This essay was written as a discussion of the existence of racial stereotypes and critical cultural theory in Star Wars. Feel free to leave me a comment. I'm open to debate and comments.
Ideologies, Connotations, and Polysemy in Star Wars: How to deal with race in space
One cannot deny the existence of dominant ideologies inherent in Star Wars. George Lucas' study of archetypes and his world views contributed to the film.
Star Wars clearly denotes an epic science-fiction film. Many light viewers of the films probably only see it, consciously, as such. Connotatively, the film has many meanings. From the viewpoint of this paper discussing race, we see such connotations as who a hero is and who he must become. How must this hero be mentored and by whom? Star Wars also connotates the meanings of good and evil--that there are even specific colors that signify good and evil: white and black. The film also messages about the existence of minorities, or aliens—how they are viewed and what their roles are as either dangerous encounters in our hero's journey or as assistants in helping our hero succeed.
In the original star wars films minorities have very sparse roles. The dominant roles are taken by Caucasians: Luke, Han Solo, Obi Wan Kenobi, Leia, and Darth Vader. Luke is mentored by Obi Wan, who acts as a patriarchal figure. Obi Wan has great wisdom, greater than that of Darth Vader and Luke learns to trust Obi Wan.
The dominant reading from the Star Wars saga speaks of ethical rebellion—that one must stand against immoral rule. Luke epitomizes the archetypal hero who goes from being an ignorant farm boy to a wise and skilled warrior for good. In the story, he and the Rebels stand against all odds in their fight for truth and freedom. Because they fight for good, they ultimately triumph. This notion of the oppressed revolutionizing is the backbone of early American thought.
Another dominant reading is that basic Jedi principles of self-control, consistent training, and a motivation for good, are the preferred principles that can make one become “good” and a hero.
As all artifacts contain potentially infinite interpretations, Star Wars is no different. Synchronic polysemy exists as different audiences view the film. Those of Christian backgrounds idolize the righteous qualities of the Jedi and the Rebels. Protestant faiths apply the protestant, rebellious for good nature of the film to their own faiths. Conversely, those of eastern religions might see the films as mirrors of buddhism, hinduism, and shinto. The spiritualism of some of these eastern religions appear in Star Wars, such as the spirits of the past who frequently visit Luke to offer him counsel. There is no supreme being in Star Wars. Those who die are melded into the Force, which acts as an energy field guiding and moving through all life.
Those of other races will also view the films differently. Anyone who is a minority might see a dominant oppression that exists in the films as well as in society. Minority racial groups will develop resistant readings of Star Wars:
One can start in a lowly state and achieve greatness only if that person is a white male. Luke becomes the greatest Jedi master in the galaxy while any minority groups, such as aliens and droids retain their roles as supporters of the hero.
It is implied that minority groups are unintelligent, misfits of society, and criminals. For example, Jabba’s lair represents the ghettos of the Star Wars world. His lair, prinicipally made up of aliens, is filled with criminals running from the law, prostitutes, and drug dealers. Another example is the signification of the noble savage in the ewoks. These side-role characters are technologically and religiously primitive and their principal purpose in the film is to suppor the main characters.
In the scheme of power structures, “whiteness” is superior to all other cultures. This is apparent in the differences between the dark side and good side of the force. Sith Lords are always dressed in black. Any scenes set inside the imperial vessels use primarily dark grays while the Rebel vessels are white. This black vs. white evidence is most notable by Darth Vadar. Vadar, who dresses in black, has an African-American voice (James Earl Jones). Only at the end when he becomes “good” and Luke removes his mask, do we see his true appearance as a white male.
Note: It is safe to assume that supposed elements of racism in Star Wars were not deliberate on the part of George Lucas. However, our environment affects what we produce. In this way, the surrounding culture during the 1970's dominated the dominant ideologies in Star Wars.
While I was in a meeting this morning, @danbischoff related some very wise counsel. He said he'd been thinking about it when he arose for the day. He spoke of the 3 most important things to do in the morning in order to start the day off right and make it a good day:
Wake up naturally or to music: If you practice going to bed and waking up at a set time consistently, you'll be able to wake up naturally
Don't look in the mirror: When you look at yourself in the mirror, most likely you'll think you're ugly. Just don't let that kind of negativity in by not looking in the mirror.
Make your first correspondence positive: Whether it's your spouse, roommate, or a driver on the road, make sure you smile and say something nice.
This lecture really stood out to me. Perhaps my time perspective differs greatly from others.
