Upon Trans-national Corporations

[Don Coyote]

So, I am taking a class that deals with the globalization of the world through media.
As part of this class I have to write a 4-5 page essay on one of large trans-national media conglomerates.
I'm going with Disney, because EVERYONE was raised on Disney, including me, and as an added benefit my mother's family LOVES Disney and everything related to it.

So far I am just skimming stuff to get ideas on where to get better sources than wikipedia when it dawned on me. I do not think these megacorps should be viewed as business ventures, but rather as a nations. This is probably very obvious, and I've been thinking towards that for a while, but it didn't click until I noticed to probably unrelated things: the birth of cyberpunk in the '80s and the whole host of deregulationing that began around the same time.
Whether or not there is correlation doesn't matter because it was in the back of my mind while I was reading about Disney and its subsidiaries. That's a LOT of people. That is a LOT of money.

Well in anycase, I'm looking forward to learning more about Disney and so on and so forth, doubly so if it turns out I can legitimately say, "hey Mom, Disney is fucked up and Disneyland is not a cool place to visit." I mean it's rather self-evident, but still her family still hold Disney to this great thing.

[Don Coyote]

So Disney has been fingerprinting visitors to Disney World since atleast 2006, and it appears before 9/11.

http://newsinitiative.org/story/2006/08/14/walt_disney_world_the_governments

The last line is rather chilling.

"It helps public perception to have biometrics deployed on a widespread basis," said Joseph Campbell, the former chairman of the Biometrics Consortium. "The more people use biometrics, the more people are comfortable with it."

So why haven't I heard about this before now? Has anyone else heard about this?

[Triple Zero]

This probably won't be very relevant to your essay, but an interesting bit of trivia about Disney: Donald Duck comics and cartoons are actually much bigger in Europe than in the USA. Bigger than Mickey Mouse, and definitely bigger than all those Disney movies that come out every year. Frankly what surprised me (having grown up reading Donald Duck comics), was that he's apparently NOT one of the biggest Disney characters in the USA and that Disney comics are in fact not at all that popular over there. Srsly, every kid for the past couple of decades grew up with Donald Duck magazine, over here.

[Nephew Twiddleton]

So Disney has been fingerprinting visitors to Disney World since atleast 2006, and it appears before 9/11.

http://newsinitiative.org/story/2006/08/14/walt_disney_world_the_governments

The last line is rather chilling.

"It helps public perception to have biometrics deployed on a widespread basis," said Joseph Campbell, the former chairman of the Biometrics Consortium. "The more people use biometrics, the more people are comfortable with it."

So why haven't I heard about this before now? Has anyone else heard about this?

No. That's pretty fucked up. Shit.

[Telarus]

I've noticed this trend for a while. It's the same ploy FB uses by completely changing their user interface and privacy terms at non-predictable intervals. Multiple people associated with federal law enforcement have made comments such as that.

[ñͤͣ̄ͦ̌̑͗͊͛͂͗ ̸̨̨̣̺̼̣̜͙͈͕̮̊̈́̈͂͛̽͊ͭ̓͆ͅé ̰̓̓́ͯ́́͞]

Check this out Coyote:

[...] both Jane Kuenz and Susan Willis have analyzed how in Disney's theme parks, intimacy, imagination, and spontaneity are replaced by the expertise of the well-placed park attendants, the picture-perfect photo sites, and the endless spectacles in which fun becomes consumption and memory is reduced to the purchase of souvenirs. Similarly, theorists such as A. Dorfman and A. Matellart have indicated how Disney's comics serve to reproduce sexist, racist, and colonial ideologies. Moreover, the mythology of an unproblematic innocence and clean virtue that has been carefully constructed by the Disney Company has been further demystified by a number of revelations indicating that Walt Disney, the founder of the Disney empire, served, according to Herbert Mitgang, "from 1940 until his death in 1966 . . . as a secret informer for the Los Angeles office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation." It seems that Walt Disney was not only a special agent (code name: S.A.C. Contact) dedicated to rooting out communist agitators in the film industry, but he also allowed the FBI access to the Disneyland facilities for "use in connection with official matters and for recreational purposes." Most disturbingly, Disney allowed J. Edgar Hoover, the director of the FBI, to censor and modify the scripts of such Disney films as Moon Pilot (1962) and That Darn Cat (1965) so as to portray bureau agents in a favorable light.
     Behind the pretense to innocence and its appeal to a childlike state in which forgetting the past becomes more important than engaging it, the policing of memory erases its emancipatory possibilities. This is illuminated, in part, through recent public revelations indicating that the Disney Company has, on occasion, exceeded the moral boundaries of its promotional enthusiasm by preventing the publication of books critical of Walt Disney and the Disney Company's image. It appears that beneath the promotion of the magical name of Disney and the public spaces it represents as "the happiest place on earth" lurks the power of a multinational conglomerate that has little regard for free speech and public criticism.

