Disney Parks and the Construction of American Identity

Disney Parks and the Construction of American Identity PDF Author: Jennifer A Kokai
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781666932393
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Focusing primarily on Walt Disney World, in a time of unmatched cultural anxiety, the authors use their influential 'tourist as actor' framework to unpack the ways that Disney parks and their guests co-create performances of implicit Americanness through case studies on music, geography and ecology, sports, families, and politics.

Disney Parks and the Construction of American Identity

Disney Parks and the Construction of American Identity PDF Author: Jennifer A Kokai
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781666932393
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book

Book Description
Focusing primarily on Walt Disney World, in a time of unmatched cultural anxiety, the authors use their influential 'tourist as actor' framework to unpack the ways that Disney parks and their guests co-create performances of implicit Americanness through case studies on music, geography and ecology, sports, families, and politics.

Disney Theme Parks and America’s National Narratives

Disney Theme Parks and America’s National Narratives PDF Author: Bethanee Bemis
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000811166
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 94

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Book Description
Disney Theme Parks and America’s National Narratives takes a public history approach to situating the physical spaces of the Disney brand within memory and identity studies. For over 65 years, Disney’s theme parks have been important locations for the formation and negotiation of the collective memory of the American narrative. Disney’s success as one of America’s most prolific storytellers, its rise as a symbol of America itself, and its creation of theme parks that immerse visitors in three-dimensional versions of certain "American" values and historic myths have both echoed and shaped the way the American people see themselves. Like all versions of the American narrative, Disney’s vision serves to reassure us, affirm our shared values, and unite a diverse group of people under a distinctly American identity—or at least, it did. The book shows how the status Disney obtained led the public to use them both as touchstones of identity and as spaces to influence the American identity writ large. This volume also examines the following: • how Disney’s original cartoons and live-action entertainment offerings drew from American folk history and ideals • how their work during World War II cemented them as an American symbol at home and abroad • how the materialization of the American themes already espoused by the brand at their theme parks created a place where collective memory lives • how legitimization by presidents and other national figures gave the theme parks standing no other entertainment space has • how Disney has changed alongside the American people and continues to do so today. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of history, media, cultural studies, American studies and tourism.

Social Order and Authority in Disney and Pixar Films

Social Order and Authority in Disney and Pixar Films PDF Author: Kellie Deys
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1793622116
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 235

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Book Description
Social Order and Authority in Disney and Pixar Films contributes to an essential, ongoing conversation about how power dynamics are questioned, reinforced, and disrupted in the stories Disney tells. Whether these films challenge or perpetuate traditional structures (or do both), their considerable influence warrants careful examination. This collection addresses the vast reach of the Disneyverse, contextualizing its films within larger conversations about power relations. The depictions of surveillance, racial segregation, othering, and ableism represent real issues that impact people and their lived experiences. Unfortunately, storytellers often oversimplify or mischaracterize complex matters on screen. To counter this, contributors investigate these unspoken and sometimes unintended meanings. By applying the lenses of various theoretical approaches, including ecofeminism, critiques of exceptionalism, and gender, queer, and disability studies, authors uncover underlying ideologies. These discussions help readers understand how Disney’s output both reflects and impacts contemporary cultural conditions.

Project Future

Project Future PDF Author: Chad Denver Emerson
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780615347776
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 185

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Book Description
The Walt Disney World Resort near Orlando, Florida is one of the world's most famous vacation destinations. This iconic resort is now located in what once was thousands of acres of swamp and marshland. Through spy-like moves and innovative strategies, Walt Disney and his cadre of creative leaders turned this massive swamp land into today's Disney World. This books shares the amazing behind the scenes story of how Disney's Florida resort, code-named Project Future, rose from the marshes of Central Florida to become one of the world's most popular theme park resorts.

Popular Culture in the Age of White Flight

Popular Culture in the Age of White Flight PDF Author: Eric Avila
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520248112
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 328

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Book Description
"In Popular Culture in the Age of White Flight, Eric Avila offers a unique argument about the restructuring of urban space in the two decades following World War II and the role played by new suburban spaces in dramatically transforming the political culture of the United States. Avila's work helps us see how and why the postwar suburb produced the political culture of 'balanced budget conservatism' that is now the dominant force in politics, how the eclipse of the New Deal since the 1970s represents not only a change of views but also an alteration of spaces."—George Lipsitz, author of The Possessive Investment in Whiteness