Professor Phillip Zimbardo talks about different time perspectives (there are 6 different ones): Positive and Negative Past, Present Hedonistic, Future oriented, etc.
In mid-April, Franck, a Euro Disney Chef, committed suicide. As one might be expect from a company with such a family-friendly image to uphold, the news of the suicide was quite controversial. As one blogger noted, “The image of chain-smoking, suicidal Frenchmen may not be quite the image Disney is going for at the Magic Kingdom” (Turley, 2010). Furthermore, this suicide is one of three that have already occurred this year among Euro Disney employees--two of them chefs. The other chef committed suicide by throwing “himself in front of a train after working in conditions which a trade union spokesman called ‘humiliating’ (Roussel, 2010).
Franck committed suicide on the day he was to return to work after a period of sick leave. Ten days after the suicide, a note was found in his home reading, “Je ne veux pas retourner chez Mickey” (I don't want to work for Mickey any more) (Lichfield, 2010). The note only added fuel to the controversy as many earlier voices had already pointed fingers at Euro Disney in causing the suicides.
These suicide incidents have been compared to last year's suicides among France Telecom's employees (Souchard, 2010). In 2008 and 2009, France Telecom dealt with 35 employee suicides and 14 of those are “considered directly linked with the company's managerial techniques – such as pressuring employees to change jobs or giving them work the employees considered ‘devaluing’” (Hall, 2010).
Many workers unions have taken the recent suicide as opportunities to pursue better working conditions for employees. Fortunately for Disney, all but one of the unions, Force Ouvrière (FO), agreed to cooperate on a "social audit" of the parks to assess needed improvements in working conditions. FO would not make any compromises and continue to pursue its own agenda. While passionately condemning Disney for the most recent suicide, the FO website read, “I remain convinced that the tragedy that has happened could have been avoided” (Mboe, 2010). The other unions have condemned FO for "exploiting" (Lichfield, 2010) the sensitive suicide incident.
Euro Disney believes the suicides were not direct results of employment conditions at the resort. Jeff Archambault, vice president of communications for Euro Disney stated, “We do not accept that either of these tragic events [the suicides] can be directly linked to Disneyland, Paris. But we do recognise that, with the financial crisis, all of us are under increased stress. At home. At work” (Lichfield, 2010).
While many have pointed fingers at Euro Disney’s working conditions as the cause of the suicides, Disney has been working in accordance with French law. According to one report, Disney’s employment practices had been certified a day before one of the deaths (Frost, 2010). Just after the suicide, Euro Disney issued a press release detailing the company's long- and short-term actionable plans to pursue better psychological and physical health among its employees. The press release also mentioned that the company would analyze current working conditions among its employees--the so-called “social audit” (Manologlou, 2010)
Many have speculated about the effects the suicides and their subsequent press coverage have had on Euro Disney. On a recent poll by About.com, 48% of respondents said the incidents weren't cause for forming negative opinions about the park. These respondents concluded that with such tragedies, specific causes are difficult to pinpoint and that “many workplaces are stressful” (Traub, 2010).
And yet, it seems that French public opinion still holds a bad taste for Disney. Consequently, many Disney employees have been led to find relationships between the poor working conditions and the suicides. One Euro Disney employees, Herve Saumade, a maintenance worker, said, “What we sell is something wonderful. We sell smiles. We sell the happiness of children. We all love our jobs, or what our jobs represent. But in the last few years, there has been a new management approach, which has, in many cases, made our working lives intolerable” (Lichfield, 2010). The FO also accused Euro Disney of a poor management structure that led to too few employees for too much work.
Employee suicides linked to poor work environments conjure many questions to be considered. First, what was the cause of the tragedies? As suicide is such a complex and individual issue, the exact causes will probably remain unknown.
In the case with the France Telecom suicides, after thousands of layoffs, remaining employees became de-motivated or depressed because their job security had decreased. These employees also had to increase their workloads in order to make up for a smaller workforce.
In a May 2010 report issued by Euro Disney, attendance dropped along with revenue while costs remained the same (Manologlou, 2010). Clearly, the current global economic crisis has affected Euro Disney. But an economic crisis will put a great deal of strain on any business. However, when these economic crises arise, how should a company like Euro Disney handle cost-cutting measures like layoffs, higher workloads, and fewer employee benefits and resources? If circumstances allow, this might be the time for a company to cash out its reserves (if it has any) and spend more in order to keep employees and continued benefits. This is not only good for operations, but also good public relations. Perhaps, Euro Disney needs to rely on the revenue of the other Disney parks during poor economic crises situated in Europe.
