Some Pics of Me at Disney World

I was working on my first Decoding Disney essay today when I got an email from my mom checking up on how the essay was going. Attached were some pictures of me at Disney World and I immediately knew they were going up on the blog. Here they are!:

*Giroux Poops His Pants As Disney Announces Twitter Interest*

Can you hear that? Listen closer. I swear you could hear Giroux screaming; he crawled out of his cave in Canada and let out a howl at the latest Disney headlines. Disney has announced serious interest in buying Twitter, one of the social media powerhouses of the world. I mean it makes sense from a business standpoint. Disney has acquired companies that were in great shape, such as Pixar, and since Pixar has won six Oscars for best animated feature films. On the other hand, Disney has bought distressed companies such at Marvel Entertainment and completely turned them around. Marvel was filing for bankruptcy in 1996, and since Disney has acquired the company, it had reeled in $8 billion world-wide. But after re-reading Giroux's papers, I kind of fear of the possibility of such an acquisition. The thought of Disney owning Twitter scares me, I feel as if Disney will be omnipresent and unescapable. Disney will actually be able to brainwash our future generations into children into mindless consumers. 



http://www.marketwatch.com/story/disney-knows-a-good-buy-when-it-sees-it-2016-09-26 

My Response to Hiaasen

While I have been told over and over again growing up to never judge a book by its cover, I can’t help but emphasize the negativity I automatically felt from looking at the cover of “Team Rodent”. While I have had my first experiences this semester reading articles critical of Disney, I haven’t read anything with such a pugnacious cover. The title refers to Disney’s franchise cartoon character, the character that basically embodies Walt Disney’s legacy, Mickey Mouse, as a rodent. Furthermore, Hiaasen clearly states his intentions of the book by having “How Disney Devours the World” on the cover of the book. In this case, the content of the book reflects the bellicose nature cover.

            Off the gate, Hiaasen starts criticizing Disney. He touches up on some of the same things Giroux did, such as Disney’s corporate greed and the scarily broad reach of its products and advertisements. However, the main focus of Hiaasen’s denouncement of Disney has to do with secrecy. Hiaasen refers to trust as Disney’s “secret” weapon. In Hiaasen’s mind Disney has basically raised everyone, gaining everyone’s trust, and by doing so has garnered so much autonomy that it could conduct business with a great deal of secrecy. Hiaasen, a proud Floridian, is quick to point out Disney’s secret purchases of approximately twenty-four thousand acres of land in Florida to build Disney World. He refers to these purchases as a “real-estate coup”, for by keeping Disney’s name out of the transactions, they prevented price surges (25). Another worth-mentioning example of Hiaasen alluding to Disney’s “fanatical obsession with secrecy” is when he talks about the “eight-hundred-member security force that patrols” all of Disney’s property. While this security force isn’t affiliated with the police, the “hosts” and “hostesses” often forget to report cases to the police, which is pretty sketchy. The best point Hiaasen makes with regard to the secret culture that embodies Disney is an incident that happened on August 31, 1994. To shorten the long story, a Disney security van pursued two young trespassers in a pickup truck. A mile off of Disney property, the pursuit resulted in a crash and death of an eighteen year old. Apparently when the Florida state highway patrol began investigating the accident, Disney was extremely uncooperative with investigators and refused to release recordings of the radio communications between the security guard that pursued the teens and the company dispatcher.

            In my opinion Hiaasen makes some great points that should spark intrigue and criticism. There is indubitably a culture of secrecy at Disney, after reading Team Rodent it’s undeniable. They have so much money and such autonomy that they get away with some really dark stuff. However, Hiaasen’s profane, politically incorrect, and prejudiced language takes away a great deal of credibility from his argument. To me he seems like an ultra-conservative yokel that listens to fox new on a transistor radio and has a news clippings plastered all over his walls. Some of his conspiracies are so ludicrous that it is genuinely hard to believe he is serious. I was shocked when I saw how normal he looked on the back of the book. Overall, I found this to be an amusing book. While there were some smart points made by Hiaasen, the vulgarity of his language and his crazy conspiracies turn his argument into a joke.

