The Revisioning of Walt’s Dream

By Ian Esquivel

This paper was originally written for a graduate course in political economy. It has since been revised, updated, expanded and reshaped to suit a different audience and serve a new purpose. As an article on the AML website, it invites discussion about the questions and issues it raises, and hopefully fulfills a function as a resource for media studies, especially given its historical and political underpinnings, and its exploration of social relations.

Disney has been studied from a multitude of perspectives, and it is a daunting task to read even a portion of what has been written about the man and the company, let alone to examine the wide range of the corporation’s own media products. The point of view expressed herein is thus an emerging one, as I seem to learn more about Disney with each passing month. I guess I’m a little obsessed, but with good reason. Disney is a media educator’s dream topic, a vast site of struggle and pleasure where communication theory and practice conjoin, the past and present converge, the local and the global overlap, and commerce and culture intertwine. — I.E.

Transforming The Corporate Kingdom: The Revisioning of Walt’s Dream
By Ian Esquivel,  December, 2005

As a highly competitive, transnational media corporation, the Walt Disney Company is among a select group that dominates the global communication market. Yet in several ways, the company is unlike its competition, a corporate anomaly. This is due in part to the fact that Disney began as, and continues to be, albeit not exclusively, a purveyor of mass entertainment to children. It is also a function of the ideology that underpins the corporation, the roots of which can be found both in modernity and to a degree in Walt Disney’s own personality and beliefs, particularly as they informed his leadership. The shape of the company’s uniqueness and the  logic of its emergence as a global entity can be traced through its transformation from a two-person operation into a multinational corporation, and subsequently into its present form. Disney’s restrictive labour and management practices, diversification of commodities, services and markets, synergistic approach, and drive for profits were all corporate characteristics that transcended Walt Disney’s death in 1966 and laid the foundation for the company’s renewal in the 1980s as it adapted to an emerging global economy.

Disney’s Double Vision

It has been suggested that the current Walt Disney Company embodies a departure from Walt Disney’s original vision, that the building of a global empire has corrupted it. Historiography and mythology work together to present Walt Disney as one of “a special American breed … the sort of man who possesses and is possessed by a dream that seems to be particularly and peculiarly of this land [America] of a time only recently past” (Schickel 41). Thus, Disney wanted to “bring warmth, laughter, and amusement to audiences around the world” (Bryman 15). He is perceived as the guardian of wholesome values, of “childhood innocence … kept safe through the magic of pixie dust” (Giroux 18). His films have been construed as morality plays: Disney “did not approve of sex, violence, greed” or other vices (Wasko, Phillips and Meehan 14).

In contrast, the modern Disney is seen as “a ravenous and highly combative corporation” (Bryman 51) that exploits its ” middle-class markets” for profits (Bryman 94). Consumers tend to “compartmentalize Disney the business from Disney as entertainment, and to make a distinction between ‘classic’ Disney and current Disney …Walt Disney is inextricably intertwined with the context and production of animation … Business practices are not associated with Walt but instead ascribed to Michael Eisner” (Wasko, Phillips and Meehan 48). That is, the latter is bad while the former is good. The Walt Disney Company is considered by its critics to be a vehicle for accelerated capitalism (Bryman 143-144), driven first and foremost by a desire to “create shareholder value” ((Wasko, Phillips and Meehan 18), not by a objective to serve its public, to whose concerns it only responds in matters of public relations (Wallace 151). It is a company that is alleged to embrace post-industrialism and hyper-consumerism, under the tight control of its chairman.

Yet the reality is that Walt (and Roy) Disney operated the company according to similar corporate principles that followed the ‘logic’ of capital. They took advantage of the existing economic conditions, and adapted to changes that arose. Like many business leaders of his generation, Disney was the “archetypal capitalist” (Bryman 144), always prepared to exploit art for the sake of commerce, culture for the sake of mass entertainment (Scheckel 44), and people for the sake of higher earnings. He actively courted corporate sponsorship (Grover 71), and in fact, he received the bulk of the funds needed to build Disneyland from the American Broadcasting Company (ABC) by agreeing to produce for it the original Disney television series, which he also conveniently used to promote the park. Clearly, from even its earliest days, the driving force behind the company has been corporate ambition (Schiller 1973  3). The quest for profits has always taken precedence over the creative spirit in Disney’s production of media, as is evident in the theme parks, “panegyrics to capitalism” (Bryman 143).

Indeed, there is a readily discernable lineage from “Original Walt” to “Corporate Walt”, a clear progression from Disney Productions to the Walt Disney Company (Wallace 134). For example, from the outset corporations had a role in the Disney theme parks that became more pronounced after “Walt persuaded Pepsi-Cola, General Electric and Ford to sponsor attractions for the 1964 World’s Fair … [a role that] was greatly enhanced by the construction of sponsored rides and attractions at EPCOT’s Future World pavilions” (Bryman 145). Similarly, Eisner’s vision has been of “an organization in which the Disney approach was restored, albeit embellished by practices required by the modern business environment” (Bryman 57). It is unlikely that Disney’s successor will divert much from that approach given its track record, despite increasingly intense competition from other media giants and the emergence of new  media technologies such as video cell phones and MP3s. Disney will adapt, most likely, not re-invent itself any time soon.

The Foundations of Disney’s Corporate Dream

Disney’s corporate identity grew out of 20th century Western modernity: monopoly capitalism, industrialization, mass production, technical rationality, and paternalism.  It stretches back to the company’s humble origins. Disney struggled financially through the 1920s but with the release of Steamboat Willie in 1928, the animated short that made Mickey Mouse a celebrity, the company attained stability (Schickel 124). The film’s popularity was due to a mix of distinctive animation, the inventive use of colour, an evocative combination of sound and image, and a healthy dose of humour and satire. By 1929, Disney Studios had released four more Mickey films that were all critical and financial hits.

In 1931, an animated short (with no Mickey), Flowers and Trees, won Disney studios its first Academy Award. In 1933, Disney won a second award for The Three Little Pigs, a film that grossed $125,000 in the first year of its release, and double that amount by the end of its first theatrical run. This was at a time when the country was in the depths of depression. By 1942, the Disney company had won eight Academy Awards. Yet artistic recognition was always but a stepping stone to commercial success and corporate growth. Disney’s pioneering and popularizing use of colour in the early 1930s resulted in a deal that allowed it exclusive rights to Technicolor’s three-colour process until 1935, a significant edge over the competitors who were forced to use the inferior two-colour process (Schickel 150).

Disney’s success with animation gave the company leverage to negotiate a lucrative deal with United Artists in 1932, signing a five-year contract to produce twenty shorts a year. At the time, there were 18,000,000 people out of work in the United States. By 1934, Disney was making an estimated $660,000 in profits, most of which he was pouring back into his studio. His company’s fortunes grew while “the rest of the country was wallowing in the deepest trough of the depression” (Schickel 151). Furthermore, the licensing that had begun in 1930 of products that bore the likeness of, or were reproductions of Disney characters, particularly Mickey Mouse, had become a fulltime venture. Such cross-promotion, wherein merchandise functions “simultaneously as commodity and advertisement,” laid the foundation for what is termed “Disney Synergy” (Fjellman 151-152). Fifteen people worked in the New York office to service the demand from eighty U.S. businesses, including major firms like RCA Victor and General Foods. In 1934, Disney opened small offices in London and Paris to assist with distribution and merchandizing. By 1937, “Mickey Mouse was available in one form or another in thirty-eight of the world’s nations” in the form of films, books, dolls, songs, merchandize stamped with the Mickey Mouse logo and even clubs, of which there were over fifteen hundred in the U.S. alone (Schickel 167).

At the heart of Disney’s success was its Hyperion Avenue studio, which operated through the 1930s until a new, larger facility was built in 1940. “From 1932 onward Disney had increased his staff to a level higher than he strictly needed … and he was also putting quite a bit of his earnings into an effort to educate his people in the fine arts” (Schickel 170). While this might seem at first glance to have been an act of benevolence, it was actually a calculated management decision. Disney was anticipating the making of his first animated feature film, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, and he needed well-trained illustrators. The staff grew from a handful in 1930 to a “complex of some 750 employees when Snow White was in full production in 1937” (Schickel 142). The majority of the new workers were in the animation department where a hierarchy existed, from the “lowly in-betweeners” to the full-fledged animators who not only received the highest salaries but also were part of Disney’s inner circle, the men with whom he mingled socially (Schickel 171).

Disney invested $250,000 in the Hyperion Avenue facility to make sure it had the best equipment. The studio was full of young employees, as well as veteran animators. It was on the cutting edge of animation and thus became a magnet for a generation of men just out of art school. To work for Disney was perceived as a privilege, as membership in a club. However, there were factions and “the studio was not the happy family that the publicity machine implied … [Disney] had become divorced from the feeling on the shop floor … believing in his own benevolent paternalism” (Allan 179).

Disney pushed his employees while still insisting on animation of exceedingly high quality. He managed the studio according to principles of Scientific Management, particularly in his insistence on a hierarchy of specialization and emphasis on managerial expertise. He kept strict control of the creative process, even to the extent that he undermined it (Schickel 175-176). According to the workers, there may not have been clocks at Hyperion Avenue but there was no need – ‘Uncle Walt’ kept a watchful eye on his shop, regulating the pace and performance of his employees. If early in the decade “there was at first very little resentment of the employer, despite the long hours and low pay he enforced” (Schickel 173), by 1940 there was labour strife at Disney Productions.

