Subliminal cues in Disney's Snow White

Snow White Is About Cocaine

The Walt Disney Company has been the center of countless conspiracy theories, most of them about sexualizing children. However, some claim Uncle Walt also wanted to teach the kids about doing blow, and that he intended Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs to be a timeless classic about cocaine. The biggest piece of “evidence” supporting this theory is the characters’ names: Snow White is slang for cocaine, and the dwarfs’ names supposedly represent the different stages of addiction. First, users are happy, and then they start sneezing. Eventually, they get sleepy, and then they’ll feel depressed or bashful. Then users will act dopey, and eventually they’ll need to see a doc.

Not surprisingly, there isn’t any real proof to back these claims. No one who knew Walt Disney ever claimed that he or his animators used recreational drugs. Even so, Snow White was released in 1937, and the big drug of the ’30s was alcohol, not cocaine. So perhaps Dumbo was part of a conspiracy to have kids grow up to be alkies. (Of course, anyone who saw that pink elephant sequence probably swore off drinking for life.)

The Disney Company Is An Evil Empire

This cannot be disputed: the Walt Disney Company is one of the United States’ oldest and most successful entertainment conglomerates. It was founded in 1923, and as of this writing consists of a certifiably insane number of subsidiaries. Disney has long owned the ABC network and all of its affiliated networks, including ESPN. The company made international headlines in 2009 when it acquired Marvel Entertainment for over US$4 billion, and again in 2012 when it acquired Lucasfilm for over US$4 billion more. The “House of Mouse” is probably the most influential and powerful of the tiny handful of huge corporations that control most of the media in the United States and, by extension, the world.

It also can’t be disputed that, though a traditionally family-oriented business, Disney has allowed sexual images to make their way not only into completed cuts of their films, but also promotional and poster artwork. Many instances have been pointed out, from the overt (a couple of frames showing an image of a topless woman in The Rescuers) to the puzzling (a spire of the castle on the VHS cover of The Little Mermaid looks a hell of a lot like an erect penis) to the questionable (at one point in Aladdin, the Genie can be heard muttering offscreen something that sounds like “good teenagers, take off your clothes”). In each and every instance, changes were made to further releases, and chalked up to jokes by animators or simple misunderstandings. Why would Disney want to expose children (so to speak) to inappropriate sexual content, anyway?

Well, conspiracy theorists have their answers: Disney is all about sexualizing children. The Disney Company, they assert, wants to suck all of the money from the parents’ wallets while rendering their children compliant, subservient consumers, and early exposure to these sexualized images is the first step in that process. Also, they say, because it’s evil—mind-bogglingly, Satanically evil. 

Subliminal Messages Tactic Is Used To Condition Consumers

It’s no secret (at least, not anymore) that extremely brief or cleverly hidden words or images can be placed within another image or film in such a way that the observer, while not making a conscious connection, is subtly mentally influenced by the message. The efficacy of this tactic has long been open for debate and has never been proven—but of course, this doesn’t stop corporations from doing things like hiding images within their logos to try to bolster positive association with their brand. It may not work, but it can’t hurt, right?

But according to this conspiracy theory, not only does subliminal messaging work, it works far more efficiently than we’ve been led to believe—and it’s everywhere. Supposedly (and honestly, you really can make the case), the practice is mostly used in advertising to induce consumers to buy, usually with references to sex. Certain Coke and Pepsi ads in the early ’90s were famously found to contain hidden sexual references (which the companies both claimed were coincidences).

One would think that, if effective, the only message necessary in subliminal advertising would fall right along the lines of “buy this product, and lots of it.” But the subliminal sexual references, odd as they may seem, are not limited to advertising. Whether coincidental or some animator’s idea of a joke, it’s also been established that hidden references to sex appear with alarming frequency in Disney cartoons.

Subliminal messages in company logos, print advertisement

Subliminal cues are apparent in every form of media, just waiting for us to see them.

Here are a few examples of subliminal messages embedded in certain print advertisements, brand logos and symbols of organisations.

a) Dodge- Message embedded in the logo


b) Print advertisement



c) Advertisement for a hair stylist



d) Burger King ad