Ashley-Aidali Abril9/10/15

Disney Reflection 3

When there is a lot going on with your work life and personal life, sometimes there is a sense that everything is unorganized and there is no place to start organizing your thoughts and projects. Creative people that have a massive creativity feel this pressure, Vincent von Gogh for example, cut off his ear because there was so much emotion inside of him. These people usually feel like there are stuck in a whirlpool and everything is dragging them down and the only thing they desire in life is control. That is how Walt Disney felt when starting to run his company. He wanted his company to be successful but he also wanted people to have a great perception of him and believe in the magic, he was a dreamer.

Seeking control is natural and “Walt Disney provided [it] to America- not escape, as so many analysts would surmise, but control and the vicarious empowerment that accompanied it” (Gabler 479). It was a time of trouble, confusion, and scorn but people kept going forward because they sensed the control in Walt Disney. A control that many of his employees believed that should be let go and have someone else handle the reins. He did just that, he stepped back for a while and “critics disdained Disney’s cartoons, in part because the films were shabbily made and the sense of control in them seemed to have diminished” (Gabler 480-481). People rely on someone to have that control and that is how they can get through the hard times.

But controlling everything was not enough for Walt Disney, he needed more. He loved his cartoons, animations, films, and merchandise along with everything that came to his empire but was it enough. No one really can pinpoint when and where “but Walt Disney had decided to build an amusement park” (Gabler p 483).

Walt Disney is definitely a dreamer, I’ve picked up on it in the reading. I also think he was a controlling, frustrated, and angry man with great qualities. This, to me, makes him human and relatable. He had big dreams and he really reached for the stars to make them come true, no matter what the cost is. That is the reality of the world, we have to do whatever we can to make our dreams come true. Now I’m not saying lying, cheating, and stealing, no, I mean if we need make our dreams come true we need the best of the best. That is why Walt Disney would fire so many people. Now on the particular project of Disneyland he had to terminate Pereira and Luckman because he needed people he needs to trust. (Gabler 494). Controlling? Yes. Mean? Definitely. Trust Issues? Questionable. But this is what he needed to do in order to get his dreams to come true and that is what really takes courage.

What holds most people back from trying to achieve their dreams is money. If money were not an issue they would do whatever they want, anything that they dreamed to be but money is always an issue. There is a need to make money in order to survive and that is what most people go off of when they choice a career even if it is not their ‘ideal’ choice. Walt Disney merely saw money as a hurdle, not the ending. When dreaming up Disneyland, he had a floor print plan but “now all Walt Disney needed was the money to build his park” (Gabler 501). Walt Disney could definitely have borrowed money and waited but he wanted his part to get that start, this is him dipping into his overwhelming need for his ideas to keep moving forward. He borrowed money for his own life insurance, against his wife’s wishes, to help move the park forward. (Gabler 501).

Instead of borrowing money, like most do and Walt Disney did when he started Walt Disney production, he searched for investments instead. That is a great business move. Both companies would benefit from an investment. This dreamer turned business man would do

anything he needs to do in order to get his company moving forward. The Chairman, Leonard Goldenson, thought it great to “trade as stake in the park” in order to help him with his network. It was a tricky investment because there was no real financial investment because they could not really support themselves, how were they going to support Disneyland but “Goldenson knew he needed the Disneys as much as the Disneys needed him” (Gabler 507).

The dreamer in Walt Disney not only created the Walt Disney productions with control but he also did anything in order for his park to grow and become a reality. The dreamer mixed with the business is the best kind of person that is needed in order to start any sort of organization, even more so an empire. The control that Walt Disney had was necessary and important because if there was no control then he would not have been able to succeed in what he needed to do and what he wanted to achieve. Dreaming, control, and business all go hand in hand.

Discussion Questions1. Walt Disney is critiqued throughout this whole book that he always needed a sense of control

and everything he did was controlled, to how snow white was playing out to how many birds are coming into the park. Control is what has gotten the company to be where it is today but why is it such a big deal for him to have that control? Why is it a ‘bad’ thing to have control if he is trying to raise, for lack of better words, an empire? Control is what got him to where he needed to be, so it more of the idea that Walt wasn’t sunshine’s and unicorns when building the company that got people questioning his control?

2. One of the first stepping stones in television was making a deal with ABC. Without ABC Disneyland couldn’t be financed but without Disneyland ABC would not be the network it is. This is the first stepping stone for the Disney Company in television. Do you think that if ABC wouldn’t have invested and made the agreement with Disney, would the Disney Company have such a strong force in the media?

Work Cited

Gabler, N. (2006). Walt Disney: The triumph of the American imagination. New York: Knopf.