Kayla Salyer, Dorfman

Alright, so clearly this piece "Instructions on How to Become a General in the Disneyland Club" has a lot of different topics and ideas. It ranges from the politicized sides of Disneyland, to the relationship between the adult and the child. This being said, I want to just focus on what I find are the most interesting points in the piece.
First, the argument that animals are used because they represent everyone, no matter their class, country, or race, is genius! I was rarely introduced to Disney as a child (yes, this may seem odd), but my family was very... down to earth. We had no television, no plastic toys, and my fairytales mostly consisted of Brothers Grimm stories. This makes me feel like more of an outsider, at least as a child. So these ideas are slightly new and intriguing to me. But back to the animals. The idea that we no longer need to struggle with where they are from, their race, their background, makes them relatable to everyone. It gives people that window of similarity to the rest of the world. We are no longer such strangers, if we can all see eye to eye through Disney. This is a huge underlying factor that Disney has given us without even realizing it. It opens the doors for so many different possibilities.
Digging in deeper, I want to look at the relationship between adults and children pertaining to Disney, which has become so prominent in our world. Disney is an adults utopia.  It enables adults to project their ideals to their children, in a safe environment, in which they will, in thought, protect them with innocence. It is the adults ideal world. It is safe, magical, and forgiving, unlike the real world. One quote, darker than the rest of the piece, sticks out to me in an obvious way, "Similarly, readers find themselves caught between their desire and their reality, and in their attempt to escape to a purer realm, they only travel further back into their own traumas" (Dorfman and Mattelart 2012, 113). This slips us into deeper waters. It is suggesting an escape by adults through Disney, an escape that is projected onto their children. Although this escape may be to a purer realm, it actually slips them deeper into their own twisted past.
Dorfman seems to be slipping from a light and cheerful mode to a much darker one. From what I can understand, his opinions on Disney may vary from the beginning of the essay, to the end.