Disney, The Serpent Swallows its Own Tail?

version

Well-known member
The other day whilst watching the trailer for Ralph Breaks the Internet: Wreck-It Ralph 2 I was struck by the relentless barrage of references and in-jokes, the entire thing seemed to be one continuous sequence of references to other properties owned by Disney and various other companies. Obviously product placement and advertising are nothing new, but this feels new in that those things used to be inserted into and around the story rather being the substance of it, Ready Player One being another example. It's more or less the same thing I was on about in the Philip Roth thread the other week:

... it feels as though we're trapped in a feedback loop. I've read that we're now into "post-postmodernism" and "metamodernism", but it all feels like postmodernism to me. I keep picturing it as the effect of pointing two mirrors at each other, that seemingly endless but gradually diminishing reflection.

A recent piece in the New Yorker covered a similar idea re: Disney's handling of Star Wars - https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/the-growing-emptiness-of-the-star-wars-universe

Because “Star Wars” is so self-consciously mythic, “Solo” is especially vulnerable to the “simulacra of simulacra” problem. The original film was already an inspired remix, and nearly everything in the new movie is an echo of an echo. Donald Glover and Alden Ehrenreich are charismatic actors, but, as Lando and Han, they’re doomed to imitate the performances of Billy Dee Williams and Harrison Ford, who were themselves channelling blaxploitation and “Rebel Without a Cause.” (Emilia Clarke plays an intriguing new character—Han’s ex-girlfriend, a galactic gun moll—but isn’t given enough time to develop her in detail.) The movie’s set pieces—a high-speed train robbery, against-the-clock heist, and asteroid-field spaceship chase—are spectacular, but they’re also deeply familiar, either from the genre films that supply the raw material for “Star Wars” or from “Star Wars” itself. Even the details of the action are predetermined. Because the Millenium Falcon is so wide and flat, one of its coolest moves involves turning ninety degrees to slip through vertical spaces, which then prove too small for its Imperial pursuers. Early in “Solo,” Han attempts this maneuver with a land speeder (in a faux surprise, he fails); later, he does it successfully with the Falcon, while escaping a field of space debris. In “The Force Awakens,” Rey tips the Falcon while zooming through a wrecked Star Destroyer; in “The Empire Strikes Back,” Han does it while navigating a canyon on a giant asteroid. Space flight in “Star Wars” is intrinsically exciting, but repetition is rarely transcendent. Meanwhile, as the film draws to a close, its climactic moment turns out to be a riff on the “Han shot first” controversy—an inside-baseball fan debate about a 1997 revision to the original “Star Wars,” from 1977. The franchise is trapped in a loop of self-love.

I guess what I'm wondering is where does it lead? Do we just end up referencing ourselves over and over and over or does the process become so dense and layered and diluted that something new has to occur?
 

luka

Well-known member
finnegans wake is already the apotheosis of this in a sense. insanely self-referential but also draws in the world, its languages and myths and historical characters and uses it all in this way.

good post btw.
 

version

Well-known member
finnegans wake is already the apotheosis of this in a sense. insanely self-referential but also draws in the world, its languages and myths and historical characters and uses it all in this way.

That's a good point, hadn't thought of The Wake. It's hard to make the comparison in some ways though given the cultural reach of a company like Disney in comparison to something like Finnegans Wake. It's one thing to do it in a text that's only really read by scholars and academics, it's quite another to do it with films making billions of dollars that huge numbers of people watch and enjoy.

FW just sort of exists on its own and people skirt around it, you can't really ignore it or carry on with what you're doing when something as big and as mainstream as Star Wars starts to do the same thing.
 

luka

Well-known member
that trailer is great. i'll go and watch that when it comes out. for the record im all in favour of this and in fact i tend to think of culture as being inherently like this in any case. my favourite blog ( http://groupnameforgrapejuice.blogspot.com/2015/12/meereschal-macmuhun-moon-child-me-3.html ) is all about this too in way and we were talking about it recently.
these lights reflect and refract off of one another in amazing patterns and nuances.
to qute a line he used... across culture as a whole, wittingly and unwittingly, from country to country, across the whole span of time.
 

version

Well-known member
that trailer is great. i'll go and watch that when it comes out. for the record im all in favour of this and in fact i tend to think of culture as being inherently like this in any case. my favourite blog ( http://groupnameforgrapejuice.blogspot.com/2015/12/meereschal-macmuhun-moon-child-me-3.html ) is all about this too in way and we were talking about it recently.

to qute a line he used... across culture as a whole, wittingly and unwittingly, from country to country, across the whole span of time.

