“Why can't you be normal?”: childhoods and cultural curricula in the animation Float (2019)

Abstract

Through the animation “Float” (2019), a short film produced by Pixar and distributed by Disney, we are motivated to think about the factors that try to standardize behaviors. The short film, then, acts as a non-school cultural curriculum that refers to the idea of ​​“normality”, which has been related to masculinity, whiteness, joviality, heterosexuality, cisgenderism, and the Christian religion, among other identity markers. How are children who do not fit into these conditions about “normality” treated by others? To answer this question, we aim to analyze representations circulated in artifacts of visual culture, which include themes related to differences and childhood. To this end, we developed a research based on Gender Studies and Visual Culture Studies, organized in three moments. The first, a presentation of theoretical aspects emphasizing the cultural curriculum; the second, a historical contextualization on how gender oppressions have acted in the production of bodies, since childhood; and the third, an analysis of the short film “Float” (2019).