Unhappily Ever After: Meet the artist placing Disney characters in dystopian situations

In the perfect fairytale, you’d meet the man (or woman) of your dreams, fall in love, get married and live happily ever after. In real life, one often has to suffer through countless frogs before meeting Prince (or Princess) Charming. Maybe even encounter harassment.
This unfortunate reality largely facing women is portrayed by American animation storyboard artist Jeff Hong in a piece from his dystopian Disney art series, aptly titled Unhappily Ever After.
The piece features a familiar scene from Sleeping Beauty, where Prince Phillip is clasping Aurora’s hand in the forest, except they’re now in a modern bar. It’s an unnervingly realistic depiction of the unwanted advances women may endure while simply trying to date – and it continues to be relevant since 2014 when Hong started the sobering series.
His modus operandi involves placing famous Disney characters into real-world situations, depicted through actual photographs. 
Meanwhile, the Disney characters keep their original animated appearance, inevitably reinforcing the jarring juxtaposition between the utopia of a fairytale and a comparably dystopian reality.
The series is topic-agnostic, with Hong’s impactful pieces covering a spectrum of current issues. One points to drug abuse by depicting Alice from Alice In Wonderland with sunken cheeks, holding a bottle of what’s presumed to be drugs, in the middle of a dark alley. Another raises awareness about the obsession with plastic surgery by showing Belle from Beauty And The Beast looking into a mirror with marked outlines on her face.
Those who were on microblogging platform Tumblr in the mid-2010s may also remember one of his early pieces that went viral: Ariel from The Little Mermaid washed up on a beach, drenched in an oil spill.
And with the ever-intensifying threat of climate change, Hong has now teamed up with Gardens by the Bay in arguably one of the most effective methods to raise awareness about a conventionally dry topic. 
An ongoing exhibition of existing work from Unhappily Ever After, along with five new pieces that were specially created, will run till Nov 29.
“Disney movies are all very utopian. They all have a happy ending, but real life isn’t like that. We have pollution, climate change, racism; we don’t live in a fairytale world. And for some reason, putting Disney characters into our world brought light to what we actually face (by adding) an emotional connection to these issues at hand,” he shared. 
“I always was very concerned about how we treat the environment and other people, so I wanted to highlight how I felt, using my art to bring that message forward.”
Even though Hong spent four years in animation at Disney and grew up loving Disney movies, it was only when he later attended the renowned Rhode Island School of Design that he developed a strong interest in creating art which sent a message.
“I learnt more about conceptual art, like putting thought behind art. Other than having it being a pretty picture, there can actually be meaning behind artworks,” explained the 46-year-old who’s based in New York. 
“I feel like my series Unhappily Ever After combined my love for Disney animation, my love for fine art and conceptual art, as well as my ethics and what I grew up thinking about how we treat this world, how we treat people around us.”
Punk music, too, played a role in shaping Hong’s values. The music he was passionate about was “very forward thinking”, dealing with issues like animal rights and equality, he added. 
“So (the series) combined everything about what I liked and came together like a perfect marriage.”
Still, the thought-provoking series almost turned out differently. Hong hadn’t planned to inject “any social message or environmental issue” into his work. 
“I just wanted to put Disney princesses into a city environment, something completely different from their fairytale,” he said, though that changed when he started work on a piece featuring Mulan. 
By placing her in front of a “polluted image of Beijing or a Chinese city” and giving her a face mask, he realised the final piece “completely brought forward the whole meaning to the series”.
Similarly, he figured he could put Ariel from The Little Mermaid on a beach affected by an oil spill, “emerging from the ocean covered in oil”. The rest is Tumblr history.
“It was like almost immediately, these ideas started coming to me. I could almost select a Disney character and perfectly match them with an issue that presides in our real world,” he added.
In the real world, Hong’s passion project that’s spanned a decade and counting has only grown “more relevant” since its inception, he believes. 
“When I started this 10 years ago, I didn’t imagine that 10 years later, the planet would’ve gone sort of backwards, just seeing how quickly things have degraded,” he said. 
“We see the effects of climate change, and how there’s more extreme weather patterns. The ocean water is getting warmer, and we’re hearing more effects of coral bleaching, almost like sea life being endangered because of these rising temperatures. It’s gotten even more urgent in the last few years.”
So when Gardens by the Bay wanted to hold an exhibition for his work under its flagship Race To Sustainability programme for students, Hong saw the chance to share about sustainability with children as “a perfect match” for his art.
The five new pieces he created highlight such issues that he believes are important to showcase to children. There is, for instance, a piece with Flounder from The Little Mermaid floundering amid trash in the ocean, and one featuring the toys from Toy Story buried in an overflowing landfill.
“I did one feature of Moana and the Maui fires – that was very important to me. Then another piece was showing Lilo (from Lilo & Stitch) at the beach side and having these rising waters causing havoc on the houses behind her,” he said.
“These are all topics I see every day in Hawaii (where I currently live part-time). It’s around me; it’s something I care about deeply.”
Perhaps using a touch of dark humour, as Hong calls it, is the wake up call that people of all ages need to pay attention to how one’s actions directly affect the planet. “I hope it highlights how much their human actions cause harm to the world,” he said. 
“As humorous as it is, it’s something that does occur. We see people hunting animals; we see plastic waste floating in the ocean. Everything we do has a reaction or a cause-and-effect. That’s something, I think, school kids can take away.” 
Despite holding a full-time job in animation, he doesn’t plan on stopping the series anytime soon. He may take the occasional break, but the current state of the world ensures he will never run out of inspiration.
Works from the Unhappily Ever After series will be exhibited at Gardens by the Bay till Nov 29. Admission is free. More details can be found here.