Fan Phenomena: Disney

Description

Fan Phenomena: Disney collects essays on Disney fans, spanning a variety of media (such as film, television, novels, stage productions and theme parks) and different fannish approaches (cosplay, fan art), as well as the company's reactions to them.

It is a timely intervention that deals with crucial issues such as race and racism within the Disney fandom and in Disney texts, the role of queerness, the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic and the advent of the streaming service Disney+.

The authors come from variety of disciplines, such as cultural and media studies, marketing and communications, cultural history or theatre and performance studies, and include both leading experts in fan and Disney studies, as well as emerging voices in these fields, plus interviews with fan practitioners.

It will be popular with scholars of cultural studies, cultural history, media studies, fan studies; Disney fans, and students at any level

Introduction – Sabrina Mittermeier

Part 1: Diversity and the Disney Princess

1. Frozen Fever: Fan Fashion, Costumes, and Revisions of Elsa and Anna Designs – Nicole Lamerichs

2. ‘Let It Go!’: Child Fans, Song, and the Frozen Franchise – Ryan Bunch 


3. “Dream Big, Princess”: Disney’s Princess Fandom as a Trans-generational, Feminist Fan Space – Tracey Mollet 


4. That’s (Not) My Princess: Representation, Race, and (Anti-)Fan Activism – Christina Wurst 


5. Panel Discussion: The Live Action Mulan (2020) and Disney’s Approach to Racial Diversity – Michelle Anya Anjirbag, Bertha Chin & Jingan Young 

Interlude: Representation, Censorship and Disney+

6. “Please don’t censor Hamilton!”: Disney+, Social Media Fandom, and Censorship – Olympia Kiriakou 


7. Musings of a Queer Disney Fan – Sabrina Mittermeier 

Part 2: The Disney Theme Parks and Their Fans

8. Creativity and Connection: How Disney Parks’ Fans Responded During the Coronavirus Closures – Rebecca Williams 


9. To Act Like a Kid or Not to Act Like a Kid: Disneybounding in the Parks – Rebecca Rowe 

Fan Appreciation: Victoria Wade 

10. Friends Just Around the Riverbend: Performing Intimacy and Authenticity in Disney Park Character Meets – Victoria Pettersen Lantz 

Fan Appreciation: Shawn Rosell

11. Haunted Waters: The Elimination of Liveness in Disney’s Rivers of Light – Tom Robson 


12. From Mickey Waffles to Vegan Samosas: Evolving Disney Food Fandoms – Jennifer A. Kokai 


13. The Traveling Disney Bear ‘Duffy’ and His Surprising Popularity in Japan – Katharina Hülsmann & Timo Thelen 

        Fan Appreciaton: Chris Nilghe

Part 3: The Brand and its Fans – How Disney Responds to Fandom and Monetizes Fan Labor 

14. Faith, Trust and Pixie Dust: Disney’s Participatory Publics – Amber L. Hutchins 


15. Disney's Social Media Moms – Kylie Torres 


16. Fitting Inside the Mouse House – Disney’s Experiential Media Aesthetics – Chris Comerford 


17. Disney Publishing and the Saturation of the Imaginative Market – Michelle Anya Anjirbag 

Sujets

• Media Studies
• Popular Culture
• HISTORY
• Histoire
• Cultural studies
• 21st Century
• Disneyland
• The Walt Disney Company
• United States
• Disney
• Media

Informations

• Publié par: Intellect Books
• Date de parution: 29 septembre 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781789386790
• Langue: English

