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1704866998 The Festival of Lion King:the Deliberately Unexplained Cultural Logic

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1704867000 Festival of Lion King is a musical show about the story of the Walt Disney Animation Lion King released in 1994.The music show however does not follow a chronological flow of the story.Instead,the finale of the story was the opening scene of the show.It was a triumphant celebration of all the animals in the African forest on the green Pride Lands with the grown-up lion King Simba and his Queen Nala standing on the top of Pride Rocks to receive the applaud of their people.The apex was the moment when Rafiki（a wise old mandrill）presenting Simba and Nala’s newborn cub that symbolizes “The Circle of Life.”The show returned to the scenes of the old days when Simba was still a cub misguided by his uncle that he was responsible for his own father Mufasa’s death.Then it was followed with the long journey of Simba to survive with his friends Timon and Pumbaa,a warthog duo who adopt and raise the cub under their worry-free philosophy（Hakuna Matata）.The show was mainly a performance and musical in English.Since each session audience is a potpourri of people who speak different language,the English-speaking show is occasionally inserted with and explained in Cantonese or Putonghua,but Disney made no attempt to explain the plot and internal logic of the story to the diverse audience.

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1704867002 The reaction of the audience was expected.Audience from the Anglo-Saxon worlds and also many Hong Kong grown-ups know the plot of Lion King well.Despite the chronological order of the story was reversed,it did not create any reading difficulty for this category of audience.They enjoyed the pleasures,laughs and tears conveyed by the show while there was no need for them to spend extra energy to read the story.The musical simply reinforced the audiences the values and imagination of the Disney story.

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1704867004 However,for the Chinese audience,they were puzzled.First,they did not possess the cultural resources,capacity and knowledge to unpack and reorganize the upside-down story and the logic presented.Second,because of the language barrier,they were not able to comprehend the English lyrics and conversations.The cultural barrier was also crucial.Not to mention the name of the characters,the jargons（e.g.Hakuna Matata）and the latent meanings of the story,after the musical,many Chinese audiences at most could tell the narrative was a legend of a lion king.Of the complex messages of the musical,the Chinese audience might only concur with the notion of championship of the justice over wickedness,good over evil and harmony over disparity-the very same thought of the Confucian and Chinese ethics.When I asked a participant about the feedback when we walked down the stairs together,he said,“I don’t understand ［the plot and story of it］.It is a game ［and］ a show.It doesn’t matter.But I feel good about it.Great! Great!”（informal talk on July 7,2008）

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1704867006 What was intriguing was that few Chinese tourists had complete understanding about the Lion King story,but they seemed highly satisfied with the performance.It has two possible explanations.First,while this person had no gratification sought,the children in the family accompanying him appeared very happy and excited.The person might prioritize the happiness of the family over his own perceptions.Second,without a conscious effort to appreciate the story,he valued more the exposure to this fresh,creative and professional musical as such.In other words,the new cultural form itself was powerful than the messages it contained.Attractive to the Chinese audience who were in general deprived of the freedom to connect to the western modernity before,the global Disney imaginations and plots had to remain non-global as a contrast to the reality.

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1704867008 The Globality for Chinese Audiences

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1704867010 To sum up,for the local Hong Kong residents,many western visitors and the young kids of mainland China,as they grow up with Disney culture and are exposed to various forms of Disney entertainment and media,Disney culture is seamlessly integrated with their own.They have no a strong attention and ability to negotiate over the meaning of it.Using Wasko’s category of Disney audience,there are hardly any cynics and antagonists for Chinese audience.For the Hong Kong children,though they usually start to know and contact to Disney products at quite an early age,and internalize the values of Disney.Rarely are they critical of the entertainment park.For adults,many are pulled by their friends to visit the Hong Kong Disneyland.They might be parents who visit there with their family and buy Disney products for their children as gifts.However,their personal interest and passion of the Disney brand is low and feel somehow compelled to do so under drive of the ball-holding news from media;or as to adult,they feel also reluctant to refuse their children’s curiosity.But unlike Americans,they are not growing up from the Disney tradition.

