Space and Identity: Disneyland

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• Topic 7
• Space and Identity Disneyland

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• Mickey Mouse Monopoly
• Disney, Childhood and Corporate Power
• Disneys Media Dominance
• How to be a Girl? How to be a Boy? (Gender
  Representation)
• Commercializing Childrens Culture

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Mickey Mouse Monopoly

• The Disney Company's massive success in the 20th
  century is based on creating an image of
  innocence, magic and fun.
• new video insightfully analyzes Disney's cultural
  pedagogy, examines its corporate power, and
  explores its vast influence on our global
  culture.
• Mouse Monopoly will provoke audiences to
  virtually synonymous with childhood pleasure.

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History of Orlando Walt Disney World

• All started from false premises. In persuading
  the Florida government of their plan.
• Walt Disney described on screen the EPCOT
  (Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow)
  plan, a model city, a residential community of
  20,000 real people, working and playing there.
• Disney demanded from the Florida government
  solid legal foundation flexibility
  municipal bonding authority, and the creation of
  two municipalities together with an autonomous
  political district controlled by the company and
  empowered to issue tax-exempt bonds.

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Reedy Creek Improvement District
In 1968, Florida Supreme Court ruled that the
Reedy Creek Improvement District was legally
entitled to issue tax-free municipal bonds the
bonding power permitted public funds to be used
for private purposes that are entirely in the
disposal of Disney.
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Autonomous Political District

• Autonomous political district means buildings,
  constructions, land-use, transportation and law
  and enforcement are controlled by the private
  corporation.
• Disneys autonomous political district in
  Orlando a special administrative region.
• Will Disney HK be a Special Administrative Region
  within an SAR?

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Autonomous Political District

• As an autonomous political district, the
  Florida Disney APD (the Disney government), has
  free land use and free use of county, city and
  state infrastructure built by tax-payer money.
  Disney is a landowner-controlled government.
• On the one hand, taxpayers need to bear Disney
  Worlds entire infrastructure cost, and the
  entire administrative burden of regulating and
  inspecting the theme parks construction.
• On the other hand, Disney, as a private company,
  does not need to bear any responsibilities for
  addressing off-site impacts (e.g. traffic jams,
  road and public utilities safety etc.) as other
  developers, like Universal Studio.

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Autonomous Political District

• The Reedy Creek Improvement district has its own
  Laws and Law Enforcement force
• Disney uses private security guards to perform
  the police function within the Disney theme park
  and community, but Disney, as private company,
  has no obligations to provide public records
  about crimes in its properties to the government.

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Conflicts with off-site impacts of the Disney
APD

• The EPCOT (Experimental Prototype Community of
  Tomorrow) where were the citizens-residents?
• Disney did not build the EPCOT residential
  community but only hotels.
• Orlando Disney (in Orange County, Florida) opened
  since 1966, but for very long, the EPCOT was no
  where to be found. Even in 1982, the EPCOT has no
  residents. It only showcases world restaurants,
  with themes like China, and these restaurants
  have mechanical games and rides inside them, just
  like a mini version of the Disney theme park.

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Potential Problems of Hong Kong Disney

• Political Governance Issues
• Disney will trap benefits, becoming an SAR within
  the HKSAR
• Degree of tax-payer subsidy
• Hong Kong government owns 57 but has no decision
  making rights. If the HKDL loses, the HK also
  loses.
• The government officials in HKDL are not
  accountable to Hong Kong people.
• Governance, public facilities infrastructure,
  surrounding land use, property rights etc.

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Economic Issues What we can learn from the
Orlando case World Tourism Organization projects
- 2010, HK will be the 5 largest tourist
city/economy

• The Myth of Tourism Tourist economies (relying
  heavily on tourism industry) limited job
  benefits to the city e.g.
• Tourism economy cant shift from low wage
  industries to high-tech industries.
• Most jobs require only low level skills - does
  not promote value-adding skills. No accumulation
  of local tacit knowledge.

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Economic Issues

• Disney has the first right to consider buying the
  land of Phase II reclaimed land (???) at a
  premium price (28?5000?).
• Government loans to Disney 56? to be paid back in
  25 years
• Assistance from governments in building theme
  parks
• Sustainable Development
• Impact on economic and corporate strategies
  outsourcing, e.g. coloring to Beijing

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Economic Issues

• Disney will resist paying
• Who will be responsible for maintaining the areas
  around Disneyland HK?
• LEGCO archive on Disney 1999 September to
  December 2005 Mar 16 meeting CB(1)1062/04-05(03)
  CB(1)1063/04-05 etc.
• Demolitions ????????
• Housing issues 2010 projected 810??. At first,
  the land now belonging to Disney (?????) was to
  be the site of these public housing.

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Disney sea and air rights
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Potential Problems of Hong Kong Disney

• Economic (Environmental) Issues
• Physical/Cultural Landscape impacts
  environmental hazards (non-disclosure clause)
• Land Reclamation the Lantau and Cheung Chau
  research
• Demolitions ????????, no environmental
  compensations
• Air pollution due to daily fireworks.
• Myth Disney investments has nothing to do with
  high-tech development

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Economic Issues

• The Disney brand will define Hong Kong in the
  tourism industry. Can Hong Kong then develop
  industries other than tourism?
• Disney and other tourist attractions will
  stimulate low-wage service economy with
  increasing age discrimination, encouraging a
  citys young work force to give up education and
  training for more and more low wage jobs.

