Disney: More Inclusive Of The Cultures

For more than nine decades, the name Walt Disney has been preeminent in the field of family entertainment. From humble beginnings as a cartoon studio in the 1920s to today 's global corporation, Disney continues to proudly provide quality entertainment for every member of the family, across America and around the world. The company is diversified, focusing on its mass media headquartered in Burbank, California (Iger, 2012). In terms of revenue, it is the largest media conglomerate in the world (Silkos, 2009). Founded on October 16, 1923, by the Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio, Walt Disney Productions established itself as a leader in

The Walt Disney Company is a diversified entertainment company that has a very distinctive corporate culture within diversity strategy centered on thinking and acting with a global mindset. According to the Walt Disney’s first Chief Diversity Officer Paul Richardson, “As a company, we work intentionally to attract and retain employees who reflect the diverse world we live in and serve”(). Diversity is significant to the Walt Disney Company because it is the pillar of the company and it is also the strategy for growth. The Walt Disney Company has several of the ranks of diversity: gender, ethnicity, LGBT, and veterans those creatives many challenges of managing the diversity.

Similar problems occurred in Disneyland Tokyo, where management didn’t even think about the height difference of Asians and Americans, resulting in too high public phones for Japanese guests. Concluding it is clear that the American company originally tried to implement a standardization strategy, when launching theme parks in other countries, without taking the local culture into consideration. Country specific procedures and regulations, and different local customer preferences forced Disney to adapt features of the US theme park business model to the local markets.

For my final paper where we had to pick a topic from current popular culture, I decided to write my paper with the focus on Disney movies. More particularly with the focus on the Disney princess movies. When it comes to the Disney movies they have always been and will always be such a huge part of our society. While growing up most children grow up watching these movies and get the idea that that is what they want to be when they grow up. When you ask a young girl what she wants to be when she is older there is a good chance that she will say that she wants to be a princess when she grows up. I have always been such a huge fan of Disney movies and I have a feeling I always will be. I found it very interesting this semester when we spend the short class period talking about the Disney female and male characters. It is rather interesting and something that I can say that I really never noticed before but the fact that the majority of all the female characters all had the same face shape. Whereas the males there were none two that were the same. However for this paper I will be looking into the relationship to cultural meanings about gender and other identity markers, such as race, sexuality, and cultural norms as seen in some of the more classic well known Disney movies.

The Walt Disney Company has created theme parks throughout the world for guests to undergo a specific experiences that recalls the guests’ inner child through rides, visuals, and music. Disney has proved to be more than just a theme park; it is portrayed as a “world” or “land” of acceptance and integration of all cultures into one place. The universality aspect is what draws people in from different countries to visit the parks. Ultimately, the Disney parks are based off of two key concepts: commoditization and Americanization. Since Disney is an imagined utopia, guests buy into, literally and figuratively, the commodities and experiences it offers. Through music and visuals, Disney intertwines a message of Americanization through a single world culture that the guests accept. Disney’s limited understanding of cultures became much more apparent as theme parks were erected in different countries with cultural values that differ from American norms. Disney is a utopian society that exposes a narrow interpretation of the different cultures throughout the world.

There are many issues in society, which are most of time created by the norms that are conducted or structured by the society. For these norms, generalizations and ideas of the society, media plays a pretentious role in the impacts given to the society. The imagery and symbolic representation in media has the greatest measures in having high impact on how the society stereotypes, generalizes and categorizes race. The Walt Disney Company will be taken into consideration in terms of the misrepresentation of race and cultures and since the Walt Disney Company is the second largest media conglomerate, owning the ABC Television Network, cable networks including ESPN, the Disney Channel, SOAPnet, A&E and Lifetime, 277 radio stations, music and book publishing companies, production companies Touchstone, Miramax and Walt Disney Pictures, Pixar Animation Studios, the cellular service Disney Mobile, and theme parks around the world, relating to Disney will help understand the important of the impact made to the society on racial factors and the stereotyping of the society. Disney films were a huge part of many childhoods around the U.S.

