In both academic and animal welfare circles, Disney's live action films 101 and 102 Dalmatians have been criticised as a commercial exploitation of the breed. From this perspective, it was widely held that the Dalmatian has been subject to over-breeding and abandonment as a direct result of these films, and that Disney should be held responsible for this abuse. I question these assumptions. I discuss the Hollywood animal image as a form of intellectual property and provide a detailed account of negotiations between Disney and Dalmatian breed associations in America and the UK. In response to critics who described the films as "an advertisement for the breed", I suggest that Disney's animal imagery should be seen as a more complex cultural and economic negotiation between filmmaker and audience, and conclude that our understanding of the commercial deployment of the Dalmatian image must be situated in a more nuanced account of the relationship between advertising and film.

Palgrave Shakespeare Studies takes Shakespeare as its focus but strives to understand the significance of his oeuvre in relation to his contemporaries, subsequent writers and historical and political contexts. By extending the scope of Shakespeare and English Renaissance Studies the series will open up the field to examinations of previously neglected aspects or sources in the period's art and thought. Titles in the Palgrave Shakespeare Studies series seek to understand anew both where the literary achievements of the English Renaissance came from and where they have brought us.

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The essay offers a reading of two episodes from widescreen biblical epics of the 1950s: Henry Koster's CinemaScope The Robe (Twentieth Century Fox, 1952), the story of the Roman centurion who played dice for Jesus' robe at the foot of the cross, and Cecil B. De Mille's VistaVision The Ten Commandments (Paramount, 1957). Widescreen technology was developed in response to a catastrophic postwar slump in cinema attendance. In this respect, it was extremely successful: by 1960, De Mille's film was top of Variety magazine's all-time grossing list. More important, however, is the fact that it transformed the very nature of the cinema image. This article reassesses the historical and theoretical significance of the '50s biblical epic, and argues not only that the metaphysics of presence it inscribed within the Hollywood frame has not been adequately theorised, but also that its transcendental values anticipate the challenge to poststructuralist thinking that has been gathering momentum in Jacques Derrida's readings of Jewish philosopher Emmanuel Levinas.