You, The Musical Animal: Humanity According to Disney

Abstract

According to Darwin’s theory of evolution, humans are animals. Yet in modern industrial society, we nevertheless distinguish the ‘human’ from the ‘animal,’ a distinction that is articulated not only through images and language, but also through music. This article examines how music relates to ideas of human exceptionalism.

I focus on Disney’s short educational film You, The Human Animal (1955), [1] which teaches children that humans are, in fact, animals. However, this film also emphasizes that we are “a very special breed” due to our rationality, linguistic ability, and musicality. By claiming that music is one of the defining features of humanity, this film highlights the question of human exceptionalism in musical terms. In this article, I position the film’s argument within the broader but often unexamined assumption that music is unique to humans. I argue that this assumption has been historically constructed through a Eurocentric understanding of both music and humanity.