Disneyfication

The term Disneyfication (also Disneyization) describes the transformation of a society to resemble the theme parks of the Walt Disney Corporation. The latter term appears, attributed to Peter K. Fallon, in Andre Kehoe's 1991 book, Christian Contradictions and the World Revolution: "This bogus culture imposed hour after hour on the people by the media is a serious interference with free thinking and therefore free action. It is part of what Peter K. Fallon of New York University, in an admirable phrase, calls the Disneyisation of society." The phrase later appears in Sharon Zukin's book, The Cultures of Cities (1996:128), and was popularized by Alan Bryman in a 2004 book, The Disneyization of Society. Disneyfication of urban space is explored in Jeff Ferrell's Tearing Down the Streets: Adventures in Urban Anarchy. Social scientists writing about urban transformation employ both terms.

The terms are generally used in a negative way, and they imply homogenization of consumption, merchandising, and emotional labor. They can be used more broadly to describe the processes of stripping a real place or event of its original character and repackaging it in a sanitized format. References to anything negative are removed, and the facts are watered down with the intent of making the subject more pleasant and easily grasped. In the case of places, this typically means replacing what has grown organically over time with an idealized and tourist-friendly veneer reminiscent of the "Main Street, U.S.A." attractions at Disney theme parks. Aspects of Disneyfication include:

The French philosopher Jean Baudrillard (who writes about the nature of reality and the hyperreality) has called Disneyland the most real place in the U.S., because it is not pretending to be anything more than it actually is, a theme park. In his essay Simulations, he writes:

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