Question #8

8)        The films Mouse Trapped 2010 and Mickey Mouse Monopoly both attack the Walt Disney Company for its business practices.  Mouse Trapped 2010 attacks Disney from the bottom up, as a greedy exploiter of labor.  Each employee (cast member) said they were underpaid, despite having been there for years.  One employee briefly mentioned he had a second job and lived with his brother (indicating some willingness on his part to take action to improve his standard of living), but the others were all presented as helpless, hard-working victims.  In Mickey Mouse Monopoly, the Walt Disney Company was attacked from the top down, as one of a handful of “giant conglomerates” that “control” the messages and images people hear and see (especially children) and therefore “control your child’s imagination.”  To even add a sinister element, one professor said that “someone” asked him if he was “afraid” to be writing about Disney. 

     Grossberg’s article “Cultural Studies vs. Political Economy” basically states that political economy and cultural studies are connected, and these two films seem to support his view.  Because of Disney’s commercial success over the years, it has become so large that it, sometimes inadvertently, affects both the culture and the political economy.  One man in the Mouse Trapped 2010 film noted that even though Disney does comparable wage surveys with other companies, Disney itself it so large relative to all the other companies in the area that the wages they pay become the average, thus reinforcing Disney’s prevailing rate (which in turn affects the wages of the other companies in the area.)    This in turn defines the type and number of people in each socio-economic class, which in turn affects what is reported upon and talked about in the media.  The top down view, maybe inadvertently, creates the same type of economic/cultural hegemony.  Politicians rely on the media, the media shapes the message that people listen to and another feedback loop is created.  Both films, taken together, I believe support Grossberg’s central point of connection between cultural studies and political economy.