Rethinking
Disney: Private Control, Public Dimensions
by Mike Budd and Max Kirsch, Editors
Wesleyan University Press, Middletown,
CT, 2005
341pp, Trade, $70.00; paper, $27.95
ISBN: 0-8195-6789-2; ISBN:0-8195-6790-6.
Reviewed by Victoria de Rijke
Middlesex University, Trent Park Campus
v.derijke@mdx.ac.uk
Dantes Infernos Giganti
strike terror into the poets verse;
they dwarf mountains and have unstoppable
octopus reach. His giants are morally
horrible, too, in their brute force and
folly.
In his introduction, editor Mike Budd
suggests Disney studies are contributing
to "a new kind of public criticism of
mass culture". Rethinking Disney
confronts the socio-economic giant out
there, but not the Disney in us.
It is not an appealing title. Would Demonising
Disney be more representative? The
Media Giants reach into Urban
Planning and Themed Environments, Representation,
Simulation, Appropriation, Capitalism,
Commodification, and Globalisation
inspire this latest collection of
critical essays.
Alternative Histories at the start
of the book has Susan Willis visiting
"Animal Kingdom" theme park (Africa to
your right, Asia to your left), beginning
with the superb summary: "The only prerequisite
to reading Disney is to bear in mind that
nothing is real but the meanings." Willis
goes on to slaughter the hallmark Disney
infantalisation of imagination by way
of a medieval bestiary "whose electric
sheep is named Dolly".
Disney has remade world continents into
"Africa, Asia, Camp Minnie-Mickey and
Dinoland." Animal Kingdom is again picked
apart by Scott Hermanson, where the reality
of the model is improved to its mediated
impression and visitors kept in awe of
the simulated, not the real. Aaron Taylors
study of market saturation argues Disneys
"Classic Pooh" commodities "violate" Winnie
the Pooh as "an icon of childrens
literature and a British cultural product."
(Having paid $350 million to the Milne
Estate for the rights to the Bear of Very
Small Brain, Im sure Disney feels
the cake is theirs). Anglophilia as an
intriguing aspect of Disneyfication is
dealt with again when Radha Jhappan &
Daiva Stasiulis critique The Discreet
Charm of the English Voice in Pochahontas
films. Sean Griffins Gay
Days at the Disney Theme Parks traces
a history of private parties or charity
AIDS events, plus attendant resistance
from the Christian Right amid an apolitical
stance by Disney conscious of spectacle
and the market. Maurya Wockstroms
title Magical Capitalism argues
for the mimetic as "sympathetic magic,"
upon which postmodern capitalism (and
Disney) draws "with a great deal of sophistication."
Wockstrom draws effectively on Benjamins
ideas of "empathy" with the commodity
and writes with great sensitivity about
Disneys theatre show The Lion
King.
Disneys immense creative power
is not, otherwise, dwelt on in this book,
which is a pity.
As urban developer, Greg Siegels critiques
Disneys "solipsistic and fortified
enclaves devoted to high-concept, high-roller
consumption," drawing comparisons between
theme parks and huge sports stadiums as
places of technological seduction dedicated
to revitalising the promise of the American
Dream. Frank Roost, the only scholar working
outside the US or Canada to feature in
the book, writes (appropriately enough,
since he is from Berlin) a Schreck or
Warnmårchen (scare and warning tale)
about the distinctively Disney business
strategy of "synergy." Roost examines
how the Disney company use urban space
for promotional development, investing
in much of 42nd street, "cleaning
up" Times Square of all its sex shops
and other adult business for "neotraditionalist"
town planning. Celebration looks set to
become a city and Disney to own and run
most of central New York, more towns,
radio and news networks, parts of the
Internet and much more besides. Be afraid?
Stacy Warren, in a piece titled: Saying
No to Disney, counters this response
more optimistically, accepting Disney
dabbles in utopian expansion of empire,
but also meets with local opposition significant
enough to curtail its drive towards a
total vision of "simulacra, placenessless
and control." Most of the contributors
remain pessimistic about Disneys
inevitable world domination, due to its
abilities with "technology, technique
and culturally palatable content", but
I am not convinced. What about the invention
Eisenstein wrote about so enthusiastically
as early as 1946? Has that gone away?
Hasnt the individualist emphasis
shifted with the Pixar team producing
works of collective action like Bugs
Life and Monsters Inc? Couldnt
Rethinking Disney have imagined
solutions, or alternative futures?
Dick Hebdiges Dis-gnosis
takes his usual witty, etymological approach,
close-reading theme parks as "narratives
in 3 dimensions." Hebdige, importantly,
is the only contributor to raise the doubt
I wanted expressed repeatedly throughout
the book:
"It remains to be seen how long tomorrows
children (as opposed to tomorrows happily
regressed adults) will respond to storylines
that insist on positioning them as innocent
bystanders at the carnival of signs rather
than as knowledgeable customers."
How long indeed? Disney is one of our
biggest Media Studies Giants, not least
in the size of academic response. Disneys
private control and public dimensions
are of giant global proportions: a measure
and metaphor for 20th and 21st centuries
growth and regression in the over-developed
world. Despite Rethinking Disneys
position, surely in the long term corporate
self-reproduction suffocated by copyright
paranoia cannot prosper. Not long now.