The Disney Fetish PDF Download

Author: Seán J. Harrington
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0861969081
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 241

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Book Description
Long considered a figurehead of family values and wholesome adolescence, the Disney franchise has faced increasing criticism over its gendered representations of children in film, its stereotypical representations of race and non-white cultures, and its emphasis on the heterosexual couple. Against a historical backdrop of studio history, audience reception, and the industrial-organizational apparatus of Disney media, Seán Harrington examines the Disney classics through a psychoanalytical framework to explore the spirit of devotion, fandom, and frenzy that is instilled in consumers of Disney products and that underlie the fantasy of the Magic Kingdom. This compelling study demystifies the unsettling cleanliness and pretensions to innocence that the Disney brand claims to hold.

Author: Christopher E. Bell
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476639639
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
Much has been written about the Walt Disney Company's productions, but the focus has largely been on animation and feature film created by Disney. In this essay collection, the attention is turned to The Disney Channel and the programs it presents for a largely tween audience. Since its emergence as a market category in the 1980s, the tween demographic has commanded purchasing power and cultural influence, and the impressionability and social development of the age group makes it an important range of people to study. Presenting both a groundbreaking view of The Disney Channel's programming by the numbers and a deep focus on many of the best-known programs and characters of the 2000s--shows like The Wizards of Waverly Place, That's So Raven and Hannah Montana--this collection asks the simple questions, "What does The Disney Channel Universe look and sound like? Who are the stories about? Who matters on The Disney Channel?"

Author: Bethanee Bemis
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000811166
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 94

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Book Description
Disney Theme Parks and America’s National Narratives takes a public history approach to situating the physical spaces of the Disney brand within memory and identity studies. For over 65 years, Disney’s theme parks have been important locations for the formation and negotiation of the collective memory of the American narrative. Disney’s success as one of America’s most prolific storytellers, its rise as a symbol of America itself, and its creation of theme parks that immerse visitors in three-dimensional versions of certain "American" values and historic myths have both echoed and shaped the way the American people see themselves. Like all versions of the American narrative, Disney’s vision serves to reassure us, affirm our shared values, and unite a diverse group of people under a distinctly American identity—or at least, it did. The book shows how the status Disney obtained led the public to use them both as touchstones of identity and as spaces to influence the American identity writ large. This volume also examines the following: • how Disney’s original cartoons and live-action entertainment offerings drew from American folk history and ideals • how their work during World War II cemented them as an American symbol at home and abroad • how the materialization of the American themes already espoused by the brand at their theme parks created a place where collective memory lives • how legitimization by presidents and other national figures gave the theme parks standing no other entertainment space has • how Disney has changed alongside the American people and continues to do so today. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of history, media, cultural studies, American studies and tourism.

Author: Kathy Merlock Jackson
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476689393
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 263

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Book Description
This work demonstrates that not everything that Disney touched turned to gold. In its first 100 years, the company had major successes that transformed filmmaking and culture, but it also had its share of unfinished projects, unmet expectations, and box-office misses. Some works failed but nevertheless led to other more stunning and lucrative ones; others shed light on periods when the Disney Company was struggling to establish or re-establish its brand. In addition, many Disney properties, popular in their time but lost to modern audiences, emerge as forgotten gems. By exploring the studio's missteps, this book provides a more complex portrayal of the history of the company than one would gain from a simple recounting of its many hits. With essays by writers from across the globe, it also asserts that what endures or is forgotten varies from person to person, place to place, or generation to generation. What one dismisses, someone else recalls with deep fondness as a magical Disney memory.

Author: Alexandre Bohas
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137562382
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Book Description
This book sheds new light on the socio-economic impact of multinational corporations. Combining Cultural Studies and International Political Economy, it provides a revealing analysis of the Walt Disney Company, and by extension the wider Hollywood studio system. It does so by examining the cultural and economic forces powering the industry's expansion, the 'civilisation' that Disney disseminates, and the various ways that societies beyond the USA have adopted facets of the Hollywood productions to which they are exposed. Identifying both the strengths and the weaknesses of these transnational firms, it demonstrates the significance of their contribution to American power and predominance.

