Religions Reviewed

Mazur and Koda discuss the religious consequences of the Disney Corporation’s capability to manufacture and maintain moral and cultural ideals, even though it is constituted as a commercial enterprise. In this analysis, they flirt with the idea of popular culture as religion, but they claim that “it would be fruitless to suggest that Disney is the same as a traditional religion.” (p. 302) Instead, their principal questions and conclusions reflect the tension between commodified popular culture on the one hand, and traditional religion on the other; this dynamic is the fourth one in the taxonomy provided by Bruce Forbes: religion and popular culture in dialogue.

Unlike the Star Trek case that we studied previously, in which a fan culture identifies itself as a rationalist vanguard conspicuously distinct from the American mainstream, Disney positions itself and its products as a barge dominating that mainstream, in many respects “synonymous with contemporary American culture.” (p. 300)

“The religion of Disney, if there can be said to be such a thing, is the same as it is for much of
America—commercialization.” Mazur and Koda assert that Disney uses its quasi-religious powers to (re)sanctify “the world of American consumer capitalism.” (p. 312) This project of idealizing mass consumption, especially when combined with the multi-cultural globalizing aspirations of Disney’s business, leads to conflicts with established religions. Not only has there been resistance from the religious institution of the Southern Baptist Convention in the form of a boycott (p. 309), but Disney has found itself at odds with the phenomenon of American civil religion: Virginians refused to submit the actual site of a civil war battlefield to the commodification of virtualized and airbrushed “Distory.” The authors do not actually cite Bellah’s ideas about civil religion, but they characterize the Virginia antagonism as “seemingly non-religious” (p. 312, emphasis added)

They draw on Mircea Eliade’s theories about sacred space and time in order to describe how the popular culture products of Disney are able to have social effects customarily identified as the express province of religion. The study also describes complementary 20^th-century trends that show how traditional religious institutions have been increasingly forced into the roles of competing “producers” of religious meaning seeking to woo a “consumer” population of potential adherents.

The authors’ emphasis on the freedom of “consumer” choice in religion, and the conscious articulation of values, seems to obscure an important factor in the success and power of the Disney empire, as well as a point on which religious opposition and resistance tend to focus: the indoctrination of children. Disney has offered its cultural products as suitable and “safe” for the amusement of children. (Note the goddess muse in the heart of amusement!) They have succeeded in cultivating a public perception that they are a source of wholesome stories for America’s youngest consumers of mass culture. Surely it is the fact that Disney is identified as a virtual food group in the mental diet of their children which raised the hackles of Southern Baptists worried about accommodation of homosexuality by Disney. Makur and Koda suggest that Disney might be excused for falsifying details in its rewritten “Distory,” since the avowed entertainment fictions do not “purport to teach people American history.” (p. 307) And yet many of Disney’s consumers are young enough that they have never had any formal instruction in history, and they will form preconceptions about history, culture and values on the basis of the characterizations and narratives that they receive from Disney. It can be considered axiomatic that for a pre-school child every experience is an “educational” experience.

One child-related feature that the authors do bring into view is the extent to which nostalgia and romanticism are invoked by much of the Disney cultural apparatus, with a special (and economically predictable) demographic focus on baby-boomer adults. They did not mention the extent to which this gambit has the effect of creating the “child-friendly” products and environments which parents then foist on their children. Children do not shop for religious affiliations; they are “brought up in” a given religious tradition or group. Similarly, and often to an equal extent, children are now “brought up in” the symbolic universe manufactured and marketed by Disney, causing understandable consternation among the champions of traditional religions.

Another feature of the Disney brand that is underplayed by the study is Disney’s professed possession of “magic.” Magic is associated with a romanticized view of childhood, but also with the superstitious dimensions of religion (e.g. in Tylor) and the incomprehensible developments of science (Arthur C. Clarke). Disneyworld contains the “Magic Kingdom,” and the “Magic of Disney” can be understood in terms of the Disneyization that David Chidester (Authentic Fakes, pp. 142-3) recounts from Alan Bryman’s analysis. In particular, the principle of dedifferentiation of consumption leads to deliberate blurring of distinctions not only between shopping and playing, but also between enjoying and valuing—in sanitized Disney stories, the good is always pleasant. The principle of emotional labor with its mandated “friendly smile” brings to mind Baudrillard’s discussion of the “smile of immunity, the smile of advertising” in the culture of American extraversion. (America, p. 33)

And in fact it is Baudrillard who has touched most neatly on what is “magic” about Disney. From the animated films of stories that never were and never could be, to the “imagineered” robots entertaining visitors to the theme parks, Disney openly exemplifies what Baudrillard calls simulacra of the third order. He agrees with Mazur and Koda that American “values are exalted here [in Disneyland], in miniature and comic strip form.” (Simulations, p. 24) But he insists that the magical attraction of the parks and the films is that they afford the consumer a chance to admit that they are immersed in pretending, in a way that is impermissible in the equally ‘pretend’ environments of currencies and financial derivatives, political parties and governments, and religious observances too. Exposure to the spectacular fakery of Disney’s products can distract and ease the concern that there is something inherently trumped-up and disingenuous about the quotidian aspects of American culture. Thus the commercial quasi-religion of Disney may surpass its competitors in an ability to opiate the masses.