which—according to composer Patrick Doyle—codirector Mark Andrews specifically asked for.³³ And indeed, the song reappears when Merida believes her mother to be dead, providing it with a considerably dark note. By this, the film touches on the twinship of sleep and death, which was an important narrative in the Romantic movement.³⁴

The most striking characteristic is, however, that “Noble Maiden Fair” is the first original Disney song sung entirely in Scottish Gaelic. This choice of language is, of course, one of the many stylistic devices to create a Celtic atmosphere. But there is more to it: as most viewers will not understand the Gaelic language, it creates a strong impression of intimacy between mother and child. This is typical of the Romanticists’ idea of an extremely close, pure, and innocent bond between mother and child, and is a recurring topic in Romantic poetry.³⁵ Vladímir Karbusický states that, by creating an impregnable mother-child dyad, the mother is stylized in an almost sacred way as a protecting power.³⁶ The reconstruction and mending of the mother-child dyad lies also at the core of the film Brave, and this is mirrored in the recurring use of the lullaby. The song reappears in a nondiegetic version before Elinor is turned human again (the corresponding track on the score is called “We've Both Changed”), just when Merida believes her to be dead and laments, “You've always been there for me. You've never given up on me. I just want you back. . . . I love you”—thus acknowledging and reinstating the Romantic mother-child dyad and breaking the spell.

In both scenes, the song occurs in a metadiegetic way (with the short exception of the domestic flashback scene) in the background, making the singing voice sound like a voice-over. This again points to the Romantic idealization of the mother: according to Marina Warner, voice-overs are reminiscent of the unborn baby's hearing of the mother's voice.³⁷ This phenomenon aligns with Kaja Silverman's feminist film theory of the “maternal voice fantasy.” In films like Orson Welles's Citizen Kane (1941) and Jean-Jacques Beineix's Diva (1981), she detects a connection between men's yearning to hear a female voice in an enclosed place symbolizing the womb.³⁸ With this voice/womb fantasy, Silverman draws on Julia Kristeva's concept of the chora (“enclosure”), a term borrowed from Plato, which she identifies with the womb.³⁹ Shohini Chaudhuri describes this chora as a “lost paradise,” an “image of unity between mother and child, prior to the Mirror Stage and the Symbolic Order.”⁴⁰ In the same way, the early child expert Sally Goddard Blythe states that “as early as the 24th week of pregnancy, babies can hear a range of frequencies that include the human voice and most classical musical instruments.” The mother's voice “is particularly powerful because it resonates internally and externally, her body acting as the sounding board. . . . Both before and after birth, a mother's voice provides a connection between respiration, sound and movement, an acoustic link from life and communication before birth—to the brave new world after birth.”⁴¹ By using a voice-over, the filmmakers thus allude to the symbiotic bond between the mother and the either newborn or unborn child, which again stresses the Romantic mother-child dyad.

“All Is Found”

The lullaby “All Is Found” is the opening song of the film Frozen II. The film starts with Anna and Elsa's father telling his little daughters about an enchanted forest. The girls grow curious and their mother, Queen Iduna (voiced by Evan Rachel Wood) agrees to sing them a lullaby her mother sang to her as a child about the river Ahtohallan, which is believed to know all the answers. Unlike most Disney lullabies, “All Is Found” (words and music by Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez) thus not only underlines the mother-child relationship but also provides important background information. At first glance, this scene seems to be a typical example of the “Romantic cradle song, with its rocking rhythm, its sentimental icon of mother and baby intimacy, and its sweet untroubled domesticity.”⁴² But in the differing third verse, the scene changes: the perspective shifts from the castle to a mysteriously illuminated sky and the opening credits “Frozen II” appear. When the last verse starts, the scene shifts to the present: we see a grown-up, melancholic Elsa standing on the terrace of the castle, probably remembering her mother who—as everyone who has seen the first film obviously knows—is long dead.⁴³ The song is repeated several times throughout the film as a leitmotif, and each time, it is connected to her mother's memory and Elsa's past.

