Inside the Mouse: Work and Play at Disney World, The Project on Disney [Paperback]

The Project on Disney (Author), Jane Kuenz (Editor), Susan Willis (Editor), Shelton Waldrep (Editor), Stanley Fish (Series Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 19, 1995

This entertaining and playful book views Disney World as much more than the site of an ideal family vacation. Blending personal meditations, interviews, photographs, and cultural analysis, Inside the Mouse looks at Disney World’s architecture and design, its consumer practices, and its use of Disney characters and themes. This book takes the reader on an alternative ride through "the happiest place on earth" while asking "What makes this forty-three-square-mile theme park the quintessential embodiment of American leisure?"
Turning away from the programmed entertainment that Disney presents, the authors take a peek behind the scenes of everyday experience at Disney World. In their consideration of the park as both private corporate enterprise and public urban environment, the authors focus on questions concerning the production and consumption of leisure. Featuring over fifty photographs and interviews with workers that strip "cast members" of their cartoon costumes, this captivating work illustrates the high-pressure dynamics of the typical family vacation as well as a tour of Disney World that looks beyond the controlled facade of themed attractions.
As projects like EuroDisney and the proposed Disney America test the strength of the Disney cultural monolith, Inside the Mouse provides a timely assessment of the serious business of supplying pleasure in contemporary U.S. culture. Written for the general reader interested in the many worlds of Disney, this engrossing volume will also find fans among students and scholars of cultural studies.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

What makes Disney tick? This theoretical cultural analysis is an alternative ride through "the happiest place on earth" that asks "What makes this forty-three-square-mile theme park the quintessential embodiment of American leisure?" Considering the park as both private corporate enterprise and public urban environment, the authors focus on questions concerning the production and consumption of leisure. Featuring more than fifty photographs and interviews with workers, this captivating exploration illustrates the high-pressure dynamics of the typical family vacation while taking the reader on a tour that looks well beyond Disney World's controlled facade.

From Publishers Weekly

If you're not an unquestioning Disney fan, this peek into "the happiest place on earth" is alternately illuminating, disturbing and, aptly, even a little goofy. Punctuated by Karen Klugman's photographs (decidedly not the stuff of Kodak Picture Spots), the Project on Disney (Klugman, of the Creative Arts Workshop in New Haven, Conn., and Jane Kuenz, Shelton Waldrep and Susan Willis of Duke's English department) offer anecdotes from their trips to Disney World before riffing on such trendy cultural-studies topics as Foucaultian surveillance, mall culture, tourism, postmodern architecture and the carnivalesque. In the chapter on "Working at the Rat," past and present employees dish Disney. We learn that the percentage of gay and lesbian Disney World workers is high (estimates range from 25% to 75% of the park's work force), that employees sneak in after hours to have sex and that many workers use amphetamines to accrue overtime (surprisingly, Disney does not test the majority of its park employees for drugs). The management structure, day-to-day operations and Disney ethos are detailed, as are the appalling, even stomach-turning, working conditions endured by the "head-wearers," which'll make you pause before posing for a grip-and-grin with Mickey.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 264 pages
• Publisher: Duke University Press Books (April 19, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0822316242
• ISBN-13: 978-0822316244
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.1 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (24 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #499,701 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Difficult to read but some useful insight, March 5, 2000

By 

GVlog "GV" (Northern California) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Inside the Mouse: Work and Play at Disney World, The Project on Disney (Paperback)

This book falls somewhere between David Koenig's "Mouse Tales" and Stephen Fjellman's "Vinyl Leaves". It leans a bit more toward the former and seems to have been intended as a critical assessment of Disney, Disney World, popular culture, consumerism and more. It is written in the form of a vacation memoir that tries to weave together the perspectives of academics, parents (some of the authors ARE parents who took their children to Disney World), photo essayists (there are 50 photographs in the book and a handful are noteworthy), Marxists, and feminists. Perhaps this breadth - or lack of focus - is one of the reasons the book failed to really engage me. There are some insights but I struggled to get at them since the writing was a bit verbose and the authors did not provide footnotes on several references. My overall impression of the book was that of a well-intentioned but poorly-written thesis. I did not come away with the impression that the authors disliked Disney or Disney World. As someone who has visited the parks, I can easily agree with some of the criticisms and frustrations noted in the text. Unfortunately for me, most of the messages that the authors where trying to convey to me got lost in the style. For academic insight, try Fjellman's book which, for all its deep thought and length, was actually much easier for me to follow. For an easier read about backstage goings-on at the mouse-house, try Koenig's book which I found most enjoyable and reasonably well-documented.

15 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Jargon-laden, May 8, 1999

By 

[e-mail] (Tokyo, Japan) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Inside the Mouse: Work and Play at Disney World, The Project on Disney (Paperback)

The researchers mar their efforts in two ways. First of all, they started with an obvious anti-Disney bias and throughout the book, the reader is forced to endure their efforts to validate their prejudices.

Secondly, as another reviewer has noted, the language is more than slightly problemmatical. Of course, there is nothing wrong with academic writing, but these people never eschewed the chance to use 100 words when 15 would have sufficed. The style is clearly meant to impress; it only clouds the issue. Writing clearly is an art; these reseachers don't have a clue.

21 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars They Missed the Point, November 24, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Inside the Mouse: Work and Play at Disney World, The Project on Disney (Paperback)

The authors started their project with the agenda of being critical of Disney. They refused to participate in the experience of "The Mouse" before rejecting it. One author was absolutely horrified when she found herself shopping in the park, and immediately returned to her distanced observer position. The authors treat Disney and those who enjoy it, snobbishly. Yet they frequently fall prey to their own criticisms (the most amusing parts of the book). This book was not "entertaining," nor was it "playful". It seeks to ask why Disney is "the quintessential embodiment of American Leisure" yet it spends more time discussing the parks hiring practices than it does asking or answering this question.