Wasco explores Disney culture in Crosman Lecture
By Ashley Davis

Associate Professor Andrew Calabrese listens as Janet Wasco discusses her research with faculty at the School.

Once upon a time, University of Oregon Professor Janet Wasco decided she would offer her students a course that goes beyond the economics of communication to examine popular culture.

Wasco found her angle in the Walt Disney Co., and she shared her observations of the corporate machine behind the fantasy with CU students in the March 6 Crosman lecture. In addition to the course Wasco teaches on Disney studies at the University of Oregon, she has written two books on the subject.

Wasco said the idea for her course came to her after she attended a lecture by a friend who encouraged the scholastic study of all things Disney. The Fort Lauderdale, Fla., event was attended by more than 150 academics, she said.

Wasco said a recent boom in Disney academia has been documented by publications including the Chronicle of Higher Education and The Washington Post. She said her colleagues have been labeled everything from "Disney-disenfranchised" to "smarty-pants leftists."

Wasco was also a central figure in the creation of the Global Disney Audience Project, a research group that has studied audience reactions to Disney in 18 countries through questionnaires, interviews, market surveys and other methods

The key to a critical examination of Disney, she said, is to break down the myths surrounding the media giant. Disney not only relies on myths in the fairy-tale content of its films but creates a public image that helps the corporation escape scrutiny, she said. Those myths surround not only Walt Disney, the late founder of the empire, and his surviving billion-dollar corporation but the Disney audience as well.

Wasco said it can be difficult to separate Disney, the man, from Disney, the corporation. The company has created a mystique around Walt Disney, portraying the man as an individualist, to deflect attention from the company's corporate nature.

"There is a tendency to think of Disney as sacred and special, not as a profit-driven company," she said.

Disney's media empire has netted the company more than $2.5 billion through its ventures in television, radio, film, resorts, sports and books, Wasco said.

"Sometimes, it's not very well understood just how extensive the company is," she said.

Another pervasive Disney myth is that the company is exclusively for children. Not only do the corporation's holdings in companies such as Miramax and ESPN indicate otherwise, but Disney also targets the content of its animated films to a range of age groups, she said.

Wasco also noted that the content of Disney's tales is often not as innocent as the company's image suggests.

"It is also a myth that Disney's products are wholesome, safe, pure, ethical, etc.," she said. "Disney needs to be deconstructed like any other cultural product."

In particular, she said that much work by Disney's critics focuses on the company's treatment of women, which they characterize as stereotypical and problematic. Wasco said she also often finds Disney's portrayal of women abysmal, even though some of the studio's female characters are given empowering characteristics.

Finally, Wasco also said she feels as if the multitude and complexity of attitudes Disney elicits among its audience is underestimated. She divides Disney audience types into seven categories: fanatic, fan, consumer, cynic, uninterested, resister and antagonist. Even isolating Disney opinions to seven types is a bit simplistic, she said, as those categories can cross over and merge among different viewers.

Wasco illustrated that point by listing such extreme Disney consumers as George Reiger, a postal worker from Bethlehem, Pa., with more than 100 Disney-themed tattoos; Arielholics Anonymous, a society of self-confessed Ariel fanatics; and anti-Disney groups such as the Society of Disney Haters and the Ricky Rat Company.

So where does Wasco fall in her deconstruction of the Disney audience?

She said that despite her Disney cynicism, it is difficult for her to decide whether we would be better off without the corporation's fairy tale creations.

"What's wrong with having a happy ending, with having a wonderful time?" she said.

The lecture was part of the Crosman series, an annual event held in honor of Ralph L. Crosman, a teacher at the School for 27 years and a leading news industry critic.