Disney's "Jungle Sound": Jazz and Wildness in Disney Animation

From the 1950s to the 2000s, Walt Disney Animation Studios have used jazz to import specific sociocultural meanings into their films. Through an examination of the feature-length animated Disney films that incorporate "jazz" idioms-namely Lady and the Tramp (1955), One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1961), The Jungle Book (1967), The Aristocats (1970), and The Princess and the Frog (2009)-this article will explore how Disney has consistently used jazz to depict wildness and "Otherness" and will consider how the films effectively typecast those characters associated with jazz, which meaningfully impacts Disney's portrayals of social morality, race, and gender in these films.