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This article talks about how the Walt Disney Company is very powerful as a cultural machine. It creates both old and new products, often re-releasing its old products so that they will be available to newer generations. Disney’s success comes from its ability to create not just films or products, but cultural objects. Disney becomes a part of culture in a way that the American public comes to value its characters. The products of Disney are memory makers, in that they stay within the minds of each generation as something memorable and unique to creating family moments, and are then passed on to each generation. Disney films and products are shared memories that Americans come to value and revisit throughout their lifetimes.
The discussion on Disney as a memory making cultural machine is relevant to Cinderella’s influence on children’s beliefs about love and romance. One reason why Cinderella may influence a child is because these films are passed down from generation to generation. A mother may have fond memories of watching the film as a child, and then as Disney releases the classic film from the vault for a limited time, she may clamor to purchase the film for her child. In addition, according to the article, Disney serves as a memory maker. In this respect, Disney’s marketing strategies attempt to ingrain in the hearts and minds of the American public its characters and films, and thus this will reinforce a child’s notion that she should value and store within her mind what she learns in the film. These ideas may be enforced by the fact that so many other Americans come to value the same characters and films.
Meehan, Eileen R., Mark Phillips and Janet Wasko, ed. Dazzled by Disney?: The Global Disney Audiences Project. London; New York: Leicester University Press, 2001.
The chapter entitled “United States: a Disney Dialectic: A Tale of Two American Cities” includes results from a study that looked at two American towns – Athens, Ohio, and Tuscon, Arizona. The results from this chapter are part of a larger study that aimed to look at perceptions of Disney in different cultures. This chapter focused on the United States, and focused on college students’ analysis of the Disney brand. The two cities are different markets in that Athens has less access to Disney films and products, while Tuscon has easier access. Despite these differences, the study found that respondents in both cities found Disney to be ever-present in society, and recognized Disney as an important part of a person’s upbringing and family life. Older students found that as they thought about the future, they saw themselves as having families and children, and thus Disney would come back into their lives. Respondents saw Disney as invoking ideas of love, romance, and fantasy, and happiness.
This chapter is useful in looking at Cinderella as a place where children learn about romantic ideals, since the study finds that people believe Disney to be a pervasive and important part of culture. If this is the case, then it is possible that the pervasiveness of Disney may result in a child placing an emphasis on what they learn from a Disney film. Since college students find that Disney conveys notions of love and romance, then this means that they recall these ideas, and have come to recognize Disney as being a purveyor of particular morals, thoughts, and beliefs, including those about love. A child may thus come to find Disney films to have these same beliefs, and these values may be perpetuated over time with increased access to the ever-present Disney brand.