No Whistling While You Work

Disney “carried his search for perfection to absurd lengths, and … he never learned to let up on his people” (Schickel 145). Yet even so, his demands might not have incited a backlash had he properly rewarded his employees for their hard work, and thereby acknowledged their contribution to the Disney ‘magic’. This was particularly the case with Snow White, when its production had “begun to overtax the studio’s facilities, Disney was able to obtain overtime [labour] in huge amounts with no more than a vague promise of bonuses, in unnamed amounts, if the film succeeded” (Schickel 184). It did, returning a gross of $2 million in the first six months after its release, on its way to earning $8.5 million in its first run. Yet instead of remunerating his staff, Disney spent $3.8 million to construct a “dream studio” (Schickel 230) and millions more on various film projects, the next of which to be released was Pinocchio. The film’s first run in 1939 failed to return more than its $2.6 million cost, in part because World War II had curtailed its release to overseas markets.

By 1940, Disney had not only spent all the profits from Snow White, he had also gone $4.5 million in debt. As a result, the banks cut off his credit and he was forced to offer stock to the public for the first time, thus diluting his ownership and subjecting the company to outside demands (Schickel 276).   Disney’s gamble had not paid off.   He had invested in the Disney ‘commodity’ instead of in the labour that produced it. In the process, he had lost considerable control over the company to shareholders, and over its workers, as external pressures forced him to lay off employees and keep wages low. By the time Disney employees were demanding better pay in 1940, the company barely had the assets to meet those demands, ironically a “victim of its own success” (Schickel 254-255).

It was hardly surprising therefore, that many of the workers decided to unionize as members of the Screen Cartoonists Guild. Disney was staunchly opposed and argued that there already was a company union, although it was obvious that it had little power and mostly operated on the company’s behalf. To some extent Disney’s anticommunist views may have contributed to his negative attitudes towards unions (Schickel 261). However, he was not prone to “think much about political affairs in any programmatic or even pragmatic way … his instinct throughout his life was to wall himself off from the affairs of nations and governments, the better to attend his own garden” (Schickel 157). A union, to Disney, was an impediment to corporate efficiency, an obstacle to low wages and rigid managerial control.

An increase in worker dissatisfaction was met by Disney’s intransigence, which was in part based on poor advice from the studio’s lawyer, Gunther Lessing. Yet the bitterness of the dispute can only perhaps be fully explained in terms of its psychological impact. Disney’s employees felt betrayed. They were “disappointed in him, in the promise of the big happy studio where everyone would be taken care of … Instead all the men saw were layoffs, an assembly-line style of production that promised less rather than more creative freedom, and an industrial design that seemed to have as its goal the ending instead of the encouragement of the old sense of community which had pervaded Hyperion” (Schickel 256).

Other more tangible factors came into play over the course of the labour unrest, such as a new round of layoffs, the wrongful dismissal of Arthur Babbit, one of the studio’s more promising junior animators whom Disney disliked, and the threat of a lock-out. On May 29, 1941, the newly unionized members called for a strike that eventually lasted for nine weeks. As it progressed, tensions between the company union and the Guild mounted, and relations between Disney and his employees deteriorated. In the end, the strike was settled by mediators who, according to Disney, gave the union all it wanted, and “the Screen Cartoonists Guild became the bargaining agent for the whole studio” (Schickel 260).

Disney tried to downplay the impact of the labour dispute on the company but a “large percentage of his most independent and creative artists left him after the strike… Among them were the group who formed the nucleus of UPA, the little studio that wrested leadership in the animation field away from Disney at the end of the war” (Schickel 261-262).  “For many, this period ended in … a sense of alienation that has grown as the corporation has grown and animation has passed from the center of its life to the periphery, where its expense has been tolerated … out of sentiment and a desire to keep the organization alive in the field where it began and with which it is still closely associated in the public mind” (Schickel 185).

In effect, Disney’s obsessive desire to remain a forerunner in the field, and the corporate strategy he adopted led to the company’s fall from grace during the 1940’s. Disney’s return to profitability and prominence only came after the war, with his decision — one which he seemed to have had relatively little choice but to make — to develop live-action films aimed at a wider audience. Disney’s re-emergence as a producer of popular entertainment also allowed him to revisit his “longheld dream, Disneyland” (Schickel 283). By 1950, with the release of Treasure Island, the company was once more financially viable (Schickel 293), and the decade that followed was one of tremendous growth and prosperity as the Disney corporation consolidated its hold on the mass entertainment industry.

Yet the callous treatment of Disney’s employees did not fundamentally change, even of its young stars, like Hayley Mills, who intimated that she had no value to Disney except as a ‘commodity’ (Schickel 307). This sentiment was echoed decades later by actor Bill Murray who noted how little was invested in the actors (Bryman 49). In effect, Disney had turned into a ‘factory’, a manufacturer of cultural products more concerned with efficiency than with human relations, adopting a mode of production that minimized losses and maximized profits. Disney Productions abandoned its aspirations to create critically acclaimed works such as Snow White because “their potential return was not worth the risk” (Schickel 298). Disney was no longer concerned with art, if ever he had been. “So long as the company prospered, so long as it kept creating fertilizer for whatever new crops he wanted to plant, he did not care” (Schickel 38).

One of those ‘crops’ was Disneyland. With its completion, Disney would achieve the status he had desired, to be counted among notable inventor-entrepreneurs such as Ford and Edison (Schickel 38). With the aid of his architects (Marling 54-55) and Imagineers, he had constructed a place in American history that was consolidated a decade later by the exhibition of Disney’s Audio-Animatronics at the 1964-65 New York World’s Fair. Once asked by a reporter to name his most rewarding experience, “Disney’s reply was blunt and brief:  ‘The whole damn thing. The fact that I was able to build an organization and hold it’ … These are clearly not the words of some kindly old uncle … Neither do they appear to bear much resemblance to anything we might expect from an artist looking back over his career. They represent, instead, the entrepreneurial spirit triumphant” (Schickel 37).

The Modern Post Modern Disney

Disney incorporated a perspective into his company that was extensively informed by prevailing values and beliefs. Just as the Disney of today reflects the post-industrial, globalizing trend of American corporate culture (McChesney 1998  34-35), so the Disney of the past mirrored the political and economic thrust of U.S. business values and practices during the first half of the 20th century. The latter was itself a product of turn-of-the-century Western ideology and praxis — modernism with an American accent. This perspective is apparent in Celebration, the town that was built on Disney’s model of a utopian community, a “consumer society’s rendition” of American life as envisioned by the nation’s founding fathers (Ross 323). Yet because Celebration is based on a vision of an America that never existed but is a real town that exists in a postmodern America, it has struggled to develop an identity and ethos. Despite the “urban planning and corporate branding … ‘Celebrationites encountered obstacles to happiness that compelled them to forge community bonds for which there was no planning blueprint'” (Ross quoted in Morris 20).

The tension between Disney’s imagined consumerist community Celebration and its actual incarnation is resolved in the theme parks where the modern and postmodern are unified through the corporate ideology that anchors the Disney vision. Disneyland is a “sanitized electronic actualization of the American Dream” (Adams 87). Disney World transcends its American ethos and location, as “the shopper journeys from one culturally coded geography to another … a touristic excursion from subtropical to tropical locales” (The Project On Disney [TPOD] 40). In effect, shopping is an amusement like other rides at Disney World, where transnational consumerism is thematized. Rather than reinforcing the notion of two Disneys, past and present, the parks illustrate and provide evidence for how the latter has evolved from and coexists with the former. Movement from the kingdom of Snow White to Tomorrowland creates no dislocation for the ‘enchanted’ guest. Technological mastery of the imagination is the thread that binds the past, present and future, which bear striking similarity to one another.

Disney animated films also demonstrate the continuum between its modern and postmodern incarnations. The experience of watching The Jungle Book, with its imperialist underpinnings, is not significantly different from watching Toy Story, with its neo-liberal agenda (Byrne and McQuillan 127). The frontiers occupied by ‘civilized man’ and ‘primitive native’, and by the cowboy and the astronaut, are only different on the surface. In the end, the so-called rational thinking of the West prevails and the audience feels comforted and satisfied, both by the implied superiority of its cultural structures and by the entertaining package in which the propaganda is wrapped. Then and now are woven together through commodity exchange, the pleasure of consumption. In addition, the general public’s perception of Disney as a benevolent and “essentially benign” (Wasko, Phillips and Meehan 38) American patriarch seems to further obfuscate an ideology that through its media products supported domination and exploitation in the past, even as it does so in the present. Uncle Walt’s magic was a sleight of hand, just as the” New Disney which trades on its founder’s name and imitates his sense of value and worth is similarly counterfeit” (Byrne and McQuillan 27).

