CULT11002 Cultural Industries

Are your opinions, values and ideas shaped by what you read, hear and watch? How do you make sense of things? Even though the amount of infromation in our lives is overwhelming, this information is increasingly likely to come from a small number of huge international communication companies. This course looks at how cultural industries work, by exploring the interactions between the individual and the Disney Corporation, the second largest communication company in the world. This multimillion-dollar corporation is involved in film, television, theme parks, sports teams, merchandising, the Internet and much more. The structure, history and products of Disney are considered in this course. Also explored are responses to Disney, both acceptance and resistance, from around the world.