Th.--Sci. de l'éduc. et de la communication--Paris 13, 1986.

This paper explores how ethnic character representations in Disney films have changed in response to changing cultural attitudes and historical context over time in response to variations in the broader American sensitivity to race and ethnicity. When we today look at instances of African American representation from the 1940s, such as in the Film Dumbo (1941), we are shocked at how overtly stereotypical these representation are. According to today’s standards, it would be unacceptable to show such caricatured racial representations. But at the time in America such standards, and the attitudes that inform them, did not exist. In view of the progress made in the intervening 70 years in thinking about race and the extent to which attitudes to racial representations have changed, we should now see the representation of African Americans being dealt with very differently in recent films such as The Princess and The Frog (2009), which featured Disney’s first African- American princess (Breaux 413). In order to answer this question I in this paper critically assess African-American representation in Disney films from the 1940s to today. In order to see how race has been dealt with in one of the studio’s first feature-length films and in one of its most recent releases I analyzed specific instances of racial representation in two case studies: Dumbo (1941) and The Princess and the Frog (2009). This analysis is informed by an awareness that the offensiveness of such representations is culturally determined and has changed over time. By textually reconstructing the contexts in which the films were produced and then analyzing instances of racial representation according to how they have been constructed, making reference to concepts of Stereotyping, Othering and Hierarchy.

Thesis PlanB (M.S.)--University of Wisconsin--Stout, 2008. / Includes bibliographical references.

The objective of this study is to examine the emotional regulation strategies used by Walt Disney World on-stage employees as a way to fulfill requirements set forth by the company. Ten Disney on-stage employees were interviewed off-property in Orlando. The emotional regulation framework was divided into several categories: (1) a distinction between deep acting and surface acting, (2) emotional deviance, and (3) emotional exhaustion. “Surface acting” is a strategy by which employees display company-imposed emotions not genuinely felt, whereas “deep acting” occurs when employees do feel the emotions that they are required to express (Hochschild, 1983). Throughout the data reduction process, five key themes surfaced as the most relevant to the initial research questions: (1) Self-Motivated Deep Acting, (2) Organizational Expectations for Surface Acting, (3) “Back-Stage” vs. “Front-Stage” Dichotomy, (4) Benefits of Emotional Training, and (5) Negative Effects of Emotional Regulation. Overall, the researcher found that a key strategy of emotional regulation that Disney employees use frequently is surface acting, although deep acting was found to be more successful. In addition, while emotional exhaustion was a common problem among employees, very few of them will actually engage in emotional deviance in order to avoid the negative consequences of surface acting. Lastly, it was found that highly skilled Walt Disney World employees will have already internalized emotional regulation training and display rules that manage emotional behavior. Therefore, it becomes less essential for the Disney Company to formally monitor its employees’ facial expressions and emotional behavior in the future

This thesis chronicles an attempt to delve into the murky world of image and semblance, illusion and contrivance. The examination and especially the celebration of image and style--of simulation--throughout recent cultural debate is incisively expressed through the framework of popular culture. Walt Disney World, as a cultural artifact and profit-making commodity, is the consummate model of all the entangled processes of popular culture: a turbulent melange of aesthetic, ethical, and sociological concerns. / America is Disney World; borne of fantasy and ubiquitous iconism. Our cultural atlas reverberates with the energy of cinematic, pulsating and seductive imagery; restrained and unfulfilled by the voyeuristic stance of the pseudo-event. / This study registers a pilgrimage into the shadows of our own creative aspirations: how can we engage in exploring new possibilities for architectural making, addressing imaginatively and ethically the rupture of the fabric symbolically connecting the actor and the drama?

This thesis investigates the representation of femininity within a variety of cultural sources including the earlier novels of Jeanette Winterson and the films of Walt Disney. This juxtaposition parallels images of female development and ego formation bringing to the fore the adolescent heroine's ancient roots in mythology, horror and the fairy story. As a cultural studies project, the thesis deploys the critical techniques of poststructuralism in conjunction with psychoanalysis, feminist theory and film analysis. This is necessary to demonstrate to full potential the heterogeneous quality of the revisioned models of heroinism. My analysis is focused on both popular and literary texts, with Winterson's early fiction in particular selected as a sophisticated and developed example of the ways in which current theory can chart the evolution of a contemporary female literary voice. This thesis carefully scrutinises traditional strategies concerned with literary discourse in order to show how phallocentric structures infiltrate and reflect postcolonial, popular culture. This is achieved through an initial concentration upon mass representation of the female form. This is a necessary analysis as one cannot demonstrate how contemporary women authors revise traditional models of heroinism without first defining what has gone before. Building on the work of Elisabeth Bronfen, this thesis examines how contradictory narratives construct a double opposition, overlapping the dead and the feminine against the living and the masculine, to defend against the knowledge of an incommensurable difference at the origin of life. By representing the narrative of double castration, this is a thorough examination of a movement away from biologically scripted models of castration anxiety, as with Freud, relocating identity at the site of the navel. This enables the subject to move beyond the division of sexuality as presented within patriarchal, heterosexual orthodoxies and to allow for a notion of femininity which is subversive because of its very willingness to explore and inhabit abject/deject states. For the purposes of my investigations, these tradtionally disturbing 'liminalities' will be understood in both psychic and cultural terms, but will focus, in particular on female adolescene. In conclusion, the revisionary heroine marks the dissolution of the certainty once associated with the ancient constructed ideal of femininity. She does not place herself in opposition to the traditional figure, more than that, she surfaces within the broader frame of Western culture as something different, some 'thing' else in the psychoanalytical sense to the 'Other'. My analysis of the figure of the revisionary heroine demonstrates the ways in which both the creation and the interpretation of art and theory can be inflected towards an inversion of the dominant structures of knowledge and power without simply reproducing them.

No description available.

No description available.

Thesis (M.A.)--Florida State University, 2004. / Advisor: Dr. Frederick Davis, Florida State University, College of Arts and Sciences, Dept. of History. Title and description from dissertation home page (viewed Jan. 12, 2005). Includes bibliographical references.

Stuttgart, FH, Diplomarb., 2002.