Disney was and is a master of disguise, draping rigid conformity in golden robes. In The Little Mermaid (1989), the protagonist Ariel is accorded status and worth but only through transformation and subordination, as she forsakes her independence to take her place in human society. She is conned, just as is the audience, into thinking she has achieved her dreams and attained happiness. Her situation is the verisimilitude of wish fulfillment. Like the character Snow White fifty years earlier (1938), Ariel internalizes the notion that “desire, choice and empowerment are closely linked to catching and loving a … man” (Giroux 99). Each character sadly abandons the close-knit and caring ‘sub-human’ community that nurtured her; each adopts the Western ideal that elevation into the ‘first’ world, the magic kingdom, is logical and worth the risk, even though it entails loss and sacrifice. Both stories recall other tales in which women, or others subjected to paternalism, are coerced (or forced) to live by the rules of the dominant and ruling elite in order to ‘escape’ their former, supposedly worse lives.

Even Mulan, who is arguably more successful at finding happiness on her own terms, returns to her ‘rightful’ place as a dutiful daughter whose disobedience is framed by her moral superiority and willingness to sacrifice herself. Her challenges to authority, and especially to patriarchy, are in the service of love and honour. She’s a ‘rebel’ in the tradition of Susan B Anthony or Nellie McClung: she’s Mother Teresa not Lilith, Marge Simpson not Madonna. So, while it is true that Mulan is a more independent and liberated type of female Disney protagonist from those who preceded her, she is nonetheless ultimately obedient to her own socially constructed gender identity. She pushes out but does not push down the walls of confomrity.

Ideological Amusement Apparatuses

Disneyland, the original theme park, provided the base upon which the current Disney superstructure was built. The park was synonymous with Walt Disney himself, and people were often greeted by him there as if it were his home. Disneyland was viewed by the public as the embodiment of the magic kingdom that only fleetingly existed on the screen: it provided the narratives of Disney’s various media works with a material presence, not to mention extensive publicity (Marling 75-76). The characters, settings, plots and themes of his films were, in effect, inscribed in the park. As such, Disneyland represented a convergence of politics, economics, technology and ideology at a given time and place in history, during a period when the United States was emerging as a world power. The roots of that convergence, and hence of Disneyland, stretch back to the turn of the century, nurtured in the fertile ground of the numerous world and industrial expositions that promoted a particular view of human progress.

Beginning in 1851, the expositions heralded an age of ‘enlightened’ Western ideals, not to mention commodity production and consumption. Many technical innovations were introduced to the public at the expositions, including amusement rides such as the Ferris Wheel, showcased at the 1893 World Exposition in Chicago. The spirit of innovation that the expositions had evoked was no doubt what Walt Disney was attempting to recast in his theme park, as well as the innovations themselves. For example, after visiting the 1933 Chicago World’s Fair, Disney came away with the idea of an amusement area encircled by a child-sized railroad (Marling 43-45). For Disney, the expositions, and later Disneyland, represented a return to a “Victorian era of optimism” when people still believed ‘progress’ would bring about better lives for everyone (Wallace 137). Disneyland was “paradise regained … an ideal vision of American history” (Adams 87). Of course, the Victorian era was certainly not paradise, especially for the working class or colonized peoples. Social, economic and political forces that brought people and nations into conflict characterized the era. Yet the often harsh realities of those forces — urbanism, capitalism, industrialization and imperialism — found polite and popular expression in the many world expositions.

“World’s fairs and industrial exhibitions, in their display of the latest products and their celebration of the fruits of progress, served as museums of the future. A new technology that gained prominence at one of these events would establish itself in the public vision of what the future would bring” (Bazerman 202). Nowhere was this more evident than in the United States, where work and leisure became arenas for the consumption and trial of new technologies and commodities. Electrical lighting, audio and visual recording apparatuses, and other technological innovations that spurred the development of amusement parks, were introduced and popularized at the various expositions of the era. Disney would preserve the tradition of the exposition, which went into hiatus in the U.S. from 1942 to 1962 (Harris 27), by showcasing the most recent technologies in a fantasy environment where crowds would thrill at the wonders of industry and science, and partake of exhilarating rides.

It wasn’t just new technologies that gained prominence at the world expositions. It was also nations and the ideologies that underpinned them. “Since 1883, when the Dutch held Europe’s first international exhibition devoted primarily to colonialism, the imperial powers had routinely organized colonial expositions to build support for imperial policies at home and in their colonies” (Rydell 61). As a relative newcomer to the imperial stage, the United States had not participated in the European colonial fairs partly because of the “growth of isolationist sentiment among the American public during the 1920s” (Rydell 62). Its first outing was at the 1931 Paris Colonial and International Exposition.   “By the close of the decade, America’s imperial revival would … spring to life in the imperial fantasyland crafted … for the 1939-40 San Francisco Golden Gate International Exposition” (Rydell 63).

These expositions provided platforms for the various imperial powers to parade their acquisitions past the international public and each other, not in a show of collegiality but in a display of power. “The cosmopolitan rhetoric of universal fraternity and the people’s fair scarcely conceals the fact that the universal exposition was a place of rival nationalisms and the production of a public discourse” (Mattelart 28). The threads of that discourse were woven into the Disney narrative, expressed in his theme parks through their use of ‘exotic’ settings, live shows, and rides such as ‘Jungle Cruise’ and ‘It’s A Small World’. The discourse was, and still is, particularly evident in World Showcase (Bryman 72), a Disneyfied version of the World Showcase at the 1939 World’s Fair in Chicago (Zukin 225). At Disney World, pavilions representing eleven countries, including the United States, present a simulacra of international communities co-existing in harmony and parity, their differences seemingly leveled by their shared consumer culture. What World Showcase actually does, however, is to decontextualize the real communities and reinsert them into a hyperreal world (Hendry 86) that is on U.S. soil and under U.S. jurisdiction. The dynamic of the discourse is clear: Disney World is a New World Order park, the home base of a colonial cultural power.

It has been suggested that “Disney was able to retain the exposition’s moralism without harnessing himself to its heavy didacticism” (Harris 27). In his desire to create exotic and fantastic settings, Disney ‘borrowed’ from the expositions, but purged the “living pages of history” of their overtly political meanings by recontextualizing them (Wallace 140). Yet to finance his dream, he turned to “the example of the twentieth century’s world’s fair or industrial exposition and involved national corporations as investing partners” (Davis 22). Thus, the Disney theme parks are heavily didactic: they invoke 20th century mainstream American values, and promote corporatism. Like expositions, they are sites of ideology and material expressions of political economy. They represent utopia (or dystopia: Marin 284), the unattainable middle class kingdom of fulfilled desire (Bryman 95), “that search for social happiness” (Harris 27) in the consumption of commodities that fuels the corporate engine.
Stages of Exploitation
The attitudes towards workers and the restrictive employment practices established by Disney in his animation studios persist in contemporary Disney theme parks.  Those who admire Disney’s model of management hold the parks up as examples of “strong corporate culture” (Bryman 109). Except for those at the top, employees are poorly compensated (TPOD 112). There are few African-American or other visible minority employees (Van Maanen 61). Workers have few freedoms (Davis 89), must adhere to rigid rules of behaviour and appearance (Bryman 76), and if they fail to conform, are disciplined (Bryman 109). When hired they “waive their right to discuss in print particulars of their job” (TPOD 115). Disney enforces this rule, and prosecutes in court those who break it (TPOD 235).

Workers are extensively scrutinized by supervisors, spied upon by peers and ‘monitored’ by guests (TPOD 124-125). Surveillance is prevalent. As a result, discipline occurs less by direct intervention, although that certainly happens (Van Maanen 76, TPOD 143), than by self-regulation (TPOD 130). Disney employees “have, to varying degrees, internalized their colonizing work identities, as these have been scripted and staged at Disney World” (Carlone and Taylor 347). Thus, in the face of what many employees feel are exploitative management practices, attempts to unionize would seem inevitable. However, once ‘burned’ by unionization, the Disney company has worked to prevent such organizing in its parks, although unions do exist for crafts workers and entertainers.

As well, Disney has created divisions within its labour force, and cultivated competition and stratification. One division operates via a hierarchy of ‘value’ assigned to the tasks performed. Thus a ride operator is accorded more status than a concession stand attendant through slightly better wages, less supervision and more flexible work conditions (Van Maanen 61-62). The boundary between jobs is further heightened by the ‘location’ of one’s work. “The dividing and subdividing of Disney workers and their jobs continues in their placement: they can work on property or off, on stage or backstage; they must be assigned to a department (e.g., Entertainment or Retail), which is further divided by park … by area … and by attraction” (TPOD 118). In short, worker solidarity is undermined by physical and social separation.

A second division is structured along scales of pay, benefits and job security, and maintained through a distinction “between full and part-time workers, and those who fall between those categories. Almost everyone aspires to be ‘permed’ – Permanent Full Time – at which point pour down the manna of Disney benefits” (TPOD 117-118). One is eligible for permanent status after three months’ employment. However, the offer of full time employment is uncommon, and thus remuneration for most is limited to a low hourly wage. To this end, Disney has created a job category called Casual Regular under which one may work for years and never be considered full time (TPOD 118). Employees who are working full time hours and come within reach of the three month eligibility provision are easily fired (TPOD 122). Disney’s profitability is thus paid for in part by its labour force. As one Disney employee noted, “I’ll never forget when we were all fighting for a twenty-five cent raise [in 1985], it came over the papers that Eisner made a $43 million bonus. And we were fighting for a quarter” (TPOD 236).

