Understanding Disney: The Manufacture of Fantasy

The Disney Company has grown and expanded by vigilantly controlling its products, characters, and images and developing its reputation as a company that produces positive, wholesome, family and children’s entertainment. The Disney company takes advantage of its reputation by presenting the corporation as special and different. Its brand recognition has been built and zealously protected, allowing the company to expand into whatever new areas develop, drawing on its strong reputation. As Eisner boasts: “It doesn’t matter whether it comes in by cable, telephone lines, computer, or satellite. Everyone’s going to have to deal with Disney.” The company has been built on a strong historical base, taking advantage of global trade opportunities that have expanded its empire far and wide, to the point where it is possible for company representatives and others to claim that Disney and Mickey Mouse are universal. But we also need to remember that this “universality” is neither automatic nor natural, but has been – and continues to be – deliberately manufactured and carefully controlled.

The sacred Disney How has Disney developed and maintained such a sacred aura that many refuse to criticize? It has to have something to do with the link to childhood and innocence. Disney products typically become a part of every child’s life, in one form or another (at least in the USA). Thus, they are intimately and strongly associated with childhood and retain a special place in people’s memories of childhood. As Susan Davis has suggested:

‘It is interesting how deeply one company and all its products have penetrated and defined the experience of childhood. There is almost universal agreement that this company’s products mean wholesome, mentally healthy, happy childhood, America, conflict free, conflict resolution, closeness, togetherness, family bonds . . . on and on. What other company has ever accomplished this? The amazing thing is the thoroughness with which everyday life has been penetrated by these overlapping products.’

So, is this why adults also enjoy Disney products? Are the products popular with adults because of their associations with childhood memories, or because they have come to represent fun, happiness, and pleasure? Are Disney products deliberately aimed at “the child in everyone”? And, if we are experiencing “the disappearance of childhood” (along the lines that Neil Postman argues), why is Disney still popular? The meaning of Disney is most often tied directly to the notion of fantasy and imagination. Indeed, the role of pleasure is a natural and important element in human nature, as some media analysts have noted in recent work. We have a natural inclination to seek pleasure and escape, and to look for utopian experiences. The Disney brand of fantasy is a ready-made, highly promoted, and powerfully seductive option, often assumed to be one of the few “acceptable” options available. However, the problem with Disney’s version of fantasy, imagination, and pleasure is the direct connection with a specific set of values. In other words, the products are hardly “innocent” – whether one is considering the proliferation of Disney products in our consumer culture or the mainstream American values represented by those products. Disney’s fantasies are offered as commodities, produced and manufactured in accordance with specific commercial parameters. While this is never forgotten by those who control the Disney company, the consumers who experience the pleasure, fun, and magic often overlook these motiva-tions. Increasingly, our lives revolve around the accumulation of an enormous array of commodities and engagement in commercial activities that come to signify basic human relations – hence the association of warm family memories with visits to Disneyland, and the fond recollections of Disney characters and products. Clearly, pleasures and memories have become associated with activities that have lost their connection to their original motivation or their inherent commercial nature. Furthermore, definite and often unmistakable themes and values are represented in Classic Disney products. As noted in chapters 5 and 6, Classic Disney fantasies are anything but open-ended and imaginative; rather, they are neatly tied into a conservative vision of the world and are linked directly with consumer culture. Indeed, the legacy of Walt Disney and the Disney company itself have been especially adept at representing what America represents: business, progress, individual initiative. Disney has incorporated the American personality, as fun-loving, innocent, optimistic, and with a sense of fair play and what is right. In addition, the success of the Disney company has come to represent American ingenuity and cleverness. The problem is that these attributes also form the basis of many American values that have either been mythologized or are not necessarily embraced by everyone. Indeed, Disney values can also be associated with such all-American traits such as conservatism, homophobia, Manifest Destiny, ethnocentricity, cultural insensitivity, superficiality, lack of culture, etc. Disney did not create these traits, but it is possible to argue that the Disney empire helps to perpetuate them. Is it the only company that does so? Of course not. But it does it very well and (at least for many) in an appealing, seductive, and enjoyable way. Many analysts have pointed out that the themes emphasized by Disney culture are reminiscent of a past America and may have less to do with the reality of America today. As we have seen, those able to take a trip to Disneyland or see a Disney film are able to escape from an everyday reality that is not always pleasurable or fun, and may well pose challenging dilemmas. In real life, not every story has a happy ending. In other words, Disneyland is not just further down the freeway from the inner-city reality of south central Los Angeles – it’s a world away.