Imagineering Childhood: Disney and the Uses of Innocence
Biographical Sketch
Julie C. Garlen is an Associate Professor of Child Studies and the Co-Director of the Institute of Interdisciplinary Studies at Carleton University in Ottawa, Ontario (Canada).
Type of Presentation
Individual presentation
Brief Description of Presentation
The paper describes the evolution and implications of the concept of childhood that was mobilized by Walt Disney through the expert engineering of his entertainment empire. I suggest that Disney’s corporate curriculum of the child teaches us into the self-perpetuating logic of magical capitalism and illustrates the profound and complex connections between popular culture, political and scientific discourse, and social and economic relations.
Abstract of Proposal
The innocent child around which the Disney curriculum was constructed in the United States continues to serve as what Meiners (2016) terms a “key technology” in managing social change and regulating the development and behavior of mainstream North American society through the organization of social and economic relations that work against human rights and conceal hegemonic capitalist agendas. In this paper, I bring Disney to bear upon Kathryn Stockton’s (2009) compelling question: “How does innocence, our default designation for children, cause its own violence?” (p. 5). I describe the evolution of the concept of childhood that was mobilized by Walt Disney in his vision for and expert engineering of his entertainment empire. Implicating Disney in the purposeful “Imagineering” of the innocent child reveals the complex and contradictory ways that the cultural myth of childhood innocence operates as political discourse. In the historical origins of the Western construct of childhood innocence and in the application of that construct to Disney’s corporate curriculum of the child, which teaches us into the self-perpetuating logic of magical capitalism, we can see the profound and complex connections between popular culture, political and scientific discourse, and social and economic relations, all of which come to bear on the construct of childhood.
Location
Session 3D (Habersham, Hilton Garden Inn)
Start Date
2-22-2019 3:00 PM
End Date
2-22-2019 4:30 PM
Recommended Citation
Garlen, Julie C., "Imagineering Childhood: Disney and the Uses of Innocence" (2019). International Critical Media Literacy Conference. 23.
https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/criticalmedialiteracy/2019/2019/23
Imagineering Childhood: Disney and the Uses of Innocence
Session 3D (Habersham, Hilton Garden Inn)
The innocent child around which the Disney curriculum was constructed in the United States continues to serve as what Meiners (2016) terms a “key technology” in managing social change and regulating the development and behavior of mainstream North American society through the organization of social and economic relations that work against human rights and conceal hegemonic capitalist agendas. In this paper, I bring Disney to bear upon Kathryn Stockton’s (2009) compelling question: “How does innocence, our default designation for children, cause its own violence?” (p. 5). I describe the evolution of the concept of childhood that was mobilized by Walt Disney in his vision for and expert engineering of his entertainment empire. Implicating Disney in the purposeful “Imagineering” of the innocent child reveals the complex and contradictory ways that the cultural myth of childhood innocence operates as political discourse. In the historical origins of the Western construct of childhood innocence and in the application of that construct to Disney’s corporate curriculum of the child, which teaches us into the self-perpetuating logic of magical capitalism, we can see the profound and complex connections between popular culture, political and scientific discourse, and social and economic relations, all of which come to bear on the construct of childhood.