When Researching Mulan Quickly Turns To Staring At Memes

My Response to Giroux

An hour ago I finished Henry Giroux’s article titled “How Disney Magic and the Corporate Media Shape Youth Identity in the Digital Age”. While I have read other Giroux articles on Disney, I found this article to be quite unlike his other articles. It is no secret that Giroux is critical of Disney’s intentions, but in past articles he has at least conceded that there are benefits of Disney’s prevalence in children’s culture. This article, however, was extremely condemnatory, and only condemnatory. I emphasize that I finished reading this about an hour ago because I felt a myriad of emotions after finishing the article and needed time to process. At first I was shocked. You read some disparaging claims about the greedy, sinister intentions. These claims backed by statistics and you cant help but feel aghast. That feeling, however, quickly turned to resentment. Disney for as long as I could remember has been an escape from the mundane for me. Through its movies, television shows, theme parks, and video games I felt able to be transported to fantastic, magical worlds. Disney was a source of inspiration, it encouraged me to dream and to explore, and now I am reading that Disney’s “corporate assault” is turning “kids into consumers and childhood into a scalable economy.” Disney has somehow maintained an identity of innocence and I couldn’t believe that it was a scam.  The craziest thing Giroux touches upon is the fact in 2000, Disney purchased the Baby Einstein Company and started developing baby videos, trying to retain the identity as a vehicle for education. Then in 2007 researchers at the University of Washington published a study denouncing the impacts of baby videos and asserting that reading to infants was more conducive to an increase in intelligence. Disney then demanded the University of Washington to retract their claims like a spoiled child that didn’t get his way. I felt played by Disney, for my parents poured money into their products that were nothing short of a brainwashing mechanism.

However, after further processing I started to realize what an absolute lunatic Giroux is. I understand Disney is not what it says it is. There is nothing innocent about Disney. However, Giroux’s disdain for Disney is so intense that I started disagreeing with some of his points because of his harsh choices of words. I mean right off the bat he uses strong language by saying children are “assaulted” by a ceaseless “proliferation of marketing strategies.” He refers to Disney’s marketing and advertising campaign as a “hostile” confiscation of “childhood”.  Moreover, he uses verbs such as “hijacking” and “lure”, and adjectives such as “grave” as if Disney is some sort of criminal that kidnaps the innocence of children and by doing so turns them into mindless consumers with no capability of creative self-thought.  Overall, I would have to say I agree with the point of Giroux’s article, but I disagree with his way about conveying this issue. We are being brainwashed by advertising masterminds that care solely about money. Children are the future and we should certainly be critical of how we invest in their upbringing, but we should spread this information in a less aggressive and disparaging manner.

Pictures of Emma Watson's 'Belle' Outfit!!!

Super stoked for Bill Condon's Beauty and The Best to come out in theaters. A huge fan of his Twilight movies, I can't wait to see how magical his rendition is of this timeless fairy tale. It is no secret that Emma Watson is playing Belle, an independent, young woman who is alive in a time when woman are ostracized for challenging gender roles. Emma Watson is pretty familiar playing an ambitious and astute character, considering her role as Hermione Granger, an adventurous brainiac, in the Harry Potter movies. While details about the film have been shrouded from the public, yesterday pictures of Belle's outfit in the movie. Hopefully as the release date gets closer we will continue to get sneak peaks into this bound to be fantastic film.

Link to pictures of Belle's outfit:
http://www.glamour.com/story/emma-watson-costume-in-beauty-and-the-beast

How Disney Influenced Me

Ever since I was young I was attracted to Disney. I loved the movie ‘Mulan’, Tarzan was my hero for a while, and ‘The Jungle Book’ singlehandedly sparked my passion for exploring. As a child I was a “wanderer” as my mom would put it. It got so bad that my parents started dressing me in neon clothing when we went out into public. Age six. New York State Fair. Disappeared for three hours. I was found at the petting zoo feeding llamas. My parents would tie me on a leash when we would go to very crowded areas. I was curious and couldn’t help myself. For as long as I could remember I had been inquisitive.

