Page 174 - The Disneyization of Society

IMPLICATIONS OF DISNEYIZATION

Disneyland and Disneyland Paris have adapted many attractions and other
aspects of the parks to local sensibilities, this is not what Disneyization is about.
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As previously argued, it is about principles to do with the production and delivery
of goods and services. In a sense, Disneyization could be regarded as more worry-
ing for the critics of the notion of globalization as an homogenizing force than
the transplanting of Disney theme parks abroad. It is potentially more worrying
because Disneyization, like McDonaldization, is a more insidious process: it is less
conspicuous in its emergence than the appearance of magic kingdoms (and the
various other symbols of globalization, such as McDonald’s, Starbucks coffee
shops, Coca-Cola, and so on) on nations’ doorsteps. In other words, finding adap-
tations and local uses of Disney theme parks should not lead us to think that they
denote or necessarily entail adaptations to and local uses of Disneyization.
None of what has been said previously should be taken to imply that there are
likely to be no processes of local adaptation or resistance or culturally-specific uses
in relation to Disneyization. Emotional labour has been a particularly prominent
site for resistance, as studies of the local reception of McDonald’s restaurants
demonstrate. During the early period of the restaurant’s arrival in Moscow, people
standing in queues had to be given information about such things as how to
order. 25 In addition, they had to be told: ‘the employees inside will smile at you.
This does not mean that they are laughing at you. We smile because we are happy
to serve you’. Watson remarks on the basis of his fieldwork in Hong Kong that
people who are overly congenial are regarded with suspicion, so that a smile is not
necessarily regarded as a positive feature. 26 Also, consumers did not display any
interest in the displays of friendliness from crew personnel. It is not surprising,
therefore, that the display of emotional labour is not a significant feature of the
behaviour and demeanour of counter staff in McDonald’s in Hong Kong. Watson
says that: ‘Instead, they project qualities that are admired in the local culture:
competence, directness, and unflappability. … Workers who smile on the job are
assumed to be enjoying themselves at the consumer’s (and the management’s)
expense.’ 27
Similarly, in her research on fast-food restaurants in New York, Talwar found
that the requirement to express emotions was often a problem for managers of the
outlets in immigrant areas. For example, she was told by a Malaysian manager of
a restaurant in New York’s Chinatown:

If you are smiling to them [Chinese customers], first of all they think what is it that you want since
you are smiling? Every day you are smiling to them [customers] and he or she is trying to smile with
you but the first time you are smiling at them they are so shocked, they [customers] are thinking,
why is this lady smiling? I receive a lot of letters. One letter asked why they [employees] are smiling
here. 28

Among the Inuit of Greenland, it appears that there is no tradition of smiling, so
that services are frequently administered with a scowl rather than a smile. According