Parenthood is replete with madeleines. Not just in the cake form – when I was struggling to breastfeed and trying to up my milk supply, I bought bags and bags of them, dipped in chocolate – but the famous Proustian kind. These small encounters with objects or sounds or smells act as nostalgic triggers, with the ability to catapult you back to moments in your childhood that you had long forgotten with a surprising emotional force. It’s perhaps less romantic when you discover that Proust initially wanted to use toast for his metaphor. Although, actually, I’ve always found toast to be hugely evocative. The sight of a schoolboy on a September morning cradling a slice in a sheet of kitchen roll reminded me recently of how my mother – along with, I suspect, mothers everywhere – used to thrust toast into my hands as I rushed out of the door, late for the bus. Then, this week, another madeleine, this time in the form of Disney. More specifically, the intro: the flag, the fireworks, the screen panning out to show the pitched turrets of the castle. The strings playing When You Wish Upon a Star. My god. I had forgotten all about it, but in a split second I was four again, lying on the floor of the living room in our little terraced house in Chorlton, Manchester, with the lights out and all the curtains closed and the VHS of The Jungle Book starting up for the 15th time that week. Years of ambivalence towards, and at times even discomfort with, the Disney corporation swept away in one fell swoop, compounded by the look of sheer, transfixed delight on my child’s face as he watched Winnie the Pooh singing about honey. Take my money, Disney, take it all! Disney is, of course, powered by this kind of adult nostalgia. It is part of its modus operandi, and central to its profit motive. I’m also aware that “Disney adults” – as grownups who really, really love Disney are termed – are widely disdained, to the point that they have been called “the most hated group on the internet”. The studio turns 100 this year, and has released a short film containing a plethora of characters new and old in celebration, many of which I recognised from my own childhood viewing. Yet it left me fairly cold. Though I was raised on Disney fairytales, my mother always made sure that its more saccharine, gendered, princess output (of which I was a faithful acolyte) was counterbalanced with feminist alternatives. Then, when I grew up, I read From the Beast to the Blonde and The Bloody Chamber. So I’m very aware of the Disney-fication of traditional fairytales and the gender stereotyping that (particularly older) Disney princess films peddle, while recognising that little girls are probably better off watching a Sleeping Beauty that doesn’t contain rape and cannibalism, even if she does have a 22in waist. (Incidentally, I was bemused to hear rumours that Disney will be adapting Bluebeard. Just how, exactly, do you manage to put a happy Disney filter on that tale of imprisonment and decapitation?) That’s before you get to the racial stereotyping, from Dumbo to Aladdin, and Song of the South – a film so racist that Disney has prevented its release on any home video or streaming platform, but I’m old enough to remember Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah playing at the end of other features as part of Disney singalong. I’m not about to start donning a pair of Minnie Mouse ears in the queue for the It’s a Small World ride, let’s put it that way.