I think culture probably is like that in general, yeah, but it's the concentrated version coming through in this Disney stuff that I struggle with. If you're drawing from culture in general it's sprawling and vast enough to work, but if you're continually drawing from the same tiny pool it starts to grate.

I bookmarked that blog after you posted it in another thread, but still haven't gotten round to it. Looks... difficult.
 

luka

Well-known member
to the contrary, i like it becasue it's not difficult. its extremely lucid. i think he's very good at explaining things. i know him and we share the same beleifs about a lot of things but he is much better at making it approachable. hes an explainer by nature.
 

version

Well-known member
https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/mega-media-merger-mania-after-t-time-warner-win-rush-consolidate-1666032
hard to keep track of the corporate cyphers, would be good to see some diagrams or infographics

Disney-01.jpg.jpeg
 

version

Well-known member
“Kekulé dreams the Great Serpent holding its own tail in its mouth, the dreaming Serpent which surrounds the World. But the meanness, the cynicism with which this dream is to be used. The Serpent that announces, "The World is a closed thing, cyclical, resonant, eternally-returning," is to be delivered into a system whose only aim is to violate the Cycle. Taking and not giving back, demanding that "productivity" and "earnings" keep on increasing with time, the System removing from the rest of the World these vast quantities of energy to keep its own tiny desperate fraction showing a profit: and not only most of humanity—most of the World, animal, vegetable, and mineral, is laid waste in the process. The System may or may not understand that it's only buying time. And that time is an artificial resource to begin with, of no value to anyone or anything but the System, which must sooner or later crash to its death, when its addiction to energy has become more than the rest of the World can supply, dragging with it innocent souls all along the chain of life. Living inside the System is like riding across the country in a bus driven by a maniac bent on suicide . . . though he's amiable enough, keeps cracking jokes back through the loudspeaker . . .”
 

luka

Well-known member
“Kekulé dreams the Great Serpent holding its own tail in its mouth, the dreaming Serpent which surrounds the World. But the meanness, the cynicism with which this dream is to be used. The Serpent that announces, "The World is a closed thing, cyclical, resonant, eternally-returning," is to be delivered into a system whose only aim is to violate the Cycle. Taking and not giving back, demanding that "productivity" and "earnings" keep on increasing with time, the System removing from the rest of the World these vast quantities of energy to keep its own tiny desperate fraction showing a profit: and not only most of humanity—most of the World, animal, vegetable, and mineral, is laid waste in the process. The System may or may not understand that it's only buying time. And that time is an artificial resource to begin with, of no value to anyone or anything but the System, which must sooner or later crash to its death, when its addiction to energy has become more than the rest of the World can supply, dragging with it innocent souls all along the chain of life. Living inside the System is like riding across the country in a bus driven by a maniac bent on suicide . . . though he's amiable enough, keeps cracking jokes back through the loudspeaker . . .”

surprising how often he wears his heart on his sleeve.
 

luka

Well-known member
the passage you quoted seems very uncomplicated, open and earnest. hes stayed true to basic hippy values.
(i only got about halfway through gravitys rainbow.)
 

version

Well-known member
Yeah, I think he's always been a hippy at heart, it runs through everything of his I've read. You should try finishing Gravity's Rainbow, it's a bit of a slog in places, but I reckon it's worth it. Mason & Dixon's more fun and focused and probably my favourite of the two, but you can't go wrong with either, imo. GR's death from a distance, M&D's death up close.
 

version

Well-known member
Inside the windowless bunker where Disney stores its 'secret weapon' - https://www.theguardian.com/film/2018/oct/20/disney-mickey-mouse-animation-research-library

At the animation research library, staffed by 24 people, the company is methodically storing, curating and digitising an Aladdin’s cave of animation models and drawings – 65m items – in recognition that these characters and stories represent corporate treasure. Items include moulds that artists used to draw the orchestra figures in Fantasia, landscapes from Snow White and the original Pinocchio puppet, who lies in a glass case, preserved in perpetuity, the Lenin of Burbank.

