Dear Blog,
From our Tuesday class this week we delved into a discussion on Baudrillard. Honestly, Baudrillard is one of my favorite theorists we have studied thus far. One of the concepts we analyzed was the procession of simulacra (representation of something or someone). Some of these representations are displayed in the media. One of the examples we discussed was Disneyland:
“Disneyland exists in order to hide the fact that it is the ‘real’ country…Disneyland is presented as imaginary in order to make us believe that the rest is real…” (393, Baudrillard).
Everyone in our class talked about their own experiences with Disneyland. One peer mentioned the sense of happiness they felt stepping into Disneyland. It makes me question how did we get to this point of brainwashing? How does the fact that Disneyland is deemed the happiest place on earth yet their employees are severely underpaid? The documentary I watched “The American Dream…and Other Fairy Tales” went into depth on the stories of some employees with their experience with Disneyland before and after the pandemic. One thing that stuck with me from that documentary was the fact that most workers at Disneyland have slept in their cars at one point due to their extensive hours. Also, the fact that full-time employees do not have the means to have families due to a lack of financial stability. I find it ironic how a place full of joy can cause so much undue stress on its workers.
I would say the representation of Disneyland in ads could be deemed evil or sorcery as it does not reflect the reality of the situation. As I see on television makes Disney seem like a fantasy land, far from reality—thus sorcery. But it also reflects a lie to the world to exploit people for their money thus why I also deemed it evil. Personally, I have not been to Disneyland or Disney World before but I have been to Universal. All of these theme parks are all the same in this retrospect. The first time I ever went was last year and I was so excited because I grew up seeing how it has been marketing online. I had this idea in my head about going into the theme park. It makes me question, how much money are we willing to spend to experience an ideal from what we see in the media?
Signing off,
SarahSlays
Comments
Post a Comment