W stronę autonomii? Rola księżniczek Disneya w procesach upodmiotowienia we współczesnych Węgrzech
Toward Autonomy? The Role of Disney Princesses in Fostering Empowerment in Contemporary Hungary

Summary/Abstract: This review article discusses Anna Zsubori's (2024) monograph, Disney Princesses and Tween Identity: The Franchise in Illiberal Hungary, with a particular focus on her analysis of the Disney Princess phenomenon among tweens in Hungary – a perspective situated at the intersection of children's media and gender studies. Instead of a conventional introduction, the publication opens with a confession about the project's origins, followed by a reflection on the author's embodied subjectivity as a teller-researcher, an overview of scholarship, a description of the research design, and an account of Hungary's postsocialist socio-political context. Across 11 chapters, Zsubori explores how girls aged 7–12 negotiate gender identity in relation to the Disney Princess phenomenon. She examines how their conceptualisations of princesses (archetypal, fantasised, Disney) may mirror and unsettle dominant gender norms in a setting where patriarchal expectations prevail. Zsubori argues that these imaginaries illuminate how girls become women in postsocialist and postfeminist Hungary and suggests that, although some princesses are associated with the pleasures of remaining a child, they can still contest patriarchal norms that limit children's choices. This review article contends that the monograph advances audience research on children's media in Central and Eastern Europe and encourages scholars to reconsider the potential for empowerment and the structural constraints of Disney Princess narratives for young girls' identity formation.

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