For instance, I was quite prolific at coming up with ideas for new television shows, and Walt needed ideas. According to studio policy, when I wrote up an idea for a new show, I was to submit it to one of the producers. However, the producer I worked under lived in a state of stark, naked fear! When I would submit a new show idea to him, he was so afraid Walt wouldn't like it that he would throw the show proposal into his wastebasket. He figured it was better that Walt didn't see the idea --- than to have Walt see it and not like it!

After wasting precious weeks of time creating new ideas for television shows --- only to have them discarded --- I decided to bypass the barrier by using the "fear system." Neatly, I typed my ideas on studio stationary and at the top wrote the magic words: "Carbon copy to Walt Disney." My fearful supervisor now was afraid Walt might see my idea and like it --- and fire him for failing to submit a good idea" (Shows, 1979: 75-76). 8

 

Walt had Charisma. He was an autocratic and a fanatical perfectionist who controlled every facet of the business. While he surrounded himself with the best talent, he retained absolute sovereign control over every phase of every project. If a project did not met his personal standards for perfection, it was shelved. Charismatic leader tell stories and Walt was perhaps the finest storyteller of all time. Followers imitated his storytelling style.

Pre-modern Animation. Before Walt Disney, animation was a cottage industry, controlled by craftsmen and their apprentices. It was an art form and the artist sketched and designed and planned and crafted his art medium. In the pre-modern phase of animation, a support system of animators got together around each new project. Walt created the studio system that would keep artists and artisans fully employed by moving them from a piece of one project to a piece of another project, and so on. He put craftsman into functional teams, and kept them employed year-round. Before Walt, animators and story men were subject to seasonal employment.

Mickey Mouse

In 1927, Walt launched a cartoon series with Oswald the Lucky Rabbit as the main character. Oswald had many of the soft-cured physical features of his future character: Mickey Mouse. Charles Mintz, the distributor for the toons, tried to cut Walt out in order to reduce his costs. He hired away several of Walt's best animators and claimed Oswald the Lucky Rabbit belonged to him. Mintz copyrighted the name of the character. Walt was furious. He developed a new character called: Mortimer the Mouse and he never, ever let anyone copyright or control anything Disney ever again. Walt's wife thought Mortimer was a pretentious name for a mouse and suggested: Mickey Mouse. The rest is history.

In 1930, Ub Iwerks, who had worked with Walt since Kansas City, doing short cartoon features, was lured away by one Pat Powers, who Walt had contracted to distribute his Mickey Mouse cartoons. Pat being a finagler, did not give Walt detailed financial reports and would send Walt a few dollars from time to time. Iwerks could do 700 drawings a day. Powers used Iwerks to try to squeeze a $2500 a week distribution contract out of Walt. Walt turned Powers down and gave his distribution contract to Columbia pictures and hired a whole staff of New York animators to replace Iwerks.

After these incidents, Walt made it a habit to keep his plan for each project in his head, assembling a project part by part, team by team, keeping central control until his empire was visible for all to see and for him to possess.

The Transition to Modern Management. Walt institutionalized a control process that consisted of departmentalizing the production process phases from story plot department to dialogue and sketch departments, music departments, inking departments, background painting departments, voice departments, and the like. Walt had bureaucratized tooning. Walt attended story performance meetings and assessed the weakness of plots, dialogue, sketches, and the like. Walt's stenographer recorded the meetings.

In 1952, Walt set out to make his vision of twenty years, a reality. His story department sketched and built models of his theme park. Main Street, for example, was Walt's vision of the heart of a small Midwestern town that Walt knew as a boy and calculated to correspond to his archetype of the American town. The Disney Sunday night TV show helped Walt to give his vision of Disneyland theme park maximum public exposure. Walt's toons, movies, and theme parks had an appeal to the emotions of millions of people. In 1958 Walt said: "Dream, diversity and never miss an angle."

 

Disney's empire was a story-processing machine, where every element was carefully related to each other element. His movies, shows, and parks were clean, simple and highly controlled. Walt centralized all project planning and operation decisions. Walt was at the top of the Sleeping Beauty Castle, and everyone that worked for him, was at the bottom. There was a clean and tidy place fore everyone and everyone kept in their place. Every element was pre-planned to be noncompetitive with every other element. The films, TV shows, and theme parks were complementary elements in the overall Disney empire. These were backed up by training, research, and an elaborate infra-structure. He was not a theory "Y" leader. He ruled by fear. It was a flat structure. There was no "real" middle management, just Walt at the top.

