
Disney is safeguarding its future by buying childhood, piece by piece - e15ctr0n
http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21684138-disney-making-fortune-and-safeguarding-its-future-buying-childhood-piece-piece
======
tunesmith
FYI, the first part of the article spoils some minor things about the new star
wars film, for those who haven't seen it. I bailed out of reading it after
that.

~~~
lambda
At some point, you have to stop considering any discussion of a movie as
spoiler.

The term "spoiler" should be reserved for a reveal that actually spoils the
movie; where some crucial element of the movies emotional impact can be taken
away by knowing some fact in advance that is held secret through the movie.

The discussion in the first paragraph here pretty much just covers the
exposition in the credits, and the material you learn very early on about one
of the main characters.

I feel like treating this kind of information as a spoiler will just lead you
to endless anxiety until you have seen every possible movie that could be
"spoiled" for you this way. Why not just relax, accept that people are going
to do some light discussion of movies, and reserve your outrage for actual
spoilers of surprising plot points, mysteries solved, puzzles spoiled, and the
like?

~~~
matrixagent
OP didn't seem outraged to me, just a bit disappointed. Which I understand,
because "at some point" is still far away for the new Star Wars movie. I do
think that any discussion of a movie is a spoiler. It depends, but from
friends I don't even want to know if they liked a movie or not as I know them
and their taste so well that I will deduce things which will influence my
experience. I want my experience as pristine as possible, which is hard enough
without articles mentioning tiny details about plots that they just don't need
to mention for the point they are making.

~~~
lambda
When I say "at some point", I don't mean that that's the timeline for a
particular movie. I mean at some point in your life, it is better to let go of
the idea of walking into a movie in a completely pristine state with no
expectation about what will happen in it.

Otherwise, either you have to cut yourself off from all media and conversation
that might possibly reference the movie, or try and convince everyone you
might interact with, and everyone who might write anything online, not to
discuss the movie. Neither option seems particularly pleasant nor realistic to
achieve. I suppose you could also just see every movie you intend to see on
the first showing of the opening day.

What you are doing by asking for absolutely no information at all, even the
basic exposition and setup of characters at the beginning of the movie, is
imposing a large burden on everyone else around you to prevent a very minor
inconvenience to yourself. I understand not wanting major spoilers, and that
there should be a reasonable time before discussing those points openly
without a spoiler warning. But it just seems that the trade-off is fairly poor
for not even allowing the most basic discussion.

~~~
matrixagent
In that case I guess my trouble with your point of view lies not with the "at
some point" phrase but rather with the generalization implied by "any
discussion". That argument is almost always used against people who complain
about spoilers, and sadly it's often insultingly non-understanding. I'm not
saying that all discussion are spoilers. While my personal wish is to not know
anything about a movie before seeing it (which I have never regretted
afterwards, by the way – the opposite, having advance knowledge, has not hurt
the experience always, but it has never ever improved it), I realize that this
is hard to achieve and requires _me_ to take care of that, not everyone else.
As you mention, that would impose too much of a burden on everyone else.

But that does not mean there is not still a lot of stuff that really should be
considered spoilers, and the complaints about these should not be brushed off
just because you think I expect you to not mention anything about a movie. I
think it's a very valid criticism when the article in question reveals
something that even the trailers kept unknown by never showing that person,
without any need for it in the context of the article. It's like saying "The
Sixth Sense, where he was dead all along, was quite good, I loved the
cinematography." a week after that movie was released. While I personally
would not have wanted to know about the cinematographical quality either, I
realize I can't complain about hearing something like that when reading a
review or when I'm not fleeing a discussion of the movie quickly enough. I
never would complain about that. But I'm sure I'm not the only one who would
be pretty annoyed to read said plot detail in an article about e.g. "The
decline of quality in M. Night Shyamalan movies" a week after that movies
release.

To sum it up: I agree with your basic point, but I think too often people that
are fine with spoilers don't care about the fact that other people have a
different level of acceptance and when confronted with that simply resort to
saying "Well, it's silly to have this level of acceptance."

------
Archio
Reading this gives me a chill down my spine. There's something about a
corporation controlling, optimizing, monetizing, and branding dominant
components of a childhood that just doesn't seem right.

~~~
rayiner
If we weren't raising our kids to be such consumers--turning stupid shit like
Star Wars into "cultural experiences"\-- Disney wouldn't have any power. They
can't own sticks and dirt.

~~~
AndrewKemendo
You know the worst part? You can't even prevent it if you are raising your
kids otherwise.

My 5 year old has never seen a Disney movie, yet she told me today that for
her 6th birthday she wants a Cinderella shirt and an Elsa costume - both
characters she has never actually seen on screen. Her friends at school all
talk about it though and recount fantastic stories.

