The Magic...

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The Magic...
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Total Merchandising

• An all-encompassing consumer environment in
  which each Disney product promoted all
  Disney products (Anderson, 18)
• Each product is an advertisement for the others.

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Integrated Leisure Market

• Baby Boom
• 1945 22 mil. children.
• 1960 35 mil. children.
• Disneys Leisure Market
• TV, recorded music, theme parks, tourism, and
  consumer merchandise.

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Loving the Logos
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Themed Environments
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Dorfman and Mattelarts Chilean, Marxist critique
of Disney

• Written in 1970, during a period of right-wing
  repression, when U.S.-supported military
  governments ruled many S-American countries.
• Primary question Who finances, publishes and
  distributes Disney publications in Chile?
• Pinsent Publishing Enterprise is a consortium
  of philanthropists of the previous Christian
  Democrat regime (1964-1970)

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Disney, the common cultural heritage of
contemporary man

Disney characters constitute a little less than
a social environment inviting us all to join the
great universal Disney family ... And amidst
so much sweetness and light, the registered
trademark becomes invisible. (p. 145)
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Disney and the reactionary press

• ...Mickey Mouse is Disney in a nutshell. What
  human being over the last forty years, at the
  mere presence of Mickey, has not felt his heart
  swell with emotion?
• (p. 145)

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Automagic antibodies (p. 146)

• Common, everyday values and attitudes (e.g., the
  innocence of children), commercially exploited.
• Walt Disney himself coined the term total
  merchandising for the commercial web in which
  each Disney product promoted all Disney products.

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Utopia and the imagination of the child (p. 149)

• Coercion melts away in the magic palace of sweet
  harmony and repose the palace raised and
  administered at a distance by the father, whose
  physical absence is designed to avoid direct
  confrontation with his progeny. (149)
• Paternalism in absentia...

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Casting/Cast Members
A Disney worker tells me later that employees
are routinely assigned jobs according to age and
appearance. The company calls it casting, he
says. In practice that means all the pretty,
young people get the main front-line jobs. Old
ladies sell the merchandise, old men work in
security. Haitian women work in housekeeping,
Puerto Rican young people work in food services
and preparation, African-Americans work as cooks
or stewards or in food preparation. And all the
less-than-presentable people get stuck in the
third shift from eleven at night to seven in the
morning.
Wayne Ellwood, Inside the Disney Dream Machine.
New Internationalist no. 308, Dec 1998.
http//www.newint.org/issue308/contents.html
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Big Thunder Mountain Railroad
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Fun Factory
Time-motion experts keep constant track of the
number of people using each attraction and all
the turnstiles are computerized. We have to push
as many visitors through each ride as we can.
Thats their main concern, complains Cohen. If
we dont, we hear about it from management ...
At Big Thunder Mountain Im supposed to handle
2,000 visitors an hour. Its just like a factory
with assembly-line production, only this is a fun
factory.
Wayne Ellwood, Service with a Smile. New
Internationalist, no. 308, Dec 1998 http//www.new
int.org/issue308/contents.html
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And now for a bit of language instruction...
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Utilidors
Term 27 UtilidorsMeaning Official first floor
of Disney's Magic Kingdom. The tunnels that run
underneath Cinderella's CastleReal Meaning A
great place to lose all your personal Magical
Disney Moments -- aka great place to see Snow
White smoking, Alice in Wonderland cussing,
Cinderella in short shorts and a T-shirt talking
on a pay phone and Peter Pan kissing Prince
Charming
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Disney Point
Term 33 Disney PointMeaning Point with your
index and middle finger or with your whole hand.
It's rude to point with one finger. Even pointing
at an inanimate object, the person next to that
object might think you were pointing at
him/her.Real Meaning It takes years to stop
pointing with two fingers, many never recover.
You can always "point out" the former CM when you
see a stranger use the Disney Point. But you
might also say, "that's so un-disney," to see a
current CM pointing with one finger.
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The Zoo
Term 43 The Zoo Meaning Central location
where all the Magic Kingdom characters meet up
for costuming, break room, GSM office.Real
Meaning If you want to "keep the magic alive"
for yourself. Don't go near the Zoo. That's where
you find out that Queen of Hearts is sometimes
male and Mickey Mouse is almost always female.
Source http//www.geocities.com/tedjamo/wdwcp/dis
neylingo.htm