What makes this song so special is the synchrony of domestic seclusion and the magical unknown. This synchrony is enhanced by the song's simulated origins in anonymously orally transmitted Northuldran folk tradition: Anna and Elsa find out that their mother belonged to the Northuldra people, a fictitious Indigenous tribe, and that her lullaby thus also belongs to the Northuldran culture. These fictive origins are mirrored in the music, built heavily from tropes associated with Northern European folk styles: the guitar, the breathy singing voice, and the reverb create the impression of naturalness and an open landscape, and the dance rhythm in the bass creates a swaying pulse. There are open fifths in the bass and, during cadences, the natural seven is used in the aeolian mode, creating an archaic impression. By creating a fictitious folk song, Disney follows a compositional practice that emerged in the early nineteenth century with an arising interest in folk songs.In these songs, folk belief, sagas, and fairy tales played a vital part. They were believed to have been left unharmed by civilization and to hold values which were no longer accessible to modern artists: the idea of a simple life, untouched nature and a golden mythical past.⁴⁴ This development had been prepared by the writings of the eighteenth-century philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who believed “primitive” cultures to be pure and good, as they had been left unharmed by civilization.⁴⁵ Rousseau's nature-civilization dichotomy also included gender stereotyping: Rousseau saw the woman as a natural and elemental creature, in contrast to the rational and civilized man—a concept which profoundly influenced the Romantic concept of femininity.⁴⁶ The fact that this song is passed on from mother to daughter corresponds to this concept and underlines the mother's role as a source of natural and elemental wisdom.

The magical unknown is, however, a frightening place. The girl Honeymaren is right to remark on the discrepancy between the song's soothing music and its disquieting text, singing of mortal danger (“not too far or you'll be drowned”) and terrible truths (“can you brave what you most fear / can you face what the river knows?”). This discrepancy draws on a long tradition which Federico García Lorca has already observed in Spanish lullabies.⁴⁷ Marina Warner, who studied American lullabies, views this discrepancy as evidence of a double perspective: the lullaby is officially “settling the infant to sleep, to banish the fear of dark,” but in fact also aims “to calm the mother or caregiver, and make the daily struggle bearable.”⁴⁸ This double perspective is also crucial for Queen Iduna: while she rejoices in the happy and intimate moment with her girls, she is at the same time deeply worried for Elsa, whose powers pose a mortal threat. But there is also the double perspective of the spectator who, of course, knows about the mother's fate. With this in mind, the comforting lines “sleep my darling, safe and sound” and “come my darling homeward bound” connote something much darker: as in “Noble Maiden Fair,” the lyrics touch on the Romantic twinship of sleep and death.

“My Lullaby”

In the 1998 Lion King direct-to-video sequel Simba's Pride, the lioness Zira raises her son Kovu in hatred of Simba, King of the Pride Lands, and hopes for Kovu to one day kill Simba and regain the throne. This plan is first fully outlined in the song “My Lullaby” (words and music by Joss Whedon and Scott Warrender), which Zira (voiced by Suzanne Pleshette) sings to her frightened and exhausted cub. Within the line of Disney mothers, Zira stands out: while bad stepmothers are a popular narrative device, evil biological mothers are a rare concept, with which the Disney fandom seems to struggle heavily.⁴⁹ In fact, the Internet is full with fan-based theories on whether Zira is Kovu's real mother.⁵⁰ Some fans even argue that the films’ producer had proclaimed on his Facebook page that Kovu was only adopted by Zira.⁵¹ By treating the evil mother as a taboo and trying to turn her into a stepmother, contemporary Disney fans draw on a practice that can already be observed in the nineteenth-century fairy tale collections by the Brothers Grimm: while in the first edition, many evil mothers were still biological mothers, following editions subsequently turned them into stepmothers or witches, disguising the taboo of the evil mother in the figure of the stepmother. Besides her evilness, Zira breaks another Disney taboo: in a first version of the movie, her death was portrayed as suicide, which was, however, altered for the final version, as it was seen as being too “adult.”⁵² Moreover, Zira is a single mother, and thus shows all the traits of a category of villains that Madeline Streiff and Lauren Dundes call the “archetypal power-hungry female villain whose lust for power replaces lust for a mate and who threatens the patriarchal status quo.”⁵³ Given this extreme character drawing—and the fact that she also sings a lullaby, thus joining in with another dark and ambivalent narrative—this lullaby is striking in the repertoire.

