Journal Entry #4: Disney....always the bad guy?!

The article written by Burton- Carvajal J, “Surprise Package: Looking Southward with Disney”, was one of the two readings assigned for this week and corresponded to this weeks theme of cultural imperialism and the notion of ‘soft power’. Generally speaking, cultural imperialism involves the practice of promoting, distinguishing, separating, or artificially injecting the culture or language of one nation into another. ‘Soft Power’, is associated with cultural imperialism, and is a concept that refers to an indirect form of control exercised under more coercive and subtle means. The United States of American, as the world’s leading empire, has essentially been charged with exercising cultural imperialistic practices onto the South American nations. Essentially, this week we painted a clear picture of how the American corporate body, Disney, utilized ‘soft power’ in the 1940’s to invade and culturally exploit South American way of life.
Burton- Carvajal’s article essentially reinforced this notion, and specifically referred to the Disney film, The Three Caballeros (1944), to illustrate his argument. Although this article proved to be quite intriguing, and compelling, I found myself to be critical of a several of her main points and ‘propositions’. To be completely honest, before learning more about the topic in lecture, and reading other fellow class members blogs, I found Burton- Carvajal’s analysis of The Three Caballeros to valid but also quite ridiculous and far stretched. She addresses Disney’s film, as a perfect instance where the Unites States, represented via the major American powerhouse Disney, reinforce their dominance while simultaneously reinforcing South American subordination. Through the narrated story of Donald Duck and his magical visit to South America, a number of ideologies are reinforced and represented to construct an ‘inaccurate’ depiction of reality. The author illustrates that stereotypes are heavily utilized, evident in the construction of Donald’s main Latin friends ‘ Joe Carioca and Panchito the boisterous Mexican rooster’, as well as unequal depictions of what is masculine and feminine, as they exist within a Latino culture. What is referred to by the author as “the end product of a process of cross cultural refiguration”, is essentially what is illustrated by this film (Burton-Carvajal 136).
Now with these points said, and after viewing parts of the film, I do not feel completely satisfied with her article. Although intense historical, political, cultural and economic reasons underly the motives of Disney for developing this film (motives I wont waste time repeating), definitely have contributed greatly to how it was constructed in representing both American and Latin American culture, I personally do not feel that this film is all that horrible. In terms of cultural imperialism, this definitely falls under the category of extreme soft power. As a communications scholar, as bad as it might be to admit, when I watched bits of this film, given even a minute amount of background information, I did not view it as that overtly detrimental to ones cross cultural understanding of Latin America and its’ people. The author demonstrates many concrete and interesting interpretations of the film as a cultural text, and conveyed a thorough semiotic analysis that really captivated and controlled the way I viewed the film. Her ten propositions proved to go above and beyond the interpretations and connotative meanings I derived from the film but definitely accentuated some valid associations. Several comments the author included about the morality of the film abruptly altered my view of this article and actually bothered me; “ The Three Caballeros, one of the most unfortunate experiments since prohibition... is not Disney’s private monster, his personal nightmare. It is a nightmare of these times....” (Burton- Carvajal 140). These types of comments by various writers in the 40’s really did not fit well with my understanding of the film.
I mean, was this film all that bad? Is it that exploitative of Latin American culture? Is it that sexual in nature? In my opinion I do not think that these types of films exploit Latin American culture, at least not more so than any other average fictional film depicting Latin America. Although I agree that this film displays minutely suggestive content, some sexual imagery, some stereotypical and some more accurately represented characters and scenes than others, I basically feel that this film has been very harshly criticized and used as a poor example of cultural imperialism. As bad as it might sound, (this is my opinion once again), I feel like this author in particular, creates a much more exaggerated depiction of The Three Caballeros than is warranted (especially with regards to sexuality and homosexuality). I think that these types of films should definitely be analyzed and decoded, however, it should also be recognized that they should be taken with a grain of salt, and taken for face value. The film was not designed to present an accurate depiction of South American way of life, nor was it designed to make one feel as if they were viewing a documentary of what the Disney creators experienced while submersed in the culture. This was a fictional, imaginative film, constructed to convey an underlying informative narrative. Don’t get me wrong though, I definitely believe that Disney had a side agenda, one that was absolutely evident in various embedded messages, however I do not feel that it poses as that much of a threat to their culture, their people, or an outsiders accurate view of their country. I strongly believe that the majority of people who view this film, would neglect the messages that express ‘domination’, ‘masculine supremacy’, or an ‘allegory of colonialism’. Basically, what I wanted to convey in this blog was simple; that I felt that this author provided a very harsh and exaggerated, one sided critical examination of Disney’s The Three Caballeros, one that was not necessary to prove her main points.




Sources:
Burton-Carvajal, Julianne. “ Suprise Package; Looking Southward with Disney.” Disney Discourse: Producing the Magic
Kingdom. Smoodin, E. Routledge, 2004. 131-147.