I hear from people saying that we will raise a kid who is out of the loop, so
she won't be able to relate and will be an outcast if we don't keep her up to
date with all the trends like her peers.

At a certain point as a parent, it's kind of like, it doesn't really matter
what we do.

~~~
anon4
You could think of it like, once Disney has permeated our culture to such a
degree, people would collectively decide they don't deserve to own them and
their kids and erode copyright.

 _The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip
through your fingers._

~~~
rayiner
The problem is not that Disney can own entertainment products they create. The
problem is our society elevating base entertainment to the level of cultural
artifact. Disney has no power if people don't treat their disposable trinkets
like sacred totems.

The post near the top about spoilers is a good example. We're all supposed go
out of our way go protect the sanctified experience of the movie for true
believers. How messed up is that?

------
Animats
When Disney acquires Barbie, their domination will be complete.

(Check out "Hello Barbie", in stores now.[1] Now your kids can talk to Barbie
and she'll talk back. Barbie has a WiFi connection to servers back at Mattel
HQ running AI software. "ToyTalk, the tech company that partnered with Mattel
to bring Hello Barbie to life, stores by default everything the doll records
for at least two years to help it better analyze children’s speech." Coming up
next, Cognitoys, plush animals powered by IBM's Watson system and able to
answer hard questions.)

[1]
[http://shop.mattel.com/product/index.jsp?productId=65561726](http://shop.mattel.com/product/index.jsp?productId=65561726)
[2] [https://cognitoys.com](https://cognitoys.com)

~~~
angersock
I'm somewhat reminded of Harrison's "I Always Do What Teddy Says"
([https://opalcp12.wikispaces.com/file/view/I+Always+Do+What+T...](https://opalcp12.wikispaces.com/file/view/I+Always+Do+What+Teddy+Says.pdf)).

~~~
StavrosK
SPOILER ALERT! The story was a bit hard to believe, as it claims that everyone
who wasn't conditioned against it (like none of us are) would just grow up to
be a sociopath and kill their parents without second thought.

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freshyill
Not going to read it due to the spoilers, but I give Disney a lot of credit.
They've done pretty well by Pixar, and exceedingly well by Marvel.

Disney is certainly a corporate behemoth out to make a buck, but I really
believe that it's accompany that understands these properties, and wants
people to love them.

Disney knows fans will not continue to flock to prequel-quality Star Wars
films. Even the die-hard fans have a limit. These movies need to be excellent
if they're going to continue to draw audiences. George Lucas himself doesn't
understand what makes the original trilogy so special to fans, which is why
Disney is putting fans like JJ Abrams and Rian Johnson at the helm of these
new movies. It seems like they're off to a great start. I have faith they'll
continue to be great.

Edit: First sentence: _I_ , not _u_. Yikes, what a typo.

~~~
Jtsummers
If you're worried about the spoiler that some people seem to think is in the
article, skip the first paragraph. It merely starts the narrative, it doesn't
contain any content pertinent to the discussion of the article beyond that it
may or may not contain a spoiler.

------
zekevermillion
There was some magic to the 80s childhood movies -- Star Wars, ET, Last
Starfighter, Goonies -- that I don't think can be bottled. Whatever stories
hold that place for our kids, I don't think they will be the same movies that
did it for us. There's just something about seeing Star Wars in the context of
that time, and it's not the same as seeing it now.

~~~
AndrewKemendo
It's because you were (presumably) a kid back then - and everything was much
more magical then because it was your whole world and imagination. Just like
old people now state how much better the 50s were, because that's when they
were children.

I pretty much discount anytime someone says "It was better when I was a kid."

~~~
wavefunction
There is actually something different with these 80s movies for kids _and_
adults. Part of it was some true courage in the story-telling, for what movie
studio of today would allow a character like "Sloth" from the Goonies to end
up in a movie? Darkness along with the light. And sincerity in both rather
than vapid "sarcasm." These movies have soul and heart.

Not saying that similar movie magic is impossible now or in the future, but in
the current world of profit-driven decisions on creative direction it seems
unlikely for the foreseeable future.

~~~
AndrewKemendo
Seriously? ANY pixar film puts those to shame in terms of depth. The entire
back story of UP was about a widower; Finding Nemo, same story - talk about
darkness and light. How about The Incredibles, Wall-E, Monsters Inc, all
fantastic story telling and incredible depth. It even goes further back than
80s, to movies like The Sound of Music with the Nazis.

Again, your biases are only fuzzy nostalgia and it seemed bigger to you then
cause your brain couldn't contextualize it as well.

