Page 18 - The Disneyization of Society

DISNEYIZATION

the company with a further opportunity to promote its image and to roll out further
its homogenizing view of the world and the corporation’s licensed wares.
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The tone of such accounts is almost relentlessly negative. Even Walz’s account,
which recognizes the quality of much of Thorson’s cartoon work, also acknowledges
that the cartoons of his Warner period are considerably tamer and less sharply
perceptive than the animation that took place in the years after Thorson’s
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departure when his influence on the studio had begun to diminish. However, it
is precisely the negative tone that is the problem, because Disneyfication has
become a synonym for depthless products. It has become difficult to discuss the
impacts of Walt Disney and his company in a neutral tone when employing
Disneyfication as shorthand for discussing the nature of those impacts. Moreover,
the emphasis tends to be upon cultural products like stories and historical repre-
sentations rather than upon wider changes in culture and the economy. The
mention of the Disneyfication (or Disnification) of Times Square by writers like
Ross and Giroux calls attention to the influence of Disney in the area but does
little more than that. There is even a vagueness about the term. The focus in
Walz’s definition of Disneyfication as involving sentimentalization, simplifica-
tion and a programmed way of doing things is only partly followed through
in the analysis of the Warner cartoons, where the emphasis is on such features
as the cuteness of the characters, which have only a loose connection with
the definition.
In other words, the problem for a social scientist confronting a discussion of the
wider impact of the Disney company and the emblematic aspects of its operations
is that the term with the widest currency – Disneyfication – has become tainted with
a largely negative view of the company and its influence. Moreover, Disneyfication
has largely become associated with a particular stance on that impact, namely
that it is mainly to do with sanitization and trivialization. Even then, the brief
coverage of a few definitions suggests that it does not have a singular meaning
and is not necessarily applied in a consistent or rigorous way.
There are exceptions to this last point. Warren writes about the Disneyfication
of the metropolis and as such is concerned with the way in which the Disney
parks have been taken to represent ‘a whole approach to urban planning’. 25
Disneyfication is not explicitly defined, but can be inferred from the components
of the Disney city. First, it is a social order which is controlled by an all-powerful
organization. Second, we find a breach between production and consumption
which is achieved ‘through the visual removal of all hint of production and the
blanketing of consumption with layers of fantasy so that residents are blinkered
from seeing the actual labor processes that condition and define their lives’. 26
Third, it is only residents’ capacity to consume that is viewed as, in any sense,
significant or important. Warren shows that in addition to the emulation of
planning principles that can be discerned in the Disney theme parks, Disney
representatives have sometimes acted as urban planning consultants, as in the case