preview

Walt Disney Influence On American Culture

Decent Essays

Whilst it is suggested the Fairytale tradition can be traced back to the Renaissance period (Zipes, 2001), famous characters and their tales like, Snow White, Little Red Riding Hood and Cinderalla can be traced back to antiquity (Anderson, 2000).

Fairy tales as we know them today began between the years of 1812 and 1857 with two young German librarians, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm. They published a collection of tales that became one of the most influential works of folklore in Germany, then ultimately, the world. These tales are based on the difficulties faced by families at the time. The tales were taken from German oral tradition, a successful attempt to preserve their cultural heritage (Gillis, 2000). These tales were made for adults, never intended to meet the ears of children. Many of these tales have been copied and ‘fine-tuned’ by Disney to make them more “child-friendly”(Tatar 2003) . Disney is described as a force that impacts cultures which influences more than just the film industry. Davis (2006), both a communications professor and Disney film researcher, argues Disney has,

“taken on the role of America’s predominant storyteller for most of the twentieth century, it became an inseparable aspect of American popular culture, as well as an integral part of the American social fabric” (Davis 2006, …show more content…

Walt Disney himself, from his beginnings as a working-class paperboy (Barrier, 2007) to the ultimate popularity his production company would gain, can be seen to embody the American dream. As put by Gregory

Get Access