In today’s society, only a few areas of media still
retain a true fandom with millions of followers. Some of these fandoms include
Harry Potter, The Lord of the Rings and Star Wars, just to name a few. Each one
of these concepts hold tremendous influence over most inside the fandom,
meaning that each one of these concepts hold a large amount of societal
influence. And Disney owns three of these fandoms
The first one of these is Marvel. Marvel has the largest
fandom of any series that is still active, meaning that they can implement any
messages they want into Marvel and its movies and millions will view this
message worldwide. Marvel is one of the few companies that still has the
abilities to create new stereotypes in its movies, which is massive today. Whether
they use this power for good or for bad, it doesn’t change the fact that Marvel
wields this kind of power, and by logic, so does Disney.
Another one of these companies is Lucasfilms, simply
known as Star Wars. The full extent of the Star Wars universe is massive, and
there are those who have fully immersed themselves into this universe, meaning
that Lucasfilms can essentially control some of those who have delved
themselves fully into the universe that Lucasfilms has created. While they often
don’t do this through explicit messages, it is easy to do through implicit
messages. They have even been able to change or reinforce connotation on certain
words. For example, the word empire’s connotation has likely changed since the
creation of A New Hope, when a group known as the Empire was the primary villain.
So, even this ability to change connotation on words can hold large political
sway. For example, if Lucasfilms were to change the name Empire to the Left,
there would likely be a hit to democratic support. This example is, of course,
purely hypothetical.
The last of these companies is Disney itself. Disney has
a cult-like following that holds influence over all generations all over the
world. In fact, my literature teacher, Ms. Heitz, is a Disney fanatic herself. Disney
has the ability to put its own implicit messages physically in the world, into
places such as Disneyworld and Disneyland, places where thousands of tourists
regularly visit. Essentially, Disney and its companies hold a tremendous amount
of influence over society. It contains in itself three fandoms, each of which
hold some kind of cult-like following themselves. Disney, through its use of
media, can create and destroy stereotypes, change the meaning of words and
likely influence world events simply by changing small aspects in some of their
products.
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