Debating Disney

Pedagogical Perspectives on Commercial Cinema

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Edited by Douglas Brode and Shea T. Brode

Type: Essays
Subject: Studio > Disney Studios
Keywords: Disney, sociology
Publishing date: 2016
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Language: English

Relative size

Physical desc.

Hardcover • 252 pages
6 x 9 inches (15 x 23 cm)

ISBN

978-1-4422-6608-7

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Book Presentation:
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 Disney’s 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 studio’s 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 hero―as much as the villain―in 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.

About the authors:
Douglas Brode,now retired, was the Creator/Coordinator of the Film Classics Program for The Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University, USA. He is a novelist, screenwriter, playwright, film historian, multi-award winning journalist, and multi-award winning educator. His previous books include studies of director Steven Spielberg, Shakespeare in the Movies, Star Wars and Star Trek, Walt Disney, the Western genre, and the D.C. Universe, among more than fifty others. Recently, Brode was selected by the Popular Culture Association of America as person of the year for his lifelong list of contributions to the form.

Press Reviews:
"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

See the publisher website: Rowman & Littlefield

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