Debating Disney: Pedagogical Perspectives on Commercial Cinema

(Hardback)

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With stakes in film, television, theme parks, and merchandising, Disney continues to be one of the most dominant forces of popular culture around the globe. Films produced by the studio are usually blockbusters in nearly every country where they are released. However, despite their box office success, these films often generate as much disdain as admiration. While appreciated for their visual aesthetics, many of these same films are criticized for their cultural insensitivity or lack of historical fidelity. In Debating Disney: Pedagogical Perspectives on Commercial Cinema, Douglas Brode and Shea T. Brode have assembled a collection of essays that examine Disneys output from the 1930s through the present day. Each chapter in this volume represents the conflicting viewpoints of contributors who look at Disney culture from a variety of perspectives. Covering both animated and live-action films as well as television programs, these essays discuss how the studio handles social issues such as race, gender, and culture, as well as its depictions of science and history. Though some of the essays in this volume are critical of individual films or television shows, they also acknowledge the studios capacity to engage audiences with the quality of their work. These essays encourage readers to draw their own conclusions about Disney productions, allowing them to consider the studio as the heroas much as the villainin the cultural deliberation. Debating Disney will be of interest to scholars and students of film as well as those with an interest in popular culture.

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Debating Disney brings together a wide range of scholars and the key strength of this collection is the breadth of Disney tradition it covers, delving beyond mainstream, instantly recognizable blockbusters like The Lion King, the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, or the Disney Princess films, though these are well-represented as well. * Journal of Popular Film and Television *

Author Bio

Douglas Brode teaches popular culture at Syracuse Universitys Newhouse School of Public Communications, the University of Texas at San Antonio, and Our Lady of the Lake University (also in San Antonio). He has published more than 35 books, including Rod Sterling and The Twilight Zone (2009). He is the coeditor of Myth, Media, and Culture in Star Wars: An Anthology and Sex, Politics and Religion in Star Wars: An Anthology (2012), and Draculas Daughters: The Female Vampire on Film (2013), all published by Scarecrow. Brode is a contributor to the upcoming PBS-TV mini-series: American Masters: Walt Disney. Shea T. Brode has an MA in Literature and Cultural Studies from the University Autonoma in Madrid. Douglas and Shea are the coeditors of The Star Trek Universe: Franchising the Final Frontier (Rowman & Littlefield, 2015) and Gene Roddenberrys Star Trek: The Original Cast Adventures (Rowman & Littlefield, 2015).