The song “My Lullaby” can be divided into two parts. In the first verse, Zira first speaks and then sings directly to Kovu: “[spoken] Hush, my little one. You must be exhausted. [sung] Sleep, my little Kovu / Let your dreams take wing / One day when you're big and strong / You will be a king.” They bid each other goodnight and Kovu instantly falls asleep. She murmurs: “Tomorrow, your training intensifies.” In the following part of the song, she reflects on her situation in exile and outlines her plans with her other cubs Nuka (Andy Dick) and Vitani (Crysta Macalush) joining in at times. In many ways, “My Lullaby” is reminiscent of Scar's “Be Prepared” in the prequel, but Zira's evil intentions mixed with her ambivalent treatment of Kovu adds a new level of eeriness, or, as Thomas Hischak and Mark Robinson put it in The Disney Song Encyclopedia: “The odd combination of motherly love and bloodthirsty determination makes the ‘lullaby’ powerfully creepy.”⁵⁴

This combination is also mirrored in the music, which draws on musical aesthetics reminiscent of horror movies, most prominently the imitation of a music box in the opening bars. This musical symbol is closely connected to the idea of early childhood and is often used in horror movies to juxtapose childlike innocence and the presence of evil.⁵⁵ In the context of Zira's lullaby, it highlights the contrast between Kovu's innocence and Zira's scheme. But more importantly, there is a striking contrast between the concepts connected to the lullaby, such as (motherly) innocence and purity, as well as Zira's performance: she is singing with a low, breathy voice that has a very sensual connotation. This contrast becomes especially apparent, when she once again turns to her sleeping cub, singing “Scar is gone . . . but Zira's still around / To love this little lad / Till he learns to be a killer / With a lust for being bad!”, with the word “lust” sung in an almost orgasmic way.

With her evil paired with attractiveness and cunning, Zira is the epitome of the femme fatale—a female archetype that flourished during the time of Romanticism.⁵⁶ In nineteenth-century opera, the femme fatale was often portrayed by a mezzo-soprano or even alto, creating a strong connection between the low female vocal register and female sexual maturity.⁵⁷ The portrayal of villainesses as femme fatales speaking and singing with a low vocal register is commonplace in Disney movies, with Snow White's stepmother, Maleficient, and Ursula being prominent examples. Ursula takes this concept even further, as her drag queen qualities make her low voice transgressive. “Female wickedness,” as Elizabeth Bell puts it, “is rendered as middle-aged beauty at its peak of sexuality and authority.”⁵⁸ Zira is, however, the only villainess to sing a lullaby with this voice. When she does, it becomes clear to the audience that this mother is no image of the Virgin Mary, but instead her lust-driven counterpart. Thus, Zira's voice gives away what her opening words try to conceal: that she has no place within the realm of the Romanticists’ angelic mothers and that her motherly actions are not selfless but rather driven by ambition of dominance and power.

Conclusion

While the films and the selected scenes differ strongly in age and style, they have a couple of central aspects in common: in all four movies, the mother is depicted in a romanticized way, which is mirrored in specific musical stylistic devices contained within the lullabies. But not only the ever-caring, wise, and pure mother and the anti-mother in the shape of the femme fatale or the stepmother are Romantic topics—the lullaby-hearing children are also portrayed in a Romantic way: as innocent and vulnerable beings, receptive to the elementary messages conveyed through the lullaby. By this, Disney touches on a Romantic concept of childhood as “a lost, idealized, clear-visioned, divinely pure, intuitive, in-tune-with-nature, imaginative stage of life.”⁵⁹ This concept aligns with Kristeva's idea of the chora, strengthening the importance of the mother's (singing) voice within this concept.