A third division within the work force arises out of Disney’s segmented managerial system. Employees cite as one of the initial attractions to Disney the self-proclaimed notion of a “community” wherein the company takes good care of its own through internal promotions (TPOD 119). Despite this rhetoric, most workers come to believe that favouritism is valued over ability. ‘Promotion’ also often takes the form of exploitation as a ‘lead’ worker, a management substrata without compensatory advantages. Leads aren’t salaried or permanent, have reached the maximum hourly wage, and are unlikely to be promoted. Yet “they have to do most of the difficult work of actually supervising workers with few of the rewards” (TPOD 120). While “supervisors and executives are frequent objects of contempt or hostility,” leads are often disparaged or pitied by other workers (TPOD 121).

The consequence of such fractured labour relations at Disney is that “any chance of collective perspective is appropriated …under the rubric of corporate ‘community’ and subsequently disabused of any liberatory potential” (TPOD 119). In effect, “Disney’s corporate structure is the model for work in the new world order, its repetitive and service-based jobs subject to the authority not of one head, but a system of specialized functional units, each with its own set of chiefs, all working earnestly at their one task, the left hand oblivious to the right – the CIA model … This is a world where all social planning has been replaced … by corporate planning” (TPOD 117). That isn’t to say there isn’t resistance, which there is in the form of extensive theft and drug use (TPOD 128 – 130). It is worth noting too, that at EuroDisney, “European workers have not taken readily to the Disney corporate culture and attempts to socialize them … as many as 50 per cent of the original 12,000 employees had left” (Bryman 112) a year after the park’s opening in 1992. French unions “railed against the ‘fascism of the company’s recruitment policy with its stress on a certain look'” (Bryman 76).

Outside the parks, Disney’s employment practices are similarly disempowering and undemocratic. During the 1990s, the Walt Disney Company, like its corporate peers, earned a reputation for harsh management strategies (Fraser 11). In fact, such strategies began in the 1980s when Disney was mired in debt. It slashed jobs, employee benefits and salaries. This continued even during years when it posted profits. Yet Michael Eisner’s salary in 1999 remained at $750,000, even though the company had a 28% drop in profit from 1998 (Lau, 1).  When it acquired ABC, the Walt Disney Company followed the same pattern of cost cutting through downsizing, chopping three hundred news staff so that its news division could become “profitable like the entertainment divisions” (Croteau and Hoynes 43). Disney also removed stock incentives, the one employment ‘perk’ left over from the “lean and mean years” (Fraser 67). In 2000, even the Disney Imagineering Department was heavily hit by cost reduction. Its staff was cut in half and in response, several veteran animators left the company (Kirsner 204).

With regard to its international labour force, Disney has only rarely been cited for unfair employment practices, although as noted, workers at Euro-Disney obviously felt their rights were restricted. In contrast, there seem to have been no publicized labour problems at Tokyo Disneyland, where the Disney approach to management is so successful that “Japanese companies are flocking to the park to see how it is all done” (Bryman 76). In 1992, the U.S. National Labour Committee exposed Disney for involvement in ‘sweatshop’ practices in Central American. Up to that point, the company had denied that it had engaged the services of maquilas to supply product, claiming it was an “innocent global shopper” (Morris 26). More recently, the company has been accused of enlisting the services of a Chinese sweatshop operation to manufacture its toys for the Christmas market (Doyran 1). Yet unlike companies like Nike, Disney has effectively managed its image as a company that values its workers and treats them well. “For Disney to perform as a central icon of the American way (and to generate revenue in doing so), the Company needs to mask its interest in control and in the strategic use of its public trust” (Fjellman 158).

Walt’s Dream Revisited

Walt Disney’s death marked the end of an era, but it did not undermine the ongoing success of Disney Productions, which had developed into a multinational corporation with a primarily national base of economic support. It had significant domestic and international holdings in the media industry, albeit relatively small by today’s standards. Yet its stability was soon threatened. The U.S. faltered in the 1970s, as it struggled to cope with dramatic change: the Civil Rights and Women’s Movements, the fallout from the Vietnam War, the oil shortages created by OPEC, the collapse of the auto industry and an ensuing recession. Disney stumbled too, as a “lack luster theme park company” (Grover vii). Its financial slump in the late 1970s and early 1980s left it with huge debts (Bryman 37-8). In 1981, costs from the construction of Tokyo Disneyland resulted in a 10 percent drop in net income. In 1983, the company’s motion pictures division lost $33.4 million. In 1984, it had to fend off two takeover bids (Bryman 38-42).

Yet there was more to Disney than theme parks. It still had a substantial catalogue of successful films, among which were the animated ‘classics’ that still earned money at the box office. It had a merchandizing and distribution network, a healthy public reputation and a central place in the American imagination. In essence, it was well positioned to enter, and indeed would be assisted by, the emerging global market. What it needed was a management team driven by the same kind of corporate ambition and values that drove Walt Disney. In 1984, Disney found its team: Michael Eisner, Frank Wells, who died in 1994, and Jeffrey Katzenberg, who left the company the same year. Building on Disney tradition, the team expanded and diversified Disney’s products,   acquired numerous other companies such as ABC/Capital City and ESPN, streamlined its operations, consolidated its workforce, cultivated new markets and eagerly pursued the use of new technologies. In effect, the company went transnational.

At the core of its strategy has been Disney Synergy, a concept that “Disney knew about … before it became a corporate cliché” (Gitlin 197). As Eisner himself notes, “The Disney stores promote the consumer products, which promote the theme parks, which promotes the TV shows. The TV shows promote the company. Roger Rabbit promotes Christmas at Disneyland” (Giroux 1). Similarly, “kids watching Winnie-the-Pooh or Mickey Mouse cartoons become a target market for Disney toys. Showing episodes of The Mickey Mouse Club … filmed at the Disney-MGM Studios Theme park, entice[s] 14-year olds into pressuring their parents to take them to Orlando” and so on (Grover 140). Disney ranks among the top six media companies in the world, in part because of synergy:

Nobody understand branding and merchandising better than Disney … Disney is evolving into …
‘the ultimate global consumer goods company.’ Disney has moved aggressively into China, with
seven [Disney] stores in Hong Kong … Disney has carefully intertwined its media brands with its
retail activities, and has done so on a global basis  (McChesney 1998  34).
Yet even with Eisner, an extremely adept corporate manager, in the driver’s seat, Disney has always been on a financial roller-coaster ride. Attempts to oust him over the past few years are not just a function of recent developments but of a long history of inconsistent achievement by the company.  In 1985, the Disney film unit scored hits with Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Good Morning, Vietnam and Three Men and a Baby. The company also received tremendous revenues from its video, TV syndication, and cable units (Grover 140). However, in 1989, the company released a series of “box office bombs” so that the “Walt Disney Company was in its deepest slump since Michael Eisner and Jeffrey Katzenberg arrived” (Grover 221). Yet a year later, with the huge success of Pretty Woman, Disney had pulled out of the slump.

This pattern continued through the 1990s. For example, the company lost money in both 1998 and 1999 but it posted a “profit of $1.9 billion on revenue of $25 billion in 2000. At the turn of 2001, the corporation bearing the founder’s name was bringing in $22 billion in annual sales; its market value was some $52 billion … The Disney style of cheery, chirpy fun is arguably America’s most potent export in popular culture” (Gitlin 197). By the end of the year, however, Disney witnessed its revenues decline in the wake of the events of September 11. Interestingly, three of the company’s most successful films over the past few years have been quite ‘unchirpy’ and serious adult-oriented ventures: The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable and Signs, which gave grossed $1.3 billion to date worldwide (Kelly D5). All deal with issues of loss, fear, death, hope and the supernatural or ‘unexplainable’, which might suggest that Disney has found a new audience. Or perhaps its existing audience also has a taste for gritty realism and despair, which might be an reflection of  the times in which we live.

As a hugely profitable, multi-billion dollar corporation, The Walt Disney Company has a vast global reach. It is involved in the manufacture, sale and distribution of animated and live action films, audio recordings, videos, toys, games, computer software, educational materials, and television programs (Bryman 43-47). It is heavily involved in publishing (Columbia Journalism Review 1-2). It produces live entertainment, such as Disney on Ice and The Lion King. It owns film studios, radio and television networks and stations, global and domestic cable channels, a TV production and distribution company, music recording labels, theme parks, resorts and a cruise line that stops at Disney’s own island in the Caribbean (Wasko, Phillips and Meehan 23).  It recently expanded its chain of high-tech arcade game stores worldwide. It also has partial holdings of many foreign media companies (McChesney 1998  34).

In addition, it owns office buildings, entertainment and sports complexes, a symphony orchestra, two sports teams (Gabler 118) and several special effects studios, including Walt Disney Imagineering, one of the world’s largest design studios and the company’s “main engine of innovation” (Kirsner 202). It is widely involved in digital distribution networks over the Internet. As of December 2000, there were 742 Disney Stores around the world (Wasko, Phillips and Meehan 22). It has extensive licensing arrangements with domestic and international retail outlets (Grover 141-142), and in fact, until recently it even controlled the rights to market the “name, image and logos of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police” (Wasko, Phillips and Meehan 23). It wields great power, some believe at the expense of the public,   as exemplified by its corporate takeover of West Forty-Second Street and Times Square in New York City (Mosco 5-7 and Giroux 157).