This may also be an issue of cross-cultural management styles. Historically, the French have never been wholly gleeful about a Disneyland Paris. In 1992, when the park was first opened, many called it “a cultural Chernobyl” (Corliss, 1992). American Disney executives need to understand the cultural differences of the French working styles. They need to be prepared to accommodate their French employees in ways that respect their culture while still upholding Disney core values. In short, an understanding of culture needs to be reached and compromises to the current system must be made.
While two of the suicides were committed by chefs, perhaps a detailed audit needs to be taken of the food department. Is there a manager in the food department who is running his or her employees into the ground? The said manager may be younger and less experienced than some of the other staff, while the employees who committed suicide were fairly seasoned employees. Many of the unions claimed that in the last six years, a younger management has taken over in the park (Lichfield, 2010).
After the social audit, when and if Disney decides to restructure policies and organization, I would submit that better motivation factors need to be put into place for employees. Promotions need to be made to employees who have worked at the park for long periods of time.
Giving the chefs in the food department more recognition might also help to stem problems of depression and job dissatisfaction. One idea might be to allow the chefs to greet and eat with guests during meal character greetings. Another idea would be to reward chefs who perform admirably the opportunities to create new items for the menu at their respective in-park restaurants.
On a more general, park-wide level, management should allow employees the opportunities to perform more diverse roles, thus breaking up the monotony. An employee who works as a ride operator in the morning, might enjoy the experience of waiting and greeting guests at a restaurant in the evening. Maybe an employee in custodial might be given the opportunity to perform crowd control during one of the shows.
Another future plan for Euro Disney might be to instruct managers to become more mindful of their employees’ stress levels and attitudes. They should be instructed on how to read suicide warning signs among their employees and how to offer them assistance from the proper counseling services. It would also be wise for Euro Disney to hold motivational, team-building workshops. They could hire corporate behavioral trainers to offer motivational lectures and confidence building exercises.
From a public relations perspective, whether the suicides were directly caused by Euro Disney or not, the ensuing negative press can be devastating to an already financially stressed company. It would have probably been less expensive had Disney noticed the warning signs of poor working conditions and deficient management and corrected those problems.
As most companies have already realized, running a large corporation in the 20th and 21st centuries is not all about profit and loss. Providing optimal human resource settings can be a delicate task.
References
Corliss, R. (1992, April 20). Voila! Disney Invades Europe. Will the French Resist? Time. Retrieved from http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,975357-1,00.html
Frost, J. (2010, April). Cast Member suicides shock Disneyland Paris family. Retrieved from http://thedisneyblog.com
Hall, B. (2010, April 10). Fresh Probe on France Telecom Suicides. The Financial Times. Retrieved from http://www.ft.com
Lichfield, J. (2010, May 6). The dark side of Disneyland Paris. The Independent. Retrieved from http://www.independent.co.uk
Manologlou, L. (2010, April 23). Euro Disney Increases Measures Aimed At Employee Well-Being In The Workplace [Press Release]. Retrieved from http://corporate.disneylandparis.com/CORP/EN/Neutral/Images/uk-2010-04-23-chsct-measures-employee.pdf
Manologlou, L. (2010, May 11). Euro Disney S.C.A. - Reports 2010 First Half Results [Press Release]. Retrieved from http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/euro-disney-sca---reports-2010-first-half-results-93379954.html
Mboe, G. (2010, April). Disneyland Paris: an Employee Commits Suicide. Retrieved from http://www.eurodif-fo.com
Roussel, C. (2010, April 2). Suicides shock France's Disney park. The Independent. Retrieved from http://www.independent.co.uk
Souchard, P. (2010, April 9). France Telecom Suicides: Authorities Probe Dozens Of Mysterious Employee Suicides. The Huffington Post. Retrieved from http://www.huffingtonpost.com
Traub, C. (2010, April 2). Disneyland Paris Investigates Worker Suicides. Retrieved from http://goparis.about.com/b/2010/04/02/disneyland-paris-suicides-probe.htm
Turley, J. (2010, April 5). The Unhappiest Place on Earth: Paris Disney Experiences Rash of Suicides Among Complaints Over Working Conditions. Retrieved from http://jonathanturley.org
In the book, he tells rulers how to maintain stability and hold power
Many rulers have followed his agenda
Now it's common to refer to the devil as 'Old Nick'
Machiavelli's first name: Niccolo
Below you'll find a vector image of Machiavelli, I created. Move the transparent images, below, over this image of Machiavelli to transform his face into another person. Can you guess the people I've turned him into?