In all four films, the child is forced to part with the mother in order for the adventure to unfold. Given the Romantic way in which childhood and motherhood are portrayed, this parting can well be understood as a modern version of the expulsion of paradise—either from a paradise that was destroyed by the mother's death, a disagreement, a deliberate runaway or, as in the case of Kovu, a paradise that never was due to the mother's lack of unconditional, purposeless love. The lullaby is used as a way to remember this lost paradise. It is repeated in varied forms throughout the movie, making the longing for this lost paradise a constant underlying topic.

In Neverland, Wendy serves as a substitute mother to her brothers, the Lost Boys, and Peter. While she fulfills this task with great diligence, she and her brothers begin to feel extremely homesick the moment she sings a lullaby. In the end, Wendy and her brothers return to their biological mother, while Peter and the Lost Boys return to Neverland where they continue to live with their ever-remaining search for a mother. The lullaby thus serves as a strong catalyst for the triumph of the biological mother over the alternative kin and motivates the children's return to the lost paradise that is the chora in the shape of their nursery, granting them a few remaining years of domestic seclusion before they inevitably grow up. In Brave, the lullaby symbolizes the breaking and restoring of the mother-child dyad. In Frozen II, the lullaby, as a symbol for the mother's wisdom and legacy, leads Elsa to the place where she truly belongs, thus helping her to regain the paradise from which she was expelled too early by the untimely death of her mother. In Simba's Pride, the lullaby reveals Zira's true nature, which ultimately allows Kovu to cut the cord with her, leave the chora, and find love with Simba's daughter Kiara, thus uniting the lion tribes. By this, Simba's Pride draws on classical male coming of age narratives. According to Sarah Bowman:

Besides their rootedness in Romantic tropes, lullabies also illustrate Disney's changing attitude toward the mother. As the literature review has shown, several studies have observed a marginalization of the mother, a lack of identity, a stereotypical portrayal as either good, absent or evil, and a reduction of her responsibilities to mundane day-to-day care, which do not influence the child's character development in the same way as the father's actions. While these observations are accurate for mothers in films such as Peter Pan, The Lady and the Tramp and Dumbo, they are not true for Brave's Queen Elinor and Frozen's Queen Iduna: Elinor is a contradictory and complex character—a privilege, which is usually reserved to villainesses, such as The Lion King's Zira and Tangled's Mother Gothel. Queen Iduna, while being more a projection than a character, drives forward the dramatic plot in a way none of her predecessors have done before. In both films, the mother's voice in form of her lullaby creates a lasting and unique bond with the child, which shapes its future actions and destiny. Thus, the lullaby underlines the mother's changing sociocultural function, from a passive angelic figure to a character engaging actively with her children. Future research may investigate further the connection between this development and the contemporary vogue for mothers connecting to their in utero babies through sound, by singing, playing music and buying recordings with in utero sounds.⁶¹ By underlining and idealizing the mother's lifelong influence on her child and the bond she creates through her voice, Elinor's and Iduna's lullabies thus show how lullabies play a crucial part in Disney's venture to update the Romantic ideal and to engage with contemporary ideas about “good mothers.”

Through her constant absence, the mother is thus not marginalized or devalued but elevated as symbolic of the lost paradise. By expressing the wish for a return to this paradise (“Your Mother and Mine”), the restoring of the broken mother-child dyad (“Noble Maiden Fair” and “All Is Found”), or the absence of the mother's unconditional love (“My Lullaby”), lullabies thus enhance and underline the mother's function as a crucial void of high narrative importance.

Notes