Walt died on december 15, 1966 at St. Joseph Hospital in Burbank, across the street from his studio. While the Disney production system was institutionalized, Walt's creative imagination and decisive control was not. When Walt died, gross earnings were $120 million, they floundered in the early 1980's and they now exceed one billion.

Ron Miller Inherits the Modernist Story Machine. Ron Miller, Walt's son-in-law became CEO. He was a finance guy and managed Disney with numbers. He did not tamper with the Disney machine. There was a lot of pressure to get into the PG-13 and R movie markets. Films like Pete's Dragon and The Black Hole did not do well at the box office, but Disney animated files like The Jungle Book, The Aristocrats, Robin Hood, The Rescuers, and the Fox and the Hound did OK. Even a 1984 rerelease of the Jungle Book netted $15 million. It was Miller who launched touchstone pictures and released Splash as a strategy to keep the Disney family image uncontaminated by PG-13 and R movies. Kids thought it uncool to go to G movies anymore. After Vietnam, people wanted movies like M*A*S*H, Easy Rider, and 2001: A Space Odyssey, American Graffiti and The Graduate. But, few creative geniuses were willing to work in the Disney method of film production.

Committees in the Mouse Museum. Ron Miller did not get into the details of production planning, project selection, and project management. He left decisions to a committee system that evolved after Walt's death. People asked: "What would Walt do?" The committee system kept Disney a conservative and risk-averse company.

Corporate Raider. Saul Steinberg, the corporate raider, smelled a victim and bought up Disney stock with the goal of carving up the Disney empire into bite size pieces that could be sold off, leaving an empty corporate shell. Ron Miller fought back by buying real estate and businesses to dilute Steinberg's ownership. Miller threatened Steinberg with the poison pill tactic: a leveraged buy back of Disney stock at a price that would put Disney too far in debt for Steinberg to be able to sell off the pieces of the empire. Finally, Ron Miller paid greenmail to Steinberg and an imitative second raider: Irwin Jacobs. Roy Disney Jr., son of Walt's brother Roy, lead the charge to oust Ron Miller.

In 1984, Michael Eisner succeeded Ron Miller as CEO. Eisner and his knight, Frank Wells awakened Sleeping Beauty in her castle and with the help of the princely Bass brothers and their money, drove away the takeover artists. Eisner brought in the creative wizards: George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola to build some new attractions like Star Tours and Captain EO. Eisner's style of leadership was not rooted in the storytelling style and story-control processes that Walt had used to control his empire. Walt had been a visual man, a cartoonist who liked each of his project made visual. Eisner was from the movie industry, where scripts were written down. Whereas Disney had sketches made and pinned to the wall for his inspection and approval. Eisner and friends transformed the "mouse museum" into a major film studio, multiplied the theme parks, and kept the Disney Empire together (Boje, 1990). 9

Deconstructing the Disney Legend. We organized the stories according to voices, totalism, universalism, essentialism, and panoptic gaze. We will look at three leaders: Walt Disney who invented Disney and took animation from the pre-mod to modern; Ron Miller who symbolizes the bureaucratic, modern manager of the Mickey Mouse museum; Michael Eisner, who rode in on a white horse to rescue Disney Corporation from its bureaucratic cage as well as a hostile takeover and symbolizes, to us, the initial transition to postmodern leadership.

Voices. As you read the Disney stories, deconstruct the "voices." Who gets a voice in the Walt stories, whose voice is marginal, who guests no voice at all? In Walt's stories there is typically one voice and it is Walt's. Walt rarely allowed any "voice" other than his own to be heard. Walt refers to his wife, Lilly, as "Mrs. Disney." Perhaps a formality of his generation, but a signal of possession none the less. Walt took ownership of everything about Disney. Musicians and composers of the musical accompaniment for Disney's movies and short were referred to as "my musicians". Cartoonist were "my artists". "My brother, my uncle, my father, my daughter, my pal" are all references to people made by Walt, but none of whom was ever given a more personal reference by name. Certainly none were ever the voices of Disney's storytelling organization. There is one exception to Walt's possession of people and their talents; his characters. Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Tico Tico, Goofy, Jose Carioca (a parrot), all are allowed a voice in the Disney organization; mostly because they are the Disney organization. Walt recognized this.

