It might seem strange to propose an aesthetic consideration of the theme park, that artificial bloom in the garden of popular culture.1 The aesthetic is often considered a minority interest in the modern world, yet it offers a distinctive perspective, even on an activity that has mass appeal, and can provide insights that would otherwise remain undiscovered. Aesthetic description and interpretation can illuminate the theme park in many directions: as architecture, design, theater, landscape architecture, environment. I shall choose the (...) last of these, environment. (shrink)

Christophe Bruchansky asks if we’re living in a global themepark. -/- Walt Disney World opened in Florida in 1971. It was the second theme park built by Disney, the first being Disneyland in California in 1955. Disney World is not one theme park, but a group of four theme parks, two water parks, and many hotels, all together in Orlando. It is one of the most visited attractions in the world, and represents far from (...) merely an American phenomenon. Disney theme parks are now located in Paris, Tokyo and Hong Kong, and a new park has recently been announced for Shanghai. But what is a Disney theme park? Is it a utopia? Is it a heterotopia – a concept defined by French philosopher Michel Foucault? Or is it something else? As you will see from this article, understanding Disney World requires a profound reflection on culture, history and reality. (shrink)

In this essay we show how certain tendencies of theself are enhanced and hindered by technologicallyorganized places. We coordinate a cognitive andbehavioral technology for the control of personalidentity with the technologically totalizedenvironments that we call synthetic sites. Weproceed by describing Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi''sstrategy for intensifying experience and organizingthe self. Walt Disney World is then considered as theexample, par excellence, of a synthetic sitethat promotes ordered experience via self-shrinkage. Finally, we reflect briefly on problems andpossibilities of human life lived in (...) a world that canbe described with increasing accuracy as anarchipelago of synthetic sites. (shrink)

This article explores the contrast of pilgrimage and tourism as sacred and profane journeys using Disney World and the Camino de Santiago as exemplars of such destinations. An entanglement of place structures reveals Disney World as a quasi-religious journey site for some whose tourist actions implicate a ritual centered on capitalist mythology. Disentangling sacred encounters and profane experiences demonstrates the role such places play in elevating community versus self-indulgence.

This article investigates artificial life image-making in relation to and as constituent of the moving image, specifically artificial life visualized in three-dimensional computer-generated space . Of particular interest in this examination is the view or `window', from the virtual camera, into the artificial life computational model or `world' , and how it organizes a dense field of expectations. Analogous to looking through a telescope or microscope, the view into the artificial life world is monocular and often fixed in (...) the world; in this regime we look `at' computer models, which are often referred to as agents, `creatures', `organisms' or `cyberbeasts'. This tactic of looking through the instrumentality of science, the arts of reality, is parallel to looking through André Bazin's `long take' in cinema and documentary film-making in which we look `at' an unmediated view of reality; in other words, in looking `at' an image of artificial life we look `through' a non-intrinsic regime of seeing. This investigation into the interpretative regime provides only a partial account of the intercultural traffic between artificial life and the moving image. I further this discussion by arguing that artificial life screen-based works are a contemporary extension and reworking of the nature film in that they provide accounts of the `natural' world that are familiar and similar to those of their filmic and cinematic predecessors. I contend that artificial life visualizations and the stories that often accompany the images are the latest manifestation of this photographic and filmic tradition. To illustrate my point I discuss the scientific project Daisyworld, the associated narrative that frames the research, and the researchers' attempt to mathematically model an `imaginary planet [with] a very simple biosphere'. This sets the scene to explore artificial life in relation to Disney wilderness and nature films. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:A Realm Without Angels: MENCs Partnerships with Disney and Other Major Corporations Julia EkIund Koza University of Wisconsin-Madison My interest in partnerships between the MENC: The National Association for Music Educators and major corporations such as Disney dates back to 1996 when I was invited to attend a free premiere screening of the movie Mr. Holland 's Opus.1 Never one to turn down anything free, in January (...) of that year I joined more than twenty-fivethousandmusiceducators, administrators, and friends ofthe arts, who gathered at fiftyone locations across the nation to watch the movie. Sponsored and promoted by theNational Coalition for Music Education, ofwhich MENC is a member, in cooperation with the National AcademyofRecordingArts and Sciences Foundation, the American Music Conference, and Hollywood Pictures (a Disney subsidiary), the promotional screening was the result of an education/business partnership. I did not like the film much even though I agreed with its message that public schools and public school music should be adequately funded, and I was sorry that MENC had entered into a partnership to promote it. Part ofthe problem may have been timing. I had recentlyreturned froma parental leave during whichIhad sufferedseriouspostpartumcomplications and had struggled fornearly a yearwithpoor health. January 1996 found me trying to figure out how I would manage a full-blown academic career, my still fragile health, and a lively child. Ibristledatthevisionsofprofessionalismfostered by Mr. Holland's Opus, recognizing that I would never again have the luxury he did of indulging myselfuninterruptedly in my career; I knew that I might never again be seen as a "real professional " even though I was more exhausted and working harder than I ever had. From my perspective the film's images of teachers, teaching, andprofessionalismwereprofoundlymasculinist; I also knew that a popular film can play a powerful role in shapingpublic imaginaries. Who tends tobenefit fromtheperpetuationoftheseimagesof teachers, teaching, and professionalism, I wondered? Who tends to be harmed? So my first step on this journey was to write a critique of Mr. Holland's Opus. I soon discovered that the film itselfwas but one small part of a much larger story about MENCs deepening involvement in education /business partnerships. One of the main themes of Mr. Holland's Opus is that budget cuts can have devastating effects on music programs. The education/business partnership forged to promote Opus and the manner in which the film was promoted suggested that the corporate world is socially responsible and genuinely concerned both aboutthe quality ofAmerican education and the demise of music education. In no way did they intimate that corporate practices may be at least partially responsible for any declines in the quality ofpublic schooling. I was also aware, however, of a corpus of scholarship suggesting that recent trends toward corporate partnerships and philanthropy are window-dressing at a time when corporations are sneaking out the back door carrying everything else in the store. Critics contend that on the one hand, corporationsengageinmuchpublicizedacts of gift-giving or school partnership, which cost the corporations relatively little (or in the case of Opus, result in considerable financial profit for the corporation), while on the other hand, they chisel away at the financial infrastructure of©Philosophy ofMusic Education Review 10, no. 2 (Fall, 2002): 72-79. Julia Eklund Koza 73 schools with unrelenting demands for special corporate tax cuts, breaks, and incentives. This practice is especially detrimental to the arts because, relegated to the feminized status of "frill," they may be among the first subjects to suffer. Tax breaks are but one example of what critics term "corporate welfare." John Hood, in Policy Review, provides a list ofincentives states use to attract and keep corporations. In addition to tax abatements and tax credits, Hood mentions land giveaways, releases from infrastructure costs, the issuanceoftax-exemptdevelopmentbonds, offers to promote products, and job training packages. These deals are unfair to existing businesses, Hood argues, especially small ones that can never hope to receive such treatment, and he concludes that there is no clear-cut evidence these forms of corporate welfare benefit state economies.2 Accordingto JayTaylor, school-business partnerships have become increasingly popular; they quadrupled between 1982 and 1992 as financially strappeddistricts found themselves "dredgingfor dollars."3 Taylor explains that "school officials... (shrink)