Park Expansion, A Wild Ride

In general, Disney theme parks have been very popular  and profitable ventures, especially since the opening of Disney World (Adams 156-157). There are eleven Disney parks around the world, all loosely modeled after the flagship Disneyland that opened in 1955. Disney Hong Kong just opened its doors to great fanfare and hype although it is too soon to tell if it has captured the imagination of the Chinese the way that Disney theme parks have enthralled the Japanese. Tokyo DisneySea, which was wholly financed by Japanese partners, opened in 2000 and has exceeded attendance goals, no doubt because the Japanese have a “stubborn affection for Disney” (Wasko, Phillips and Meehan 162). The most financially successful park to date has been Tokyo Disneyland (Kirsner 208), which is only 30% owned by the Walt Disney Company.

Other recent ventures such as Disney’s California Adventure (which has combined with Disneyland to form Disneyland Resort) and Animal Kingdom failed to meet projected opening targets in 2001 (Kirsner 209). Even Epcott Centre, the third-most visited park in the U.S. after Walt Disney World and Disneyland, had an attendance drop in 2001 of 15 percent (Kirsner 209).  Some attribute the slump to the competition from the “hundreds of other entertainment options, from Imax movies to massively multiplayer games” (Kirsner 204). It could also be that the numerous other competing theme parks launched by Disney’s success are hurting it (Davis 23). The Six Flags chain has a dozen parks in North America and its owner, Time Warner, “estimates that 85 percent of the U.S. population lives within a day’s drive … of a Six Flags park” (Davis 24). Yet these downturns are likely short-lived, as the Disney company seems to have a knack for overcoming its misfortunes.

What might not be just a temporary setback for Disney, and indeed for all identifiably American companies, however, is the instability of U.S. foreign relations. The events of 9/11 had a dire impact on the U.S. economy in general, and caused a major decline in tourism in the United States in particular – Disney theme parks suffered greatly, as did all such vacation destinations.   Early in 2005, the U.S. economy was showing signs of improvement, but the war in Iraq and the resulting financial and political costs continue to hamper a full recovery. It may turn out that a backlash to the American government’s policies in the Middle East will have a lasting and negative effect on U.S.- based transnational media corporations like Disney.

Demand for Disney

Walt Disney’s ‘vision’, and in particular its focus on the family, has been widely lauded for its contribution to the financial success of the company. Although it now considers university students as an important market (Wasko, Phillips and Meehan, 39), Disney still overwhelmingly targets, exploits and profits from an audience of children, for whom “Disney is a wish-landscape that combines fantasy, fun, and the opportunity to enter into a more colorful and imaginary world” (Giroux 6). As well, parents feel comfortable with, and even quite attached to, Disney products, from educational materials (Davis 281) to more overt forms of popular entertainment (Wasko, Phillips and Meehan 49). Disney takes advantage of the public’s perception of it:
Unlike … other large corporations, Disney is an icon of American culture and middle class family values. It actively appeals to both parental concerns and children’s fantasies as it works hard to transform every child into a lifetime consumer of Disney products and ideas. A contradiction emerges between Disney cutthroat commercial ethos and the Disney culture, which presents itself as a paragon of virtue and childlike innocence (Giroux 25-26).

A simplistic although common interpretation of Disney’s remarkable growth posits that it provides what the consumer wants. The interaction between supply, the product, and demand, the consumer, is considered to be a matter of choice: As Disney satisfies its customers, its markets expand. A “related claim is the range of products is greater, that is, the claim of more diversity and consumer choice. But looking at the breakdown of products made available … it may be … that consumers actually receive more of the same – multiplicity rather than diversity” (Wasko  484). In either case, a market eventually collapses under the weight of too many products. Most Disney commodities are not goods that are immediately destroyed in consumption: one Snow White video will last a while, one Mickey t-shirt can be worn repeatedly.

The question of the demand for, and popularity of, Disney remains. One answer is that Disney appeals to the ‘child in all of us’. The corollary of this is the appeal to nostalgia, a desire for more ‘innocent’ times. The theme parks and films like Winnie-The-Pooh exemplify this nostalgia and its ongoing presence: a new animated feature, Piglet’s Big Movie, “the best Pooh film yet,” was released just this past summer (Svejda quoted by Disney Enterprises  B4). A related and prevalent theory is that Disney produces quality entertainment, that it has the resources available to create commodities of superior caliber, to harness “creative talents capable of bringing forth unique assets that would stand the test of time and competition” (Grover 302).

Another theory suggests that Disney ‘borrows’ narratives and images from other countries and repackages them in a “simplified, smoothed down, prettified” form that is easily consumed (Gitlin 187). The stories are therefore appreciated both by a foreign audience and by a domestic audience that has emigrated from abroad. As well, because the stories are “universal” (Wasko, Phillips and Meehan 55), they appeal to those from outside the culture of origin. For example, from its early days, Disney mined Europe for material, turning to its “folklorists and storytellers – from Aesop, Grimm and Perrault to Hans Anderson, Kenneth Grahame and A.A. Milne – as sources for his animated films” (Allan XIV). Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Pinocchio are clear examples of this borrowing. Fantasia appropriates European music and ballet. More recent instances include The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Over the past decade, Disney has looked to other cultures for stories, such as Aladdin and Mulan.

Another school of thought suggests that it has been advertising, marketing and branding that has fueled the demand for Disney. Prior to the arrival of Wells and Eisner, Disney rarely advertised. As noted, it counted on synergy to promote its products. In addition, “Disney had relied traditionally on self-referential coadvertising and on word of mouth … Get the other guys to do it by convincing them that it’s a good deal. Right through the opening of EPCOT Center, Disney piggy-backed on the promotions of its corporate associates” (Fjellman 159). There is no question that the company has inundated the market not only with its products but also with its corporate brand: the name, logo and famous Walt Disney signature are ubiquitous.  Disney products seem to have a celebrity status of their own (Gabler 201-202). In effect, Disney’s popularity rides a wave of increasing commodity fetishism and a flood of mass consumption.

Yet as noted, consumption has its limit in a restricted pool of consumers. To maintain a demand for Disney commodities, the company has to pursue new markets, which it does with tremendous zeal (Wasko, Phillips and Meehan 18). Where no market exists, it has to develop one. The rise to prominence of Disney and other ‘first tier’ transnational media corporations who have increasing control over global distribution is a function of, and reason for, increased global consumerism. Disney and its competitors mobilize vast financial and human resources, and extensive political clout to pry open markets. In part, their successes can be attributed to global advertising (McChesney 1998  3 and 2001  5) and to a “strong base in the United States, by far the largest and most stable commercial media market” (McChesney 1998  4).

The Kingdom of Consumerism

A recurring theme in the political economy of Disney is consumerism and its impact on the individual, the society and the global economy in general. Consumerism, like the Disney company’s corporate culture, is a condition and effect of modernity, as well as a function of post-modernity. The particular and micro movements of Disney are woven into the universal and macro dynamics of monopoly capitalism, and thus must be examined in the context of the broader issue of global economic forces. Of the latter, consumerism has become a powerful engine of capitalism. In and of itself, consumerism may not be problematic — a market driven economy, even a tempered one like that of Canada, depends upon and grows because of consumerism — although the social and environmental costs of consumption in the modern world  are certainly frequently debated and often steeped in controversy. Nonetheless, consumerism has been shown to contribute to economic prosperity, which has provided political stability and opportunities for people to improve their lives, albeit clearly in varying degrees. A key problem, however, is that an overemphasis on, or unbridled pursuit of, consumerism precludes community and instead promotes the individual. To consume is to situate one’s needs and wants above those of others; to engage in, or perhaps more accurately to be engaged by, what C.B. Macpherson termed ‘Possessive Individualism’ (Babe 148). As many in a long line of prominent Canadian intellectuals from Harold Innis to Mark Kingwell have argued, unfettered individualism undermines civic responsibility, substituting personal gain for the public good, and commodity exchange for social interaction; we also become passive consumers instead of active producers — cultural ‘couch potatoes’, to use the vernacular.

The ripple effect of consumerism is apparent every day in many of our seemingly innocuous and so-called ‘individual’ choices. For example, when one buys a car for oneself or the family, one engages in a transaction that has implications for numerous others. Obviously, the purchase generates revenue for the manufacturer, dealer, salesperson, auto worker, gas producer, and so on. It also creates income for the various levels of government though taxation, and thus would seem to contribute to the public good, which is largely underwritten by taxes. However, car transit pollutes the environment, which is a local as well as a worldwide problem, and adversely affects public transit, as the latter’s costs and funding are tied to the number of people who use it. On a global level, the use of cars also drives the need for new sources of fuel, a situation that can lead to innovation, cooperation and mutual benefit. As often as not, unfortunately, it results in backwards-thinking and stale solutions, conflict, exploitation, and on occasion, war.