Anyways, Disney had its first real, visible impact on me when I went to Disney Land for the first time. I know this is such a cliché considering every child’s first time at a Disney theme park is magical and moving. But for me, the curious and adventurous little boy I was, Disney Land was the Mecca. There is this spirit that embodies Disney Land. An energy, an aura. Whatever terminology you use to describe it is trivial because you can’t help but feel it course through your veins when you walk through those magical gates. It is as if you are walking into a fairyland where anything is possible. You feel as if you can be there forever and this dream-like reality will never cease to amaze you. Overall, I can say my first trip to Disney Land instilled an everlasting thirst to explore and dream.

While as a youth, my everlasting thirst to explore an dream, would mainly consist of me wandering away from my parents at malls, markets, and museums, as I grew older my dreams of wandering the world started transforming into a reality. At first, I started with summer programs traveling the United States and Canada. However, when I was sixteen I graduated and was fortunate enough to go on a program to France, Spain, Germany, and the Netherlands for the summer. While I couldn’t be more grateful for the opportunities to travel given to me by my parents, I still couldn’t seem to satisfy this desire to go on a more fulfilling adventure.

The summer before I started my endeavors at Duke, I convinced my parents to let me go on an adult community service trip to Vietnam. After about a week of teaching English, I left the program by myself. I then rented a motorcycle and drove around Vietnam, staying at hostels in various cities for the remaining three weeks. To an eighteen year old, backpacking Vietnam by himself may seem overwhelming, but not for me. I was ready. I had been ready for this life changing and humbling adventure since my first trip to Disney Land.

Why Decoding Disney?

Hi! My name is Ethan Susser. I am nineteen years old and from Long Island, New York. Unlike everyone else taking this class, I am a sophomore here at Duke University. I started my freshman year as a student in Pratt, the notoriously work heavy school of engineering at Duke. While a very strong math and science student, I quickly found the course load and requirements not to be too intimidating, but to be way too confining. You are at a world-class institution with some of the most renowned individuals of their respective fields teaching classes, and you don't have the time to experience a wide array of classes and to discover new passions. So I transferred to Trinity, the college of arts and sciences, and never looked back.

A perpetually mediocre writer, I managed to elude writing 101 as a freshman, but was ultimately forced by my advisor to take it this semester. As a rising sophomore I had the luxury of selecting any writing 101 class, for returning students have a earlier class registration window than incoming freshman. When scrolling through the long list of Writing 101 classes Decoding Disney instantaneously caught my eye. While being an average analytical writer, I had always shown more promise when analyzing something of interest. When I get to write about an interest of mine I could usually relate it to an experience or something that had a strong impact on me and thereby write more eloquently. Furthermore, there is an intrinsic spirit of exploration that embodies Disney and as an individual who loves to travel and explore I have always been attracted to that spirit.

My first visible attraction to Disney was to the movie ‘Mulan’. I vividly remember lying with my sisters at the foot of my parents’ bed watching Mulan. We made it a tradition that once a year we all lay in the same spots and watch the movie, each time just as memorable as the last. Even with my sisters out of the house and me at Duke, we still manage to honor the tradition. Cooking in the kitchen it is commonplace to hear a family member howl “Lets get down to business!’. That howl is consistently responded with a “To defeat the Huns!” bellowed out by the other family members in the room. It will never ever get old.

My first trip to Disney Land, however, was the real tipping point in my life when my interest in Disney became a passion. Walking through those gates for the first time was a memory I will cherish forever. There is this magical aura to Disney Land that is hard to put into words. There is excitement in the air and an adventurous spirit that you just can feel through your bones. I was hooked. Over the past several years my fervor for all things Disney has dwindled. But my experiences with Disney, whether it be watching it’s magical films or visiting it’s theme parks, have instilled a thirst to explore and dream. This thirst has led me to backpack Vietnam by myself, to bungee jump in Zimbabwe, and to scuba dive in frigid waters in Iceland. This thirst has led me to learn a lot about my self and countless others all around the world.
With regards to the focus of the course, I look very forward to scrutinizing and analyzing the dynamic and role of evil or a villain within Disney films. I have always been interested in the evil villain in films and I found ‘The Aesthetic of Evil’ to be super fascinating. Maybe my inherent interest in the villain has formed because the villain’s actions represent rebellion in a time that I felt cooped up in the confines of an over protective Jewish mother. I guess this course will give me a whole semester to figure out the reasoning behind this innate intrigue in the villain.