Fallen World Of Nature And Death example essay topic

Television and movie industry have a major influence on children's outlook and cultural development. Children became interest in books and computer by the age of eight or even later. Before that time television and conversation with relatives are main information sources and instrument of great influence for psychological development. Disney studio is monopolist in children movie production and. For media companies their activities are business and, therefore, the control under Disney movies for children must be putted up because of the following reasons. The Disney park of the animals is a giant materialized projection of the unconscious mind that has been turned into a fantastic environment.

What it is really about is our narcissistic desire to feel like we are grandiose heroes and saviors, on the side of right, and our desire to enjoy the full-throated optimism that comes with the sense that the cup of the world run neth over and death can be conquered. It is about our childhood desire to see wonders and get prizes and surprises. The park is similarly about our desire for quick and easy transcendence -- transcendence for the price of admission. It creates the illusion we are transcending time, traveling back to the age of dinosaurs, and that we are transcending space, zipping off to those exotic locales.

It lets us see magnificent spectacles of vast scale, and lets us escape the negative emotions and mundane character of everyday life into a numinous realm of perfected nature. In short, Disney's Animal Kingdom is a giant symptom, a multi-million dollar daydream of mystical innocence and childhood grandiosity, letting us help save Life in its battle with Death in a cosmic struggle. In Freudian terms, it lets us pretend to save Mother Nature from the rapacious father or renegade son, as we whistle while we are entertained because right and righteousness are on our side, and we need never consider the complex motives that really make up our fears and desires. The core fantasy of the park, which offers us a disguised expression of what is on our minds, is one that we find throughout contemporary culture. It expresses a growing rational and irrational concern people have that as we develop the ability to control -- and damage -- the physical world, we may have to save some aspects of "reality" from ourselves. We can see this same theme in many other entertainment products, whether it is movie characters saving humanity and nature from giant mutant insects, or movie ride audiences saving the present from a time traveler who would interfere with the unfolding of history, or Star Trek characters who discover that they will have to deal with the fact that their technology is undermining the fabric of the physical universe.

In response to genuine practical concerns about the negative effects of science and technology, we are now busy symbolically saving the world from ourselves in story-based simulations which, in their unholy mix of truth and illusion, may turn out to be as big a threat to "reality" as the kind of dangers we pretend to save ourselves from in them. What the park is about, then, is our mostly unconscious fantasies and fears and desires, involving heroism, righteousness and the expulsion of evil from ourselves, as well as optimism, transcendence and safety. It is about our desire to play the role of "reality saviors" who rescue the world, thereby alleviating our anxieties while convincing ourselves we are on the side of right. In some ways, it may also be a projection of Oedipal issues onto the world, letting us save Mother Nature from ourselves. To give us ourselves back again, the Disney Imagine ers take our unconscious fantasies and make them seem real. They do what all the culture fabricators in the age of simulation do -- they take elements of the world and blend these with fabrications modeled after other elements of the world, to create a large work of fiction.

In place of nature, they give us a simplified, exaggerated, and massively denied version of human nature. The world becomes a vehicle to tell us a dishonest story about ourselves. What we see in Disney can now be found not merely in zoos and theme parks but throughout contemporary culture -- in news and television, movies, advertising, museums, politics and virtually all other institutions and media that are trying to win and hold large audiences. National television news, for example, is supposedly intended to give us information about the world -- information we often need to fulfill our role as citizens. But with its computer-generated special effects, camera work, dramatic music and sets, and dizzying efforts to take us to distant locales, it increasingly looks like a theme park ride.

Its often exaggerated and simplified scenes and story lines satisfy our desire to feel as if we are participating in great events and striding the world stage. Like fictional stories, it offers us dangers to fear, sufferers to sympathize with, villains to hate, hypocrites to disdain, and leaders to admire, all condensed into interesting narratives and once again made more compelling by the belief that they are about important events and situations in actual life. Disney, in fact, comes close to admitting that this is what it is trying to do, although it would undoubtedly deny it if the implications of its statements were pointed out. For example, it says the inspiration for the park is "mankind's enduring love for animals", and a Disney "imagine er" is quoted as saying that the Tree of Life is a "symbol of the beauty and diversity and the grandeur of our animal life on Earth", and a "celebration of our emotions about animals and their habitats". Similarly, in the statement quoted earlier, Disney says: "Inspiring a love of animals and concern for their welfare is the underlying theme, both subtle and obvious, throughout Disneys Animal Kingdom Park". In other words, the park is about inducing positive emotions in visitors -- emotions that are a one-dimensional expression of our complex attitudes toward nature.