In a pluralist society, when the needs of the individual are prioritized over the needs of the many, the public may be harmed. In effect, consumerism can undermine democracy:

Since consumption is with its limits a satisfactory activity, it can be plausibly offered as a
commanding social purpose. At the same time, its ambiguity is such that it ratifies the
subjection of society to the operations of the existing economic system … the
consumption ideal is not only misleading, as a form of defence of the system, but
ultimately destructive to the broad general purposes of the society (Williams 188).
If the economic system is a truly democratic one, the needs of the individual are weighed against those of the group. Since capitalism, by its very nature, promotes individual prosperity and private ownership, Canada, like many first world nations, has adopted measures to maintain a balance in the economic system by restricting the ‘freedom’ of the market, and thus of the individual, in the interest of the collective. The Canadian government further attempts to protect the public good through a ‘safety net’ that includes such measures as the funding of social programs and universal public health care; these types of  interventions in the market are heavily criticized by our main trading partner, the United States, and often the target of legal attacks under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

The challenge that governments like ours face is in the form of an emerging economic system in which neither the individual citizen nor the collective public but rather the corporation is advantaged. This is especially a problem given the imbrication of Canada’s economy with that of the United States, where the corporation has been granted, in effect, the same rights as the individual under the 14th Amendment to the Constitution (which was originally intended to provide newly freed slaves with protection of their rights), even though the corporation has vastly superior resources and power. Transnational media companies like Disney exert tremendous pressure on global economics, mobilizing both financial and cultural capital to influence and monopolize communication systems and control their operations. In effect, if an ‘invisible hand’ ever guided the market, today it appears to be unabashedly directing the flow of trade, tightening the grip on economies, putting the squeeze on policy makers and guiding the penetration of currency into all aspects of culture in order to further concentrate wealth in the fists of the few.

Consumerism is central to Disney’s success, not just as an activity but as a way of life. The company benefits when consumerism operates not simply as a function of individual needs and desires, which is still a matter of choice, but as a function of prevailing ideology, which is a matter of no choice disguised as choice. A consumer culture truly exists when conditions are such that as one is socialized as a citizen, one is in fact socialized into being a consumer:

Thus the main argument here about consumerism is a political one: the techniques of modern
mass media marketing socialize by reproducing certain identities, values, and attitudes in
consumers. Media culture invites identification with diverse sets of images, meanings, and values
encouraging certain patterns of behaviour that tend to favour the consumption of its products.
This does not deny that an individual’s identity is also the product of complex and everyday
interactions with others and with institutions … But today, media and consumer identities certainly dominate (Morris 18).

In contemporary Western society, socialization is the result not just of an internalization of dominant values and beliefs, and capitalist discourses, but as well of the very act of consumption, which from an early age reinforces consumerism. “As commercial culture replaces public culture, and as the language of the market becomes a substitute for the language of democracy, consumerism appears to be the only kind of citizenship being offered to children” (Giroux 24). And while Disney products may represent a kind of symbolic security blanket for some, they also register as a social straitjacket for others: Disney’s hold on the childhood imagination is the firm grip of corporate control, the heavy fist of homogeneity.

Disney’s Transnational Media Empire

Related to issues of consumerism are the increasing consolidation and control of domestic and global communication systems — production, distribution and regulation — by a handful of transnational companies like Disney (McChesney 2001  3). “The communications infrastructure of most of the Third World has been privatized and turned over either to transnational corporations or to national collaborators with transnational capital” (Schiller 26). A recurring theme in critiques of transnational culture is the undermining of democratic rights,  ideals and movements by ideologies of the market place, and the non-democratic nature of mechanisms by which such values and beliefs are spread, entrenched and incorporated.

“Corporate capital, insistent on full access to the informational system to propagate its commercial and ideological messages, has demanded, and achieved, the privatization of the communication sector … in one country after another” (Schiller 14). This includes the U.S., where deregulation by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has been the trend for the past decade and a half  (Croteau and Hoynes 67), achieved in part by lobbying conducted by the National Association of Broadcasters and other media corporations, as well as by political funding. “Media corporations and their employees contributed $75 million to candidates for federal office and the two major political parties between 1993 and mid-2000. From 1996 to 2000 … the 50 largest media companies and four of their trade associations lobbied Congress and the executive branch to the tune of $111.3 million” (Kennedy 1). Such deregulation has opened the door to increased media convergence and concentration of capital. For example, without deregulation, Disney’s acquisition of Capital Cities/ABC would not have occurred (Croteau and Hoynes 44).

Early in 2003, the FCC, chaired by Republican Michael Powell, son of then Secretary of State Colin Powell, voted for reforms that would have relaxed ownership regulations and paved the way for more concentration of media holdings in the United States. Under the new laws, media giants such as Viacom (CBS), Time Warner, the Tribune Co., News Corp (Fox) and Disney, would have been allowed to “buy and sell properties as they please[d], thereby allowing them to ‘adapt, respond, and survive'” in an increasingly competitive media industry (Polman A3). However, the reforms elicited a flood of over 750,00 emails and letters of protest. A campaign to stop the deregulation was launched by a broad coalition of groups. It included a seemingly odd mixture of partners: the National Organization for Women, the National Rifle Association, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops and the National Council of Churches, as well as a group of small radio stations. Even CNN founder Ted Turner was opposed to the FCC reforms (Morton B1).

On September 3, 2003, a U.S. federal appeals court, in response to a legal challenge, ruled unanimously that the reforms could not be implemented until the litigation had been resolved. In addition, “the new regulations are already facing a challenge in Congress, where legislators  … [in] both the House and the Senate have begun the process to repeal at least one of the new rules, the one that makes it possible for the largest television networks to buy enough stations to reach 45 percent of the nation’s viewers, up from 35 percent” (Labaton 1). The outcome of the challenge to the FCC certainly will have immediate consequences for U.S. based media companies and their domestic markets. As well, it will have an impact on the global operations and aspirations of transnational corporations like Disney. The challenge represents, on one front, what some interpret as a growing resistance to American hegemony in the field of  global communication and cultural production.

However, some believe that what began as a project of American ‘cultural imperialism’ has become one of cultural combination and consolidation. “A worldwide flood of imagery and messages since the end of World War II … could be seen as American cultural imperialism. More recently, it has become transnational corporate cultural domination” (Schiller 39). Thus, to suggest that Disney is engaged in cultural imperialism  inaccurately conveys the complexities of today’s global communication market. “The misleadingly easy answer to the question of how American images and sounds became omnipresent is: American imperialism … But the empire strikes from inside the spectator as well as from outside” (Gitlin 179). As a dominant ideology of consumption has been naturalized, it has replaced or at least subsumed other arenas of ideology, and destabilized local, national and cultural boundaries and identities. The threat to democracy, therefore, is no longer perceived as American corporate culture domination, but what has evolved from it. “The dominant media firms increasingly view themselves as global entities” (McChesney 2001  2). Nonetheless, the “American economic machine remains a mighty engine … a near $6 trillion economy [that] cannot fail to be a tremendous force in the world system” (Schiller 28).

There is little comfort for exploited and oppressed people in the notion that media imperialism, the “colonization of communications space,” has replaced territorial imperialism, the colonization of physical space (Boyd-Barrett 163). That is, the site of struggle has shifted but the struggle remains. The sovereignty of the nation state  is challenged from both within and without its borders (Boyd-Barrett 167), as is the right of the citizen to self-determination. The role of the various national publics, and of the global public, in decision-making and the ability to intervene in political, social and economic matters is being minimized and constrained. The greatest threat, perhaps, is that “democratic identities are replaced by consuming patterns, and the good life is constructed in terms of what we buy” (Giroux 24).  This may in part explain the generally poor turnout at the polls during elections in Canada – why vote when you can own?

In the face of transnational hegemony, many people worldwide are engaged in a postmodern stage of “class struggle under capitalism” (McChesny 2001: 2). Some are intervening on a ‘theoretical’ level (Wasko 477), and others on a ‘street’ level in the form of protests, boycotts and culture-jamming, etc. Still others aspire to repel the “one-way” flow of transnational exploitation by developing their own local and regional cultural products (Sinclair, Jacka and Cunnigham 6-7). Related to this is the idea that Disney culture is co-opted through importation. For example, Tokyo Disneyland is not considered by many Japanese as ‘Disney in Japan’ but rather represents “the active appropriation of Disney by the Japanese” (Raz 3). Parallel to this theory is the belief that to understand the culture of Tokyo Disneyland, one needs to consider “reverse orientalism” – Disney’s colonization by the Japanese (Hendry 13). Clearly, notions of cultural adaptation, resistance and survival are bound up with communication and the media. Social theorist Henry Giroux believes that, “Organizing to democratize the media and make it accountable to a participating citizenry also demands engaging in the hard political and pedagogical task of opening up corporations such as Disney to public interrogation and critical dialogue” (Giroux 11).

