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Inside the Mouse: Work and Play at Disney World, The Project on Disney Paperback – April 14, 1995

by The Project on Disney (Author), Jane Kuenz (Editor), Susan Willis (Editor),

26 ratings

Part of: Post-contemporary interventions (94 books)

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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.

Print length

264 pages
Language

English
Publication date

April 14, 1995
Dimensions

6.13 x 0.66 x 9.25 inches
ISBN-10

0822316242
ISBN-13

978-0822316244
Lexile measure

1400L
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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.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Duke University Press Books; First Edition (April 14, 1995)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 264 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0822316242
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0822316244
Lexile measure ‏ : ‎ 1400L
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 15.2 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.13 x 0.66 x 9.25 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #1,163,554 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #89 in Disney World Travel Books
- #434 in Performing Arts Industry
- #497 in Service Industry (Books)

Customer Reviews:
26 ratings

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Ronald M Aronis

Big disappointment

Reviewed in the United States on May 31, 2018

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Some interesting things but a lot of leftist psychobabble.

One person found this helpful

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CCW

Two Stars

Reviewed in the United States on May 8, 2015

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The editing of the kindle version is terrible. The book itself is now quite dated.

One person found this helpful

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R. Jim Baskin

I cannot believe the people who reviewed this book as 'entertaining' actually read it.

Reviewed in the United States on June 27, 2017

Verified Purchase

Best word to describe this book is 'odious'. I cannot believe the people who reviewed this book as 'entertaining' actually read it. I feel cheated. The authors clearly wrote this as a tool to be used in their college classes, to take apart the big Capitalist icon with their Marxist theory. Marxist theory is literally what they use as a lens throughout the book, it is not to be demeaning or dramatic. The wording was academic and dated when written, now it was too painful for me to finish. They are only making sales because they put Disney in the title.

Helpful

Penny Milford

Not for the casual reader of Disney information

Reviewed in the United States on June 15, 2017

Unlike the description, which makes it sound so fun & enticing, this book is not for anyone reading for pleasure. It is an entry in a scholarly series from Duke University Press, and is listed as relating to "Cultural studies, American studies". It's not for the casual reader, or anyone looking to learn more about the Disney phenomena. There are photos (b&w) without captions, and it's up to the reader to wade through the nearby text to figure out what they refer to. I tried, I really tried, to read this book, but I cannot. Two stars because I feel that the info on this page (and the back cover) tout this book as being a light-hearted book for the general reader, which it is not. It's so elitist, I will probably throw it in the trash, rather than donate it to my local library sale. If you want to learn more about the Disney parks, movies, etc., this is not the book for you.

2 people found this helpful

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K. Fugate

Please visit Snopes.com before you write anything else!

Reviewed in the United States on April 28, 2012

I happened across this 1995 book at my local library, and I was looking forward to reading some inside scoop. Yikes. I sincerely hope the authors didn't make a lot of money on this mess, because anyone who bought this book was robbed. It is a bizarre combination of dry, snooze-inducing academic prose and a perpetuation of every urban myth ever created about the Disney organization. It is riddled with BS referred to as foaf (friend of a friend) stories by scholars who study urban legends. These myths include grisly on-property deaths that never happened, a totally laughable claim that Disney and the local hospitals are in cahoots to make sure that all park-related deaths are tampered with to declare time of death as happening just after the ambulance leaves Disney property (thereby making sure that no one ever dies at Disney World), and a made-up story about Walt Disney making a series of videos to be played to Disney executives after his death, so that he would still be able to run the company from beyond the grave. Why not throw in a couple of alien abductions while they were at it? Please do not waste your time on this hack job. If you must read it, be sure to look up all of their claims on Snopes. Someone deserved a lawsuit for this book!

8 people found this helpful

Helpful

Daisuke

Difficult to read but some useful insight

Reviewed in the United States on March 5, 2000

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.

21 people found this helpful

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Bruno

Marxist yawn fest

Reviewed in the United States on July 23, 2009

I got this book admittedly hoping to maybe read a little dirt on how Disney isn't what it's cracked up to be all the time. Instead I got page after page of almost pointless pontification by at least one self-described Marxist and a lot of other eggheads trying to use big words to impress readers. Some things just aren't as deep as one would like to make them. You can't analyze everything and break it down the way these authors are attempting to. They just come off sounding idiotic. They're over thinking it. They also managed to work in some unattributed gossip about what goes on (rapes, murders, etc)in a fashion that left the reader wondering what was the author's imagination and what was stories they were relating to the reader from interviewees. So much for academic integrity. If you get someone like me who enjoys Disney but knows the corporation isn't always great to actually work and wants to get the scoop from employees, but who hates this book, imagine what true disneyphiles would think of it. This sort of pretentiousness and isolation from reality is why kids today are exiting college knowing almost nothing worth knowing.

6 people found this helpful

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