Calling All Intellectuals-- Disney Senior Political Science Thesis

[Wick]

The last twenty years saw The Walt Disney Company. As impersonal as “Company” is, so too did the company become. While there were individuals who tried to act as artists, as individual dreamers, overall the company became a manufacturer of products. In place of personal efforts, it products became corporative and mass produced. Walt had an innate trust and confidence in the American people. That allowed him to risk and to dream and to lead. The people that created The Company felt themselves superior to their audience. They sought only money and could only achieve it through pandering.

With the loss of respect and connection to the public, The Walt Disney Company lost its soul. While The Company can market a billion dollar movie and convince thousands to trade shiny pins, - in the end all they really do is to convince people to consume.

AnotherVoice,

I understand where you're coming from (and half-heartedly agree with you), but it's almost as though your perspective expects Disney ("productions" or "company") to pick up exactly where Walt left off. In other words, it seems like you fault the post-Walt era of Disney for not filling his shoes. But isn't that what makes Walt so special? His uniqueness and the inabilitiy to replace him?

Also, it seems like you criticize "Dazzled by Disney" by classifying it as just another one of those anti-Disney books (one which damns Disney as an arm of globalization and, to an extent, guilty of American/Western imperialism). This may be. But if that is an accurate account for the book, wouldn't it simply echo the notion which you provided above? This notion that Disney (in the "company" aspect) simply encourages wanton consumerism and, ultimately, has lost its soul.

 

[Another Voice]

it seems like you fault the post-Walt era of Disney for not filling his shoes.

What I meant was the attitude and the focus of the company. Walt, as an artist and as any individual artist is irreplaceable.

But the legacy that Walt left was one of risk taking, of confidence, and a clear and certain vision of what they should do. For a long time the company tried to follow that legacy – with greater and lesser degrees of success. Sure, The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes is not a film of lasting artistic merit, but Disney knew where it stood as Hollywood lurched to Midnight Cowboy and Cleopatra. In the later years, Walt’s Disney still maintained a level of risk taking that is shocking by today’s standard – EPCOT Center vs. Disney’s California Adventure; The Disney Channel (back when 10% of the country had cable) vs. FOX Family. Walt knew that an entertainment company can only survive by constantly challenging itself and its audience. That lesson doesn’t depend on a single person, but it’s something that any person can learn.

Today’s Disney, The Company, believes that success comes with following what you’re taught at MBA School: minimize risk, follow rather than lead, incremental change over innovation. It’s based on a belief that an entertainment company is just like another other manufacturer or distributor – and it’s been proven wrong a thousand times over. The falsehood remains because of one simple reason – instead of requiring talent and skill, anyone can run a movie studio by simply following a set of rules.

In practice that lead a dull, humorless lawyer’s son from the “better” parts of Manhattan to believe that he could run Disney. He destroyed all aspects of the company that were still organized around talent and brought in the suits. It wasn’t Disney inability to replace Walt that lead to Disney’s downfall – it was the destructions of Walt’s organization.

it seems like you criticize "Dazzled by Disney" by classifying it as just another one of those anti-Disney books

There’s a decades long tradition in academia of simply “not getting Disney”. A lot of it is the standard elite distain for anything that’s popular with the masses, some just because it’s such a long lasting tradition that old suspicions are now taken as proven truths and no one bothers with doing real research.

And since Disney has been so central to the American identity for so long, Mickey Mouse has become an easy symbol for all the alleged evils of America. That’s what so many of these books do – consciously use Disney as a metaphor to hold together their scattershot rants:

Disney sells t-shirts at WDW. T-shirts are mostly made in sweatshops. A lot of sweatshops are in Central America. Sweatshops draw peasants from their paradise life in the country into polluted cites – just like The United Fruit Company rounded up the peasants to work on their plantations in 1839. And the United Fruit Company called in the Marines to keep local despots from taking their control of the fields.

Therefore Disney is a tool the military/industrial complex. NO BLOOD FOR MICKEY TOTEBAGS!”

It’s difficult to see where Disney was part of giant cabal in a century-long plot to drive consumerism. I also love these deep conspiracies that try to divine out some Disney Code conspiracy to force people into liking cartoon mice and signing mermaids – and buying the t-shirts to oppress the masses in Guatemala. Anyone who attends a Disney executive meeting doesn’t get the impression these people can figure out their Starbucks order, let along plot to overthrow governments.

Cultural Imperialism doesn’t exist. You can’t force people to like something – a fact that anyone in marketing is forced to concede despite all their promises and theories. In fact in the areas where Disney attempted to force The Company’s vision on people – Euro Disney, California Adventure, Hong Kong Disney and too many movies to list – they’ve all been colossal failures.

Disney’s successes have always come for articulating the desires and wishes of an audience – elements that were there before Disney showed up. It’s The Company’s inability to connect with these desires which is at the core of Disney’s troubles. Granted in a lot of places (including Hollywood) many of these ideals are deeply threatening – individual liberty, self responsibility, the belief that one’s spot in life can be changed for the better. “Imperialism” is just a charge that can be thrown out by the endangered elites.

And to sell books.

 

[Wick]

Update! I finished my thesis a few weeks ago and received an A in the course.. Woo Hoo! I can almost taste graduation...

In some of my early posts in this thread, I toyed with a few different approaches to the subject. In the end, I narrowed the focus on how WDW is a model for urban planning/development. More specifically, I analyzed how WDW as a whole satisfies the concept of New Urbanism, a popular urban planning philosophy which looks to combat urban sprawl.

Richard Foglesong's Married to the Mouse and Stephen Fjellman's Vinyl Leaves provided a wealth of information. Also, Steve Mannheim's Walt Disney and the Quest for Community proved to be a huge help.

It's about 40 pgs, loaded with sources. I have it in Microsoft WORD format; if anyone would like to see a copy, just let me know in here or send me a PM. Would also be glad to snail-mail a hard copy.

I'm extremely proud of how it turned out as it's received high honors for originality from my college's Chairperson of Political Science.

 

[Aisling]

Congratulations to you! I hope you try to get it published somewhere.

 

[Wick]

Thanks for the interest!

 

[wdw4us2]

If you're still interested in reading more on this subject, there is an excellent book which I rarely see mentioned anywhere:

Florida's Disney World : promises and problems by Leonard E. Zehnder published by Peninsular Publishing 1975. I found this book in our local library and found it very informative.