from "Disturbing Pleasures: Learning Popular Culture" by Henry, Giroux, page 32, published in 1994

[ñͤͣ̄ͦ̌̑͗͊͛͂͗ ̸̨̨̣̺̼̣̜͙͈͕̮̊̈́̈͂͛̽͊ͭ̓͆ͅé ̰̓̓́ͯ́́͞]

A few pages later in the book, Giroux deconstructs Good Morning, Vietnam and Pretty Woman. There's more that's probably relevant to your paper than I'm going to quote here, but here's another nugget I think you'll find useful:

In the 1970's and 1980's, the rewriting of the United States intervention in Vietnam became the focus of celluloid history. Vietnam as a spectacle provided the impetus for a series of Hollywood films engaged in the process of organized forgetting, a process that substituted myths for reality, redemption for truth, and collective self-pity for social justice.
   With few exceptions, Hollywood's rendition of the Vietnam War paralleled and legitimated the nation's imperialist strategy in Southeast Asia. It shifted the focus of the war away from those who were victims of long-standing Western and, specifically, North American imperialism to the personal and social struggles of Americans involved in the war.
    The legacy of historical amnesia during the 1980's and the construction of popular memory in Hollywood Vietnam films is well known and need not be repeated in depth. After all, this was the decade in which the United States needed to reassert itself as the leader of the new world order by exorcising the critical legacy of the 1960's and reversing the public humiliation it suffered during the Iran hostage crisis. At the same time, the United States was actively obscuring and erasing its own legacy of military intervention and terrorism in world affairs by constructing Third World peoples as either terrorists or religious fundamentalists.

Ibid, pages 34-35.

[Don Coyote]

This probably won't be very relevant to your essay, but an interesting bit of trivia about Disney: Donald Duck comics and cartoons are actually much bigger in Europe than in the USA. Bigger than Mickey Mouse, and definitely bigger than all those Disney movies that come out every year. Frankly what surprised me (having grown up reading Donald Duck comics), was that he's apparently NOT one of the biggest Disney characters in the USA and that Disney comics are in fact not at all that popular over there. Srsly, every kid for the past couple of decades grew up with Donald Duck magazine, over here.

I think one of the readings I did on class touched on that, and personally I liked Donald over that mouse.

Check this out Coyote:

[...] both Jane Kuenz and Susan Willis have analyzed how in Disney's theme parks, intimacy, imagination, and spontaneity are replaced by the expertise of the well-placed park attendants, the picture-perfect photo sites, and the endless spectacles in which fun becomes consumption and memory is reduced to the purchase of souvenirs. Similarly, theorists such as A. Dorfman and A. Matellart have indicated how Disney's comics serve to reproduce sexist, racist, and colonial ideologies. Moreover, the mythology of an unproblematic innocence and clean virtue that has been carefully constructed by the Disney Company has been further demystified by a number of revelations indicating that Walt Disney, the founder of the Disney empire, served, according to Herbert Mitgang, "from 1940 until his death in 1966 . . . as a secret informer for the Los Angeles office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation." It seems that Walt Disney was not only a special agent (code name: S.A.C. Contact) dedicated to rooting out communist agitators in the film industry, but he also allowed the FBI access to the Disneyland facilities for "use in connection with official matters and for recreational purposes." Most disturbingly, Disney allowed J. Edgar Hoover, the director of the FBI, to censor and modify the scripts of such Disney films as Moon Pilot (1962) and That Darn Cat (1965) so as to portray bureau agents in a favorable light.
     Behind the pretense to innocence and its appeal to a childlike state in which forgetting the past becomes more important than engaging it, the policing of memory erases its emancipatory possibilities. This is illuminated, in part, through recent public revelations indicating that the Disney Company has, on occasion, exceeded the moral boundaries of its promotional enthusiasm by preventing the publication of books critical of Walt Disney and the Disney Company's image. It appears that beneath the promotion of the magical name of Disney and the public spaces it represents as "the happiest place on earth" lurks the power of a multinational conglomerate that has little regard for free speech and public criticism.

