Disney pre-class

Having read tonights reading which directly correlates to a similar reading I did in prior weeks in CMC-200, I found Dorfan and Mattelart to have some very intersting material in their article. Having done the Disney work for 200, I already knew the bulk of Domani's material and a fair amount of Dorfan&Mattelart's but the latter provided me with a great deal of fresh perspective. I liked how the text looked at the connotative and dennotative readings of Disney texts and especially the patriarchal aspects of father/son narrative relation. I have seen firsthand what D&M clarify on page 123 about Disney being a social environment 'which extends beyond all frontiers and ideologies, transcends differences between peoples and nations and particularities of custom and language' (123) as I lived in Singapore for a month in my youth and saw a prevalence of Disney characters abroad. The narratives put forth by these characters and their archetypes are universally relatable which suggests as D&M put it a 'common collective vision' (123).
I found D&M's statement on 125 to be particularly eye opening in 'children's literature is a genre like any other, monopolized by specialized subsectors within the culture industry' (125) as I had never given thought to children's literature at all, let alone as a genre. I found the coverage of new reality, closed circuits, mass culture, utpoia, and nostalgia to be interestingly approached in the text on 126&127 as an effective leighway to the coverage of generational conflicts, which was the golden concept of this article.
D&M state on 126 that 'the identity of parent and child inhibits the emergence of true generational conflicts. The pure child will replace the corrupt father, preserving the latters values. The future (the child) reaffirms the present (the adult), which, in turn, transmits the past. The apparent independence which the father benevolently bestows upon this little territory of his creation, is the very means of assuring his supremacy' (126). This was a very intersting spin on what D&M identify in their instructions expelling someone from the Disneyclub as 'Marxism-fiction, a theory imported from abroad by "wicked foreigners"' (125). This stood out to me because what they say about the emergence of true generational conficts is literally a reinterpretation of Marx's theory of the owners of material production subsequently owning mental production. In D&M the father acts as the proletariat and teh child the bourgeoisie, the father shaping the childs thought processes vicariously through their own experience and future hopes for the child. As my Dad conditioned my mental production to act with chivalry whenever the opportunity arises, i.e. opening doors for women, the fathers in this text influence their children and condition them through juvenile narratives the inspire, such as Disney's ideological interpretations. Also paramount to this is D&M's statement that 'inasmuch as the sweet and docile child can be sheltered effectively from the evils of existence, from the petty rancors, the hatreds and teh political or ideological contamination of his elders, any attempt to politicize the sacred domaine of childhood threatens to introduce perversity where there once reigned happiness, innocence and fantasy' (124).
D&M also cover Marxian thought in their conceptualization of mass culture, reflecting the proletariats pros and cons over the bourgeoisie: 'MAss culture...had a levelling effect and has exposed a wider audience to a broader range of themes, it has simultaneously generated a cultural elite which has cut itself off more and more from the masses. COntrary to the democratic potential of mass culture, this elite has plunged mass culture into a suffocating complexity of solutions, approaches and techniques, each of which is comprehensible only to a narrow circle of readers' (127). All the material in this quote is talking about the proletariats dominance over the mental production of the bourgeoisie, even stating that the complexity of solutions, approaches and techniques is comprehensible to only a narrow circle of people reading the text i.e. the proletariats themselves. This means the bourgoise follows the proletariats ideology without question considering themselves incapable of reading the full context of why things are the way they are, which they perceive the proletariat to have a grasp over - in the same way the son listens to the father unquestioningly.

on my honor I have not given, nor received, nor witnessed any unauthorized assistance on this work.