Introduction -- Tales of dominion -- The plow and the gun -- Picturing the West, 1883-1893 -- American idol, 1898 -- The end of nature -- African romance -- The dark continent -- When cowboys go to heaven -- Transplanting Africa -- Of ape-men, sex, and cannibal kings -- Adventures in monkeyland -- Nature, the film -- The world scrubbed clean.

Walt Disney is largely responsible for popularizing the princess story in American culture. These stories are the centerpieces of the Disney collection and their flagship theme parks. Indeed, Cinderella's castle itself is at the heart of Disney's Magic Kingdom. The first of Disney's theme parks, the Magic Kingdom was intended to capture the magic and imagination of the Disney movies, and bring to life the settings of Disney stories. Epcot was the second of four (...) parks built at the Walt Disney World Resort location in Florida. While Liberty Square in the Magic Kingdom celebrates the independence of those who live in liberal democracies, the World Showcase at Epcot celebrates multiculturalism, and the possibility of appreciating and learning from a multitude of cultures. The chapter provides a better understanding of the philosophical tensions in Disney's theme park by taking a tour of the underlying political ideas lurking inside the Epcot and Magic Kingdom theme parks. (shrink)

This paper explores the way in which America—a cultural space produced by the world's largest media corporations and not the political entity called the United States— constructs, both discursively and spatially, zones of violence and zones of safety, contributing in the process to the maintenance and acclamation of political/symbolic global order. Through “thick descriptions” of three zones—EPCOT Center in Walt Disney World in Florida, as the ultimate safe zone; a day of media coverage of the Kosovo intervention (...) in 1999, the epitomy of a constructed zone of violence; and a reinterpretation of debates over media violence in the United States as the way of policing the zones of safety and zones of violence—the paper argues that zoning was the principal practice with which the self-content narrative of global economic success confronted the onslaught of alleged cultural violence in the 1990s. Zoning, to use Giorgio Agamben's analysis, is the forceful localization of an ever-expanding suspension of legal order; the practice that obfuscates the increasing frequency with which sovereign power encounters—and obliterates—bare life with impunity. Construction of boundaries between zones of safety and zones of violence is, therefore, more than performance of security—it is the way to affirm global order in face of its absence. (shrink)

In 2017, Steven Gimbel published Isn’t That Clever: A Philosophical Account of Humor and Comedy. This book proposes, among other vastly interesting notions, a definition of humor that eschews audience reactions in favor of focusing exclusively on the craft and intention of the responsible comedian. This article intends to provoke that definition and show why humorous performances cannot be crafted without an audience-centric mindset, proving Gimbel’s notion problematic at best. To poke this definition, I draw on the American Folk Humor (...) tradition and compare its historic roots with modern tourist attractions that on the surface appear to channel its spirit. These include the Hoop-Dee-Doo Revue dinner show at Walt Disney World and The Brewery Follies at Virginia City, Montana. After showcasing the differences between these modern performances and the tradition they pretend to espouse, I conclude that Gimbel’s theory cannot account for the evolution of a funny genre. (shrink)