from "Disturbing Pleasures: Learning Popular Culture" by Henry, Giroux, page 32, published in 1994

WHOA Thanks Net. Currently I got another book by Giroux on Disney specifically, The Mouse that Roared, I'll see if the college library has a copy of Disturbing Pleasures.

[Anna Mae Bollocks]

This probably won't be very relevant to your essay, but an interesting bit of trivia about Disney: Donald Duck comics and cartoons are actually much bigger in Europe than in the USA. Bigger than Mickey Mouse, and definitely bigger than all those Disney movies that come out every year. Frankly what surprised me (having grown up reading Donald Duck comics), was that he's apparently NOT one of the biggest Disney characters in the USA and that Disney comics are in fact not at all that popular over there. Srsly, every kid for the past couple of decades grew up with Donald Duck magazine, over here.

I think one of the readings I did on class touched on that, and personally I liked Donald over that mouse.

What's not to like about an enraged duck with a speech impediment who wears a sailor suit with no pants? And has a filthy rich uncle who, when he buys a box of 1000 BBs for Huey, Dewey and Louie, COUNTS EVERY FUCKING ONE OF THEM AND DEMANDS A REFUND IF THERE'S ONLY 999? 

Mickey always gave me the creeps. He's a "good consumer". Ever see all the shit he packs when he goes camping?
He's the boring white guy in the burbs that old Walt referred to as "the everyman" and wanted people to think of as "the norm". The problem is never MICKEY, it's EVERYBODY ELSE. All his FRIENDS are crazy and/or mentally defective and his woman runs around in oversized heels with her panties hanging out.

Check this out Coyote:

[...] both Jane Kuenz and Susan Willis have analyzed how in Disney's theme parks, intimacy, imagination, and spontaneity are replaced by the expertise of the well-placed park attendants, the picture-perfect photo sites, and the endless spectacles in which fun becomes consumption and memory is reduced to the purchase of souvenirs. Similarly, theorists such as A. Dorfman and A. Matellart have indicated how Disney's comics serve to reproduce sexist, racist, and colonial ideologies. Moreover, the mythology of an unproblematic innocence and clean virtue that has been carefully constructed by the Disney Company has been further demystified by a number of revelations indicating that Walt Disney, the founder of the Disney empire, served, according to Herbert Mitgang, "from 1940 until his death in 1966 . . . as a secret informer for the Los Angeles office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation." It seems that Walt Disney was not only a special agent (code name: S.A.C. Contact) dedicated to rooting out communist agitators in the film industry, but he also allowed the FBI access to the Disneyland facilities for "use in connection with official matters and for recreational purposes." Most disturbingly, Disney allowed J. Edgar Hoover, the director of the FBI, to censor and modify the scripts of such Disney films as Moon Pilot (1962) and That Darn Cat (1965) so as to portray bureau agents in a favorable light.
     Behind the pretense to innocence and its appeal to a childlike state in which forgetting the past becomes more important than engaging it, the policing of memory erases its emancipatory possibilities. This is illuminated, in part, through recent public revelations indicating that the Disney Company has, on occasion, exceeded the moral boundaries of its promotional enthusiasm by preventing the publication of books critical of Walt Disney and the Disney Company's image. It appears that beneath the promotion of the magical name of Disney and the public spaces it represents as "the happiest place on earth" lurks the power of a multinational conglomerate that has little regard for free speech and public criticism.

from "Disturbing Pleasures: Learning Popular Culture" by Henry, Giroux, page 32, published in 1994

WHOA Thanks Net. Currently I got another book by Giroux on Disney specifically, The Mouse that Roared, I'll see if the college library has a copy of Disturbing Pleasures.

