Disney: God of the Media

            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.