This week in my American cinema class the topic was 'Disney'. We specifically ended up talking about their anxiety around the subject of the family.
Out of the 43 feature films that Disney has produced, 30 have a family as a central feature of the story. Of those, only one features a nuclear family (101 Dalmations). Seven feature parents as either repressive (The Little Mermaid) or outright evil (Snow White). I'm not sure how exactly the person who compiled these stats decided to the family was significant enough - I thought the one example would be 'Sleeping Beauty'. This is something that seems to pervade a lot of their attitude - even in 'The Three Little Pigs' short there are pictures of their parents on the wall of the third pig's brick house - a mother sow with several piglets and a chain of sausage links as the father. To me, it was one of the funniest bits of the film, but at the same time, a little disturbing to find this moment of black comedy.
The other thing he pointed out was that most Disney narratives revolve around an adolescent finally growing up, developing into an adult and leaving home. Even in Pinocchio (our screening for the week), it is really when Pinocchio begins to show adult characteristics - such as the initiative to go save Gepetto, that he becomes a real boy. My prof's thesis was that the one thing Disney was unable to imagine was children - although Lilo and Stitch might disprove that.
I feel that some Disney films are very upsetting - we also watched the scene of Bambi's mother's death in class and in a room full of 20, 21 and 22 year olds, there were some very dismayed people and upset sounds when it started to play. A young cousin of mine won't watch The Little Mermaid because of how scary Ursula is - Disney truly does have some terrifying villains. I don't at all think that this means that they should be rejected, just that it does require a judgement call about when to let children see it. However, I do think that between this and the adolescent into adult narratives, there is a real question about who Disney's target audience is.
There's also a difference between the films and the corporation. The company makes 2/3rds of its revenue from merchandising products around their films, making one function of the films to be extended commercials for the rest of their product.
Another thing about the process of writing an article on Disney - apparently if you want to publish anything with 'Disney' in the title, you have to submit it to them for approval. Some academic presses are now very leery about publishing any work on Disney, and it makes it that much harder to get work accepted.

Maz"Fortunately, not planning on being a Disney scholar"er31