The World War II Disney propaganda films – the propaganda and entertainment shorts – are included in the Walt Disney in the Front Lines boxed set, which was released as part of the third wave of the Walt Disney Treasures collection in 2004. This chapter considers a neutral definition of propaganda – one that does not foreclose on the question of its moral acceptability. Each of the Disney propaganda shorts comes with a specific message, though (...) the common purpose was “intended to help the war effort, whether by encouraging thrift and sacrifice, or demoralizing the enemy.” Whether it is the pareidolic depictions of Nazi submarines in The Spirit of '43, or the caricatures of the German leaders in Der Fuehrer's Face, or the portraits of the Japanese troops in Commando Duck: the point is that these all rouse the passions in a way that purely verbal descriptions of the Axis soldiers never could. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The 1998 Meeting of the Society for Buddhist-Christian StudiesPeggy StarkeyThe annual meeting of the Society for Buddhist-Christian Studies was held at the Walt Disney World Dolphin in Orlando, Florida, on Friday, November 20, and Saturday, November 21, 1998. The theme for this year’s sessions was “Ritual and Its Connection to Ethical Activity in the World.”The Friday afternoon panel, moderated by John Berthrong (Boston University), focused on (...) Buddhist views. John Makransky (Boston College) argued from a Mahayana Buddhist perspective that ritual/contemplative activity is a more effective paradigm for contemporary Buddhist ethics than that of Buddhist doctrine, which is now regarded by many as the source of Buddhist ethics. Historically, ethics has been the outflow of ritual activity and as such is both available to many more Buddhists than doctrine and draws more fully upon the various resources of the tradition. Furthermore, rituals as communal/universal expressions of ultimate reality, when practiced within the horizon of the concerns of one’s culture, naturally take expression in forms of social engagement. Stephanie Kaza (University of Vermont) provided insight into the connection between ritual practice and ethics through her vivid explanation of specific Zen rituals. One such ceremony, adapted to address human suffering in a specific situation, took place at the Nevada Nuclear Test Site. The ceremony prepared people for the difficult decision of choosing or not choosing civil disobedience. Thus, Zen rituals not only provide the invitation for mindful awareness in daily life, but also the possibility, though not the guarantee, for transformation everywhere. Yukio Matsuda (University of Heidelberg) discussed the relation between ritual and social activities in the areas of peace, culture, and education in Nichiren Buddhism as practiced by the Soka Gakkai movement. Chanting the diamoku in front of the gohonzon, for example, enables one to directly touch one’s own enlightened life and encourages not only a responsibility for changing one’s own destiny, but also a commitment to social engagement that works toward the creation of a peaceful society. Don Mitchell (Purdue University), responding from a Roman Catholic perspective, stressed those aspects of the three papers that led him to a better understanding of his own tradition. As in Buddhism, he sees the ritual sacraments in Christianity as providing models for moral behavior, reinforcing faith, and [End Page 175] empowering ethical behavior. He also raised several issues pertaining to the reinterpretation of Buddhist rituals or even the creation of new ones by Western Buddhists.John Berthrong introduced the Saturday morning panel, which focused on Christian views. Nicholas Groves (Chicago Public Library) drew on the history of the Oxford Movement, which he traced from its inception in 1833, for his example of the influence of Christian ritual upon ethics. For this movement, ritual was both an expression of the Christian doctrines of the Incarnation and the Trinity and the basis of an imperative for social justice. For the discussion to follow, he asked, “What is the function of a prophetic and radical reading of a spiritual tradition, either Christian or Buddhist, within the larger community of the Sangha or the Church?” Speaking from a Protestant point of view, Jay Rock (codirector, Interfaith Relations, National Council of Churches of Christ, USA) discussed Christian ritual in terms of the reactualization of the past and of the transformation of the present. Baptism and the Eucharist commemorate past historical events that are made present in the liturgy in such a way that the participating Christians not only receive God’s gift of unlimited love, but also are sent out into the world to live out this love in ethical behavior. Christian ritual confronts the participants with the question, What is now required? Responding from a history of religions perspective, Jan Nattier (Indiana University) raised several questions for discussion: How does ritual—not the theological ideas behind it—empower social action? Would there be Christian social activists without the ritual of the Eucharist? What are the political factors, past and present, that have created a shared sense of the necessity of social action across the boundaries of such radically different traditions as Buddhism and Christianity? The session then ended with a lively discussion.President Paul Ingram presided over... (shrink)

This chapter contains section titled: Problem‐solving Summary: problem solving ‐ Gory, Kuczaj, Pryor, Grover, DRC Language Comprehension Commands: FETCH, IN, MIMIC.

In the author's dual identities of Disney fanatic and philosopher of disability, he was as delighted as a five‐year‐old on their first trip to the Magic Kingdom to see the progress that Disney had made in Finding Dory by depicting what philosophers call the social model of disability. In contrast to the social model of disability, people often see the medical model, in which disability is understood as an individual problem to be remedied through medical treatment or charity. (...) Not to get too far ahead of themselves, but Dopey from Snow White is a perfect illustration of a character with a disability portrayed in terms of the medical model. Keep pondering that while people consider a darker side to the Finding Dory disability paradise, one that reveals it is only a wonderful world for those who can speak. (shrink)

Zen advocates returning to a childlike state of mind, unburdened by the conceptual baggage that marks what people typically call “adult” and “mature” thinking – baggage that includes concepts of the self, of the future, and of hoarding worldly goods so one's future self will live comfortably. This chapter begins with a Zen master whose own life story is worthy of a Disney movie. His name is Dogen Kigen. Dogen chose the monastic path because he wanted the opposite of (...) escape: liberation. If the three marks of existence are the problem, the solution is not to flee them. Rather, it is to make peace with them. Rather, it is to make peace with them. If one can do that, maybe he/she can even reach a deeper level of insight: they were never the problem in the first place. (shrink)

Walt Disney’s movie, The Pagemaster (1994) begins on a dark and stormy night, with a young boy stumbling into an immense, gothic-styled library for refuge from the rain. Once inside, he is soon carried away by a tumultuous river of coloured paints, transformed into an animated characterization of himself, and thrust into an animated world of literature, where he battles Captain Hook, flees Moby Dick, and participates in other classic tales of adventure, horror, and fantasy. -/- Adults might (...) understand the film as a fanciful description of how they feel when reading a lively book. Although they would probably not imagine themselves tagging along with the animated characters like a 4th musketeer, they might very well claim that they enter a fiction through the viewpoint of one or more of the characters, experiencing, imaginatively, mental images of the sights, sounds, smells, and movements that the character would experience. Under this description, the reader would be forming multi- modal images that would correspond directly to what the literary characters are doing, thinking, and experiencing. When a fictional hero whips out his sword and slashes a rope in half, the reader might form a visual image of the hero’s determined face, an auditory image of the sound of the whizzing sword, and a motor image of an extended arm movement. I call such an imitative participation, by use of mental images in any modality, a simulation. -/- I suggest that this imitative experiencing of a fiction through the production of multi-modal imagery - a simulation - is not the only way in which readers might engage a literary text. In this paper I explore the hypothesis that readers might use their own bodily processes - those of the somato-viscero-motor system (SVM) for a non-imitative activity that I call a reinterpretation and that the reinterpretation might make a distinctive contribution to the reading process. As an example of a simulation and a reinterpretation, take the SVM experience of the reader’s breathing. A simulation would occur if the text describes a character who is taking deep breaths of air and the reader creates a mental image representing the experience of breathing. In this case, the reader’s mental image of breathing would stand for a property of the literary work - the fictional experience of breathing. -/- By contrast to the simulation, a reinterpretation would occur if the text describes a character who is gazing at long, wispy clouds that extend outward from a horizon and the reader uses his own experience of breathing to stand for the visual sense of looking at a long, continuous expanse of filmy white: the reader’s actual breathing would stand for a property of the literary work - the fictional experience of seeing. Breathing is not the same as seeing. This should help clarify the following definition. -/- I hypothesize that a reinterpretation occurs when the reader becomes aware of some component of the SVM system and reinterprets it as a property of the literary work that is not the same as that particular SVM process. The SVM experience is projected into the literary work. (shrink)

