Page 10 - The Disneyization of Society

Chapter One

Disneyization

Mini Contents

Disneyization not Disneyfication 5
Trivialization and sanitization 6
Reflections on Disneyization 10
Conclusion 12

In this book, I make the case that more and more sectors of society and the economy
are being infiltrated by a process I call Disneyization. By Disneyization I mean
simply:

the process by which the principles of the Disney theme parks are coming to dominate more
and more sectors of American society as well as the rest of the world.

I see the principles that are described in this book as infiltrating many and a grow-
ing number of areas of social, cultural, and economic life. Others have drawn
attention to the way in which many areas of modern life are coming to take on
the manifestations of a theme park, such as when a Times journalist referred to
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Canary Wharf in London as ‘theme park city’. In this book I go beyond such
general allusions to the growing influence of the Disney theme parks on social life
by delineating, in more precise terms, the specific theme park principles that I see
seeping through our society. In other words, the project with which this book is
concerned is a more analytic assessment of the manifestation of Disney theme
parks’ principles than is typically undertaken. At the same time, I will emphasize
that we cannot attribute the dispersion of these principles solely to the rise of the
Disney theme parks, since they clearly predate the parks themselves. The Disney
theme park principles may well have leaked into our social institutions and prac-
tices without the aid of the parks themselves. However, it is also likely that the
high profile of the parks and the frequency with which they are held up as
models in a variety of areas – for theming, for their architecture, for their trans-
formation of shopping into play, for their smiling ever-helpful employees, and so
on – have contributed greatly to the circulation of the underlying principles
described in this book.

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