Conclusion: Infinity and Beyond Reason

There are two ways to conclude this paper. One is to consider the future of the Walt Disney Company, the object of this study. It seems to be approaching a crossroads again, as is the American economy in general. Michael Eisner is fast approaching retirement and the company is coming to terms with a shifting media landscape in which the public’s appetite for all things new  might undermine its loyalty to an ‘old fashioned’ company like Disney. Clearly, one of the features that most links Disney past and present has been the absolutely central role of leadership inspired by ‘vision’. Walt Disney may have been a Republican (Schickel 157) and Eisner may be a Democrat (Byrne and McQuillan 7), but both have demonstrated strikingly similar ideals in their uncompromising commitment to capitalism and the pursuit of unbridled accumulation. Their politics converge at the point where wealth and power are concentrated in the hands of the few. From a business perspective, both men have been strong leaders, but Eisner has been the more successful corporate manager. Thus, if history treats Walt a little kinder than his successor, it will no doubt be because of the power of nostalgia and narrative.

Once upon a time in America, the mining for profit of trivial pleasures such as miniature trains and family amusements could be construed as benign and benevolent entrepreneurship. One could earn a reputation as a visionary for looking inward to one’s imagined past. Now, however, vision in the corporate world entails looking out over an expanding and vast “empire” (Grover 302) and noticing that it doesn’t quite stretch far or wide enough into one’s imagined future. Its borders may soon be beset upon by armies of a growing global trend, large transnational media corporations not based in the U.S., eager and equipped for the take-over of publicly traded companies and public communication spaces.

The other way to conclude this paper is to consider the people who have little choice but to live and toil in a world increasingly dominated and circumscribed by consumer culture and ideology, the subjects of hegemony who are implicated in Disney’s success, or more precisely, in the success of the transnational media entity. To accept at face value that such a situation is either a necessary consequence or a temporary condition, a growing pain that signals progress, an effect and not a goal of corporate capital investment, is to ignore or fail to question the ‘political’ in the political economy of globalization, and to sidestep a debate that is raging all around. Over the past two years, it has specifically meant to feel little or no guilt when watching reports about the rising civilian death toll in Iraq where American soldiers are supposedly in the service of ‘liberating the people, eliminating tyranny and restoring peace’ in the world.

At present it means buying into the idea that post-war Iraq will emerge as a better place for its citizens, as a democratically run, self-sufficient nation. It is a compelling vision, and an enticing media construction. However, I have to admit that I have my doubts about the reality of that American dream, about its ‘Hollywood’ ending. I suspect instead that strong ties to the current U.S. administration will result in the rebuilding of a regime in which the terms of freedom are transcribed in corporate code and inscribed in transnational script: Iraq Inc. And perhaps I’m making a leap here, yet I can’t help but feel that, while Disney isn’t at the helm of the black ship  of renewed U.S. imperialism, it certainly is bound up in the direction of its navigational course. As former Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney noted, “all roads lead to Washington … If you want to live in Disney World, you can believe something else” (Salutin 1). And, perhaps, the opposite is also the case.

Ian Esquivel is a Media teacher for the Toronto District Board of Education, and a member of the Executive of the Association for Media Literacy.

(These lesson ideas can be adapted to the Secondary classroom – ed.)

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NOTES

_{1. Even in cultural critiques of Disney, a kind of nostalgia exists that distances the contemporary company from the Disney of the past, an enterprise in which corporatism is seen to have played a lesser part (Bryman 145 and Davis 21). This is ironic, given the role of nostalgia in producing and maintaining Disney mythology (Giroux 6). Thus while Walt Disney was highly regarded by his fellow Americans, to the point that in 1963 he received the title “Walt Disney, Ambassador of Freedom for the U.S.A.” (Grosvenor 3), Michael Eisner is often portrayed as having a “dark side” (Bryman 49). Similarly, the modern Disney company has been accused of a variety of anti-social acts. These include supplanting individual, creative expression with corporate, commercial “speech” (Schiller 44), the commodification of history (Wallace 148-9) and memory (Giroux 5), racial stereotyping (Byrne and McQuillan, 94-98), and the promotion of anti-Christian values (Giroux 85), among others (Byrne and McQuillan 1). Under the rubric of globalization, the Walt Disney Company’s political and economic activities are routinely scrutinized and criticized. “Theories of cultural imperialism are well and alive in the literature devoted to Disney productions around the world ” (Raz: 15).}

2. There were also apprentices at Hyperion Avenue who, although poorly paid to do routine work, were nonetheless under the tutelage of Don Graham, an instructor from the prestigious Chouinard Art School in Los Angeles. Again, this was less a matter of Disney’s concern for his employees and more a question of strategy. Disney wanted to develop a pool of trained animators so that a labour shortage would not occur.

3. As early as 1931, Disney had been pushing his employees to produce, and in the process “driving himself in the time-honored tradition of the American success ethic” (Schickel 142) to the brink of physical and emotional collapse. He stated that, “I kept expecting more from my artists than they were giving me, and all I did all day long was pound, pound, pound … Costs were going up … so I cracked up” (Schickel 143). Under doctor’s order, he embarked on a well-needed vacation, took up horseback riding and polo and by 1932, he had recovered enough to plunge back into his work. He was obsessed with his career and his company’s growth, and loath to share management duties. As the decade progressed, his paternalism and parsimony became more evident in his dealings with his employees. He would prowl the halls of Hyperion at night, sneaking glimpses into the work of his animators, or leaving notes for maintenance staff. He would repeat this pattern years later at Disneyland, where he would patrol the park grounds at night to ensure that all was in order.

4. Of note is that Disney was accused of trying to “assuage a worsening labor situation” by providing gifts of stock, rather arbitrarily, in lieu of holiday bonuses, a move that backfired when disenchanted employees dumped the stocks and drove their value down (Schickel 248-9). The irony, of course, is twofold: the loss of value of the stocks translated into a loss of value of the company, which affected workers’ wages as well as Disney’s worth as a company over the course of the next few years.

5. In fact, of the four animated film releases over the course of the war years, The Reluctant Dragon, Fantasia, Dumbo and Bambi, only Dumbo fared well at the box office (Schickel 267). It was primarily because of government contracts for training and propaganda films during the war that the company stayed afloat, which also caused some to accuse Disney of being a ‘war profiteer’ (Schickel 268-271).

6. The extent to which labour relations had soured was evident when the company moved into its new studio in 1940. Many of the employees were disenchanted in part because the luxuriousness of the accommodations seemed to manifest Disney’s financial success (however tenuous at that point) from which they had largely been excluded. As well, the studio’s physical layout seemed to underscore the hierarchy and unequal treatment that all but the animators who were in “current standing” with Disney received (Schickel 248). His disregard for his workers was evident in his treatment of them and in his failure to increase salaries except when it served his own purposes. In addition, many of those workers had not only been denied the bonuses that they felt they had been promised, they also faced layoffs.

7. Upon scrutiny, it also becomes evident that Disney’s preoccupation with children’s entertainment was only ever marginally about children and always centrally about his own interests in childhood as an imagined state that he could bring to life through a convergence of technology and commerce. He loved to tinker with mechanical devices (Schickel 282), almost to the point of obsession (Marling 35 and 42), but always with a view to their application in the machinery of profit (The Project On Disney 81).

8. As a postmodern retelling of The Tempest, The Little Mermaid, makes overt the connection between patriarchy and imperialism, whether it is territorial or cultural (White 192). Similarly, Pocahontas, which appropriates a Native American icon and narrative, operates as “a similacrum of neo-colonialism” (Byrne and McQuillan 27). Clearly, Disney is not, nor ever has been, avuncular except in the paternalistic sense. This was evident in Disney’s treatment of workers described above, a large number of whom were women required to labour in a sexist environment (Allan 178). It is evident in the fact that Disney animated films help maintain a New World Order (Byrne and McQuillan). As a corporation, Disney always already exerts hegemonic control, both ideological and material, over its household: the physical site, the market, the consumer and the worker.

9. Actually, Disneyland represents the second theme park to incorporate and express the ethos of the world expositions. In the late 1800s, three amusement areas at Coney Island were the first North American sites where exhibits, performances, rides and activities were unified under central themes: Steeplechase Park, Luna Park and Dreamland. By the late 1940s when Disney concluded that amusement parks, with their working-class overtones (Bryman 93), offered no wholesome entertainment for middle class families like his (Bryman 11), Coney Island had unfortunately lost the splendour of its “Spectacular Era” (Kyriazi 69). In addition to concession stands and games, the three parks had imported aspects of the many international world and industrial expositions. For example, the 1873 Vienna World’s Fair introduced a “large array of machines … which changed the mild, relaxing atmosphere of the pleasure garden into a fast-paced, noisy, and exciting type of park” (Kyriazi 15). The first amusement ride to appear at Coney Island, the Iron Tower, was brought from the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial Exposition (Kyriazi 32). Many features of the parks foreshadowed Disneyland and Disney World (Kyriazi 58-68).

