QUESTION #8

The political economy and cultural studies are both theories of Karl Marx. The political economy has to do with economics, while cultural studies is how culture shapes the world and economics is not the basic factor of the world. In the first part of “Mouse Trapped 2010,” political economy is present when they talk about how the workers need the money to make to live their lives regardless of how little the make. For example, a fifty year old man who works 50 hours and makes only $165, or working there for 3 years and not even making $8 especially because Disney is a HUGE franchise, you’d think the employers would be making more. The cultural studies are seen when they interviewers admit that they love their job and making others happy, and they don’t want to leave the company because they don’t have enough money to put food on the table. In the first part of “Mickey Mouse Monopoly” Disney is apart of the political economy because of all the corporations they own. One being ABC, which is a huge network company, that also owned capital cities, so since Disney owned ABC then they also owned the capital cities, witch results into narrow media out-put of what the world around us is like. In cultural studies,Disney is seen has a fantasy that stimulates children's’ imagination. But as Grossberg states in his intro, “it celebrates pop culture...cultural studies ignores the economics, it is incapable of understanding the real structures of power, domination, and oppression in the contemporary world.” the fact that Disney controls what images and messages get put out to the public, the people can’t really understand what goes on behind the scenes. For example, Disney not allowing any authors to get political about them because they don’t want anyone knowing that some of the things they do are shady or how villains in movies are darker colored.