------
Super_Jambo
It is down right perverse that you have a discussion of how Disney is buying
childhood without a discussion of copyright laws they're also buying...

------
deciplex
Basically nothing about Disney's strategy would be wrong, or even harmful,
provided copyright terms were something reasonable rather than infinite as a
practical matter. By now _anyone_ should have been allowed to make "The Force
Awakens" and without paying $4.1 billion for the privilege, either.

~~~
cwyers
I'm not so sure I agree. First of all, it's not like anyone could have made
this movie without significant financial resources -- reportedly it cost $200
million to make, and it looks it (not to mention, Harrison Ford isn't coming
back for cheap). Nobody without a large commercial stake in it was going to be
able to make a movie like this.

That doesn't justify current copyright laws (trademarks alone might be
sufficient to keep someone from making Star Wars VIII even if copyright was
allowed to lapse on ordinary time rather than being constantly extended to
keep Steamboat Willy out of the public domain), but collaborative works of
fiction require big financial commitments sometimes to get made.

~~~
deciplex
You're assuming that the monopoly on IP is necessary to get a good return on a
film like this. It's also arguable that copyright law made this film more
expensive than it otherwise would have been - I don't think your $200 million
figure includes the cost of buying the franchise in the first place.

------
samfisher83
It seemed like new star wars was a remake of the old star wars. I think people
people know what they like and they just want it repackaged in a slightly
different form. Surprised they haven't gone out and brought out hasbro and
mattel.

~~~
brazzledazzle
I know a lot of people are probably going to want to yell at me but I think it
needed to be remade. And I say this as a fan. I don't think a non-fan would
pour over Star Wars vehicle cross sections. What they did was remake it in the
best way possible given their constraints (old diehard fans) and I think it
was done smartly and tastefully. Done this way you get new fans without losing
a lot of them to appeasing old fans and old fans without losing a lot of them
to appeasing new fans.

~~~
Alex3917
Except for that it wasn't supposed to be a remake, rather this was just a case
of everyone involved phoning it in. I think Andrew O'Hehir said it best, "it's
the Citibank of movies, literally too big to fail." Right now everyone has
been brainwashed into loving it because of Disney's billion-dollar marketing
spend. But much like Bush's popularity after 9/11, sooner or later reality is
going to catch up.

As a kid part of the magic of Star Wars was that you could sort of imagine
there was an entire universe of interesting stories and characters beyond what
was pictured in the movies. But J.J. Abrams has made it abundantly clear that
no, actually, there was never anything else there.

~~~
dlp211
[STAR WARS: TFA SPOILERS AHEAD] I don't understand how you got to this
conclusion. There were more interesting characters and missing backstory in
this single movie than in the OT. Characters like Phasma, Maz, the old man
that give Poe the map, Poe, Snoke, and the rest of the Knights of Ren. And
while there were many parallels between the new movie and the OT, it also
introduced and developed a ton of extremely strong new characters, namely
Finn, Kylo, Poe, and Rey. My biggest gripes with the new film was Death Star
3.0 and the helo pan at the end, neither of which were really intricate to the
story. Also the acting was head and shoulders above any of the previous films
and the most impressive thing was how real everything felt, from the
Stormtroopers humanization to the land battling and dog fighting.

~~~
andrewingram
There's also the fact that entire antagonist team seems desperate to be bigger
and badder than what came before (with the possible exception of Snoke who is
somewhat mysterious). I took the new super-weapon to be a symptom of this. A
healthy number of tropes were both subverted and upheld by the film, a pattern
I hope continues.

------
EGreg
I don't know. I loved some Disney movies and appreciated their art growing up
but never bought the action figures or anything. I also went to disneyland
once and disneyworld once to check them out, but I went to six flags twice.
Oh, and I visited disneyland while in Paris, to show the girl I was with from
Moldova, who had never been.

I guess maybe it's because I'm a child of immigrants. I don't see what the big
deal is. Everyone commercializes and ties stuff in. Many if you are probably
users of the whole Apple ecosystem.

------
patch45
It's fascinating how strongly we feel about things we were exposed to as
children. Exploiting that seems inevitable.

~~~
knughit
Which is why the US original law put a 14-28 year limit on it

------
javery
This is why I bet they buy Nintendo at some point.

~~~
beedogs
It's why I hope they're broken up under antitrust law at some point.

~~~
rangibaby
I have been thinking that over the past couple of days too. In Japan, Disney
everything is literally _everywhere_. How do you think that work out? Split
into parks and movies?

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swang
> Marvel turned the story of a second-tier character, Iron Man, into a
> blockbuster.

Iron Man was popular enough to have a 90s cartoon made for him. I'm not sure
how he is second-tier...

