Understanding Disney By Janet Wasko Summary

Since the 1930’s, the Walt Disney Company is known for producing characters, images, as well as stories which have created happiness for audiences around the world. This corporation has grown from a small cartoon studio run by famous Walt and Roy Disney to a million dollar business. In Janet Wasko’s novel, “Understanding Disney”, Wasko explains Disney as corporation calling it “The Disney Empire”. Throughout her novel, Wasko argues that Disney is set up like a typical profit seeking corporation, as well as creates and manufactures fantasy, and lastly re-invents folk tales by americanising them.
Rather than looking at Disney as a place of magic, Janet Wasko examines Disney as a corporation, which is known to be the largest entertainment corporations in the world. Wasko examines the process of Disney through a critical lens Wasko explains “The objective of this novel is to encourage analysis of popular culture and its role in society by exploring a

Wasko discusses that Disney attaches certain values to their products such as magic, hope, family and love which persuade people to participate in consumer culture. In her novel, Wasko quotes a newlywed who spent their honeymoon at Disney land as they claim “I am discontented mostly because of the fact that our tickets lied to us. On the ticket it says ‘Where everyone can be a kid again.’ Disneyland is not a place for children. It’s a place for their parents to feed into the great big Disney profit machine” (Wasko 211). Due to how well Disney portray their values and brand, people forget that they are participating in consumerism. I agree with Wasko when she says that Disney does an excellent job hiding the fact that they produce, package, and sell experiences and memories as commodities. Everything within Disney is set up in a way to bring “happiness” to people when in reality it is making them