If It Quacks Like a Duck: The Classist Curriculum of Disney's Reality Television Shows

• In Event: 46.053 - The Disney Curriculum: Pedagogies of Being and Buying

Abstract

Although many people may not immediately associate Reality TV with The Walt Disney Company, the reality is (pun intended) that through its cable properties like The History Channel(s), The Biography Channel(s), the Lifetime Network, as well as the ABC Network, Disney produces a plethora of very popular “reality” programs. Many, if not most, of those programs depict individuals and/or groups with low socio-economic status. In effect, these are programs about working-class and poor people. Bourdieu and Passeron (1977) describe class as one’s position in a hierarchy relative to economic, cultural, social, and symbolic capital—the gateways to healthcare, life quality, education, information, opportunity, and overall well-being. Beginning with the recent economic downturn, and especially since the recession of 2007, there has been an exponential proliferation of reality programs focused on the working-class. No longer content to transform “childhood dreams into potential profits” (Giroux, 2000, p.109), Disney now saturates cable television with programs like Duck Dynasty, Swamp People, Lady Hoggers, and Appalachian Outlaws. These shows also abound on Netflix, Hulu, and other internet television subscription services. Moreover, like children’s programing, these shows have massive merchandising campaigns with bobble-heads, tee-shirts, coffee mugs, caps, key chains, and a myriad of other show-related paraphernalia.

This qualitative content analysis (Merrigan & Huston, 2009) of Disney’s working-class reality programming is framed by critical theory and filtered through symbolic convergence theory. This approach enables researchers to investigate how groups are caught up in narratives that are promoted by the media, history textbooks, and other culturally shared experiences. In this case, I explore how this medium of reality television is reinforcing classist stereotypes in order to support Disney’s capitalist agenda by providing a shared fantasy of a working-class and poor who 1) are content, even happy, to be poor, 2) are proud of their ignorance, their poverty, and their “white trash” social standing, and 3) are undeserving of socialistic government programs that might provide opportunities for advancement, authentic education, and movement into the middle class. In effect, these programs overtly create and support a shared fantasy of a utopian status quo during the deepest economic recession since the Great Depression.

Author

• Robin Redmon Wright, The Pennsylvania State University - Harrisburg