Author: Amy M. Davis
Publisher: John Libbey Publishing
ISBN: 0861969626
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 270

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Book Description
Discussing Disney has grown out of a conference of the same name, is a collection of 12 papers on topics which, though diverse in scope, all relate back to one another through their connection to Disney. As the field of Disney Studies continues to grow and evolve, those working within and contributing to it come from a range of backgrounds, including History, Myth Studies, Film Studies, Gender Studies, and Musicology (to name just a few), and therefore examine the outputs of the Disney company - and the company itself – in diverse ways. Discussing Disney seeks to continue the evolution of Disney Studies as an academic field that has now evolved beyond a discourse that merely, to quote Eric Smoodin (1994), "...[sought} to complicate the notions and uses of Disney discourse that currently make their way to the general public through the popular media". Though this was an important early step in Disney Studies, as it found it necessary to justify its legitimacy within the academy, in the intervening quarter-century, Disney Studies has established itself as a field of Animation Studies (which, simultaneously, has established itself as a branch of Film and Television Studies, as well as Cultural Studies), and is now recognized widely as a valid subject of academic enquiry in its own right. Film Studies as a whole - and Disney Studies as part of that - has also evolved in such a way that it has moved forward from insisting upon an overtly political (and therefore inherently biased) stance, and has taken up a more historically-based and/or cultural studies-based, politically-neutral approach that seeks to contextualize its subject in terms of the conditions in which the company's various outputs - animated shorts and films, theme park attractions, television shows, books, music, merchandising, and the like - have been produced, as well as understanding the audience for whom these were made initially. This is not to say that the field ignores politics - far from it - but rather that it uses political history and political theory as academic basis, rather than as a position from which to debate and opine. By looking at Disney from some of its many angles - the history and the persona of its founder, a selection of its films (from the blockbuster successes to the less than successful), its approaches to animation, its branding and fandom, and the ways that it has been understood and reinterpreted within popular culture - it is hoped that Discussing Disney offers its readers (and the field of Disney Studies) a more holistic understanding of a company that is arguably one of the most important forces within culture - popular or otherwise - within (so far) the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries.

Author: Douglas Brode
Publisher: University of Texas Press
ISBN: 0292709609
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 321

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Book Description
Douglas Brode's spirited defence of Disney entertainment argues that Disney paved the way for today's multicultural values through its positive portrayal of women, ethnic minorities, gays, and non-Christian spirituality and it was this portrayal of difference that promoted diversity decades before the 1990s.

Author: Ute Dettmar
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3662646250
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 248

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Book Description
Disney – This name stands not only for a company that has had global reach from its early days, but also for a successful aesthetic programme and ideological positions that have had great commercial success but at the same time have been frequently criticised. Straddling traditionalism and modernism, Disney productions have proven adaptable to social discourses and technical and media developments throughout its history. This volume brings together scholars from several European countries to explore various dimensions that constitute ‘Disney.’ In line with current media and cultural studies research, the chapters deal with human-human and human-animal relations, gender and diversity, iconic characters and narratives, Disney’s contribution to cultural and visual heritage, and transmedial and transfictional spaces of experience and practices of participation associated with Disney story worlds.

Author: Jennifer A. Sandlin
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317340574
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 287

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Book Description
A presence for decades in individuals’ everyday life practices and identity formation, the Walt Disney Company has more recently also become an influential element within the "big" curriculum of public and private spaces outside of yet in proximity to formal educational institutions. Disney, Culture, and Curriculum explores the myriad ways that Disney’s curricula and pedagogies manifest in public consciousness, cultural discourses, and the education system. Examining Disney’s historical development and contemporary manifestations, this book critiques and deconstructs its products and perspectives while providing insight into Disney’s operations within popular culture and everyday life in the United States and beyond. The contributors engage with Disney’s curricula and pedagogies in a variety of ways, through critical analysis of Disney films, theme parks, and planned communities, how Disney has been taught and resisted both in and beyond schools, ways in which fans and consumers develop and negotiate their identities with their engagement with Disney, and how race, class, gender, sexuality, and consumerism are constructed through Disney content. Incisive, comprehensive, and highly interdisciplinary, Disney, Culture, and Curriculum extends the discussion of popular culture as curriculum and pedagogy into new avenues by focusing on the affective and ontological aspects of identity development as well as the commodification of social and cultural identities, experiences, and subjectivities.

Author: Lauren Dundes
Publisher: MDPI
ISBN: 3038978485
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 246

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Book Description
In this volume of 15 articles, contributors from a wide range of disciplines present their analyses of Disney movies and Disney music, which are mainstays of popular culture. The power of the Disney brand has heightened the need for academics to question whether Disney’s films and music function as a tool of the Western elite that shapes the views of those less empowered. Given its global reach, how the Walt Disney Company handles the role of race, gender, and sexuality in social structural inequality merits serious reflection according to a number of the articles in the volume. On the other hand, other authors argue that Disney productions can help individuals cope with difficult situations or embrace progressive thinking. The different approaches to the assessment of Disney films as cultural artifacts also vary according to the theoretical perspectives guiding the interpretation of both overt and latent symbolic meaning in the movies. The authors of the 15 articles encourage readers to engage with the material, showcasing a variety of views about the good, the bad, and the best way forward.