For the Enjoyment of the People

For the Enjoyment of the People PDF Author: Mary E. Stuckey
Publisher: University Press of Kansas
ISBN: 0700634797
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
National parks are widely revered as “America’s best idea”—they are abundantly popular and remarkably noncontroversial in the United States. American presidents use these parks to stake their claims to environmentalism, assert a singular national history, and define a unified national identity, often doing so inside the parks themselves. However, the establishment and history of almost every national park has been riddled with conflict over competing claims to land, knowledge, and economic interests. Like any major area of public policy, the fissures present in debates over the national parks also represent important fracture lines in the public understanding of the meaning of America and of individual claims to citizenship. The park system, in other words, does a lot of political work for both presidents and the mass public, even though much of that work goes largely unnoticed. This book explores that political work by addressing themes of national origins and the dispossession of Indigenous peoples; monuments to the national past, heritage, and the assertion of a national narrative; environmentalism and natural resources; and exploitation of the national landscape for economic gain. In For the Enjoyment of the People, Mary Stuckey looks at the politics of the parks as well as what the parks can teach us about citizenship and what it means to be American. Stuckey asserts that through the national parks we can hope to explain the past, clarify the present, and project the future. Combining interdisciplinary conversations about tourism, public memory, national history, park history, the presidency, and national identity, Stuckey contributes insightful ideas to the conversation on the history of national parks while examining the natural, military, and patriotic nature of America’s best idea.

Walt Disney's Disneyland

Walt Disney's Disneyland PDF Author: Chris Nichols
Publisher: Taschen
ISBN: 9783836595131
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Discover the story of Disneyland, Walt Disney's visionary theme park in Anaheim, California. This intriguing visual history includes stunning color photographs, concept drawings, as well as ephemera from the historical collections of the Walt Disney Company, to trace the park's development and immersive world of magic and wonder.

Interpreting and Experiencing Disney

Interpreting and Experiencing Disney PDF Author: Priscilla Hobbs
Publisher: Intellect (UK)
ISBN: 9781789384741
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 250

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Book Description
A collection of essays exploring the wide-ranging influence of the Walt Disney Company. It would be difficult to go through life without ever encountering a Disney product. Since the first Mickey Mouse cartoon premiered in 1928, Disney has played a central role in shaping American popular culture, and it has expanded to the global market. The company positioned itself as a titan of family entertainment, and many of its offerings, from films to consumable products, have become embedded in the minds of children and adults, woven into many of our life experiences. Fans of Disney build connections with their favorite characters and franchises, fueled by Disney's marketing practices. Others have developed a near-cult-like relationship with the brand, equating its products with religious icons and theme park visits with pilgrimages. This edited volume looks beyond the movies and merchandise to peer into the very heart of the Disney phenomenon: how the fan response drives the corporation's massive marketing machine and how the corporate response, in turn, shapes the fan experience.

Martial Culture, Silver Screen

Martial Culture, Silver Screen PDF Author: Matthew Christopher Hulbert
Publisher: LSU Press
ISBN: 0807174718
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 312

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Book Description
Martial Culture, Silver Screen analyzes war movies, one of the most popular genres in American cinema, for what they reveal about the narratives and ideologies that shape U.S. national identity. Edited by Matthew Christopher Hulbert and Matthew E. Stanley, this volume explores the extent to which the motion picture industry, particularly Hollywood, has played an outsized role in the construction and evolution of American self-definition. Moving chronologically, eleven essays highlight cinematic versions of military and cultural conflicts spanning from the American Revolution to the War on Terror. Each focuses on a selection of films about a specific war or historical period, often foregrounding recent productions that remain understudied in the critical literature on cinema, history, and cultural memory. Scrutinizing cinema through the lens of nationalism and its “invention of tradition,” Martial Culture, Silver Screen considers how movies possess the power to frame ideologies, provide social coherence, betray collective neuroses and fears, construct narratives of victimhood or heroism, forge communities of remembrance, and cement tradition and convention. Hollywood war films routinely present broad, identifiable narratives—such as that of the rugged pioneer or the “good war”—through which filmmakers invent representations of the past, establishing narratives that advance discrete social and political functions in the present. As a result, cinematic versions of wartime conflicts condition and reinforce popular understandings of American national character as it relates to violence, individualism, democracy, militarism, capitalism, masculinity, race, class, and empire. Approaching war movies as identity-forging apparatuses and tools of social power, Martial Culture, Silver Screen lays bare how cinematic versions of warfare have helped define for audiences what it means to be American.

A Cultural History of the Disneyland Theme Parks

A Cultural History of the Disneyland Theme Parks PDF Author: Sabrina Mittermeier
Publisher: Intellect (UK)
ISBN: 9781789383270
Category : Amusement parks
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
The writing is academic, but it is not inaccessible. It will have wide disciplinary appeal within academia, as tourism studies cross into a variety of fields including history, American studies, fandom studies, performance studies and cultural studies. It will be invaluable to those working in the field of theme park scholarship and the study of Disney theme parks, theme parks in general and related areas like world's expositions and spaces of the consumer and lifestyle worlds. It will also be of interest to Disney fans, those who have visited any of the parks or are interested to know more about the parks and their cultural situation and context.