Mary Poppins is a magical film and a story of redemption that might be placed alongside the Parable of the Prodigal Son or A Christmas Carol. Mary may be the star of the film, but George Banks is its subject. If the world ever seemed wonderful and filled with surprises for George Banks as a child, it has since been supplanted by a world that is mechanical, predictable, and subject to the demands of business and of propriety. From (...) Jack the Giant Killer people learn that when pride has grown to gigantic proportions it ought to be killed; Cinderella teaches that the humble are exalted; Beauty and the Beast demonstrates the principle that loving the unlovable may result in the transformation from the beastly to the beautiful; and Mary Poppins reminds them that “There is no greater joy than that seen through the eyes of a child,” as Walt Disney observes in Saving Mr. Banks. (shrink)

"_The Moment of Complexity_ is a profoundly original work. In remarkable and insightful ways, Mark Taylor traces an entirely new way to view the evolution of our culture, detailing how information theory and the scientific concept of complexity can be used to understand recent developments in the arts and humanities. This book will ultimately be seen as a classic."-John L. Casti, Santa Fe Institute, author of _Gödel: A Life of Logic, the Mind, and Mathematics_ The science of complexity accounts for (...) that inscrutable mix of chaos and order that governs our natural world. Complexity explains how networks emerge and function, how species organize into ecosystems, how stars form into galaxies, and how just a few sequences of DNA can account for so many different life forms. Recently, the idea of complexity has taken the worlds of business and politics by storm. The concept is used to account for phenomena as varied as the behavior of the stock market, the response of voting populations, and the effects of risk management. Even Disney has used complexity theory to manage crowd control at its theme parks. Given the startling development of new information technologies, we now live in a moment of unprecedented complexity, an era in which change occurs faster than our ability to comprehend it. With _The Moment of Complexity_, Mark C. Taylor offers a timely map for this unfamiliar terrain opening in our midst, unfolding an original philosophy through a remarkable synthesis of science and culture. According to Taylor, complexity is not just a breakthrough scientific concept, but the defining quality of the post-Cold War era. The flux of digital currents swirling around us, he argues, has created a new network culture with its own distinctive logic and dynamic. Drawing on resources from information theory and evolutionary biology, Taylor explains the operation of complex adaptive systems in social and cultural processes and captures a whole new zeitgeist in the making. To appreciate the significance of our emerging network culture, he claims, we need not only to understand contemporary scientific and technological transformations, but also to explore the subtle influences of art, architecture, philosophy, religion, and higher education. _The Moment of Complexity_, then, is a remarkable work of cultural analysis on a scale rarely seen today. To follow its trajectory is to learn how we arrived at this critical moment in our culture, and to know where we might head in the twenty-first century. (shrink)

Today most of us are awash with choices. The cornucopia of material goods available to those of us in the developed world can turn each of us into a kid in a candy store; but our delight at picking the prize is undercut by our regret at lost opportunities. And what's the criterion for choosing anything -- material, spiritual, the path taken or not taken -- when we have lost our faith in everything? In The Era of Choice Edward (...) Rosenthal argues that choice, and having to make choices, has become the most important influence in both our personal lives and our cultural expression. Choice, he claims, has transformed how we live, how we think, and who we are.This transformation began in the nineteenth century, catalyzed by the growing prosperity of the Industrial Age and a diminishing faith in moral and scientific absolutes. The multiplicity of choices forces us to form oppositions; this, says Rosenthal, has spawned a keen interest in dualism, dilemmas, contradictions, and paradoxes. In response, we have developed mechanisms to hedge, compromise, and to synthesize. Rosenthal looks at the scientific and philosophical theories and cultural movements that choice has influenced -- from physics to postmodernism, from Disney trailers to multiculturalism. He also reveals the effect of choice on the personal level, where we grapple with decisions that range from which wine to have with dinner to whether to marry or divorce, as we hurtle through lives of instant gratification, accelerated consumption, trend, change, and speed. But we have discovered, writes Rosenthal, that sometimes, we can have our cake and eat it, too. (shrink)

Total work of art in an age of mechanical reproduction -- Total stage: Wagner's festspielhaus -- Total machine: the Bauhaus theatre -- Total montage: Brecht's reply to Wagner -- Total state: Riefenstahl's triumph of the will -- Total world: Disney's theme parks -- Total vacuum: Warhol's performances -- Total immersion: cyberspace.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:“Save The Music”?Toward Culturally Relevant, Joyful, and Sustainable School MusicJulia Eklund KozaIf historical sources are reliable indicators, music educators have never felt confident that music's place in the U.S. public school curriculum is secure. Proponents have been developing exhaustive rationales for the existence of school music from the moment that the subject was introduced into the public schools, attempting to convince an apparently skeptical public of the merits of (...) school music, and trying to pull endangered programs—usually their own—out of the fire. Today, as has been the case in the past, rescue and salvation discourses and initiatives abound. Moving music to a more secure place in the curriculum was cited as a rationale for the development of national music standards in 1994.1 In recent years saving the music has become a favorite project of major corporations, especially as privatization of public schooling has gained momentum. For example, in 1998 one of the National Association for Music Education's (MENC) corporate partners credited the school/partnership that promoted the Disney movie, Mr. Holland's Opus, with saving school music.2 The corporate-sponsored initiative "VH1 Save the Music" claims not only to help flailing school music programs but also, through the donation of musical instruments to schools, to rescue children as well—more than 250,0000 of them since 1997.3 [End Page 23]Because music outside of school seems to be thriving and probably will never be in need of rescue—although specific styles, genres, and practices may be in their twilight—"the music" to which "VH1 Save the Music" refers presumably is school music. As a music educator who perennially is called upon to "save the music," I will take a brief look at the object of salvation, the salvific discourses that surround it, and some of the systems of reasoning that construct it. I propose modifications in these systems of reasoning, which may lead to more culturally relevant, joyful, and sustainable school music.School Music: An Alchemized Constellation of Systems of Reasoning and PracticesTo conceptualize school music as an entity is both problematic and useful. On the one hand, doing so assumes the existence of an exteriority from which it can be clearly differentiated, that is, outside-of-school music, and yet these culturally constructed categories are leaky. The fact that the American Federation of Musicians joined forces with MENC to establish guidelines, which attempt to prevent school performing groups from encroaching on the turf of unionized professional musicians, indicates that the line of distinction between school music and its exteriority sometimes has been blurred.4Furthermore, when VH1 refers to it as "the music," school music seems to be not only clearly defined but also static and monolithic. I argue, however, that it consists of a whole constellation of systems of reasoning as well as the varied practices resulting from these systems. Differences between the various elements in this constellation may be as numerous as commonalities. School music in the U.S. is diverse in the sense that it encompasses a variety of sub-categories or sub-cultures (for example, elementary general music, secondary instrumental music, and so on), each with somewhat distinct systems of reasoning and practices. When suggesting that school music should be saved, we are faced with the complex question of whether all of these sub-categories, their systems of reasoning, and their consequent practices are to be objects of salvation.In addition to having to address the variety within school music, any mapping of relationships between school music and it exteriority should take into account the variety and dynamism of the musical world outside of school. This exteriority consists of a multiplicity of sub-cultures, each with a set of governing practices that may or may not be shared.On the other hand, astonishing within-category similarity exists, which supports the view that school music is an entity. In addition, some commonalities may not only unite all of the sub-categories but also may be shared with non-music school subjects, as well. One such commonality is the inescapable influence of a process of change educational theorist Thomas Popkewitz calls [End Page 24] "alchemy... (shrink)