When we looked at the Eisner stories, the deconstruction process shows how he gives identity to the many voices that are present at Disney. George Lucas, Michael Jackson, and Walt all have stories as actors and participants in the Disney organization. Whereas Walt uses personal experience narratives, Michael Eisner tells more third person stories through a narrative style. For example:

Actually on the 30th Anniversary night, I came down here with Frank and the writer from New York Times and I was proudly telling about all the things we were doing at Disneyland and I got to the George Lucas-Star Wars rides and having heard from Dick and other people the attractive attraction which Disneyland ever had was during Inner Space, I told her we were replacing it. We're going to put in this great Star Wars attraction with technology that has never been seen before. It's gonna be the attraction that's going to replace that "dog" Inner Space. She said, "How can you say - that Dog? That's the most brilliant attraction ever at Disney. Walt Disney himself designed it. How can you ruin Disney?" She then dragged me to go over on it. We rode it twice. She called me a monster. And I haven't told anybody it's a dog. So it's not my fault. I just want you to know that it's not gonna be as good as the Star Wars attraction will be. (line 898-913, VT699; Boje 1992).

Totalism. In deconstruction, a totalism is an historical account which privileges one particular and rather narrow point of view. To deconstruct, we look at the stories that are not told as part of the grand story of Disney. As part of Walt's dominating voice at Disney is the history of Disney...as told by Walt. History is a recount of events as seen and enacted by participant observers. Disney's "official" history was told by one man from one perspective. The Disney story is a commodification as well as a control device. It is commodification because Walt is himself one of the characters of Disney, the way that Mickey Mouse is a character of Disney. Walt's story is control because it contains the embellishment of the Disney philosophy, the one man logic of what to do, what to say, how to walk the Disney walk. The story contains the Disney focus on neatness, order, the enactment of life in the Midwest town.

For Ron Miller, even though I did not record any of his storytelling, I do know the ghost of Walt was remained at the helm. In the many committees that reproduced during Miller's administration, people would often say: "what would Walt have done?" They would tell the story of how Walt handled a similar situation and then do it that way. People called Disney the Mouse Museum referencing their traditional Walt-Midwestern values, their conservative deals --- people who took on Disney film projects got paid less than industry standards. Walt's story of Disney was continuing its life force without Walt peering out of the castle tower at his expanding empire. I think there was no room at the top of Disney for both Ron and Walt.

When I look at Eisner's approach to totalisms, I see more paradoxical accounts. The paradox is Eisner could both reference Walt's history and attack Walt's strategy as out of date for Disney in the same discourse. For example, while Eisner would invoke the Walt legend to bridge into his own strategies "This is how Walt did it" he would then challenge the Walt legend "but, this is where Walt and I part company."

I couldn't follow it (said Eisner). I'd go down there and they'd go through the story boards. And you go through one storyboard and they'd bring in another story board. And, I';d sit there for hours and I couldn't remember what was in the first story board. And, it was a hard process for me to deal with. I'd been used to working in the script area.

And, I was a little critical of some of our animated films that had been done before Walt died. Because I think there were great scenes but a lot of scenes put together. But, sometimes the art of the story (as he motions his hands back and forth in an art in the air) didn't follow the way I was used to thinking about stories, or what I learned in school about the construction of ---the stories and all that. And I'd keep thinking about this.

And every time I'd say: "How was it done in the past?" And I'd hear about Walt. He'd just be there and he'd jump up and down and he'd go back and between thing and so forth. And Roy Disney (Jr.) told me a story about how he sat on his bed when he had the flu or the mumps or something and told the entire story of Pinocchio in the bed. And, I finally discovered they did have a script (emphasized).

And the script was in Walt Disney's head. We didn't have Walt Disney. And therefore we didn't have a single mind, tracking the entire movie. We had (a) committee of minds. And that was the problem. And now we do scripts (Lines 2817 to 2942; Benson, 1989 Video; also in Boje, 1992).

Eisner is telling his story in a way that deconstructs the Walt Disney Story. He is pulling on one of the strings of the story's fabric, and in the process, unraveling the grand account. Walt's control over the storytelling process of Disney is going to change to allow Eisner to get scripts instead of storyboards, to have script meetings instead of storyboard meetings. Eisner is also using the stories he hears of Walt as an inquiry into the Disney system. Eisner is not postmodern man. Rather, he is opening up the modernist account that Disney has been living out for many generations to other interpretations. The history of animation that is Disney, still does not give much voice to the legions of artists and technicians that made Disney. For these stories look to Charles Shows (1979) who was a scriptwriter for the TV shows and movies and tells his side of working with Walt. See Jack Kinney's (1988) side of the story of animators, how the animator's lived in the most marginal quarters, away from the main lot in a dilapidated apartment building, not getting their names on their work. Schickel (1985) tells the tale of Disney commerce and art. 10 Finally John Taylor's (1987) account of Storming the Magic Kingdom tells the multi-facets stories of how Disney transitioned from Walt to Miller and then to Eisner leadership.11

