Stars Of Walt Disney Productions

Biographies of the stars of Walt Disney pictures.

Over a century after its first stage performance, Peter Pan has become deeply embedded in Western popular culture, as an enduring part of childhood memories, in every part of popular media, and in commercial enterprises. Since 2003 the characters from this story have had a highly visible presence in nearly every genre of popular culture: two major films, a literary sequel to the original adventures, a graphic novel featuring a grown-up Wendy Darling, and an Argentinean novel about a children's book writer inspired by J. M. Barrie. Simultaneously, Barrie surfaced as the subject of two major biographies and a feature film. The engaging essays in Second Star to the Right approach Pan from literary, dramatic, film, television, and sociological perspectives and, in the process, analyze his emergence and preservation in the cultural imagination.

First Published in 2000. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Since the Progressive Era, baseball has been promoted as an institution encapsulating the best of American values and capable of bridging the chasms of twentieth century American culture--urban versus rural, industry versus agriculture, individual versus community, immigrant versus native, white versus color. Among the more enthusiastic of the game's proponents have been American filmmakers, and baseball films present perhaps the purest depiction of baseball's vision of an idealized America. This critical study treats baseball cinema as a film genre and explores the functions of baseball ideology as it is represented in that genre. It focuses on how Hollywood's presentation of baseball has served not only to promote dominant values, but also to bridge cultural conflicts. Commentary on 85 films deals with issues of race, community, gambling, players, women, and owners. Instructors considering this book for use in a course may request an examination copy here.

Star Trek emerged alongside mini-skirts, bellbottoms, and VW vans; flourished in the shadow of Madonna, big hair, and greed; and expanded with computers, Beanie Babies, and religious revitalization. Star Trek survived the culture shock of 9/11 and experienced a revival in the era of yoga pants, hybrid cars, and Starbucks. After more than 5 decades, Star Trek is alive and well, still voyaging through space and time. But, why is that? How has this science fiction franchise managed to anticipate and adapt to such rapid culture change? In The Voyages of Star Trek: A Mirror on American Society through Time, authors K. M. Heath and A. S. Carlisle, investigate the enduring appeal of Star Trek, noting how it has mirrored, foreshadowed, and adapted to contemporary American culture from 1966 to the present. Through anthropological analysis, the authors examine the evolution of Star Trek by tying its storylines to events and developments in the U.S., assessing the extent to which the visual image of Star Trek is reflected on the screen from “snapshots” of randomly selected episodes and all of the films. By examining how Star Trek addressed contemporary social issues through a sci-fi lens over time, the authors postulate, Americans can better understand their own changing culture. If StarTrek can continue to anticipate and adapt to our rapidly changing world, then it should remain a part of the cultural landscape for another 50 years, truly going where few franchises have gone before.

One of the great intellectual achievements of the 20th century, Joseph Campbell's The Hero with a Thousand Faces is an elaborate articulation of the monomyth: the narrative pattern underlying countless stories from the most ancient myths and legends to the films and television series of today. The monomyth's fundamental storyline, in Campbell's words, sees "the hero venture forth from the world of the common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons to his fellow man." Campbell asserted that the hero is each of us--thus the monomyth's endurance as a compelling plot structure. This study examines the monomyth in the context of Campbell's The Hero and discusses the use of this versatile narrative in 26 films and two television shows produced between 1960 and 2009, including the initial Star Wars trilogy (1977-1983), The Time Machine (1960), Logan's Run (1976), Escape from New York (1981), Tron (1982), The Terminator (1984), The Matrix (1999), the first 11 Star Trek films (1979-2009), and the Sci Fi Channel's miniseries Frank Herbert's Dune (2000) and Frank Herbert's Children of Dune (2003).