Growing up in southern California in the 1950s and 1960s meant a good deal of exposure to Disney’s world. Disneyland was just up the freeway from where I lived in San Diego, and The Wonderful World of Disney and The Mickey Mouse Club were essential television viewing. For me, as for most American children, more than a few family memories involved Disney, in one way or another. I again dedicate this book to my family, especially to my brother, Jack, whose first girlfriend moved from San Diego to Los Angeles to become one of the minor Mouseketeers, with whom I shared many of these childhood memories, and who found pleasure and delight in trips to Disney’s “magical worlds.”

I also must admit that, once upon a time, I found myself working “down on Uncle Walt’s farm” (AKA Disney’s studio) in Burbank, California. It was the final in a series of film/television industry jobs that propelled me back to academe to try to understand why the entertainment industry behaved the way it does, and to question its role in society. I now find myself at a university that has a Disney character as a mascot, and I still work on trying to understand media and society.

Many years ago, it seemed like a good idea to offer a course on Disney at the University of Oregon. The course became known by the same title as this book and has covered some of the same territory. Initially, it was an attempt to expand upon a political economic approach to the media, as well as to respond to all those critics who say that political economists are uninterested in texts, audiences, or culture. But it also seemed like it would be a potentially popular course on media – and it has been. Over the years, literally hundreds of students have helped to sort through many of the questions posed in the book, offered their thoughts about the Disney phenomenon, as well as shared their own Disney memories (some of which are included in chapter 7). My thanks to all of them – whether they liked the course or not.

Many other acknowledgments are due. Research assistance was provided by Kris Wright, Adrian Black, Elim Hernandez, Phil Duncan, and Zak Roman. Many thoughtful individuals have forwarded articles, clippings, and email stories (special thanks to Greg Kerber, Brent Cowley, Chris Chavez, and Jeremy Swartz); others have passed along interesting Disney paraphernalia (especially Bill Kunz, Jörg Becker, and Andrew Jakubowicz). Photographs were provided by Andrew Jakubowicz, Rodrigo Gomez, Gabriela Martinez, Graham Murdock, David Gracon, and Ulli Becker. And very special thanks to Wade Larsen and Jeremy Swartz for the cover design.

The people at Polity Press and Blackwell have been (as always) helpful and efficient. Special thanks to Ellen MacDonald-Kramer, Mary Savigar, Andrea Drugan, Elen Griffiths, and Lauren Mulholland for their incredible patience. Also, to Gail Ferguson for careful copy-editing.

And, finally, for years of intellectual stimulation and moral support, thanks to Eileen Meehan, Deborah Phillips, and Jeremy Swartz. And to Joey . . .

From Mickey to Marvel

Since the early 1930s, the Disney company has manufactured stories, characters, and experiences that have been not only popular but beloved by many around the world. Over the years, Disney films, comics, books, toys, theme parks, and other products have been sources of pleasure for many – if not most – young American children, who learn and have reinforced ideas and values that may last a lifetime. Many adults have joined their children in these forms of leisure, dutifully introducing them to the same stories, characters, values, and ideals, or revisiting these sites on their own, renewing the pleasure and satisfaction experienced as children. Indeed, Disney holds an almost sacred place in the lives of many Americans.

The Disney company started in the late 1920s as a small entrepreneurial enterprise when Walt Disney and his brother Roy Disney began producing Mickey Mouse cartoons. The company grew gradually, sometimes experiencing financial difficulties but eventually establishing itself as an independent production company in Hollywood. Never one of the major studios (in fact, the company relied on other companies to distribute its film products), the Disney brothers built a reputation for quality animation, utilizing cutting-edge technological developments such as sound and color.

Despite the independent status of the Disney company in Hollywood, the popularity of Disney’s products and characters was instantaneous and unmistakable. Indeed, the image of Mickey Mouse was a global phenomenon by the mid-1930s. Thanks to the international distribution of Disney films and the merchandising efforts that accompanied them, the Disney company developed a reputation that was magnified far beyond the relatively small company’s resources.

And that reputation has continued as the company has grown. The aggressive marketing of a multitude of Disney products through a wide range of distribution channels all over the world has contributed to a proliferation of Disney images and characters that could hardly have been imagined in the 1930s. Disney products are almost everywhere.

