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(More customer reviews)As authors Mike Budd and MAX KIRSCH along with contributors Lee Artz, Sean Griffin, Dick Hebdige, Radha Jhappan, Daiva Stasiulis, and Susan Willis show in this collection of eleven interdisciplinary essays, the Walt Disney corporation has grown far beyond its origins in animated films and theme parks to become a BIG multinational corporation with global cultural programming power. Although the authors purport to take an economic approach to corporatism's "Disney-sized" problems, they do little more than show their confusion on corporations and capitalism. Corporations are creations of the state and do not arise spontaneously in a free market, but the authors seem to know little about the origins of these "artificial persons". Here are the topics that they do cover:
INTRODUCTION: "Private Disney, Public Disney" by Mike Budd
PART ONE: ALTERNATIVE HISTORIES
"Dis-Gnosis: Disney and the Re-Tooling of Knowledge, Art, Culture, Life Etcetera" by Dick Hebdige;
"Disney's Bestiary" by Susan Willis;
PART TWO: CAPITALISM, COMMODIFICATION, GLOBALIZATION
"Monarchs, Monsters and Multiculturalism: Disney's Menu for Global Hierarchy" by Lee Artz;
"The Lion King, Mimesis, and Disney's Magical Capitalism" by Maurya Wickstrom;
PART THREE: HIERARCHIES: RACE, CLASS, GENDER, SEXUALITY
"Curiouser and Curiouser: Gay Days at the Disney Theme Parks" by Sean Griffin;
"Anglophilia and the Discreet Charm of the English Voice in Disney's Pocahontas Films" - Radha Jhappan and Daiva Stasiulis;
PART FOUR: REPRESENTATION, SIMULATION, APPROPRIATION
"Everybody Wants a Piece of Pooh: Winnie, from Adaptation to Market Saturation" by Aaron Taylor;
"Truer than Life: Disney's Animal Kingdom" by Scott Hermanson;
PART FIVE: URBAN PLANNING AND THEMED ENVIRONMENTS
'Saying No to Disney: Disney's Demise in Four American Cities" by Stacy Warren;
"Synergy City: How Times Square and Celebration are Integrated into Disney's Marketing Cycle" by Frank Roost;
"Disneyfication, the Stadium, and the Politics of Ambiance" by Greg Siegel.
I thought the difficult economic issues were avoided as well as the analogy of the corporation to a Roman General and his army. Part Three was the best on Class and Heirarchies with all three authors contributing works in the section providing a superb and vitally important introduction to cultural theory and cultural programming.
With Tony Blair ever-whispering into Bush's ear, the British empire now American-powered, and Disney too a victim of Anglophilia, it is difficult to believe that American Yankees ever fought a war against the British, let alone two wars!
In short, a concise socialist critique of a certain corporation.
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In recent years, the Walt Disney Company has grown far beyond its beginnings in animated films and theme parks to become a major multinational corporation with global reach. As the company's activities have grown more complex and its influence more ubiquitous, both its internal practices and its attempts to control its now global public environment have generated conflicts that contradict the classic Disney publicity image. The 11 wide-ranging, interdisciplinary essays in this collection cover topics including Animal Kingdom; Gay Days at the theme parks; Disney's connection to sweatshops; commodification of The Lion King on Broadway; the transformation of Winnie the Pooh; Disney's experience in urban planning in Times Square and Celebration, Florida; and Disney's America. A comprehensive introduction contextualizes the essays and relates them to earlier Disney studies.CONTRIBUTORS include Lee Artz, Sean Griffin, Dick Hebdige, Radha Jhappan, Daiva Stasiulis, and Susan Willis.
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