Disney Owns Your Culture

What happen when a company relies heavily on public culture as its stock and trade? What happens when a company appropriates folk tales and tradition then copyrights and claims as private property? There’s nothing easier than cashing in on a tried, trued and beloved story, but what happens when you cross the line into stealing the people’s own culture?

David Bollier’s Brand Name Bullies, published in 2005 by Wiley, shows how Disney had built an empire by poaching and repurposing public domain material.

Bollier calls it the “substitution effect” – where public domain material is available to all, including companies, but then private companies expropriate folk culture and claim exclusive ownership. Then, any derivative creations must obtain permissions from those private companies, like Disney.

A famous case of defending copyrights happened when a Florida daycare center put Disney characters on its walls without authorization. When you capitalize on the brand awareness of already established folk traditions, why not also allow that newly positioned branding to be spoon fed to young consumers on the walls they stare at every single day? And yet Disney fought.

Disney’s “open plunder” of popular folktales includes:
Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast, Cinderella, Hercules, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Robin Hood, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty

American folk legends:
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, Pocahontas, Song of the South, Davy Crockett

Classic children’s literature:
The Jungle Book, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Oliver Twist, Treasure Island, The Wind in the Willows, The Three Musketeers, Pinocchio

Stories whose rights Disney has paid for:
Peter Pan, Bambi, Winnie-the-Pooh

“[Disney] has appropriated dozens of folk stories and literary classics, scrubbed them up with the perky Disney touch, and then claimed the entire franchise as its own,” claims Bollier. It’s not necessarily about Disney using public domain material, since it is entitled to do so. It’s about having the market power to substitute its proprietary version of the story for the folk version, wiping the memory of the original clean of the public’ mind and branding every unique story as a Disney story.

Yet the Disney brand is stronger than ever and these precious stories are fondly held in the public’s mind. How do other companies capitalize on awareness of certain products, slap their own branding on it, and reap the benefits?

images: flickr: Tony the Misfit and jonathan mcintosh.