A Picture's Worth a Thousand Words

This past Wednesday night (1/21/15) Marketplace hosted a Disney themed night. Among the food featured was Nemo's Clam Chowder, Elsa's Frozen Gelato, Barbossa's Jerk Snapper, and my favorite, Pooh's Spare Ribs. Weird combination? Maybe. Fun time? Definitely.

Henry Giroux Response

In his work "The Disneyfication of Children's Culture," Giroux describes the need for us to look at Disney films as teaching influences and not just forms of entertainment. Although this view would suggest a neutral take on the motives of Disney, this isn't actually the case. One of his main topics is the noting of stereotypes about races and gender roles that are accentuated in a number of films, something that was novel and interesting. At least for me anyways. After all, learning that The Little Mermaid encourages feminine dependence and that Aladdin is about as racist as can be will make you question your childhood. Nevertheless, it definitely opened my eyes in many ways.

Overall I thought Giroux's argument was very logical. Although the organization could have been a bit better, with headlined sections rather than ambiguous roman numerals, his points were coherent. He starts with some personal background information, continues by leading in to his thesis, and finally using critical analysis of films and Disney's business as a whole to corroborate his claim. This is to say he actually had tangible examples, which is always a good thing. Yes, the text was rather tense which usually has me running, but it was also funny. It's phrases like "They also surrender the responsibility to challenge increasing attempts by corporate moguls and conservative evangelicals to reduce generations of children to either consumers for new commercial markets or Christian soldiers for the evolving Newt Gingrich world order" that make a work memorable. Funny yes, but colorful metaphors like this also served a point.

Nevertheless, there were definitely points I disagreed with. Giroux often described the Disney Corporations two motives for operating as being to earn profit and to spread conservative views across America. However, I would argue that the latter is simply a bi-product of the former. If you read my previous blog post, you probably know by now that I like money. Money's good, and that's all the really matters in a business. In the 90s, most of America held fairly traditional views about gender and race relationships and by making movies that didn't overstep these accepted customs in this time (which is the time frame of the majority of the movies Giroux references) Disney was able to make his films desirable to the biggest possible audience. In this sense, the conservative views stem from the desire of profit and as society evolves, Disney likely will too. And they have. Films featuring different races (such as The Princess and the Frog) and films with more independent female characters (like Brave) signal this trend.

Overall, though, the critical essay was something I generally agreed with and it provided us with a good introduction to this course. Good job Giroux.

Janet Wasko Response

To quote the great (even at times godly) Jay-Z, "I'm not a businessman - I'm a business, man." After close analysis, it seems Jay-Z pretty much sums up Janet Wasko's work "Challenging Disney Myths" about as well as a person can in one sentence. All jokes aside, the main point from the piece is definitely to show how the life of Walt Disney and the company Disney interact together and how the perceptions about each developed over time.

As a kid, Disney was pretty much around me at all times. Whether I was watching Lion King with my sister in the family room or drinking from my Mickey Mouse sippy cup, the influence Disney had on me (and most other children, as my experiences were pretty common) is truly remarkable. Having such nostalgic memories about the Disney corporation is perhaps why it can be difficult to separate the magical characters we all grew to love as kids from the business side of Disney. I thought Wasko did a good job of distinguishing the two sides. However, it shouldn't take an economist to realize that money matters and companies won't produce unless they can make a profit. Like CEO Michael Eisner says in the article, "We have no obligation to make art. We have no obligation to make a statement. To make money is our only objective."

While Wasko was successful at reiterating this point, I do disagree with the stance she takes on the matter, as she seems to be overly critical of the profit-driven motive that the Disney corporation has demonstrated. She derisively states that a video documentary of Walt Disney is in the works and how "of course" there is an online gift shop to buy biographies and other books. It is statements like this I disagree with. The truth is that money makes the world go round and I applaud any company that can carve a successful niche for itself. After all, no one is criticizing Nike for selling shoes or Apple for selling phones.