Universalisms. A universal is a grand and macro principle, a sweeping statement to gloss over a lot of differences in the local accounts. Walt advocated, for example, that Disney stay with the "G" movie market. He felt that it would be bad for business to get his cartoons, TV show, and theme park associated with "R" films, even though it was clear that the youth market was increasingly repelled by the idea of being caught dead at a "PG" let alone, the staple of Disney, the "G" movie. In this next story, we get a story of a story. Eisner, speaking at the 1984 stockholder's meeting is recounting a portion of a speech (a story) that Walt once gave (Walt's story).

Take A Chance

And I quote (says Eisner).

When I was 21, I went broke for the first time. I slept in chair cushions in my studio in Kansas City and ate cold beans out of the can. I took another look at my dream and set out to Hollywood. Foolish? Not as a youngster. An older person might have had too much common sense to do it. Sometimes I wonder if common sense isn't another way of saying, fear. And fear too often spells failure. In the lexicon of youth there is no such word as fail. Remember the story about the boy who wanted to march in the circus parade. The band master needed a trombonist so the boy signed up. He hadn't marched a block before the band master demanded, "Why didn't you tell me you couldn't play the trombone?" The boy said, "How would I know? I never tried it before." (line 195-207)

Of course the speech was given by Walt Disney and it was entitled: "Take a Chance." Walt was already a grandfather at that time and concluded the speech this way:

"If I am no longer young in age I hope to stay young enough in spirit never to fear failure, young enough still to take a chance and march in the parade." (line 209-212; Boje, 1992)

This is one of many places in this stockholder meeting that Eisner invokes the Disney legend.

"In 1923, Walt arrived in Hollywood with drawing materials under his arm, $40 in his pocket, and a dream. Waiting for him at Union Station was his brother Roy who would dedicate his life to making Walt's dream come true. Together with their wives: Lily and Universalism, working alongside them at night around the kitchen table, they struggled to keep a tiny studio alive (lines 223-229; Boje, 1992).

There is an official discourse and there are many marginalized discourses in every organization. What is interesting, is that though Roy and Walt were partners, Roy has no character and no voice at all in the Disney account. Here is Eisner giving Roy a characterization, that was not in Walt's egoist account of the founding of Disney. For Walt, it was Walt Disney alone who developed the Disney machine of Walt Disney Productions. Look at how animator and author, Jack Kinney renders the account:

It was a lovely spring evening in Paris. Roy Disney, Sr., and Jack Cutting had just finished a fine dinner and were taking a stroll. They talked of various subjects related to the studio, mixed with general small talk. They were relaxed and in a reminiscent mood, and finally Jack asked, "Roy, now that Walt is gone, why don't you take some of the credit for the development of the studio since the early days?" Roy stopped Jack with a hand on his arm and said, "Let me tell you a story.

When Walt and I first started in business, we had a little studio on Vermont Avenue - really a storefront, with a gold-leaf sign on the front window reading 'Disney Brothers Productions.' As we prospered, we needed larger quarters and we found them in a building on Hyperion Avenue, close to our original store. One evening when Walt and I were discussing our move, Walt said to me, 'Roy, when we move to Hyperion, I'm going to have a large neon sign erected, reading "Walt Disney Studios, Home of Mickey Mouse and Silly Symphonies." He looked at me as if expecting an argument. I said, 'If that's the way you want it.' And Walt said, 'That's the way I want it and that's the way it will be!' And that's the way it was. So you see, Jack, I think it's a little late now, and besides, that's the way Walt would have wanted it." (Kinney, p.198)

Eisner, goes on in his stockholder speech to further turn on the legend:

"No one was more sensitive to change nor more attuned to its possibilities than Disney himself. I believe that Walt would take great pride in announcing with me today that our company has concluded an arrangement with George Lucas hose film-making innovations have created the Indiana Jones and Star Wars series of movie... I don't know if Walt would be more pleased with this announcement because George today comes closest to the creative level of Walt himself or because George as a child was there 39 years ago at the opening day of Disneyland.... In Disney's business the fundamental idea can apply to a motion picture, a Disney Channel, or network TV show, a new pavilion, a theme park attraction, or a merchandise offering" (lines 237-256; Boje, 1992).