Well, you probably guessed it right: Napoleon Bonaparte, Adolf Hitler, and Joseph Stalin.
These despots all learned from Machiavelli and utilized some of his principles in their rule. Napoleon wrote extensive notes about The Prince. Hitler was affected by Mussolini, who read and followed Machiavelli's The Prince. And Stalin kept a copy of The Prince on his nightstand.
For this project, I created a framed image of Machiavelli with transferable Plexiglas sheets showing the other faces.
Disneyland has been considered, among other things, the mind controlling, child knapping, psychotic dream world of the 20th and 21st centuries. Millions of visitors make their way to the park every year to put away adult obligations for a few days in order to re-live their childhoods. One LA Times columnist summed up his experience: “We eavesdrop as self-described mouse freaks trade esoteric tips for milking the most fun from every Mickey moment. We meet families who never vacation anywhere non-Disney. We learn of couples who get married here and ride in Cinderella's coach. With resolve that is nothing short of heroic, I fight the mind control.”
Indeed, Disneyland has created a fascinating cultural movement worth a bit of study. Rather than simply explaining this cultural movement, a deeper significance is found: Although Disneyland seems to model American idealism (an attribute at odds with postmodernism), park visitors (including the majority of American visitors) are, in effect, embracing postmodernism.
American idealism is forever branded in the American dream: The belief that with some hard work and clever thought, one can achieve his or her utopian world—a world where happiness abounds among equal opportunity, capitalism, consumerism, and industrialism. Conversely, postmodernism has no such grandiose ambitions. Postmodernism might be considered the satirical twist of the American dream. It objects to objectivity; rather than searching for answers, postmodernism makes a parody of presupposed truths and juxtaposes seemingly unrelated pieces of culture together.
And yet, how can one purport such postmodernism in Disneyland when the park is literally a microcosm of early America and the American Dream? I doubt many would debate this idea. Everything about Disneyland seems to scream “American” just as anything about McDonalds and other fast food franchises do the same. If one were only to stroll down the park’s first land, Main Street USA, one would clearly recognize signs of America as it was in the 40s, such as the quaint, Victorian street shops, the barbershop quartet, and the red fire engines. Perhaps the most American feature is the first attraction visible in the park, “Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln.”
We also can’t forget the man who dreamed up the park, Walt Disney, who is considered one of the most American men of the 20th century. We can readily see Walt Disney’s American characteristics such as his small-town, conservative personality, and his pursuit of the American Dream. However, many other typically adverse values have been characterized with Disney: emphasis on capitalism, commercial globalization, and an unseen obsession with control. Let’s analyze these characteristics and how they influenced the creation of Disneyland.
Don’t expect any deep interpretations about Disney culture from Walt Disney himself: “I make pictures for entertainment, and then the professors tell me what they mean.” However, many meanings can be derived in Disneyland—especially with the larger, capitalist, American culture as the context.
More than anything else, says Mark Gottdiener, Disneyland exhibits signifiers of each aspect of early American capitalism. “Frontierland can be interpreted as a reference to the stage of predatory capitalism; Adventureland, as a representation of colonialism/imperialism; Tomorrowland, as state-financed capitalism, or the military-industrial complex; New Orleans Square as a signifier for venture capital; and lastly, Main Street as the period of family and mercantile capitalism.”
Take, for example, one of the newer attractions in the park, the Indiana Jones Adventure ride. Guests can embark on a daring journey past giant snakes, into skeleton-filled rooms, and over a rickety rope bridge all inside a forbidden Indian temple. The ride is obviously Disneyesque, and yet much of what is signified is completely overlooked by guests. Its capitalistic story tells of Professor Jones using the ancient temple to offer tours in order to raise money. When Indiana Jones goes missing with a group of tourists, park guests must enter into the temple to rescue them. Turning an ancient temple into an attraction is clearly capitalistic and points to the western tendency to commercialize just about anything. The temple becomes an object of exploit, where artifacts and historical information may be extracted.
In terms of globalization, just about any child in the world can recognize the iconic mouse ears. Disneyland has effectively made copies of itself in every corner of the world and before Disneyland had penetrated far off countries, Disney movies had already snuck into homes and theaters of foreigners. Before even entering the park, visitors were already attached to the characters and stories that make up much of Disneyland’s attractions.
Perhaps, these “warm-fuzzies” instilled in childhood memories by Disney’s Animated Classics have been a major factor in garnering such an attendance to the Disney parks. The idea of theming based on cinema has been imitated by successful theme parks ever since.