Other than that, each park is designed and structured towards the country’s culture. As operations exist outside the United States, Disney had to consider and accept the cultural differences between their home market of the United States and different international markets. A key theory that assisted Disney in global expansion to Shanghai, China is the understanding of Hofstede’s cultural factors which focuses on six cultural dimensions; power distance, individualism/collectivism, masculinity/femininity, uncertainty avoidance, long-term/short-term orientation, and indulgence/restraint (Steers, 2016). “Hofstede compares culture to the “software of the mind” that differentiates one group or society from another.” (Steers, 2016). Figure 1 illustrates the cultural differences between China and the United States through Hofstede’s six cultural dimensions.

Walt Disney’s animated classics are prominent and affluential for the millennial generation and are loved by many people all over the world, preferably by the western socialized population. Because of its dominance, Disney’s subliminal impacts on children and even adults are presented as an enormous socialization factor throughout Hollywood. Disney’s portrayal of race and culture is predominant throughout its characters, settings and music, specifically in the last 2 ½ decades. The following analysis investigates Disney’s utilization of race and culture, throughout its films and correlates with its awareness in social responsibility. A paramount example would be Disney’s, A Bug’s Life, presenting many key components of race and culture and how the lives of the main characters are impacted as a whole.

IT suggests that there are two sources of isomorphic pressures (1) from the home country and (2) the host country (Davis, 2000). There are so many forces that a company must entertain and must decide between using coercive isomorphism or native isomorphism; corporate strategies from the parent company or imitate from a similar company in the new market (Escobar and Vredenburg, 2010). These pressures are a struggle for Disney who has a strong internal institutional environment and wants to keep their American values. That is WDC solely wants to practice an ethnocentric approach (Karadjova-Stoev and Mujtaba, 2011). In addition, Disney has found success with their first three parks because of its American experience: “TDL is an American in

Each country has differences with how their culture plays a factor on how they do business. Rather it is by certain topics being discussed or a certain way people greet one another. When examining the cultural charts of both France and China on http://geert-hofstede.com , a U.S. manager can get an idea on how their behavior may need to be modified when communicating with associates from France or China.

Disney’s target market consists mainly of family-oriented Asian tourists, primarily those from mainland China, Taiwan, and Southeast Asia. The mainland China accounted for large number of incoming visitors. At the time of Hong Kong Disneyland’s establishment, Hong Kong already enjoyed booming business and tourism sectors, but the government believed that the latter would be invigorated by the creation of a then absent “family tourist” niche. Below are the

Euro Disney could not modify the main theme of other Disney parks to create something unique for Europeans. Restaurants were not prepared according to the European eating habits and one of the biggest mistakes was not selling alcoholic beverages in the park which has very close connection with French culture. Customers had to leave the park to buy those from outside.

Even in the United States, Disneyworld (Florida) and Disneyland (California) vary in there social forces. Cast Members (Disney’s term for employees) in CA are trained to be friendly and greet every guest, while in FL they are trained to only greet guests who seek them out. The political, legal, and regulatory factors again, vary from theme park to theme park. The parks in the United States have more restrictions than say those of Hong Kong, China. In the U.S, minors (age 15-17) are only allowed to work 20 hours a week. In Hong Kong, young persons (ages 15-17) are allowed to work up to 48 hours a week. Regulatory factors such as this differ in each region. The Walt Disney Company Parks and Resorts has quite an extreme variety of natural environments. The weather in Florida for example can get in the 100’s regularly whereas in California it can get as cold as the low 50’s. These weather conditions actually are a big factor in guests determining which park they want to visit. Technology seems to stay consistent between most of the theme parks. In fact, many of the theme parks have some of the same rides at their parks. The global forces actually can create threats to the company. The addition of the newest theme park to the company, Shanghai Disney, took several years to become accepted. This has been common throughout the duration of The Walt Disney Company. Many people vote against a new theme park or resort because of the crowds that it

Culturally, Disney cannot force itself on another people, which in this case was the whole of the European continent. Disney promoted its product, the theme park, similar to that of Tokyo Disneyland believing Europe wanted their piece of “Americana”.

After having everything in order and running smoothly, leaders want to make sure that these plans run for the long-term. Disney Institute provides