To prepare for the Other: this is the mission of ethics. Future Present: Ethics and/as Science Fiction fuses contemporary philosophy from Heidegger, Derrida, Levinas, and others with cultural texts preoccupied with the future arrival of an Other: science fiction. We peer through the lens of science fiction with the help of H. G. Wells, Walt Disney, Star Trek, David Cronenberg, Philip K. Dick, and many others, in search of a theory of ethics that leaves open the possibility of the (...) Other and encourages empathy, which is necessary for survival in our multicultural world. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Jameson on Jameson: Conversations on Cultural MarxismPaul Allen Miller (bio)Jameson, Fredric. Jameson on Jameson: Conversations on Cultural Marxism. Ed. Ian Buchanan. Durham, NC: Duke UP, 2007. 296 pp.Fredric Jameson may well be the greatest intellectual produced by the United States in the last half century. It is difficult to think of anyone else who has made as many, as lasting, and as wide-ranging contributions as Jameson. From his (...) early work on Sartre’s style, passing through the twin opera on dialectical theory (Marxism and Form) and formalism and structuralism (Prisonhouse of Language), and the idiosyncratic appreciation of Wyndham Lewis (Fables of Aggression) to that summa of Marxist hermeneutics, The Political Unconscious, and from his major collection of essays, The Ideologies of Theory, through his books on Adorno (Late Marxism) and film (Signatures of the Visible), to that foundational text on postmodern literature, theory, art, and architecture, Postmodernism or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, and the late work on world cinema (The Geopolitical Aesthetic), utopianism (The Seeds of Time), Brecht (Brecht and Method), modernity (A Singular Modernity), and science fiction (Archaeologies of the Future), Jameson’s career is unparalleled in the American letters. It is perhaps not coincidental, either, that this larger-than-life figure on the intellectual stage ranging easily from Russian formalism to Deleuzean antihumanism, from Balzac to Frank Gehry, and from Hegel to Derrida, is an intellectual dissident. Contemporary American life’s alternation between uncritical consumerism (Marcuse’s one-dimensional man) and nonothing anti-intellectualism (Christian fundamentalism and corporate-fueled jingoism) could only produce such a body of work as an alien presence: its own systemic negation and thus the fullest expression of its deepest internal contradictions. The present collection of interviews from 1981 to the present, then, stands as a welcome commentary on Jameson’s vast work and an important reflection of the changes in American intellectual life in the period from the last days of the Cold War to the end of the second Bush administration.Naturally, as with any collection of interviews, not every thing is new here. Indeed, to the seasoned reader of Jameson, much of this is familiar territory, and there is a fair amount of repetition from one interview to the next (Goethe’s concept of “world literature,” for example, is a recurring motif). Nonetheless, there are many moments of real insight and bold commentary that remind us why Marxism is far from dead and how Jameson has achieved an iconic status rivaling that of Lukacs, Althusser, or Eagleton, as one of the preeminent Marxist thinkers of the last century. Many of these come in the form of vignettes, little snippets of cultural analysis. One such comes in Jameson’s interview with Columbia University Professor of History Anders Stephanson. Here Stephanson asks Jameson to comment on the recent architectural and cultural phenomenon of creating ersatz public spaces. These come in the form of commercial areas that present themselves in guise of “squares,” “plazas,” or “villages.” They make reference to and pastiche traditional forms of life and then re-represent them in the form of a hypercapitalist consumerism. These simulacra of less alienated, precapitalist forms of [End Page 65] life are then presented as depthless surfaces, parodies of authenticity. The archetype of such ersatz public spaces is Disney’s EPCOT:Stephanson: In other words, you are referring to his compressed version of the world; little toy countries where you can orient yourself in no time at all.Jameson: I suppose you can orient yourself because walking paths are available. But where you actually are is a real problem, for you may in fact be in the Florida Everglades, and in this case you are not only in a swamp but also in a simulacrum of a different geographical complex altogether. Disneyland is, on the whole, supremely prophetic and paradigmatic of these multiple shifting and dissolving spatial levels. (49)This is both an insightful observation and a wonderful example of Jameson’s dialectic at work. One moment we’re walking hand in hand with Goofy round the little, fake Eiffel Tower of EPCOT and the next we sink into the morass that paved the Everglades, acquired control... (shrink)

