4) Unit Four: Deconstructing Disney

Essential Question:

What kind of messages does Disney transmit about society and identity?

Intertextual Investigations:

LESSON ONE: An E-Learning Module for Children's Literature Students

By the end of this session, you will be able to draw conclusions about embedded messages contained within Disney texts.

Introduction

So far this semester, we have been exploring the ways that children's literature is a filter for the beliefs and values of a time period and its people. In doing so, we've been learning to read the worlds of childhood, culture, and society through keener understanding about the way that culture is transmitted generationally.

Now you will begin to research the broad dimensions of how one childhood cultural icon, Disney, represents and culturally transmits specific messages about social and cultural constructs that impart particular ways of being. The information you compile will ground an eventual multimodal presentation that you will teach to small groups in the class. It will also offer you further insights into how children's texts reflect society and also how taking critical distance from pervasive media messages can lead to awareness and transcendence.

In our next lessons, you'll become much more knowledgeable about how Disney has influenced American society. You'll see how contemporary films like Frozen have slightly altered the dominant ideologies about life and society that Disney has historically imparted. You'll see how people's identities often continue to be tied to Disney characters and how those characters create genderized, racialized, or socio-economic meanings about what life should be. And you'll meet Common core standards to write information/ explanatory texts to examine and convey complex ideas, concepts, and information clearly and accurately through the effective selection, organization, and analysis of content.

E-Learning Module Overview

You are an scholar whose responsibility it will be to deconstruct one particular Disney text and to determine the ways that Disney enacts an account of the real lives of people and their community. You will reveal how Disney shapes the course and meaning of what it means to thrive with a human systems and organization.

To prepare, you must go through a series of learning events to better understand these and other elements of the Disney experience. You will create a Web page on your own Google website that captures the important information you locate during each step of "The Process" below as well as your own deconstruction of one particular Disney text.

You must do each step of the Process below. Create a Google Doc and title it, "E-Learning Module: Disney." When you are done, you will show your work to Dr. Carolyn, who will give you a grade based on your thoroughness and insights. Afterward, you will choose a particular Disney text and compose a Product : an expository narrative. Each student in a class must choose a different Disney text to investigate, and you must register your choice of Disney text with Dr. Carolyn.

E-Learning Module: Process

In each step of this e-learning module, you will read, view, or listen to a text. Then you will compose a response based on a series of directions that follow. Please open a Google Doc and title it, "E-Learning Module: Disney." As you work through the E-Learning Module, please title each step: for example, Step One: How many Disney Texts Can You Name?

Step One: How Many Disney Texts Can You Name?

List as many Disney texts as you can. (Remember: a text is any narrative with a beginning, middle, and end. So a text can be a song, story, film, video game, commercial, etc.)

Step Two: Reviewing Disney's History

The following list of Disney films on a Wikipedia page is an interesting retrospective and a chronological list of Disney films... beginning in the 1930's! As you review it, make a list of the films that you have seen but did not include in Step One.

Step Three: Frozen as Contemporary Disney

View the film trailer for the 2013 Disney film, Frozen. Make a list of all the possible themes that emerge in Frozen. (You should have between 5-10 themes.) In other words, what messages would someone who views the film take away?

Step Four: A Feminist Perspective on Frozen

Read the following blog, titled, 5 Feminist Reasons to Love Disney's Frozen. Write down the five reasons the author offers. After each one, write a sentence that summarizes her perspective on why this film is different than the previous body of Disney films.

Step Five: Social and Cultural Language to Deconstruct Disney

Click through to Dr. Carolyn's Quizlet: Deconstructing Disney Terms to Know. Play the games available as a way to help you figure out what terms you already know and which terms are new to you. Afterward, make a list of the five most sophisticated terms that you own, and make another list of five other terms that you really want to learn so that you can use them to deconstruct Disney.

Step Six (12H/ 12CP Extra Credit): Applying Theory to Disney

Pinterests are great ways to survey multiple texts and to gather a lot of information in a glimpse. Go to this Pinterest, called "Deconstructing Disney on Pinterest." Survey the various Pins, choose one, and interpret it theoretically in one sentence. [Note: This will be prep for tomorrow's lesson.]

Homework: Finish your E-Learning Module for homework. Be ready to share to start our class tomorrow.

LESSON TWO: FILTERS ON OUR DISNEY WORLDS

By the end of class, you will be able to apply theoretical analysis to critical reading of Disney films.

Share your Steps Three- Five responses with at least five people while Dr. Carolyn checks off your E-Learning Module.

Next, view the Google presentation below, "What is a Theory?"

What is a Theory?

Theory Questions will help you to formulate analyses to texts about and from Disney.

PART TWO

What is Disney really promoting?

Some people say that Disney promotes childhood innocence, that it creates spaces where children are safe, and that it provides wholesome family fun. Other people say that the Disney culture that surrounds children also educates them about which possibilities are open to them and which are out of reach. We'll do some investigations to see what we think Disney is really promoting.

Read "Reversing the 'Disneyfication' Process: Using Disney Films to Debunk Stereotypes and Oversimplification in Middle and High School Courses"

Respond to these Disneyfication Article Discussion Questions.

Homework : Do a close reading of one sentence in the "Disneyfication" article. Afterward, write one sentence of theoretical interpretation that is based on your close reading. Use the new Quizlet words in your theoretical framework so that you begin to filter ideas about Disney and society.

LESSON THREE: Applying Disney Terms and Theory to Famous Disney Texts

By the end of class, you will be able to apply specific terminology and theoretical filters to Disney texts in order to gain critical distance from the pleasure of being immersed in Disney.

Share our homework: Do a close reading of one sentence in the "Disneyfication" article. Afterward, write one sentence of theoretical interpretation that is based on your close reading.

Let's view some videos to understand how we can each gain critical distance from texts with embedded messages about ways of being.

Disney Trailers and Documentaries

DAY TWO

We'll continue to use the Questions for Deconstructing Disney alongside the Deconstructing Disney Film Clips handout to learn the language of Deconstructing Disney. [Don't forget the Theory Questions as well.]

Homework : Find a Disney video clip --- either film trailer or film analysis --- and put it on your Unit Four page. Also, write 4-7 sentences to deconstruct it, using the following sources:

  • Questions for Deconstructing Disney.

  • Quizlet: Disney Terms to Know

  • Theory Questions

12H Students : Also, embed in one very short direct excerpt of scholarly support within one of your 4-7 sentences.

LESSON FOUR: SURVEYING A VARIETY OF DISNEY-RELATED SOURCES

By the end of class, you will be able to draw conclusions about how Disney texts have become so pervasive in our U.S. culture.

Let's Get Started! Please share the Disney video clips you located in groups of 2-3. Also, please don't repeat the same video; find another group who do not have your same video.

Options Assignments

Below, you'll see several different sources that offer new and different ways to learn about Disney and its influences on U.S. culture. Please choose 3 (CP) and 4 (H) options and write 2-3 sentences about what you learned/ the essential ideas that emerge from each source.

Option One: Themes and Theoretical Analyses

How shall we investigate the effect of Disney on contemporary children? Let's survey a Pinterest!

Option Two: Walt Disney: The Man, The Imagination

Take a tour of the Walk Disney Museum in San Francisco, California

Option Three: Sample Method to Deconstruct Disney: Social and Cultural Construct Identification

Click here to see the lesson and the accompanying template.

Option Four: Toys and Games Galore

Visit the Disney site for videos, games, and film.

Option Five: List of Disney Assets