“Follow Your Heart”: Disney on Ice as Post-Modern and Medieval Pastiche

The Disney on Ice series of touring ice shows aimed mainly at younger children highlight the alterity of the Middle Ages and the era’s ongoing appeal in contemporary popular culture. The specific show “Follow Your Heart,” which conjoins storylines from fifteen different films, provides the main text for this analysis of how these skated performances function as medievalism. This Disney on Ice show foregrounds the important status of the past as pastiche in the (post)modern imagination and reveals the ongoing vitality of open-ended narratives characteristic of medieval storytelling.