In this lively and accessible study, David Lyon explores the relationship between religion and postmodernity, through the central metaphor of 'Jesus in Disneyland.' Contemporary disciples of Jesus have used Disneyland for religious events, whilst Disney characters are now probably better known throughout the world than many biblical figures. But this book cautions against seeing it as a simple substitution. Rather, Lyon shows how this metaphor reveals highly innovative and potentially enduring features of contemporary spiritual quests. In the West, (...) many religious institutions have declined in social significance, but what Lyon calls the religious realm, including faith and spirituality, is flourishing in multifarious forms. Throughout the text he examines a wide variety of religious and para-religious behaviour, exploring its relation to issues of identity, cyberculture, consumer culture and social theories of time. Lyon's stimulating use of contemporary case studies illuminates the interconnections between religion and postmodernity in a world where holy wars are waged in cyberspace, New Age self religions resonate with new identity quests, and Pentecostalism sparks globalization from below. This book will be essential reading for students and scholars in the sociology of religion, sociology of culture, social theory, religious studies and theology.. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Journal of Aesthetic Education 37.4 (2003) 32-41 [Access article in PDF] Does Art Education Dream of Disneyland? [Figures] Introduction What image can we present when challenged to illustrate art education in the form of a scheme? The word "illustration" literally means to build understanding through an explanatory diagram. In art education or anything [End Page 32] else, the use of a visual image to understand a certain system (...) can be interpreted as a question of human sensitivity and recognition. Translating minute nuances or peculiarities of information into a vibrant image is, however, a confusing and difficult exercise. In this essay, I attempt to portray those elements crucial to the teaching and learning process of art education using Disneyland as a structural as well as a functional metaphor. The Happiest Place on Earth? Disneyland is depicted as "a dream world" and "the happiest place on earth." As described in various incisive essays, Disneyland is a symbol of modern American culture, an ultimate form of the consumer society or the hegemony of entertainment. 1 To start with, the structural elements of this epitome of Walt Disney's vision are outlined.Walt Disney created Main Street USA (the World Bazaar) to make all visitors feel as if they are the leading character in a Disney film, walking through the main street of life. He attempted to remove the ugliness of everyday life from his dream space by eradicating the back streets of the real world. The design of the buildings along Main Street originates from Walt Disney's hometown. The sense of distance within the Disney complex is enhanced by using a smaller scale for the upper stories of buildings and a progressively narrowing street.Sleeping Beauty's Castle (or Cinderella Castle at Tokyo Disneyland) lies beyond Main Street and is modeled on Neuschwanstein Castle in Fussen,South Bayern, Germany. The road leading to the castle ascends slightly which amplifies the anticipation factor for visitors. Sleeping Beauty's Castle is the centerpiece of Disneyland and functions as the hub to guide visitors to various lands. Several attractive spaces radiate from this hub, forming a total of six areas.On the extension line from the Entrance via Sleeping Beauty's Castle lies Fantasyland where Walt Disney has reproduced the world of animation based on European legends and fables. Toontown lies beyond Fantasyland. This is a world of familiar characters, such as Mickey, Minnie, and Goofy. Traveling clockwise, Tomorrowland is next where all kinds of imaginary worlds await visitors. Adventureland, on the opposite side of Main Street, offers worlds of different cultures and spaces for adventure. Beyond Adventureland lies Westernland, designed to invite visitors to return to the Wild West.It is possible to form a hypothesis that there are three axes connecting the six lands. Those axes run through Sleeping Beauty's Castle that acts as the hub and two opposing areas on the same axis with the Castle being the point of symmetry.The first axis could be the axis of "reality." If Main Street is considered to be the "crawling approachway" from the everyday sphere to dreamland,Fantasyland, offering playful space of extraordinary imagination, is set [End Page 33] against the ordinary space for everyday life. The second axis is the axis of "relationship" which connects individual persons to society. Toontown presents a world of fraternity and is a place where people bonded by kinship or friendship can trust each other and feel at ease. Frontierland, located on the opposite side of this axis creates a solitary space where people leave family and friends for the adventure of traveling to unknown lands. The third and final axis is that of "time" from the past to the future. Tomorrowland is a future world based on fantasy and imagination where prophecies becomereality. On the opposite side of this axis lies Westernland embodying the history and traditions of the American past.It is possible to regard each area of Disneyland, structured by these different worlds, as a metaphor to reflect the basic content and structure of art education in the context of the general curriculum. In fact... (shrink)

Computer and video games have become nearly ubiquitous among individuals in industrialized nations, and they have received increasing attention from researchers across many areas of scientific study. However, relatively little attention has been given to Massively-Multiplayer Online Games . The unique social context of MMOGs raises ethical questions about how communication occurs and how conflict is managed in the game world. In order to explore these questions, we compare the social context in Blizzard’s World of Warcraft and (...) class='Hi'>Disney’s Toontown, focusing on griefing opportunities in each game. We consider ethical questions from the perspectives of players, game companies, and policymakers. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Terry Comito NOTES ON PANOFSKY, CASSIRER, AND THE "MEDIUM OF THE MOVIES" The modesty of my title is not feigned. Panofsky's essay on "Style and Medium in the Motion Pictures"1 is more often quoted than understood, and much of it proves upon examination to be curiously elusive. The notes and hypotheses offered here are tentative ones, meant only to point us in the direction of answers to two questions. (...) How might Panofsky's well-known formulation ("the medium of the movies is physical reality as such") most usefully be construed?—useful for us as viewers and then perhaps as critics of movies. And what might he plausibly be supposed to have intended? It is to be hoped that these two points are not impossibly remote from one another. In a recent discussion of "Fact and Fiction in Literature," Roger Shattuck takes Panofsky's essay as an extreme instance of a "belief in the basically documentary nature of film." According to Shattuck, Panofsky supposes that a "film grows naturally out of material things," that it is generated spontaneously, without the intervention of authorial consciousness, from the "undifferentiated reality" before which a camera needs only to be set in motion. Now this is a familiar enough parody of "realist" theories of cinema. But it would be a curious position for anyone really to assert, and particularly curious for a writer so committed as Panofsky to idealist aesthetics. There is, to be sure, a puzzle about the way such an aesthetic might take account of an art that is said somehow to "do justice" to a materialistic interpretation of the world (p. 31). (We would presumably want to know if the justice in question is distributive or commutative: rendering unto Caesar or robbing Peter to pay Paul?) But does a disciple of Cassirer really need to be lectured at about the priority of the whole to the parts, or to be informed that what we call "reality" is constituted in the act of perception? There 229 230Philosophy and Literature are confusions enough in Shattuck's essay to suggest that he is not our best guide over an admittedly strenuous terrain. He informs his readers that Panofsky (and apparently Bazin and Kracauer too) "anticipate " the views of "many structuralists and semioticians," as if there were not a fundamental difference between the autonomy of écriture and the "animistic" view of physical reality Shattuck attributes to Panofsky and his followers. He then introduces a distinction between documentary and fiction films that makes Panofsky the prophet of Warhol, Wiseman, and South American snuff-films, when in fact he talks about Disney, the Marx Brothers, and the derivation of movies from comic strips and dime novels. All this is worth bringing up because Shattuck does raise some crucial issues, if only by so noticeably fudging them. Like most of us who have responded to Panofsky's essay, he has chiefly in mind the assertion that "the medium of the movies is physical reality as such" (p. 31). He wants to construe this as saying that movies "document" or certify the world of external objects and thereby encourage certain sorts of naivete: the belief that we are secure in our knowledge of the world "out there," and that the world really is "out there," independent of our hypotheses and untainted by our uncomfortable consciousness. That movies have often fueled some such nostalgia for the world seems undeniable, but the question elided in Shattuck's discussion is the critical one. To what extent and in what ways does a statement about the "medium" of the movies commit us to a position as to their proper content, or to a specific social program, or to a particular metaphysical understanding of the world? Shattuck cuts through these knotty matters rather than unraveling them. He talks as if Panofsky claims that physical reality as such is the subject matter of movies—which is where Warhol and cinéma vérité come in, as the inheritors of the tradition of Balzac. But this is not what Panofsky says, and it does not accurately describe the parameters of his taste. He objects to "artistic prestylization" in the manner of Caligari, and he thinks... (shrink)

