Disney and the Dialectic of Desire: Fantasy as Social Practice

Zornado, Joseph

This book analyzes Walt Disney’s impact on entertainment, new media, and consumer culture in terms of a materialist, psychoanalytic approach to fantasy. The study opens with a taxonomy of narrative fantasy along with a discussion of fantasy as a key concept within psychoanalytic discourse. Zornado reads Disney’s full-length animated features of the “golden era” as symbolic responses to cultural and personal catastrophe, and presents Disneyland as a monument to Disney fantasy and one man’s singular, perverse desire. What follows after is a discussion of the “second golden age” of Disney and the rise of Pixar Animation as neoliberal nostalgia in crisis. The study ends with a reading of George Lucas as latter-day Disney and Star Wars as Disney fantasy. This study should appeal to film and media studies college undergraduates, graduates students and scholars interested in Disney.

Details

Published by: Palgrave Macmillan

Publication Date: 2017-11-02

Format: Hardcover

ISBN-13: 9783319626765

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-62677-2

Dimensions: 210cm x148cm

Pages: 260