Although Disney was an idealist and a modernist, he sampled postmodern tendencies—taking art from the past and mashing them with his own ideals. Gottdiener said, “We know that Disneyland over the years had a profound impact on the construction of themed environments across the country by blending common mass culture symbols and an appealing physical design.”
Walt Disney was a grand storyteller—taking fairy tales and tall tales of his youth and presenting them to millions. He was extremely successful at sterilizing his image of folk culture and turning it into pop culture. In the meantime, the company raked in profits from selling park tickets and products plastered with Disney’s version of fairy tale characters. Interestingly, Cinderella and Snow White aren’t just figures from German folklore but they now hold the modern title of “Disney characters.” David Boje said, “Walt had a universal vision of a vast empire; he saw his cartoons, characters, TV shows, and films as culminating in a theme park. The theme park was based on Walt's vision of a small midwestern town, the one he knew as a boy. Disneyland is Walt's archetype of an ideal American town.”
America’s historical connection with conquering the frontier is also seen in Disneyland. In their effort to conquer and own the open land, Americans laid railroads and built cities as settlers made their way across the pioneer trails in order to gain their piece of the American Dream. Such historical westerners as Louis and Clark, Davy Crockett, Jim Bridger, and even the bandit, Jesse James, have been idealized in American folklore. Walt Disney produced films featuring some of these men, sanitizing them and molding them into archetypal characters that showed conservative dignity and determined self-reliance.
Thus, it was natural for Disney to include his version of the American West, Frontierland, in the park. The land meshes varied symbols of the Wild West such as a steamboat, an old saloon, and an out-of-control mining car. In combining such previously unrelated signs, Disney created a new image of the frontier that has since replaced the older signs. Consequently, meanings have also changed.
A discussion on hyperreality is important as it is one key component of the Disney parks. Hyperreality exists in a state where chosen symbols of reality mask our surroundings, thus producing unreality. Jean Baudrillard, one of the leaders of postmodernism and proponent of hyperreality noted that with Disneyland, “everyday life has been captured by the signs and sign systems generated to represent it. We relate to the models as if they were reality. In his argument, California's Disneyland functions as ‘an imaginary effect concealing that reality no more exists outside than inside the bounds of the artificial perimeter.’”
As was stated earlier, Disney had an obsession with control. Every aspect of the park was micromanaged by Disney. He even went so far as to refer to the company artists as “my musicians” and “my artists.”
And just as Disney sought to control his company environment, Disneyland, like American colonialism, controls its natural environment. Rather than allowing nature to be “natural,” Disneyland restrains every aspect its guests’ environment, from the sights and sounds to the available directions guests may go. Furthermore, “there is no sign of decay, crime, confusion, discontent, pain, poverty, or struggle.” According to one scholar, this cultural interpretation of nature can have negative effects: “There is a strong presumption that Disney closely records the real thing out there in mountain meadow, prairie and pound. If our first introduction to the natural world is via ‘Disneyvision’ -- and for virtually all of us, it is -- then we cannot help being disappointed by the real thing. Documentary is a dramatic form. Nature is hard put to compete with art.” Disneyland embodies the presence of an idealized world in which Americans, bred from a culture of idealizing, find comfort in the safe and happy confines of a park where nothing goes wrong.
Many of these aspects of Walt Disney and his park relate his idealistic approach to business, and this idealism coupled with modernism is engrained in the parks.
Disney utilized modernism’s emphasis on the empirical approach to management and creative thinking. He engineered what Boje called the “story machine,” where all aspects of animation and film making, including much of the creative work was systemized and compartmentalized. Similarly, the creative work and development of Disneyland was also brought about in a similar fashion.
Modernism also deals with commodification. Disneyland makes an increasingly good use of placing price tags on elements and ideas in nature and society. One scholar said that “indirect commodification is a process by which non-salable objectives, activities, and images are purposely placed in the commodified world.” Disney discovered a great source of revenue when he began commodifying the characters from his films. From that time, commercialism has only increased in the parks. At every attraction there is a retail store, and the walkways are flooded with Disney street vendors.
As Disney embedded commodification in modernism, he also did so with advertising. Globalized corporations sponsor many of the attractions at Disneyland. One scholar said Disney is the “integration of recreation and leisure with hyper-consumption advertising and public relations.” Like a mall, one cannot escape the thousands of commercialized messages found in every corner of Disney. When the park opened in 1955, Tomorrowland’s featured attraction was CirCarama, sponsored by American Motors. Even the front entrance to the circular theater looked like an American Motors show room.