10. Technological innovation has always seemed to be a driving force for Disney theme parks. Among the many innovations introduced at Disneyland in 1956 were Audio-Animatronics (robots that move, speak and sing), and a monorail; there was also a ‘Carousel of Progress’ where new electronic gadgets were displayed (Wallace 140). In the 1970s, Disney World provided simulated space travel, 3-D films, and an updated, less sexist ‘Carousel of Progress’ (Bryman 132). The latter was a sophisticated Audio-Animatronics show “originally designed for General Electric for the 1964 World’s Fair … which relates how our lives have improved through electricity and electrical goods” (Bryman 69). More recently, ‘Mission: SPACE’, a sophisticated simulated flight to Mars, showcases the latest in computer, animation and robotic technologies, and is a “marvel of imagination and pioneering science” (Kirsner 204). In the jargon of Disney, it is a visionary feat of ‘imagineering’. According to retired NASA astronaut Winston Scott, Mission: SPACE is as “close to a rocket ride as most humans will ever get” (Gazette J6). Over the years, each of the various Disney venues has become a type of contemporary world exposition, a permanent showcase of technology where the ‘theme’ is consumption and the product is ultimately the public (Bryman 88 and 159).

11.The “American pavilion took the form of a prefabricated Mt. Vernon, stuffed with artefacts from George Washington’s home” (Rydell 72). Behind the home in a cluster of annexes, were “exhibits from its overseas territories” (Rydell 75). In the Philippine annex, “wax figures depicted Filipino ‘types’. Photographs, charts, and dioramas portrayed the ‘rapid social, educational and sanitary development realized through the kindly tutorship of the United States’ … another annex shared by Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, and Hawaii, [offered] recorded music together with photographs of ‘bronzed men riding surfboards’ and ‘women dancers in hula skirts'” (Rydell 76). As well, there was a twenty-three piece Native Indian band “in full tribal regalia [that] struck up the ‘Marseillaise’ to the beat of tom-toms” (Rydell 77) as visiting dignitaries assembled. The U.S. had put its ‘colonized’ people on display as if they were possessions, a situation repeated at the Chicago World’s Fair in 1933 (Rydell 83).

12. In the parks, labour is also figuratively undermined, absorbed by the commodity  — the park experience — which is fetishized. Whereas the toil of the animators, the process of making a film, is rendered ‘invisible’ at the level of projection or broadcast, erased by the here and now, the toil of the park employees disappears at the “level of architecture” (The Project On Disney 157) and is erased by language. Workers are “cast members” who perform, and consumers are “guests” who visit. There is, semantically, no work in a Disney theme park, only play (Bryman 107).

13. Or, as Janet  Wasko prefers to see it, Eisner and his Disney team engaged in “repackaging and recycling”  its products (Wasko, Phillips and Meehan 17).

14. In “The Untold Story: How corporate takeovers make the media less curious” journalist Nikki Finke notes that “after buying ABC in 1995, Eisner declared on the record, ‘I would prefer ABC not cover Disney.’ Interesting that, just a few days after this Eisner interview was broadcast on National Public Radio’s Fresh Air, ABC news boss David Westin killed the network’s story which examined whether Disney’s policy of not running criminal background checks on all new hires allowed for the employment of convicted pedophiles at its theme parks and resorts. ‘Are you crazy?’ Westin reportedly said when the story’s instigator, Brian Ross, kept insisting the fruit of his four-month investigation should air, according to the behind-the-scenes account in Brill’s Content. Westin ‘concluded that the script did not meet ABC News editorial standards.’ It’s not just no ABC coverage of Disney, but no criticism, either. When Barbara Walters used her ABC show The View to express dismay at Disney’s attempt to replace Ted Koppel with David Letterman, she received a verbal drubbing from Disney president Bob Iger in Vanity Fair.”

15. Not everyone is thrilled by Disney theme parks. The battle over its plan to build its Disney America theme park in the vicinity of a national war monument, Manassas National Battlefield Park, is well documented. Outraged citizens and historians mobilized against the Disney move through a public relations campaign. Disney never built the park, partly because it didn’t want to engage in any activity that would tarnish its image or garner it negative press. Historians have often criticized Disney for its treatment of the past, particularly when it involved a rewriting of American history, as in the case of the film Pocahontas.

16. The distinction made here between EPCOT and Disney World fulfills a particular purpose. Nonetheless,  the fact is that, as of 2001, the Magic Kingdom (i.e. Disney World), EPCOT, the Disney-MGM Studio Theme Park, the resorts and all facilities on Disney’s 29,000 acres in Florida operate under the name Walt Disney World Destination Resort (Wasko, Phillips and Meehan 23).

17. Ironically, given the huge popularity of, and overall profit derived from, its domestic parks, Disney has struggled to export intact its theme park model. For example, the financially successful Tokyo Disney was “not a perfect copy of the original” (Raz) but rather a uniquely Japanese “kind of cultural product” (Davis 21), an adaptation of the original (Hendry 91-92). EuroDisney was more of a replica of the original, a transplanted American park that has struggled since its opening in 1992 (Wallace 162). This is partly due to huge debts from start-up costs (Grover 245) but also because of its identification as an American attraction. Only in 2002 did the park become financially viable after it was re-branded as Disneyland Paris (Bryman 80) and found a new backer to refinance it, a Saudi Arabian prince.

18. Martin Morris provides useful and well-articulated insights into the importance of such branding in the political economy of capitalism in “Contradictions of Post-modern Consumerism and Resistance”, pages 9-11.

19. Under the guise of democratic rights, the contemporary Disney, like its corporate peers, goes to great lengths to protect its ‘product’, such as successfully lobbying the U.S. government to pass the “Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act”, the effect of which was to extend Disney’s copyright on Mickey Mouse for  two more decades. Otherwise, it “would have begun entering the pubic domain in 2003” (Ticoll 1), a situation the company no doubt would have found intolerable – it even has used its copyright to threaten daycare centres in which the likeness of Mickey and Minnie Mouse has been painted on walls. On February 28, 2002, Eisner appeared before the United States Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation. He was there to argue that legislation should be passed to protect digital distribution over broadband and broadcast systems by censoring the “software that powers the independent Internet … the only national public voice most [people] have” (Marti 2). Eisner’s argument was  that media companies such as Disney needed to be able to protect their intellectual properties from’ theft’. To ensure that protection, Eisner was asking for, and received, the government’s support to further restrict the rights of individuals for the sake of protecting the rights of corporations through legislation. In 1998, the U.S. government, under pressure from an industry lobby led by Disney, passed the “Digital Millennium Copyright Act” which makes it a crime to distribute any “technology that circumvents the industry’s electronic locks on books, films, articles, software, or songs – even though circumvention itself is not always illegal, and even though a ban on technology strikes directly at scientific research” (Heins 2). Similarly, yet less successfully, in 1971, the Disney  company tried to block the importation of a study by two Marxist academics, Ariel Dorfman and Armand Mattelart, that critiqued the corporation. Disney claimed that it wasn’t the content of the study to which it objected, but rather the use of the “cartoons the authors choose to use to exemplify their argument” (Byrne & McQuillan 16). ). The U.S. Customs agency rejected the claim but restricted the number of books to be imported to 1500 copies.

20. Neil Gabler offers a slight spin on the notion of cultural imperialism by suggesting that the U. S. has also been ‘colonized’ by the transnational media system. The entertainment industry has so infused the daily life and psyche of Americans, that it seems “to confirm Jean Baudrillard’s observation that  ‘Disneyland is presented as imaginary in order to make us believe that the rest is real, when in fact all of Los Angeles and the America surrounding it are no longer real, but of the order of the hyperreal” (Gabler 213). In essence, Gabler argues that the demand for media products such as Disney supplies has been internalized and naturalized to such an extent that it has become an essential need. Worth noting is that Hendry pursues the Baudrillard line of thought but applies it quite differently to the Japanese situation in the context of resistance to Disney cultural imperialism. Hendry maintains that such imperialism is undermined by a rejection of the American obsession with simulation and infantilism. A variation on Gabler’s theory is that Disney has managed to colonize the public imagination, to corporatize the public sphere and public spaces, to “shape public consciousness through its enormous economic holdings and cultural power” (Giroux 156).

21. Manuel Castells implies that the nation state has already collapsed in the face of globalization:  “After the demise of statism as a system … capitalism thrives throughout the world, and it deepens its penetration of countries, cultures and domains of life … It is , however, a different kind of capitalism … It is informational capitalism” (358).

22. This transnational ideology is evident at Disney World’s Adventureland where the “shopper journeys from one culturally coded geography to another … A world comprised of distinct cultures and histories melted into an exotic – but homogenized – totality. By comparison … EPCOT’s World Sh0wcase appears retrograde for its insistence on a world defined by discrete nation states, each marketing its national products” (The Project On Disney 41-2). In effect, World Showcase is yesterday’s version of tomorrow (The Project On Disney 82-83), while the “rest of Disney is actually more future oriented in its globalized presentation of production and consumption” (The Project On Disney 42). Visitors to the park “fully participate in the ideology of global capitalism, for which the duties of citizenship are equated with the practice of shopping. Such a world offers each and every shopper the experience of companionship with the rest of the global community through purchases” (The Project on Disney 43). As citizenship is reconfigured as consumerism, power becomes defined as the power to purchase commodities, but political and economic power overwhelmingly remains in the hands of those who own and control the means of cultural production, the ruling elites of the media.

23. The ‘black ship’ refers to the arrival in Tokyo Bay in1853 of four U.S war ships under the command of Commodore Matthew Perry who proclaimed that America was ready to open trade with Japan whether it was prepared to or not (Raz 204).