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Cultural Disney

• Synergy a combined action or operation between
  individual units - produce an immediately
  recognizable brand?
• Walt Disney Company

Walt Disney Studios Walt Disney Attractions Walt Disney Consumer Products
Walt Disney Animation Touchstone Pictures Hollywood Pictures Disney Channel (85) bought ABCgt200 more channels to come, 20 radio stations Disney Vacation Club Disneyland, Walt Disney World, Euro Disney, Tokyo Disneyland Stores, records, licensing 16,000 items of merchandise worldwide, computer software, Disney Education (English learning program with Harvard)
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What we can learn from the Orlando case Cultural
Issues

• Cultural Domination any local newspapers or
  magazines criticizing Disney died due to Disney
  pressure and market manipulation.
• Intellectual Property violence
• Culture of Extreme Control
• Controlled sense of total environment
• Disney realism programs out negative, unwanted
  elements, like poverty, war, social issues
• Control nature through technological progress and
  corporatism
• Controls employees through instruction manuals,
  handbooks, scripting, audio-animatronic figures
  phasing out cast members.

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What we can learn from the Orlando case Cultural
Issues

• Culture of Extreme Control
• Control visitors behavior. LA park spokesperson
  Bob Roth, We de reserve the right to ask people
  to leave if we feel their appearance would be
  offensive to others at the park. (Koeing, 209).
• Private property can enforce discriminatory
  rules of its own, e.g. No gay couples dancing and
  touching, No sloppy clothes
• Suppress Cultural Diversity
• eliminate and transforms local cultures,
  heritage, communities to Disney-fied versions.
  Eliminate historical conflicts, wars, genocides
  and other unpleasant facts

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Cultural Issues Disney Values

• Disney Movies specific formula, always moral
  tales with overt values represented reinvention
  of folk tales (de-politicized, sanitized)
• Heroes and heroines are handsome/beautiful
  (eventually), with upper class or aristocratic
  background. Villains are extremely fat or
  extremely thin, with exaggerated facial features,
  and usually have accents, body languages of
  poorer classes and non-white cultures.
• Individualism, optimism, good triumphs over evil
  (but de-contextualized from social reality)
• Corporatism (corporations improves our lives),
  technological progress, consumerism (consumption
  replaces control at the workplace)

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Cultural Issues (1) The Disney Corporate Model

• Alan Bryman, The Disneyization of Society argues
  that the contemporary world is increasingly
  converging towards the characteristics of the
  Disney theme parks. This process of convergence
  is revealed in the growing influence of themed
  environments in settings like restaurants, shops,
  hotels, tourism and zoos the growing trend
  towards social environments that are driven by
  combinations of forms of consumption shopping,
  eating out, gambling, visiting the cinema,
  watching sports...

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Cultural Issues the GDAP Global Disney
Audience Program

• When asked to use one term to describe Disney,
  the most frequent answer is fun, followed by
  happiness, fantasy, imagination, and
  family.
• Need alternative visions and rhetoric to deal
  with this.
• The audience term Disney animation as cute,
  cozy, warm, clean, safe, friendly, heart-warming,
  carefree, enchanting, wonderful, perky, innocent,
  mystical, moral.
• Disney-Harvard English program deal target
  global middle-class aspirations (from age 0
  onwards).
• Invading memories Kodak-Disney Deal all
  childhood memories encrypted in Disney
  experience.

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Cultural Issues the Global Disney Audience
Program

• Reasons why respondents enjoy Disney
• (1) pleasant memories with family and friends
• (2) contrast to everyday life practices and
  association to holidays, celebrations, gifts
• (3) association with rituals and tradition
• (4) escape from problems such as pain of aging
  and social problems
• Disneys ubiquity incorporates family, romantic
  and friendship rituals some respondents place
  Disney in a special, almost sacred, category.
  (WaskoMeehan, 2001 332)
• Movies are also promotional items introducing new
  characters for new Disney products commodifying
  emotions

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Potential criticisms against Disney Labor Issues

• Beware of Mickey
• Disney Sweatshops In South China

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Potential cultural criticisms against Disney
Labor Issues

• Emotional Labor
• even the janitor is a CAST MEMBER performing a
  staged cleaning.
• Control design of products, then licenses the
  actual manufacture to independent subcontractors,
  mostly in Third World countries in poverty-level
  wages and inhuman conditions.
• Toys of Misery A Report on the Toy Industry in
  China, The National Labor Committee reports,
  2001, 2002, 2004 http//www.nlcnet.org
• Hong Kong Christian Industrial Committee reports
  www.cic.org.hk
• Mexican Chinese workers cases
  www.maquilasolidarity.org/campaigns/disney/finding
  s.htm
• China Labor Watch report

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More Visual Materials

• The Celebration Project http//www.celebrationfl.
  com
• Take the best ideas from the most successful
  towns of yesterday and the technology of the new
  millennium, and synthesize them into a close-knit
  community that meets the needs of today's
  families. The founders of CELEBRATION started
  down a path of research, study, discovery, and
  enlightenment that resulted in one of the most
  innovative communities of the 21th century.

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The Celebration Project http//www.celebrationfl.
com

• Community in the spirit of neighborliness,
  CELEBRATION residents gather at front porches,
  park benches, recreational areas, and downtown
  events celebrating a place they call home.
• CELEBRATION is a community built on a foundation
  of cornerstones Community, Education, Health,
  Technology, and a Sense of Place.