Disneyland clearly stemmed from modern thinking in the early 1900s. Disney visited the early World Fairs that presented new technology in themed environments. In fact, much of the early technology at Disneyland, such as the Monorail, were first made known at World Fairs. These technologies were developed during the modern era, where functionality determined design.
Las Vegas, a land of themed casinos, draws much upon the themed approaches which were established by Disneyland. However, modernism is no longer a driving force in contemporary America. One scholar compared modernist architecture with that of the Luxor Casino, built in the shape of an Egyptian pyramid while using mirror-like glass for the exterior: “Modernist architects once promised us cities of glass in which we would live in a continual state of revelation: all would be made clear and available to us. Here, glass hides all, inviting our desires and threatening us with the danger lurking at the heart of the cities we have built for ourselves.”
Perhaps Disneyland, although an ideal world, was never quite so modern as it was postmodern. Its hyperrealistic environment is at odds with modern thinking. Ultimately, visitors who trek to the park aren’t necessarily seeking the ideal world but rather an escape from objectivity.
Disneyland attendance is much like that of modern-day social media use. Virtual reality provides the same type of hyperrealistic world that was detailed above. In effect, it replaces a reality—social interaction, with another seeming reality—virtual interaction, which creates an element of unreality.
Disneyland has few clocks for guests to tell time and many of the attractions take place in dark environments. The buildings and attractions are also disproportionate, creating spatial illusions. These elements suspend time and space for park guests, further enhancing their notions of hyperreality. As so many have noted, the park allows for guests to relive childhood dreams in a packaged, sterilized world without consequences or adult concerns.
Hyperreality allows the guests to embrace postmodernism. For postmodernism seeks not to define truths by connections, but rather, it simply makes connections—never coming to conclusions about reality. I don’t assume to say that Americans have completely forgone attempts to find meaning, but contemporary society, as a whole, is moved by this trend, further pushed by pop culture and mass media. While Disneyland may still be considered the mind controlling dream land of the 21st century, in the end, it’s this postmodern tendency in our culture that continues to compel us to the gates of the happiest place on earth.
Wild Wilderness, “Critical Disney References,” http://www.wildwilderness.org/docs/disney2.htm
Mark Gottdiener, The theming of America: dreams, media fantasies, and themed environments (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2001), 120.
Mark Gottdiener, The theming of America: dreams, media fantasies, and themed environments (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2001), 119.
David M. Boje, “Stories of the Storytelling Organization: A postmodern analysis of Disney as ‘Tamara-Land,’” Academy of Management Journal 38 (1995): 997-1035.
Stephen M. Fjellman, Vinyl leaves: Walt Disney World and America (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1992), 301.
David M. Boje, “Stories of the Storytelling Organization: A postmodern analysis of Disney as ‘Tamara-Land,’” Academy of Management Journal 38 (1995): 997-1035.
M. J. King, “The audience in the wilderness: The Disney nature films.” Journal of Popular Film and Television 24(2) (1996): 60-69.
David M. Boje, “Stories of the Storytelling Organization: A postmodern analysis of Disney as ‘Tamara-Land,’” Academy of Management Journal 38 (1995): 997-1035.
L. M. Benton, “Selling the Natural or Selling Out,” Environmental Ethics 17: 3-32.
S. G. Davis, “The theme park: Global industry and cultural form.” Media, Culture & Society 18 (1996): 399-422.
Aaron Betsky and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Icons: Magnets of Meaning (San Francisco: San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 1997) 232.
Because I am such a Disney fanatic and so caught up in "Magic," I had to express my utter appreciation for one of the most magical movies, Hook. This film has a special place in my heart as it is a picture I remember watching as a young 6 year old.
One of the features that makes this film come to life with magic is the score by John Williams.
Here you'll find my personal rants about Design, Disney, and basic sociology and marketing. I'm glad you're here. I would love to check out your stuff. If you would like to connect with me (I'm happy to help with any design challenges you may have), send me a reply on twitter (@davidscoville). DavidScoville.com
Find me on Twitter,
Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+. My Wordpress Plugin: SEO Rank Reporter
In the original star wars films minorities have very sparse roles. The dominant roles are taken by Caucasians: Luke, Han Solo, Obi Wan Kenobi, Leia, and Darth Vader. Luke is mentored by Obi Wan, who acts as a patriarchal figure. Obi Wan has great wisdom, greater than that of Darth Vader and Luke learns to trust Obi Wan.
