“Sometimes it’s a bit too much Disney” exploring Norwegian parents and their ambiguous domestication of Disney

Abstract

Parents are often ambivalent about their children’s engagement with popular culture, where popular culture is seen as trivial and potentially harmful. In this article, I explore how Norwegian parents of girls experienced the Disney tween shows, and tied in merchandise of Hannah Montana and High School Musical. As the parents interviewed reported feeling ambivalent and conflicted about the Disney shows, the article makes use of Bakhtin’s dialogism and domestication theory to explore this ambivalence. Employing the concept of voice from Bakhtin, the interview data suggest five voices the parents drew on – the educational voice, the voice of children’s autonomy, Disney as innocent and safe, the voice of caring consumption and the culture critical voice. The analysis focuses on how these voices operated, how they were expressed in the interviews, and what these different voices produced in terms of how Disney was included in the everyday home life.