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1704867012 Those hardcore resisters who feel it beneath their dignity to pay the local theme park a visit will not go in the park anyway.For those visitors,the intact,relatively nonlocalized,global cultural forms of Disney,its values and products basically pitch in with their values and lifestyles.From the perspective of Disney,they have no need to kick off the“localization.”Nor did we witness the backlash to Disney’s “conquer”in Hong Kong.Though some audience sneered at the small-scale of the Hong Kong Disneyland and media outlets were quite critical of the Disney Corporation at the outset,few audiences consume Disney products as American cynics who are critical of the intense marketing and merchandising efforts.

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1704867014 In the Hong Kong’s Disneyland,literally,“localization”is largely concerned with mainland Chinese audiences.As we have illustrated,the strategies of Disney was to deliberately construe a large cultural gap between their American dream and the veracities of the audience,privileging the former and disparaging the latter.Thus,in this Hong Kong Disneyland study,rather asking the question whether Disney culture be internalized as part of the Chinese culture,we would ask why and why not people are not willing to see a localized version of Disney in Hong Kong?

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1704867016 On the one hand,the denial to localize the global form is due to practical reasons.As tourists in Hong Kong,mainland Chinese would like to experience the real Disney tradition,the one that has been constructed since 1928 when Walt Disney launched the beloved Mickey Mouse character.Mainland Chinese are simply fed up with the overwhelmingly exposure to pirated versions of Disney characters in different mainland channels and the“fake culture”in China in general.They are all aware of the scandalous media report about the fake Mickey Mouse,Tigre and Seven Dwarfs in the state-owned popular（with 1.5 million visitors annually）Shijinshan Entertainment Park.Able to temporarily escape the malevolent culture,Chinese audiences are eager to witness the authentic ones in Hong Kong.Though they never know what Disney really is-perhaps knowing only Mickey Mouse always landing on his feet no matter what adversity threw at him-Chinese are prepared for a cultural shock that they have not experienced in China.

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1704867018 Yet,we have to admit that we did come across many adult mainland visitors who are keen merely on purchasing Disney merchandise over games and activities in Disney.Understanding the games and shows or not is not an issue concerned.Many of the Chinese audience can be described as the uninterested audience as many of them are “go-and-see”travelers.Quite interestingly,groups of mainland visitor joined the cheap,packaged tour to the Disneyland in Hong Kong.Well-informed or not of the Disney culture,the travelers to Hong Kong are attracted by the non-expensive tour charge and the good service are offered by the travel agency.Some of them are even sponsored by their own business organizations to visit Disneyland for free or at an unreasonable low price.We did encounter Chinese visitors who openly admitted that coming to Hong Kong-and sojourning Disneyland as part of the trip-was an open secret bonus from their company they were working.Stopping by Disneyland for a short time-and it could be short as a morning-they had no anticipation of take pleasure in the rides and games.As a result these uninterested visitors never feel too excited nor reluctant about the visit.

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1704867020 On the other hand,some Chinese audiences can be enthusiastic about the Disney’s global dream.For those mainland Chinese visitors did immerse themselves in the pleasure of the shows and rides,they consume Disney in a different way.They developed the aesthetics,not from a direct consumption of Disney’s cultural icon,but by contrasting the imaginations and fantasy connected to Disney with the assumed lower standard version of aesthetics they used to develop in their homeland.

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1704867022 To foreground the difference or the Disney’s global dream,the Disneyland constantly reminds the audience what they are consuming are uniquely American.The more intact and unchanged the original Disneyland is,the more global the Chinese audiences feel.Having no intention at all to internalize such culture,instrumentally,they understand the globality the audiences exposed to are superior to the nationalist culture they have been bombarded with.

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1704867024 Conclusion:Globality over Nationalism

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1704867026 Based on a case study of the localization process of Hong Kong’s Disneyland,this paper revisits the concept of localization in the era of cultural globalization.Contrary to the commonplace notion of a localizing global culture,The Walt Disney presented an American fantasy and imagination,not a diluted or a modified version to the audience of Hong Kong.In various shows and games in the theme parks,as we have suggested,Disneyland assumes the“foreign”audience,even those from a non-western culture,fully understand the plot and legends of the original Disney animations.There is no sign of implementing so-called“localization”strategy.The“localization strategy,”if any,is only a segregation of Hong Kong,mainland Chinese and English-speaking visitors.

