15. Expanding the Kingdom: The Walt Disney Company as a Purveyor of Neoliberal Logic

This chapter explores the interrelationship between the Walt Disney Company’s integration into the Anglo-American neoliberal shift since the 1980s and the subsequent adoption of a neoliberal cultural logic exemplified by the company’s products, merchandise, labour practices, and globalisation strategies. Special focus is given to the underlying cultural premises of Disney’s theme parks in both Europe and East Asia. Through contextualising the neoliberal shift within a trend towards oligopolies and structural changes brought about by post-industrial developments, it is ascertained that the Walt Disney Company’s strategies towards horizontal and vertical integration are largely isomorphic with the actions pursued by other US-based consumption-oriented corporations. Disney’s efforts at glocalisation in its theme parks illustrate the centrality of the US corporate model for immersive consumption in an environment in which time and space have seemingly collapsed into mass-producible categories. Building on Bryman’s observations on the “Disneyization” of societies, the role of branded experiences is shown to be detachable from discourses of civic engagement and liberal democracy, leaving the door open for Anglo-American neoliberalism to be co-opted by more authoritarian forms of capitalism. A final discussion sheds light on how Disney’s labour practices have incorporated a discourse of “passion,” which is embedded in an ideological framework of “individualistic self-fulfilment,” but can easily serve to justify the exploitation of workers worldwide.