Lighter, but still 
http://www.cracked.com/article_15677_the-9-most-racist-disney-characters.html

[Triple Zero]

What's not to like about an enraged duck with a speech impediment who wears a sailor suit with no pants?

Sounds like Belgium in a nutshell!

The problem is never MICKEY, it's EVERYBODY ELSE. All his FRIENDS are crazy and/or mentally defective and his woman runs around in oversized heels with her panties hanging out.

Sounds like America in a nutshell!

[navkat]

This probably won't be very relevant to your essay, but an interesting bit of trivia about Disney: Donald Duck comics and cartoons are actually much bigger in Europe than in the USA. Bigger than Mickey Mouse, and definitely bigger than all those Disney movies that come out every year. Frankly what surprised me (having grown up reading Donald Duck comics), was that he's apparently NOT one of the biggest Disney characters in the USA and that Disney comics are in fact not at all that popular over there. Srsly, every kid for the past couple of decades grew up with Donald Duck magazine, over here.

That's because you people are the only ones who understand what the fuck he's saying.

[ñͤͣ̄ͦ̌̑͗͊͛͂͗ ̸̨̨̣̺̼̣̜͙͈͕̮̊̈́̈͂͛̽͊ͭ̓͆ͅé ̰̓̓́ͯ́́͞]

Check this out Coyote:

[...] both Jane Kuenz and Susan Willis have analyzed how in Disney's theme parks, intimacy, imagination, and spontaneity are replaced by the expertise of the well-placed park attendants, the picture-perfect photo sites, and the endless spectacles in which fun becomes consumption and memory is reduced to the purchase of souvenirs. Similarly, theorists such as A. Dorfman and A. Matellart have indicated how Disney's comics serve to reproduce sexist, racist, and colonial ideologies. Moreover, the mythology of an unproblematic innocence and clean virtue that has been carefully constructed by the Disney Company has been further demystified by a number of revelations indicating that Walt Disney, the founder of the Disney empire, served, according to Herbert Mitgang, "from 1940 until his death in 1966 . . . as a secret informer for the Los Angeles office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation." It seems that Walt Disney was not only a special agent (code name: S.A.C. Contact) dedicated to rooting out communist agitators in the film industry, but he also allowed the FBI access to the Disneyland facilities for "use in connection with official matters and for recreational purposes." Most disturbingly, Disney allowed J. Edgar Hoover, the director of the FBI, to censor and modify the scripts of such Disney films as Moon Pilot (1962) and That Darn Cat (1965) so as to portray bureau agents in a favorable light.
     Behind the pretense to innocence and its appeal to a childlike state in which forgetting the past becomes more important than engaging it, the policing of memory erases its emancipatory possibilities. This is illuminated, in part, through recent public revelations indicating that the Disney Company has, on occasion, exceeded the moral boundaries of its promotional enthusiasm by preventing the publication of books critical of Walt Disney and the Disney Company's image. It appears that beneath the promotion of the magical name of Disney and the public spaces it represents as "the happiest place on earth" lurks the power of a multinational conglomerate that has little regard for free speech and public criticism.

from "Disturbing Pleasures: Learning Popular Culture" by Henry, Giroux, page 32, published in 1994

WHOA Thanks Net. Currently I got another book by Giroux on Disney specifically, The Mouse that Roared, I'll see if the college library has a copy of Disturbing Pleasures.

No problem. Glad you've already got some Giroux, he's kind of academic/abstract at times but usually seems to come at things from an insightful angle. I'm also going to ask one of my politically savvy buddies about Disney who might have some information and get back to you.

Also, if your paper turns out well I hope you'll consider posting it here. I bet I'm not the only one who will want to read it.

[Don Coyote]

I was planning on posting it after the quarter ends.

[ñͤͣ̄ͦ̌̑͗͊͛͂͗ ̸̨̨̣̺̼̣̜͙͈͕̮̊̈́̈͂͛̽͊ͭ̓͆ͅé ̰̓̓́ͯ́́͞]

I was planning on posting it after the quarter ends.

Sweet.

[Don Coyote]

Although it might be funny if I posted it before I turned it in just to see if I get called out for plagiarizing myself.