Between Books - Walt Disney & El Grupo in Latin America

I’m tired! I think Walt Disney may have been tired too!

Walt Disney & El Grupo in Latin America by Theodore Thomas, J.B. Kaufman, and Didier Ghez outlines Walt Disney’s trip to South America in 1941. The book covers the entirety of the nearly 3-month fall expedition, spreading American goodwill as a strategy to win over South American neighbors away from Nazi sympathy. Disney was asked by the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs (CIAA) to use his global celebrity to strengthen Western hemisphere ties. The story is told heavily in images with the authors providing narration to the group’s daily doings. The volume does not focus on just Walt Disney but recognizes that El Grupo the 18 Walt Disney employees and family members on the journey, were at times separated into smaller traveling parties or even in the same cities separated to meet with numerous local industries or celebrities. Due to the highly visual nature of the text, it at times feels like a documentary and less than a book.

I’m tired, did I mention that? The goal of the authors is to provide a detailed account of the trip. The trio, therefore, doesn’t provide us a thesis to prove, in fact, the three have other works on El Grupo that have this as a goal. As a reader, you understand this is a very visual book seeking to provide a daily accounting. Hence, I’m tired. It feels like the group, especially Disney, rarely had a chance to rest during this fact-finding and goodwill-building adventure. Even in “downtime” artists like Mary and Lee Blair and Jack Ryman were sketching, painting, and refining ideas for potential future movies Saludos Amigos and The Three Caballeros. Or perhaps, Jack Cutting may visit a local studio to supervise a movie dubbing into Spanish. The book makes it clear that this group of 18 were constantly in motion. And while early in the trip, they may have spent in the reader's mind “weeks” in Rio, it becomes clear to the reader that on later stays the group seemed to only linger a day or two in a location before moving on again.

Design-wise, I was pulled into the book and it often felt like a visual experience and not a book. That is why I feel tired. This isn’t an era of perfect staged pictures. The spontaneous nature of many of the pictures helps one to feel the emotion and action, like a tired Lillian Disney asleep on a train car one can feel the stuffiness within. The closed eyes and the improperly directed glances remind us this is a different time before everyone had a camera and the time to coordinate numerous shots for the perfect social media image.

My only complaint with the design is some pages have maps on the layout that pictures and text sit upon. These maps have notations to locations on the page design. Sadly at times, I read these like image captions and not part of the page design which took me out of the journey for a bit.

Walt Disney & El Grupo in Latin America by Theodore Thomas, J.B. Kaufman, and Didier Ghez is a book for those who want to go deeper into Disney’s trip to South America in a highly visual way. For those who want to see Disney legends like the Blairs and Frank Thomas working, drawing, and immersing themselves into a culture this offering is for you. The authors help me to understand the kinetic and tiring nature of the trip, even without making this an overt goal. I wondered, can El Grupo just kick back and relax? An answer that seems like no as Frank Thomas was teaching himself Spanish even on the long-trip home.


Quick Note: While you can purchase this text on Amazon. I grabbed mine at Stuart Ng books where I was able to pick up an autographed copy. 

 

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Between Books - Contested Kingdom: Fan Attachment and Corporate Control at Disneyland

 

Congratulations Disney Adults, you’ve caught academia’s attention.

Contested Kingdom: Fan Attachment and Corporate Control at Disneyland by William McCarthy provides two discussions. First, McCarthy explores the sense of place attachment developed by Disney fans at Disneyland. Second, the text provides an examination of three decades of fan social media relationships with the power including power dynamics. As part of this evaluation, McCarthy provides insights into the relationship between fans and the Walt Disney Company. The author completed a longitudinal study of fans and media that ranges from the use of discussion boards to the more current Instagram and YouTube influencers. McCarthy demonstrates that the creation of the Annual Passholder program combined with message boards gave fans who had increased access to the parks additional thoughts of ownership and a platform to share their increasingly strong thoughts of ownership. However, with increasing costs and diminished access, many fans have found themselves disenchanted with Disney corporate and limited access to a place they see as their own. But in the current age, many of the expressed fan thoughts are strongly positive as key social media influencers need to maintain positive messages to gain access to Disney resources for content creation. As a reader, we observe a transformation as online outlets were originally a place to state strongly one’s own opinions to today where many of the loudest voices require Disney support to feed their streams.

I totally understand the need for support to create content, right here on this blog. Not to speak out of school, there once was a publisher I had a fantastic relationship with and numerous review copies. But in my promise to be honest, I had some problems with one of their books, which led to a curt email and the end of a relationship! Could I have been softer in my criticism? Well, no! But honesty came with a cost. I understand in a small way how those in the online space creating content need external support to lower the economic cost of creating. A true rock-and-hard place situation is occurring in these online settings. McCarthy does an excellent job of showing how the increased cost of content creation and access online, and the need to pay for the content, has created a situation where even unintentionally, some of the top Disney and Disneyland content creators have been coopted to the Disney publicity machine. I bet the late Jack Linquist would be proud!

I’ve made some observations in the past about serious academic works and largely Disney history intersecting. This is another example of a serious academic study, with McCarthy completing a survey and interviews while employing an academic model to construct an argument. However, in this case, it’s not history but media studies and sociology taking Disney fandom seriously. This could be intimidating to some, with academic language and models attempting to explain relationships. I at times struggled with how to review this text, do I use a more formal academic tone or slide into more casual language? This is the type of study that will gain the attention of researchers and other academics. However, I would urge those interested in Disney influencers and social media, Disney’s corporate relationships with these media outlets, and those with a general interest in the growth of 21st Century social media to consider this monograph an interesting read.

Contested Kingdom: Fan Attachment and Corporate Control at Disneyland is an academic study of the relationship between fans and the location they feel they just not own but also love. McCarthy demonstrates how fans have come to be attached to the park. McCarthy also details through surveys and interviews the changing relationship between fans and the Walt Disney Company’s views of the park on online platforms. While academic, the main points of the study are accessible to non-technical readers, especially for those who consume Disney social media content as part of their fandom. 

 

Review Copy Provided for Review

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