In the nearly 800 pages that comprise the three volumes of his Graphology Poems 1995–2015, John Kinsella demonstrates an exemplary moral anger registering iterations of colonial “omni-speak” as unethical. This paper reads Giorgio Agamben’s Homo Sacer by way of apprehending the rhetorical substrata underpinning discourses of Australia as not just determining a sovereign colonial space; in a place where “history is absurdity […] history is overlay”, Kinsella shows how indigenous and non-colonial others are consistently cast as extra-juridical and merely sub-human. (...) These Graphology Poems not only anathemise and hex historical falsehoods of nation: Kinsella dares sound out the bullshit, and his iconoclastic language games refuse outright to acquiesce to the epistemically violent nullifications of antipodean identity. (shrink)

The cholinergic system is a good candidate for the role of determining the relative weight given in cortical information processing to new sensory information versus prior knowledge. We discuss the physiological data supporting this, and suggest that this Bayesian perspective can easily be reconciled with the dynamical framework proposed by Behrendt & Young.

John Kinsella remains Australia’s most militant, morally cognizant naysayer, and his oeuvre is an archive of precepts running counter to master narratives of place. This essay re-reads Benjamin’s notion of the artist as cultural producer against the grain of Esposito’s etymological excavations of “community,” and frames Kinsella’s steady output of co-authored books as not only a mode of nomadic munificence but no less than a kind of formative guerrilla poetics. Pairing with poets, rock stars, others to extend his anti-capitalist project, (...) Kinsella’s co-authored works perform a suite of interventions, gifting readers a means by which we too might fathom the generative effects of banding together in a munus speaking its own laws to reconfigure notions of co-empowerment, equity, and indeed comradeship. Each of Kinsella’s co-authored books constitutes an intentional community of two and, as if dwelling in compositional possibilities, each text remains steadfastly optimistic. Refusing to be locked into despair by regressively instrumentalist political non-visionaries, from within an Antipodean milieu Kinsella and his many co-authors materialize gestures demonstrating how we might struggle for control of who gets to produce ideas, by which decentralized means, and to which generative ends. (shrink)

“WALL.E” stands for Waste Allocated Load Lifter Earth‐class. The last robot on planet Earth, WALL.E is programmed by the Buy n Large Corporation to clean up the environment. With this depiction of a world in which only a single green plant survives, WALL.E offers a brilliant look at environmental devastation. One way to overcome the tendency to shortchange future generations is to focus on the intrinsic value of nature. In WALL.E, the animators attempt to overcome the defects of one's (...) own self‐interest by illustrating the love and care for the plant. He/she can see this depiction of love of the environment as an effort to prompt him/her to think more about the environment as if nature is a person. The ending of WALL.E is suggestive along the lines of sustainability, but it does not come out and directly advocate for solutions. (shrink)

Adi Da argues that no solutions currently proposed are sufficient to righten the present unsustainable trajectory of life on Earth, because there is no integrated approach to the ordering of society and use of the planet. The presumption of separateness—manifesting collectively as separate “tribes” vying for control—characterizes human affairs, rather than the prior (“a priori”) unity of existence. The struggle for dominance is the “stave in the wheels” of the Earth-system's inherent capacity to self-correct. A new institution, “the Global Cooperative (...) Forum,” is proposed—invoked by “everybody-all-at-once” (a global populace awakened as a single force, capable of cooperatively effecting global change). (shrink)

orbit and far beyond it. Indeed, the immense, painstaking, indefatigable and ever-improving effort of Husserl to find ever-deeper and more reliable foundations for the philosophical enterprise (as well as his constant critical re-thinking and perfecting of the approach and so called "method" in order to perform this task and thus cover in this source-excavation an ever more far-reaching groundwork) stands out and maintains itself as an inepuisable reservoir for philosophical reflec tion in which all the above-mentioned work has either its (...) core or its source. In fact, in his undertaking to re-think the entire philosophical enterprise as such and to recreate philosophy upon what he sought to be at least a satisfactorily legitimated basis, Husserl, through his already systematised and "authorized" work, and his courses, and later on in his spontaneous reflection (which did not find its way into a definitive corpus but was nevertheless sufficiently coherent with his previously established body of thought to be considered a continuation of it), uncovers perspectives upon the universe of man and projects their new philosophical thematisation that brings together all the attempts by philosophers (e. g., Merleau-Ponty, who drew upon this material and found there his own inspiration) who succeeded him with foundational intentions; it also gives a core of philosophical ideas and insights for the youngergenerationofphilosophers today. (shrink)

This collection is the final volume of a four book survey of the state of phenomenology fifty years after the death of Edmund Husserl. Its publication represents a landmark in the comprehensive treatment of contemporary phenomenology in all its vastness and richness. The diversity of the issues raised here is dazzling, but the main themes of Husserl's thought are all either explicitly treated, or else they underlie the ingenious approaches found here. Time, historicity, intentionality, eidos, meaning, possibility/reality, and teleology are (...) the main concerns of this collection devoted to studies in aesthetics, metaphysics and literary interpretation, written by such authors as, among others, R. Cobb-Stevens, C. Moreno Marquez, J. Swiecimski, Sitansu Ray and M. Kronegger. These original studies of phenomenological aesthetics and literary theory by scholars from all parts of the world were gathered by the World Institute for Advanced Phenomenological Research and Learn ing during the year 1988/89 during its assessment of the phenomeno logical movement, fifty years after Husserl's death. IX A -T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana, Vol. XXXVII, ix. (shrink)

If we agree with the notion of a global community, then we must extend our concepts of justice, fairness, and equity beyond national borders by supporting measures to decrease global warming and to increase foreign aid, argues Peter Singer.

