HOLLA! Dorfman and Mattelart

When I say Disney World…what do you think about? I think about magic, Mickey Mouse, the Magic Kingdom, and a world that never gets old. I grew up loving Disney like I am sure a lot of my generation did. Like Dorfman and Mattelart said, “Disney thus establishes a moral background which draws the child down the proper ethical and aesthetic path” (124). I could not agree more with this statement. I learned many lessons from Disney movies like friendship in The Fox and the Hound and love in The Little Mermaid. Disney helped me to expand my imagination through its animal characters as well. But enough about the child like aspects of Disney, Dorfman and Mattelart go deeper into Disney and its creators. They say that the adult is the one who produces these movies and brings these characters to life and the child is the one that consumes them. These adults are living vicariously through children to form a utopia in which they never had. They go on to say “this is a closed circuit: children have been conditioned by magazines and the culture which spawned them. They tend to reflect in their daily lives the characteristics they are supposed to posses, in order to win affection, acceptance, and rewards; in order to grow up properly and integrate into society” (126). Disney is teaching children the morals, lessons, and values needed to succeed and the social norms that must be followed. Adults are the ones creating these social norms, telling children they must follow these guidelines in order to be accepted. Disney is a type of literature, according to Dorfman and Mattelart, that is a father surrogate. “Parentalism in absentia is the indispensable vehicle for the defense and invisible control of the ostensibly autonomous childhood model” (128). This means that a child fantasy becomes a special place where parents do not exist but maybe the favorite uncle does. Disney is a desired place that children may see as a reality as they grow up and learn, if anything I see it as a teaching mechanism and an a much needed escape from the world around us.