By Kiran Grewal

What is the first thing that springs to mind when you hear the word ‘Disney’? Is it love, good overcoming evil, princesses and sing-a-longs? 

Jeff Hong pictures The Little Mermaid’s Ariel, washed up on the beach, oil stained as a result of sea pollution. He imagines Dumbo at the hands of circus trainers, forcefully exploited. Frozen’s Elsa stranded on a fragment of frozen water, unable to stop the polar ice caps from melting.

 

Jeff Hong is an animation storyboard artist from New York City. Having worked on films like Hercules, Mulan, Tarzan and The Emperor’s New Groove at just 17 years old, he’s been no stranger to Disney. But with constant debate over issues such as global warming, pollution, homelessness, political disruption and much more, the ‘Unhappily Ever After’ series poses these concerns through an image series depicting our much-loved Disney heroes. 

 

Taking inspiration from conceptual illustrators like our mysterious English-based graffiti artist Banksy, Jeff Hong utilises the worldwide emotional bonds between popular Disney characters and ourselves, arranging them into extremely frightening real-life situations, potentially even more scary than Maleficent transforming into a fire-breathing dragon. But then, who puts a death curse on a baby, guys? Gulp. 

Banksy, recently used a similar theme in his dystopian theme park ‘Dismaland’ in 2015, and the enigmatic response to this twisted topic only indicates that the vast majority of people, like Darth Vader, quite enjoy a trip to the dark side. 

 

Alongside Banksy, Mexican artist José Rodolfo Loaiza Ontiveros also created a series in 2012 called ‘Disasterland’, which features Disney characters in unequivocally adult situations. It features Cinderella caught by paparazzi with a risqué wardrobe malfunction, the Evil Queen snorting coke and Snow White drunk on love, surrounded by empty bottles of alcohol.  

But what do all these artists’ works have in common, apart from the attraction to Disney characters? It seems they suggest reality is no walk down the yellow-brick road. Whilst the above-mentioned artists use Disney characters to create a sense of irony or even entertainment value, Hong’s ‘Unhappily Ever After’ has a simplistic awareness of important issues that cannot go unnoticed. 

 

He conveys Alice’s Wonderland to be no more than her hallucinogenic state when completely loaded on drugs. (A similar idea was used as album art for an all American Hip-Hop group, Cocaine 80s, for their EP ‘The Pursuit’.) Winnie the Pooh’s 100-Acre Wood is decimated due to deforestation, leaving his home completely obliterated in an act of human selfishness. 

 

Each one of the 28 images take a portion of our social, environmental and political issues and succeed in making a personalised story which tugs on our heartstrings, as though it were our own loved one portrayed in the depiction.

 

The work from the series went viral online shortly after Hong posted them on the Internet, where it was shared and viewed all around the world, and even published in books. The series is continuous and a new image pops up every now and again, when inspiration strikes.  As long as these social and environmental concerns persist, the ‘Unhappily Ever After’ series will endure, using the medium of illustration as a response to our existing global matters. 

 

For instance, the most recent of the series is a clear reflection of the young Syrian boy found drowned on a beach near the Turkish resort of Bodrum. The image itself was harrowing, but with the divided response around the world as the immigration crisis continues, Jeff Hong transforms the boy into our sweet-faced puppet, Pinocchio. 

 

The description of the boy in the news was strikingly similar to that of Pinocchio, wearing a bright red top with dark hair. The message behind this image can be interpreted in many ways; I see a puppet whose dreams of becoming a real boy were shattered, juxtaposed with the child whose dreams of having a future without war invoked violence and poverty were cruelly snatched away from him.

These images are powerful, and tell a story in a way no fairy tale could. Hong’s passion for encouraging people to broaden their thinking is demonstrated in his unique artwork. When it may be easier to ignore these concerns and imagine them not to apply to us individually, Hong gives us insight into just how important they are universally, and how collectively we can make a difference.

Hong’s series could have seemed like a very far-fetched idea on paper, but he manages to create something that combines the world of fiction and reality. Besides, as Walt Disney once said: “All our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them.”