The digitising shows long-term horizons: the painstaking process of photographing and capturing pieces of art will take an estimated 120 years – perhaps finishing in time for Mickey’s 210th birthday. “We started nine years ago,” said Mat Fretschel, one of the archival photographers. “On a good day we photograph about a thousand pieces of art. We’ve done about 1.1% of the archive.”
 

other_life

bioconfused
“Kekulé dreams the Great Serpent holding its own tail in its mouth, the dreaming Serpent which surrounds the World. But the meanness, the cynicism with which this dream is to be used. The Serpent that announces, "The World is a closed thing, cyclical, resonant, eternally-returning," is to be delivered into a system whose only aim is to violate the Cycle. Taking and not giving back, demanding that "productivity" and "earnings" keep on increasing with time, the System removing from the rest of the World these vast quantities of energy to keep its own tiny desperate fraction showing a profit: and not only most of humanity—most of the World, animal, vegetable, and mineral, is laid waste in the process. The System may or may not understand that it's only buying time. And that time is an artificial resource to begin with, of no value to anyone or anything but the System, which must sooner or later crash to its death, when its addiction to energy has become more than the rest of the World can supply, dragging with it innocent souls all along the chain of life. Living inside the System is like riding across the country in a bus driven by a maniac bent on suicide . . . though he's amiable enough, keeps cracking jokes back through the loudspeaker . . .”

this quote is the thematic of this record idr if i've linked this here before some of u may enjoy it.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
Luka did you ever go and see this?

I'm a big fan. As capitalist propaganda goes it's very charming.
 

version

Well-known member
This recent run of live-action remakes is insane. They've got Marvel, Star Wars, their own streaming platform and now they're remaking seemingly every Disney classic too.

Released

Maleficent (2014)
Cinderella (2015)
The Jungle Book (2016)
Alice Through the Looking Glass (2016)
Beauty and the Beast (2017)
Christopher Robin (2018)
Dumbo (2019)
Aladdin (2019)

Upcoming

The Lion King (2019)
Maleficent: Mistress of Evil (2019)
Lady and the Tramp (2019)
Mulan (2020)
Cruella (2020)
The Sword in the Stone (TBA)
The Little Mermaid (TBA)
The Hunchback of Notre Dame (TBA)
Lilo & Stitch (TBA)
Untitled The Jungle Book sequel (TBA)
Pinocchio (TBA)
Rose Red (Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs) (TBA)
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (TBA)
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
I think their dominance is partly about the juvenilisation of adults in our era. They're not just selling superheroes and talking lions to kids now, or even to kids parents - its to everyone.

Even more 'gritty' films like the Dark Knight or Logan are just kids' movies for adults.

Saw a clip of that new Lion King and was disgusted by how bland it looked. Whatever you think of those 90s disney films "ethically" or "politically" or w/ever, the animation is beautiful. These new photorealistic CGI ones look ugly and aren't purpose built to make you believe animals are talking and its adorable not sinister and creepy.
 

sus

Well-known member
I think their dominance is partly about the juvenilisation of adults in our era. They're not just selling superheroes and talking lions to kids now, or even to kids parents - its to everyone.

Sam Kriss talks about this quite eloquently over at his blogspot (a post which incidentally, draws on Fisher); there is something obviously undead about all this. Misanthropic as hell, but that doesn't seem like a problem around here:

In the modernist 20th century, culture produced novelty: new galaxies, new empires, new images and affects. Now, in the era of neoliberalism, it’s all repetition and pastiche; the best we can do is repeat ourselves. Disney is churning out soulless live-action remakes of its old cartoons at a frightening, industrial rate. These aren’t for children: they’re for people who used to be children, and aren’t any more, but never actually grew up. People who want to remember their childhoods, but this time with lots of CGI. Sappy idiots. Meanwhile, every other major blockbuster is either a sequel or a franchise. Pop music copies the forms of the 70s, 80s, and 90s. Literature recoils into tedious 19th century realism. All we can do is rearrange the rubble of the past.

All the images of ruin in the new Star Wars: star destroyers parked in sand dunes, the ruins of a Death Star on Endor. The apocalyptic films and television series of the 2010s, where National Geographic would preview New York "25 years after humans": all overgrown vines and wolf packs two generations removed from domesticity. The Irishman.
 
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