We Are Star Stuff: Transgender Cinema and Disney’s Wishing Star

Abstract: The wishing star is a prominent symbol featured throughout Disney media. By examining the studio’s most notable deployments of the icon in Pinocchio, The Princess and the Frog , and Wish , this article argues that the wishing star is not a generically normative trope, but in fact works on both a visual and narrative level, in isolated instances and within a broader corpus, to confound the idea of a clearly defined, unchangeable body. In doing so, Disney’s wishing star operates as a queer cinematic device that resonates in particular with the modes of embodiment and change experienced by transgender persons.