Extrait

Credits

First published in the UK in 2022 by Intellect Books, The Mill, Parnall Road, Fishponds, Bristol, BS16 3JG, UK
First published in the USA in 2022 by Intellect Books, The University of Chicago Press, 1427 E. 60th Street, Chicago, IL 60637, USA
Copyright 2022 Intellect Ltd
Editor: Sabrina Mittermeier
Production Editor: Laura Christopher
Copy Editor: MPS
Typesetting and Cover Design: Aleksandra Szumlas
Inside front cover image: Me at the Pocahontas Meet and Greet, Discovery Island Trail. (Photo courtesy of Nick Lantz.)
Inside back cover image: Duffy the Disney Bear character meet at Tokyo DisneySea. (Photo taken by Simon Essler, used with permission.)
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written consent.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Fan Phenomena Series
ISSN: 2051-4468
eISSN: 2051-4476
Fan Phenomena: Disney
ISBN: 978-1-78938-677-6
ePDF: 978-1-78938-678-3
ePUB: 978-1-78938-679-0
Printed and bound by CPI, UK.
Contents
Introduction
SABRINA MITTERMEIER
PART 1 DIVERSITY AND THE DISNEY PRINCESS
Frozen Fever: Fan Fashion, Costumes and Revisions of Elsa and Anna Designs
NICOLLE LAMERICHS
Let It Go! : Child Fans, Song and the Frozen Franchise
RYAN BUNCH
Dream Big, Princess : Disney s Princess Fandom as a Trans-generational, Feminist Fan Space
TRACEY MOLLET
That s (Not) My Princess: Representation, Race and (Anti-)fan Activism
CHRISTINA WURST
Panel Discussion: The Live Action Mulan (2020) and Disney s Approach to Racial Diversity
MICHELLE ANYA ANJIRBAG, BERTHA CHIN JINGAN YOUNG

INTERLUDE REPRESENTATION, CENSORSHIP AND DISNEY+
Please Don t Censor Hamilton ! : Disney+, Social Media Fandom and Censorship
OLYMPIA KIRIAKOU
Musings of a Queer Disney Fan
SABRINA MITTERMEIER

FAN APPRECIATION
Victoria Wade
Sabrina Mittermeier
Shawn Rosell
Sabrina Mittermeier
Chris Nilghe
Sabrina Mittermeier

PART 2 THE DISNEY THEME PARKS AND THEIR FANS
Creativity and Connection: How Disney Parks Fans Responded During the Coronavirus Closures
REBECCA WILLIAMS
To Act Like a Kid or Not to Act Like a Kid: Disneybounding in the Parks
REBECCA ROWE
Friends Just Around the Riverbend: Performing Intimacy and Authenticity in Disney Park Character Meets
VICTORIA PETTERSEN LANTZ
Haunted Waters: The Elimination of Liveness in Disney s Rivers of Light
TOM ROBSON
From Mickey Waffles to Vegan Samosas: Evolving Disney Food Fandoms
JENNIFER A. KOKAI
The Travelling Disney Bear Duffy and His Surprising Popularity in Japan
KATHARINA H LSMANN TIMO THELEN

