Disney and the Dialectic of Desire

"Disney Fantasy is an important book that draws on theorists from Lacan to Baudrillard in order to examine Disney as both a pervasive ideology rooted in various registers of fantasy and as a disimagination machine wedded to a corporate ethos that markets innocence as a tool for profit making. This is a must read book if you are concerned about the pervasiveness of Disney's influence globally and its effect upon generations of young people and others." (Henry Giroux, Professor of English and Cultural Studies at McMaster University, Canada)

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.

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 neoliberalnostalgia 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.