Emotion Review, Volume 14, Issue 4, Page 244-253, October 2022. This article is a précis of my 2019 monograph The World-Directedness of Emotional Feeling: On Affect and Intentionality. The book engages with a growing trend of philosophical thinking according to which the felt dimension and the intentionality of emotion are unified. While sympathetic to the general approach, I argue for a reconceptualization of the form of intentionality that emotional feelings are widely thought to possess and, accordingly, of the kind (...) of role they play in our mental lives. More specifically, I argue that the way we feel in having an emotion is not a perception-like awareness of evaluative properties of its object, but instead constitutes the taking of a stand or position on this object in light of its evaluative properties. (shrink)

With a little help from British philosophers John Locke (1632–1704) and John Stuart Mill (1806–1873), the author believes people can recover from The Incredibles a treasure trove of ideas that can help them think more clearly about tolerance, individual freedoms, and cultural conformity in their own world of incredible differences. On Mill's view, the “only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over” a member of society (against her will) “is to prevent harm to others”. If people follow (...) Mill, they have a reasonable but not overly restrictive principle for guiding human life and conduct. There is room to hold unpopular opinions, publish unpopular views, and belong to unpopular groups – even if society disapproves. These things are to be tolerated unless they have as their purpose harming others. But the PREFER principle will not give people that. (shrink)

This paper proposes a qualitative study exploring anomalous self and world-experiences in individuals with high levels of depersonalization experiences. Depersonalization (DP) is a condition characterized by distressing feelings of being a detached, neutral and disembodied onlooker of one’s mental and bodily processes. Our findings indicate the presence of a wide range of anomalous experiences traditionally understood to be core features of DP, such as disembodiment and disrupted self-awareness. However, our results also indicate experiential features that are less highlighted in (...) previous work, such as faster time perception and blurriness of the self/other boundaries which may play a key role in altering one’s sense of self and sense of presence in the world. Our qualitative study provides an in-depth examination of self-reported disturbances of one’s relatedness to one’s self and the world, thereby shedding further light on the nature of altered subjective experiences in DP. In doing so, this paper draws attention to key aspects yet overlooked that may prove valuable for shedding further light into the phenomenon of depersonalization. We conclude by highlighting limitations of this study and a number of open questions that further work needs to address in the future. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 10.3 (2003) 227-231 [Access article in PDF] World Traveling as a Clinical Methodology for Psychiatric Care Suzanne M. Jaeger Keywords embodiment, dialogical consciousness, interpersonal communication, epistemic responsibility, self-knowledge, understanding IN HER ARTICLE "Moral Tourists and World Travelers," Nancy Potter suggests a way in which psychiatrists and psychologists could gain a better understanding of their mentally ill patients' experiences. Rather than assuming that hallucinations (...) and incoherent speech and behavior are merely senseless disconnections from reality, Potter argues that mental health care clinicians ought to spend time engaging patients on their own terms. Even when mental illness is a result of brain disease, much can be learned about the patient's experiences of their disease by temporarily setting aside the scientific frameworks of diagnosis and medical treatment. Potter uses Maria Lugones' concept of world traveling and recommends playfully accepting, and even entering into the patient's world (Lugones 1990). She calls world traveling a methodology and explains it in some detail. Moreover, at the close of her essay, Potter suggests that clinicians have a moral obligation to understand the mentally ill patient's world from the patient's perspective. This obligation is based on an appeal to our sense of what it is to be a responsible knower who attends to issues of trust and truth. Relying on arguments made by Lorraine Code (1987), Potter asserts that to try to understand the other's perspective is the responsible thing to do.My discussion focuses on the notion of play to which Potter appeals, as well as on what she sees as the moral obligation of clinicians to communicate with their mentally ill patients in extra-professional ways. This moral obligation arises because (a) the theoretical and professional frameworks of medical science are seen as inadequate, and (b) playfulness opens up mutually respectful, authentic interaction between persons. I generally agree with Potter's claims, and I want to situate them in the wider framework of an epistemological debate about the status of our knowledge of others. A broader context will help to elucidate the strengths of Potter's analysis as well as some points for critical discussion. I begin with the relationship of trust between clinicians and patients.Few people would disagree with the claim that patients need to be able to trust that their physicians are not harming them, but helping them to get better. If patients feel misunderstood, they will not trust their caretakers. This is probably even truer for psychiatric patients, whose conditions and loss of autonomy make establishing trust even more challenging. Psychiatric patients [End Page 227] often have their own ways of compensating for the symptoms of their mental illness. If either their will to survive or their compensatory strategies go unrecognized or misinterpreted, patients may respond by rejecting the well-intentioned efforts of caretakers to restore them to a degree of ease, measured as it must be by the standards of the professionals under whose care the patient remains. 1 Despite the fact that these standards are established through scientific testing procedures for the treatment of diseases, they may be experienced by patients as indifferent to the particular and unique features of their condition. Nestled within the issue of trust is thus a question of truth.Although current scientific knowledge of the human brain, and of human behavior, has made available a range of sophisticated therapies and psychotropic drugs, there are still many mental illnesses that leave families and clinicians wondering whether the treatment plans are providing any help. Alzheimer's disease and schizophrenia are two examples. There is a difference between, on the one hand, containing the patient's behavior by admitting the patient to a psychiatric ward and managing symptoms with psychotropic medications, and, on the other hand, understanding what is happening for the patient, from his or her perspective. Although psychiatric patients may not have a realistic sense of either their abilities or the extent and nature of their disease, there may be much about their experiences that ought to be known and understood by the professionals caring for them... (shrink)