A Chorus of Cynics and Provisional Ethics: A Response to Matthew Levy

Singing. Powerful, heartfelt singing, somehow more resonant given its context: a rather stuffy classroom where we gather for a first-year Honors Program seminar, "Reading Culture/Reading Disney." Let me explain. This semester I'm co-teaching this Disney class with my colleague, Sue Doe, and the course objectives are what we've come to expect from an interdisciplinary, cultural studies course: we want to enhance students' media literacy, to help students develop critical lenses that enable them to under stand the production, circulation, and reception of cultural artifacts. We want to introduce students to a variety of interpretive strategies that help them see the processes through which Disney, the quintessential media conglomerate, participates in global cultural imperialism, employs hegemonic strategies to win our consent, and reproduces raced, gendered, and classed values. We want students to leave our class not as cartoonish versions of anti Disney clones, but as people who negotiate and, when appropri ate, oppose Disney's practices and values. Disney, of course, is a particularly generative site for such discussion.1 Disney's "magic" inspires a kind of loyalty beyond rationality, and it often brings to the fore, particularly for our students whose childhoods have been saturated with all things Disney, tender and tenacious affective identifications. These emotional connections are at the core of any developed understanding of Disney's cultural power. That's where the singing comes in.