Disney grew to become a dominant player in the entertainment business as the company successfully diversified far beyond the arena of children’s programming. And, since the turn of the century, the company has expanded its scope even further with key acquisitions of other successful companies, as well as adjusting some of its messages and characters, sometimes even including overt portrayals of violence and sexual content. Yet it still maintains its reputation for producing family entertainment that is safe, wholesome, and entertaining. Thus Disney is able to remain extremely influential, if not dominant, in the marketing of children’s and family entertainment, as well as its other lines of business.

From universe to multiverse

In 1973, in his book Mass-Mediated Culture, Michael Real described the Walt Disney Company as the “Disney universe.”¹ He argued that the term was appropriate because: (1) the Disney organization used it; (2) it signified the “universality” of Disney’s products; and (3) the Disney message created “an identifiable universe of semantic meaning.” Following Real’s lead in the previous edition of Understanding Disney, the concept of the Disney universe was defined as “the company, its parks, products, and policies, the individuals who manage and work for the company, as well as Disney characters and images, and the meanings they have for audiences.”

But, as noted above, the Disney company has expanded dramatically since 2000, becoming one of the largest and most dominant media and entertainment corporations in the world. The company has added several key companies and franchises that also have become known as universes – Pixar, Marvel, Lucasfilm, and 21st Century Fox. These are now owned by the Disney corporation, which has become greater than just one universe. We can now refer to something called the “Disney Multiverse.”

The definition of “multiverse” refers to many universes or, more specifically, “a hypothetical collection of potentially diverse observable universes.” Though scientists are not all convinced of the actual existence of multiverses, it is a concept that is often used as a metaphor.

The notion of a Disney Multiverse has received some attention from fans who explore overlapping films and worlds, game designers who have created a few Disney Multiverse games, and so on. The company itself has provided examples of their multiverse, for instance at their theme parks, and most recently in the film, Ralph Breaks the Internet. But, as in the Marvel and Star Wars universes, these examples relate only to narrative universes, or in other words, focus on locations, time periods, stories, and characters from films, television programs, books, and so on.

In this discussion, the Disney Multiverse refers to the totality of Disney, not merely its various narrative universes. It includes all of the previously mentioned components of the Disney corporation – its corporate management, directors, shareholders, and employees; its corporate ethos, policies, and strategies; its divisions, products, services, and properties; its content, values, and meanings; and its audiences, consumers, and fans; as well as the other universes that it owns (Pixar, Marvel, Lucasfilm, and 21st Century Fox) (see Figure 1.2). Not only are we interested in how these universes are different – with their own products, characters, narratives, etc. – but also important are the ways in which they are controlled by the Disney corporation and influenced by its policies and strategies, as well as how these universes may connect/interact as part of the Disney Multiverse. More details about these components and their relationships will be explored in this volume as we seek to understand this immense, multifaceted, and significant entity.

Interestingly, a 2009 episode of the Fox-distributed satirical television show Family Guy was called “Road to the Multiverse.” In the program, Stewie and Brian travel by time machine and at one point visit the “Disney universe,” where they find the characters, dialogue, songs, and settings to be very obviously “Disney-like.”² In this edition of Understanding Disney, we will be exploring the road to the Disney Multiverse.

Studying Disney

Studying Disney can be challenging in many ways. When it is introduced as a topic for discussion, Disney is most often accepted with unqualified approval, and even reverence, by the American public, as well as by many international audience members. Many feel that the Disney company is somehow unique and different from other corporations, and its products are seen as innocent and pleasurable. There is a general sense that its products are only entertainment, as Walt Disney constantly reminded everyone. It is as though the company and its leaders can do no wrong – after all, they’re making so many people so happy. And they do it so well – how can one not be awed by their success?

There is also some hesitancy to discuss Disney as a business, despite the overwhelming emphasis on stockholder value and corporate goals by the company itself. In some settings, calling Walt Disney a “capitalist” would be considered risky, despite his role as head of a profit-motivated company. Furthermore, taking a critical stance towards the company that has created the happiest places on earth may be considered overly pessimistic, not to say downright un-American. After all, why should it be taken so seriously? As we’re told continuously, it’s just entertainment.

Nevertheless, it is important to consider the Disney phenomenon seriously and to insist that it is a legitimate focal point for cultural and social analysis. It is appropriate not only to look more closely at the Disney company and its products but also to critique their role in our culture. Indeed, with the proliferation of Disney products and the diversification of corporate activities, one must insist that Disney is fair game for serious critical review.