PART 3 THE BRAND AND ITS FANS - HOW DISNEY RESPONDS TO FANDOM AND MONETIZES FAN LABOUR
Faith, Trust and Pixie Dust: Disney s Participatory Publics and the Cult of Mouse
AMBER L. HUTCHINS
Disney s Social Media Moms
KYLIE TORRES
Fitting Inside the Mouse House: Disney s Experiential Media Aesthetics
CHRIS COMERFORD
Disney Publishing and the Saturation of the Imaginative Market
MICHELLE ANYA ANJIRBAG
Notes on Contributors
Index
Introduction Sabrina Mittermeier
In 2023 the Walt Disney Company is celebrating its centennial. For 100 years, Disney has shaped not only the American, but global entertainment landscape, even more so now than ever before. Once a family business, it has morphed into a multimedia conglomerate that holds several of the biggest film and television studios, a content streaming service with billions of subscribers, the most successful theme parks in the world, a chain of retail stores, Broadway theaters and tours, several publishing houses (encompassing comics, fiction and nonfiction books), a fleet of cruise ships, and even a private island in the Caribbean.
Never would this staggering success have been possible, however, had it not been for the company s devoted fans who existed from day one - as soon as Mickey Mouse s first appearance in Steamboat Willie flickered across cinema screens in 1928, have fans been enamored with not only the character, but the brand behind it. While Disney s spread over the globe has often rightfully been criticized as part of a larger project of American cultural imperialism, this approach has left fans of the brand silenced.
This volume wants to analyze how this fandom developed in tandem with the company over all these years; chronicling fannish practice from cosplay to activism, from their love for and critical engagement with Disney s animated films to their theme parks, and how all of this entangled. While the volume focuses on a more current, presentist take on its fandom, it is aware of how long back its history goes - despite scholarship on it overall being more recent. It also stands on the shoulders of, and in conversation with previous additions to the Disney studies project that have begun to take its fans, and the cultural translation processes at work, seriously (Wasko et al. 2001; Kokai and Robson 2019; Anjirbag 2020; Williams 2020; Bryan 2021; Mittermeier 2021). It also reflects on how the fandom has begun to reckon with issues of diversity, most importantly, with racism, it does also owe a debt to Rukmini Pande s (2018, 2020) important interventions in this field. It wants to shine a light on why fans remain so invested in this brand, and in their fandoms despite such exclusions, and how the company makes sure they do so.
As Chris Comerford argues in his chapter, Disney deals in what he calls experimental media aesthetics that evolve fans in all parts of their transmedia empire. Building on this, Amber L. Hutchins dives into the world of the most avid of Disney fans, the Disney lifestylers , and tries to answer the question why people are so taken by the brand. While many fans are arguably attached to Disney as a whole, the animated film Frozen s (2009) initial success has turned into a robust fandom of its own. This thus warrants that both Nicolle Lamerichs and Ryan Bunch discuss different aspects of it in this volume; while Lamerichs explores Frozen cosplay and other forms of fans engagement with material culture, Bunch focuses on children s unique relationship with the film and its songs, touching also upon the musical nature of this fandom.
While Frozen was established as its own brand, Disney has since 2009 also grouped together their princess characters under the umbrella of the Disney Princess franchise, particularly targeting girls and women. Tracey Mollet discusses how this franchise s fandom engages with intergenerational feminism and the company s Dream Big Princess campaign, while Kylie Torres engages with social media influencers who brand themselves as Disney Moms .
A transmedia approach to branding has shaped the company s strategies since the advent of the Disney theme park experience: When Disneyland opened in 1955, it was a space for existing fans to visit, as the Walt Disney Studios were off-limits, and it brought to life their animated worlds. Walt Disney financed the park partially through a partnership with then-fledgling television network ABC, producing a television show called Disneyland that served as a marketing tool for the park (Mittermeier 2021: 3). It however also sparked its own fandom, as did some of the productions created for it: a sheer Crockett craze (Mittermeier 2020: 33-35) surrounding the fictional version of Davy Crockett is testament that the hype surrounding Frozen is not an entirely new phenomenon.
It also it set the groundwork for an ever-growing fanbase of the parks themselves (Williams 2020). By now, even rides like Pirates of the Caribbean have not only sparked their own huge franchises but also built devoted fanbases of their own. As the parks had to close during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and 2021, fans dealt with this by bringing their beloved attractions to their own homes - a phenomenon Rebecca Williams explores in her chapter of this book. Yet it is not just the rides that draws fans to the parks and that ends up sparking their own fan activity around them: Victoria Pettersen Lantz engages with fans affective responses to Disney character meets, as well as Disney s troubling casting practices for BIPoC characters.
Generally, Disney parks remain spaces that are rooted in whiteness. After all, when Disneyland opened initially, it was geared at an American white middle-class in the early Cold War years, following in the footsteps of increasingly exclusionary practices of amusement parks, and segregated public parks that turned them into gated community spaces (Mittermeier 2020: 4). In interviews with the editor, both YouTuber Shawn Rosell and influencer Victoria Wade speak about their experiences with racism in the Disney parks fandom and how it has affected their fan labour. Both interviews also discuss the infamous Song of the South (1946), its fandom and its long, seemingly never-ending, racist history that has previously received an in-depth scholarly treatment by Jason Sperb, who self-identified as a skeptical, even resistant, Disney fan (Sperb 2012: ix) - a mantle perhaps also suitable for all the contributors to this book.
The Walt Disney Company itself has meanwhile, albeit belatedly, begun to more openly deal with the US s systemic racism. This was most notably sparked by the brutal murder of George Floyd at the hands of police in May 2020, which led the company to release public statements in support of the Black Lives Matter movement. At the same time, it has also begun to retheme attractions steeped in racist imagery, most notably the Jungle Cruise and Splash Mountain. In 2021, Disney has announced Inclusion as one of its central keys of guest service, the first time such a central change has been made in over 65 years. This seems to mark a shift in how the company deals with matters of diversity and structural inequity, but it rema