~~~
eru
Definitely second tier in mainstream culture compared to Batman and Superman
---which are universally known.

------
cup
Whats the point in putting a complex image up if I can't zoom in to read it.

------
free2rhyme214
Is the only way to beat Disney to build another Pixar?

------
e15ctr0n
What if Disney bought Netflix and/or Valve?

~~~
desdiv
They can't afford Netflix, at least not any time soon. Netflix's market cap is
almost a third of Disney's right now.

~~~
sangnoir
That's nothing financiers (banks) can't solve. There are historical examples
of smaller companies buying larger one (especially interesting as a counter-
maneuver to a hostile take over bid: though it doesn't usually end well)

------
rasputhin
Isn't this what all profit driven companies targeting children would do?
Should do?

------
olewhalehunter
"Inside Out" made me fucking furious. No child should have such an calcified
perspective of mind or language shoved down their throat at such an early age
by a global corporation.

~~~
codemac
I watched it and I thought it was cute. I would like to hear more about what
made you so furious - it's a perspective I didn't get while watching or with
other people I spoke with after. Maybe I'm already disney brain washed.

~~~
olewhalehunter
Emotions are so much more complex than our terrible labels for them, and much
of your emotional sense of self comes from the language your parents branded
you with for the most cultural convenience: '"Anger" is bad! It's your fault
in not handling "it", not ours or the systems', but "Anger" in-of-itself
doesn't exist outside of language, just the nebulous array of feelings and
reactions we've been to coniditoned to label as "Anger", what this film
effectively did was create an false emotional framework for children to rely
on in the future, which should fucking terrify you because so much of modern
society and capitalism is built on neurological manipulation to get you to buy
things and not disrupt systems of power. The movie was nothing less than
brainwashing.

~~~
bitwize
Actually psychologists have identified seven basic emotions: fear, anger, joy,
sadness, surprise, contempt, and disgust. "Surprise" was considered similar
enough to "fear" that Pixar made one character out of them; the same goes for
"contempt" and "disgust". Complexity in emotions arises from their
interactions, much like how we perceive a spectrum of colors as a mixture of
three primaries.

Most of the professionals in the field who saw _Inside Out_ have praised it
for getting the basics of emotion and memory right, even if it isn't super
accurate. It is after all a cartoon.

~~~
olewhalehunter
Is there any evidence those labels aren't a product of linguistics and
culture? Two things developed during childhood that Disney is working to
profit from? Did those professionals grow up watching Disney movies?

~~~
isolate
The labels are based on experiments and are cross-cultural.

~~~
olewhalehunter
Are you insinuating those cross-cultural experiments predate the institutions
of culture and language that produced them? Sounds a bit like time travel.

~~~
isolate
They looked at people's facial expressions, it wasn't based on self-reporting
of emotion. The subjects were treated as animals in a biology experiment. You
can look it up easily enough, the guy's name is Silvan Tomkins and the work is
known as "affect theory".

------
joering2
Many of you will downvote me for sharing this, but parents will appreciate:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hwUwchCeeI4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hwUwchCeeI4)

DO NOT let your kids watch Disney!

~~~
GFK_of_xmaspast
Saving you a click, the title of the video is "Illuminati Hypersexualization
of Children Exposed! Disney Pedophilia and Satanic Rolemodels".

~~~
joering2
Did you watch it?

Since when is youtube about reading titles?? This title is misleading; it's
all about Disney as empire.

~~~
GFK_of_xmaspast
The abstract is "Exposing subliminal sexualizing content aimed at young
children from Hollywood, TV shows, Movies, and the pedophile fashion industry.
Disney channel and Disney movies exposed. Young girls being turned into
miniature sex kittens. Illuminati brainwashing and destruction of Morality",
and the preview image shows a young girl drinking out of a penis-shaped
bottle.

Furthermore, there are comments (never read the comments) like " This truly
shows we live in a sick ass perverted world even looking at the scene from a
reality show at the 28:00 mark that the fat bitch is telling little girls they
should make the audenice think they are naked to that i say sick ass world
there would be no way in hell that this type of shit would've been on tv 30
years ago & if it ever did make it on tv back then every tv watchdog group
across the country would have called for the networks to take shows like this
off the air.....﻿"

Even furthermore, the suggested video page has videos like "Dead babied in
Your Food", "Martin Lawrence EXPOSES Illuminati", "Lil Wayne says the
Illuminati is changing the world for the Mark of the Beast".

EDIT: One of the suggested videos is of clear importance to the Hacker News
community:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hbldNqL6LOI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hbldNqL6LOI)

