THE "PARCOSM":
"His (Disney's) life would become an ongoing effort to devise what psychologists call a "parcosm," an invented universe, that he could control as he could not control reality. From Mickey Mouse through Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs through Disneyland through EPCOT, he kept attempting to remake the world in the image of his own imagination, to certify his place as a force in the world and keep reality from encroaching upon it, to recapture a sense of childhood power that he either had never felt or had lost long ago."
Introduction xvi
THE CREATION OF LIFE:
"The process of animation was a process of giving life, of literally taking the inanimate and making it animate. It was, at base, a hubristic process in which the animator assumed and exercised godlike control over his materials, which was why it also offered a feeling of empowerment to its viewers who sensed the control. .....Indeed the animator created his own world- an alternative reality of his imagination in which the laws of physics and logic could be suspended. Though Walt Disney could never fully articulate why he was attracted to animation, falling back instead on vague generalities, it always had these two great and unmistakable blandishments. For a young man who had chafed within the stern, moralistic, anhedonic world of his father, animation provided escape, and for someone who had always been subjugated by that father, it provided absolute control. In animation Walt Disney had a world of hos own. Walt Disney could be the power."
p. 55
THE CULT:
"Many, including Walt, had previously observed the similarity between the animator and God. At the Disney studio this similarity was manifest in the attitude of the employees toward their leader, who was spoken of in quasi-religious terms...." You just felt it if he were in the same wing of the building you were in. I know it sounds weird but you never got over that awe of him." He had an overwhelming power over people and the voice of a prophet," said animator Joe Grant. "You always had the feeling he knew what you were going to say and he seemed to know things before they happened. That sort of omnipotence held a mental control over you." "
p. 212
"By the mid -1930's the Disney studio operated like a cult, with a messianic figure inspiring a group of devoted, sometimes frenzied acolytes."
p. 212
CONTROL:
It had always been about control, about crafting a better reality than the one outside the studio, and about demonstrating that one had the capacity to do so. That was what Walt Disney provided to America - not escape, as so many analysts would surmise, but control and the vicarious empowerment that accompanied it."
p. 479