This is not to say that the Disney phenomenon has gone unnoticed. Indeed, the attention that Walt Disney, the Disney company, and Disney products have received in print is staggering. Several books consist mainly of references to Disney material,³ while a search on Amazon’s website in September 2018 resulted in more than 50,000 books listed with “Disney” in the title. (Of course, many of these are Disney products.) To this must be added the constant attention that the company and its products receive in the popular press, which has contributed to the Disney phenomenon.

In some academic circles, the study of Disney in particular, and popular culture in general, has been perceived as an irrelevant, frivolous, “Mickey Mouse” occupation. Nevertheless, Disney has been the focus of study in a wide variety of disciplines, with countless books, essays, and articles on Walt Disney, his contribution to animation, the history of the Disney company, and the analysis of its products and their creators.

In the 1930s, cultural pundits and film critics celebrated Disney as art, while members of the Frankfurt School often used Disney characters such as Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck as examples in their discussions of the culture industry. In addition to Michael Real’s study, the Disney empire attracted the attention of communications scholars in several classic studies in the 1970s, specifically Ariel Dorfman and Armand Mattelart’s How to Read Donald Duck and Herbert Schiller’s The Mind Managers.⁴

However, in the 1990s, there was a boom in “Disney studies” that attracted the attention of the popular press and others, not always in a favorable way. Numerous scholars continue to direct attention to the phenomenon and have joined in “the fashionable sport of Disney bashing.” Analysis has featured rhetorical, literary, feminist, and psychoanalytic critiques, stressing social issues, such as race and gender representation. Anthropologists, architects, historians, and geographers are still seriously discussing the impact of Disney’s worlds (especially the theme parks), considering their aesthetic, cultural, and social implications.

Why another book (and a second edition) on Disney?

Despite all of the attention and analysis, there is still a need to look at the entire Disney phenomenon from a critical perspective.⁵ This is especially important in light of the intensification of Disney’s corporate power during the last few decades and its increasingly dominant role in the media/entertainment industry. This book will look at the wide range of perspectives that have been used – and must be used – to understand the Disney Multiverse. The company’s continued expansion and ongoing popularity calls for the deliberate integration of political economic analysis with insights drawn from cultural analysis and audience studies or reception analysis, or, in other words, analysis emphasizing the economic as well as the ideological, or production as well as consumption. In the case of Disney, this approach is expressed in the notion of manufacturing fantasy.

If we are to fully understand the Disney phenomenon, the reception or consumption of Disney products needs to be considered. Though some analysts have attempted to integrate audience responses and reception with textual readings, most of the analyses of Disney texts merely reinforce the subjective nature of these readings. Also, by focusing only on individual texts, the overall output or ideological position represented by Disney is neglected. Herbert Schiller expressed this idea many years ago:

Schiller’s call for a “systems approach” echoes the aim of this book, which is to present an integrated approach to understanding Disney. In other words, the analysis of production, distribution, and consumption of Disney texts is necessary to understand their significance. An integrated approach is especially relevant in considering the Disney theme parks, which present Disney ideologies in material form, providing sites of pleasure, fun, and family entertainment but also serving as highly successful businesses.

In 1997, David Buckingham discussed several books on the Disney phenomenon, pointing out how the studies included economic, textual, and (sometimes) audience research, albeit rarely integrating these forms of analysis. He noted: “Of course, it would be asking too much to expect any single book to incorporate all these dimensions.”⁷ It is even more of a challenge to examine the “whole” of Disney since the turn of the century, with the extensive expansion of the Disney corporation and the continuous academic and popular attention it receives. However, this book still represents an attempt to look at the Disney Multiverse from a systems perspective and contribute to further understanding its significance. Although every detail cannot be discussed thoroughly, an integrated, interdisciplinary approach can help us to further understand the popularity of Disney over the years, as well as Disney’s role as a major contributor to consumer culture in the United States and around the world.

In chapter 2, different versions of Disney’s history will be discussed, as well as the issue of Walt Disney’s contribution to the company’s development. A political economic analysis of the different sectors of the current Disney empire will be presented in chapter 3, followed by a discussion of the company’s strategies and policies in chapter 4. Chapter 5 will review examples of the analysis of Disney content, and chapter 6 will consider how some of the same techniques have been applied to the Disney theme parks. Chapter 7 will discuss the reception of Disney by different types of audiences or Disney fans, as well as presenting examples of how individuals respond to Disney.