Disney officials recently scolded a man with a natural beard and red shirt for confusing children at the park. Rather than disappoint numerous children who thought he was Santa, the man played along and in doing so made officials mad.
But Disney officials descended, telling him to stop the impersonation or get outSanta at Disney parks is apparently a Disney character and not the Santa of kids' imaginations and popular culture. Which leads me to ask, who is Santa? Who owns Santa? Is Santa soon going to be a copyrighted and trademarked image? Of course, given the commercialization of Christmas, perhaps he already is.
of the park. They said they wanted to preserve the magic of Santa.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6189521.stm
1 comment:
Great post, p-duck! Harrogate's been missing ye.
Santa is of course already registered trademarked in a number of ways, and this Disney fiasco shouldn't really surpirse anybody.
But at the same time trademarking Santa can never be a complete enterprise any mopre than trademarking Robin Hood, Zorro, or for that matter Jesus. Something larger fills the imagination here, something capitalism can thrive upon but never quite thoroughly subjugate.
Children do not recognize brands, except as a result of a long torturous process of assimilation, a process of indoctrination into the laws of propriety. For children at heart are not capitalists, in Harrogate's view, but are rather much closer to hedonists, though really no label at all will quite get them (like Santa).
And God bless them for it, we could learn a lot from them in this regard.
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