I think the same general statement can be said about Disney's life in general, another thing in which Wasko is critical. She draws attention to how the image of Walt Disney is different from the actual man. He is mentioned as being from a big city rather than a small town, acting reclusive and demanding rather than fatherly and comforting, and being power-hungry rather than humble. The fact that Walt Disney was able to focus attention towards his "magical" product while painting a positive image of himself is commendable, not erroneous. In fact, it should be argued that this is the goal of many businessmen and that many of the top entrepreneurs around the world have had similar success. In particular there are two points that Wasko states about Disney the man to argue against his serene public image that I find ridiculous. She states that he was quite bossy and thinks this should stain his image. However, this should be thought of as a positive, a sign he was a good boss. She also claims that acting as the face of the company and taking credit for the initial animations (even though he had help) was a bad thing. To this, I say that this will always be the norm. Bill Gates had Steve Wozniak and Michael Jordan had Scottie Pippen, but only Gates and Jordan are household names. That's just the way things will always be. There has to be a Batman whenever there's a Robbin.

While in these ways I thought Wosko was wrongly critical of Disney, both the company and the man, there were a number of valid points she brought forward in the piece. For one, the argument about much of Disney being geared towards adults was particularly strong. Obviously Disney holdings such as ESPN, ABC, etc. aren't reliant on children, but her point that Disney World isn't either stuck with me. She describes how in order for something to be family-geared (as many of us picture Disney as a whole being) there has to be aspects aimed at different demographics. The example of Winnie the Pooh was useful to express this view. Finally, the research done on the gender roles and also race roles in Disney movies was also fascinating and credible. In these areas, Wasko's reservations towards the wholesomeness of Disney seemed fair.

Hello my name is...

Hello my name is Noah Gray, but if you're reading this, odds are you already knew that. Although it's an impossible task for anyone to describe himself in a couple hundred words, I'll try my best. For starters, I'm from Atlanta, Georgia and have lived in the same house my entire life. My family is relatively small - I have my parents, of course, an older sister, and a dog named Charlie (although he's a little schnauzer, he is quite mean.) As far as interests are concerned, it's pretty simple. I love sports. Sports, sports, sports. I've been playing soccer as long as I can remember and, while it may sound cheesy to say, there's no other feeling quite like being out on the pitch. I played practically everyday in high school either with my school or club team and it's a big part of who I am. In addition to soccer, I've played baseball, football, tennis, and basketball (yes basketball even if I'm only 5'6", although that isn't to say I was particularly good) throughout my life. As far as my rooting interests, I am a diehard New York Yankees and Uconn basketball fan, both of which I get a lot of flak for at Duke. It seems a bit random being from Georgia but my parents and pretty much the rest of my entire family are from Connecticut so it makes sense.

And here's the big kicker...I go to Duke. Again, you already knew that but it's definitely worth mentioning because it has become a huge part of me, even if I've only been here for a few months. Here at Duke, I'm involved with club soccer, the investment club, and some IM sports team. If you missed all the headlines in the newspaper a couple months back, our football team actually won the IM championship so, you know, we're kind of a big deal. All joking aside, I definitely feel at home at Duke and am exited to start a new semester with all of my friends here.

Although I am a potential economics major, I am pretty excited to taking Writing 101. I was the Editor-In-Chief of my high school's newspaper so I do have some experience and interest in writing. However, newspaper writing and academic/creative writing are very different so I'm looking forward to improving these different aspects to my writing and just becoming a better writer in general. Unlike some of my other classmates in Decoding Disney I bet, I don't have some prophetic reason for choosing a writing class about Disney. It's not like I was riding Space Mountain one day, saw an image of Walt Disney's head floating around and immediately thought I must take a writing class devoted to him in college. I wish it was something like that, but really I just watched a lot of disney movies as a kid and, when I saw this class at Duke, I thought it would be interesting. I'm a big fan of the old school Toy Story and Lion King- type movies and some of the more recent ones like Cars and Finding Nemo and have been to Disney World a few times (although it's been a while.) Anyways, it should be a fun semester - oh, and I feel like I should take a moment to thank first registration.