Where Magic Lives: Disney's Cultivation, Co-Creation, and Control of America's Cultural Objects

The Walt Disney Company today is a veritable cultural machine, churning out new products and recycling old in ways that build and maintain a consumer base that spans generations. Although it is true that Disney's contemporary box office success is subject to significant competition, the company has a distinct advantage: A strategic grasp on key cultural objects-characters the American public has grown to hold quite dear-and the means with which to maintain and promote them. Disney products thus serve as both memory takers and memory makers, absorbing original works and forming a cultural heritage that is reinforced and reproduced cooperatively between Disney and the American public.