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1704867028 This case then problematizes the concept of localization,which does not necessarily mean the incorporation of local elements into the global culture forms nor a modification of the global cultural forms which,with other variations of adaptations are intent on increasing the familiarity and reception of the global culture.Localization is not necessarily advantageous for the global corporations.Current literature on localization might largely focus on the desires of the audience for traditional culture.The aspiration could be a preservation of traditional culture as such but the desire can also facilitate the local reception of global culture.However,such a perspective neglects the very urgent need of the audience for an external set of culture for modernity,empathy and empowerment.

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1704867030 In this paper,we underscore the power of neo-globalism,which,different from globalism that simply consider the values,process and impacts of globalization,we define from the view of the audience,a set of global mentality that audiences around the world,including China,has developed and internalized with the flow of global culture circulating around.Neo-globality functions hence not from a top-down perspective,but from the internal and psychological or social need of global culture for various purposes,survival,entertainment,commercial competition,resources of political power,to name a few.

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1704867032 However,our argument does not mean that all global corporations could promote and distribute cultural products with few adjustments.It is just that under different context,global corporations might adapt with variations.Global appeal might or might not work.It all depends on the local audience composition,their background and how they respond to the transnational culture.But in this specific Disney case which attempt to penetrate into the mainland market whose people are suffocated by the authoritarian system,rather than merging with the local culture,it strategy is probably to amplify the uniqueness of the Disney culture.The more globalized and a firmer attitude to refuse to make local modifications,the stronger the appeal to the Chinese audience.

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1704867034 We would here want to emphasize our standpoint:to be fair to Disneyland,this paper has no meaning at all to blame the corporate to serve as a proselytizer for the values of the American heartland.It is not that we are not critical enough to challenge capitalism.Nor are the Chinese visitors of Disneyland.It is simply that the audience as consumers preferring this intact global culture to the nationalistic ideology in their own culture.Albeit beyond what the data could suggest,we would espouse that while there might be consumers passively enjoying the pleasure of global culture,some audiences,conscious or unconscious,would enjoy the entrapment into the global culture as a gesture to detest the disenfranchisement of the Chinese politics,political participation and freedom.These latter audiences might not particularly find Micky Mouse adorable nor do they emotionally echoes with the bubbling gaieties of the Disney kingdom.However,they do experience a difference,an American atmosphere one that is in sharp contrast with the overly repressive state that they reside.If the fantasy of the kingdom symbolizes happiness and enjoyment,the system they compared with mean only oppression and stigma to them.Should we have to count a good impact of globalization,the presence of this global culture in Hong Kong could be regarded as an alternative,creative counterforce to empower the disempowered audience.

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1704867036 Reference

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1704867038 Anthony Fung（2009）,Globalizing Televised Culture:The Case of China,in Graeme Turner（ed.）,Television Studies after TV,London:Routledge.

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1704867040 Micky Lee and Anthony Fung（2007）,Disney:The Cultural Nexus of Globalizing China,Annual Conference,International Association of Mass Communications Research（IMACR）,Paris,France,23-25,July.

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1704867042 Chan,J.M.（2002）,Disneyfying and Globalizing the Chinese Legend Mulan:A Study of Transculturation,in Chan,J.M and McIntyre B.T（eds.）,In Search of Boundaries:Communication,Nation-states and Cultural Identities,Westport,CT:Ablex Publishing,pp.225-248.

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1704867044 Chan,J.M.and Ma,E.（2002）,Transculturating Modernity:A Reinterpretation of Cultural Globalization,in Chan,J.M and McIntyre B.T（eds.）,In Search of Boundaries:Communication,Nation-states and Cultural Identities,Westport,CT:Ablex Publishing,pp.3-18.

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1704867046 Chinareview.com（2007,August 21）,Hong Kong’s Disneyland Pushes student Discount,http://www.chinareviewnews.com/doc/1004/3/3/5/100433534.html?coluid=21&kindid=272&docid=100433534&mdate=0911123624,Last Accessed on September 22,2008.

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