 

The universal's here are the ways in which the story of Walt is reshaped by Eisner to fit his particular vision of Disney, the Corporation, is to react to change; how Disney the man, would have welcomed the creative genius of George Lucas; how Disney the spirit lives on in the merchandise. Eisner is like Gorbachev, reshaping the Marxian Grand Narrative to sent the Soviet Union down a new path. In Eisner's case, he is opening the doors of the Disney museum and letting new curators rearrange the exhibits. It is still the same story, but the base of participation is being widened by Eisner.

Walt had a universal vision of a vast empire in which his cartoons, characters, TV shows, and Films would culminate in the production of Disneyland theme Park. The theme park was based on Walt's vision of a small Midwestern town, the one Walt knew as a boy. Disneyland is Walt's archetype of an ideal American town. All facets of the Disney operation "synergized." The toons and movies produced the characters which became theme rides and exhibits and walking characters in the theme park. The TV show, movies, and toons told the Disney characters and the TV series sold the concept of a theme park.

To deconstruct Disney is to look at the stories that get marginalized by the official Disney legend: the account to Walt's founding story and his triumphs in animation, theme parks, and merchandising.

Essentialism. An essentialism, is similar to a universal, except that it is a micro theory, an appeal to a foundation essential of human character. We have seen several already, in the accounts of Eisner about Walt. Walt has the character to "accept the risk," "make the change" "act like a young man," "be the creative genius." These norms are held out to the flock.

If you read the lesser accounts of Walt, such as those of Kinney and Shows, then you hear Walt referred to as "Der Fuhrer" and "Mr. Fear." In the office art, one a set of drawings called "the Seven Faces of Walt" circulated (Kinney, p. 157) Walt was Simon Legree, Der Fuhrer, The Bountiful Angel, Mr Nice Guy, Ebeneezer Scrooge, Beezelbub the Devil, and of course Mickey Mouse (with a dollar sign as the s in mouse ("mou$e"). Jones (1991) has suggested that people tell these informal accounts when the strong ideation system of the organization does not allow for people to speak up about the oppression they are enduring.12

By most non-official accounts, Walt is said to have ruled with an iron fist. If you disagreed with Walt, you could get fired. If you broke a rule of Walt's you would be fired. Everything was owned by Walt Disney Productions. Walt was everything, including all people.

Frustrated by the noise of a lawn mower outside the conference room window... He opened it, and yelled at the top of his voice, "Shut off that goddamned machine and get the hell away from here, you stupid son-of-a-bitch!"

The roar of the power mower stopped abruptly. Once again, all was quiet. The Disney executives resumed their meeting.

Ten minutes later the session was interrupted again, by a phone call. It was Disney [Walt]. His tone was stern. He ordered Harry to come to his office "at once".

"Harry," Walt growled, appraising him, "I understand you just raised hell with one of my gardeners."

"I'm sorry, Walt," Harry shifted uneasily. "I guess I lost my cool."

Walt glared at him. "That old man has been with me twenty-two years," he snapped, "and if I ever hear of you cussing him out again --- I'll fire your ass!"

"I'm sorry, Walt," Harry murmured, shaken. "It won't happen again --- I promise." and he started toward the door.

But Walt stopped him in his tracks. "And another thing," he barked "Always remember this --- I'm the only son-of-a-bitch around this studio!" (Shows, p. 70)

 

Walt was very intense and moody and was not above using scare tactics in his meetings. He had strong likes and dislikes and held a grudge forever. What is interesting about this observation and the next story is the way in which the grand story of Disney and the public personification of Walt is the nice guy who made it big by being creative and enterprising. It is as if you are dealing with a family that is in denial, that they have a perfectionistic, workaholic addict that often uses temper to keep the family in line. Schaef (1987) has written about the ways in which organizations exhibit process addictions and behave much the same as substance-abuse families. 13 No matter what daddy does, tell the right cover (up) story to everyone. Look at the dysfunctional games below.

Walt roamed his domain with a hard-heeled stride that, along with his distinctive cough, warned us of his arrival. He'd crash through the door, stride to a chair, sit down, and tap his fingers on the arm until one of the guys grabbed a pointer and proceeded to tell the story.

