Page 176 - The Disneyization of Society

IMPLICATIONS OF DISNEYIZATION

consumer as many opportunities as possible to make purchases and therefore to
keep them as long as possible in the theme park, mall, or whatever. Emotional
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labour is the oil of the whole process in many ways: in differentiating otherwise
identical goods and services, as an enactment of theming, and as a means for
increasing the inclination to purchase merchandise.

Structures of similarity

The direction that these reflections are pointing is to suggest that systemscapes
like Disneyization and McDonaldization constitute templates for the way goods
and services are presented and delivered in modern society. When exported
abroad they are capable of being adapted to local conditions, circumstances and
culture in numerous ways by both corporations and consumers. They do not
determine the forms that institutions will assume. Instead, they provide templates
that allow variation in the concrete forms that institutions can take on. However,
there is a crucial difference here between Disneyization and McDonaldization.
While there is evidence from studies of the export of McDonald’s abroad and its
reception among overseas consumers to suggest that McDonaldization should not
automatically be associated with homogeneity of appearance and reaction, 31 it
also needs to be recognized that McDonaldization is considerably more prone to
creating a sense of homogeneity than Disneyization. In fact, one of the dimen-
sions of McDonaldization – predictability – is very much associated with the drift
towards standardization. As Ritzer puts it:
Rationalization involves the increasing effort to ensure predictability from one time or place to
another. In a rational society people prefer to know what to expect in all settings and at all times.
They neither want nor expect surprises. … In order to ensure such predictability over time and place,
a rational society emphasizes such things as discipline, order, systematization, formalization, routine,
consistency, and methodical operation. 32

In other words, homogeneity and standardization lie at the heart of
McDonaldization. While McDonald’s restaurants frequently adapt their overseas
menus slightly or adjust to local uses of their restaurants, such as the practice of
treating them as leisure centres in parts of East Asia, 33 the basic features of a
McDonald’s restaurant are usually intact and highly predictable in terms of the
food and the manner of its presentation. Thus, as a systemscape, McDonaldization
is capable of some adaptation to local conditions, but the emphasis on predictability
tends to propel it towards homogeneity and standardization.
Beck, for example, has linked McDonaldization with homogenization. He
writes:

The keyword here has become McDonaldization. According to this view, there is an ever greater
uniformity of lifestyles, cultural symbols and transnational modes of behaviour. In the villages of