It isn't just nature that is falsified but our reactions and perceptions. Of course, none of this is, in itself, new. Mythmaker's and storytellers, and kings and shamans, have always taken our disavowed fantasies and converted them into artful daydreams that take on the appearance of life, to satisfy our desires and let us act out what is on our minds. Similarly, politicians and other manipulators of rhetoric have always told stories full of idealized depictions of themselves and those they represent, while offering "demonized" depictions of their opponents, to induce a fictionalized view of the world in audiences. Even this text creates illusions and plays on emotions, offering to provide a window onto some aspect of the world while creating the illusion the reader is being directly addressed in a unified and spontaneous expression of ideas, and placing the writer and reader on the side of right, as a villain is depicted who is worthy of their hate. What is different now is that massively powerful new industries of culture fabricators have made great strides in learning how to use art and science as tools of manipulation.

Collectively, they have turned news and television, movies, advertising, museums, politics, documentaries and most other forms of contemporary culture into variations on Disney. All convert life into lifelike theater by seamlessly integrating physical and sensory simulations with computers and story lines, and blending in special effects to keep people watching. And all, to one degree or another, provide depictions and stories that deliberately falsify their subject in order to play to the psychology of their audience. They do what all artists do -- they improve on life, exaggerating, intensifying, and using their raw material to create aesthetic effects.

But they claim that what they offer is a faithful depiction or that it is something authentic, as they use the new techniques of image fabrication and simulation to make it convincing. What we need today is a form of culture criticism that is based on these essential truths. Its purpose will be to study all of our representations, unraveling simulations and authentic objects, and fact and fiction, and revealing disguised and disavowed expressions of personality, ideology, marketing, and myth. Its role will be to help us understand ourselves and society, despite the censorship imposed by the mind and by those in power, and to help us cease projecting our own psychology onto things. Most essentially, it will help us see through the pervasive fictionalization and falsification that pervades virtually all forms of media. As part of this effort, it will have to take a stand against the degradation of the search for truth, which now puts kids on thrill rides and tells them they are getting an education and helping to change the world.

It will demand that we try to understand and teach about nature as it is, rather than turning it into a projection of ourselves. That means it will ask us to recognize there is little that is natural about peaceable animal kingdoms in which disguised forms of containment create the illusion the lion is lying down with the lamb. It will ask that we refuse to be taken in by scenes of "humorous" insects, and that we (to use a well-known example) stop telling stories about dolphins as enlightened beings that are really about our own hopes and aspirations. Such a form of culture criticism would not seek to bar us from enjoying any of these depictions. But it would ask us to stop confusing them for the world outside us, and ask us to try to construct stories and descriptions that are as close to what is being described as possible.

It also won't ask us to bracket out our own fantasies and unconscious thoughts when we try to study the world. On the contrary, by making the stories in each of our own minds transparent, we learn to understand the stories of popular culture, which were created by minds much like our own. And by making the stories of popular culture transparent, we learn to understand our own minds. Our psycho dynamically-drenched fantasies even give us information about the nonhuman world, along with models we can use to understand it. Indeed, since it is impossible for us to think about anything without our unconscious fears and desires going along for the ride, undercover, we can't help but be talking about our selves when we are avowedly talking about nature or other people.

But, once again, what is essential is that we try to tell the difference. In helping us to know ourselves, such a form of culture criticism can also perform another essential task -- it can reveal the way our narratives and depictions express our deep-seated desires to become whole as individuals and create better, more decent, societies. Here, we discover one of the most essential insights into news, politics, Disney et al, which is that, despite all their falsehood, they give disguised expression to our desire for ethical transformation. Disney's Animal Kingdom is certainly a prime example of this, since it takes us into a myth that expresses our primal yearning to live in an un fallen realm of nature that expresses our values, and to be benevolent caretakers rather than destroyers. The critic Northrop Frye believed that Western civilization has been permeated by a myth of a universe with four levels -- heaven; a perfect un fallen realm of nature that embodies our desires; the fallen world of nature and death we live in; and an underworld. Disney takes us into that second, un fallen realm of nature to play on our desires to undo our fallen state.

Like many of the creations of contemporary culture, it is in the business of immersing us in false utopias and ersatz realms of transcendence, for its own purposes. Adult people have essential life experience to be protected in some ways but young children remain almost unprotected.