He'd usually allow the guy to finish, then all the boys would hold their breath until he started talking. We studied him the way he studied the boards. If he coughed, you knew you'd lost his attention. A slow tap meant he was just thinking, but a fast tap meant he was loosing his cool... If you had something good, Walt usually said he liked it right out. Then everybody could relax and get on wit the meeting. Sometimes he could be very enthusiastic, and all the guys would fly high around the room and pitch in to use his suggestions for tightening the stuff up, then help move the boards into the director's room and into production.

If he didn't like it, he'd want to get out before any more money was spent. He'd stomp from the room, leaving the poor guys responsible with egg on their faces. (Kinney, p.151)

 

Suddenly I heard the unit door bang open, and with a few coughs, Walt made his appearance, quickly sitting in front of the boards and immediately starting to drum his fingers on the chair arm. This was a surefire tip that he was in one of his gorilla moods. Frowning at the empty chairs, he lit a cigarette and said, "Okay, Jack, let's get going. What are you waiting for?"

So I started telling the story...as each of the various groups gathered, they realized that "man was in the forest" ( a line from Bambi) as they quietly seated themselves. (Kinney, p. 93)

Walt also made it a habit to keep his plans in his head, assemble each project part by part, team by team, while keeping central control. Walt moved animation away from a system of seasonal employment for skilled animators and in its place concocted a system of departments, production phases, and interorganizational contracts. Instead of a skilled craftsmen doing a job from story to drawings to inking to background, Walt split the production process into phases, put a department over each phase, appointed a department head, and in the end bureaucratized cartooning. In story meetings, Walt would listen to story plot ideas, give the OK to some and shelve the rest.

Walt was the king of his Sleeping Beauty Castle. Everyone that worked for Walt was his subject. It was a clean and tidy place, with a place fore everyone, and everyone kept in their place. Every element was pre-planned to be noncompetitive with every other element. Walt, by all accounts (Kinney, 1988; Shows, 1979) ruled by fear. There was not much middle management. It was the ideal flat structure with just enough layers to be efficient and to leave Walt in control.

Walt's Panoptic Gaze. In an organization that commodifies stories by buying up options for children's stories at low prices, putting the story through the Disney machine, and out-putting it as cartoons or movies, followed by merchandising, and then theme park exhibition, it is no surprise that storytelling is itself a valued commodity at Disney. Walt prefer "G" rated stories. But, Walt used the process of storytelling as a process of control.

It all began when Webb Smith, around 1931 pioneered the process of story boarding. Webb, it seems, was a hell of an artist, but a bit messy for Walt's taste. Webb had the nasty habit of sketching gag sequences instead of writing them down, and then tossing them in (to others) a rather confusing mess all over the floor of his office. To avoid Walt's penalties for being uncleanly, Webb took to pinning his sketches on the walls. Walt was initially quite furious: "the holes will ruin the walls, that I spent good money redecorating" (Schieckel, 1985: 148; Kinney, 1988: 62). Webb began pinning his rough sketches to 2 by 8 foot and later 4 by 6 foot boards. He could easily reposition the sketches until the continuity of the story scenes had been achieved. Scene backgrounds and dialogue could then be pinned to the sketches. Hundreds of drawings on Webb's storyboards would get repositioned until the story was ready for telling at a story meeting. The idea spread, with Walt's advocacy, and every story meeting, every project, and over the years every film, every them ride, every layout was story boarded. A group could work with the story board, perfect the story, and use the boards to coordinate production. Walt took the process a step further.

Walt's Gaze. Walt, it seems was an obsessive control snoop. He made it his habit to roam the halls at night so he could take a peek at the progress of every project in his domain. Unit managers ("straw bosses") would also snoop and run back and forth to report the progress of each project to Walt. Foucault (1977: 175-180) defines the panoptic gaze as a multiple, automatic, continuous, hierarchical, and anonymous power functioning in a network of relations from top to bottom, from bottom to top, as well as laterally to hold the enterprise together with no shade anywhere to hade from the eternal gaze. 15 Walt could roam his kingdom and literally gaze his empire's projects through the story boards and thereby look at the workings of each departmental cell. Biographies, such as Kinney's report that Disney people learned to internalize the gaze. They would behave as if Walt had actually visited last night, inspected what they were doing, and was getting ready to raise hell. Foucault refers to this internalized gaze as Bertham's Principle: power should be visible and unverifiable (p. 203). Actually Disney's was a less than perfect cage of subjection. People knew the signs to look for to discern Walt's gazing rituals. If Walt had come in the night, then Chesterfield cigarette butts would be everywhere since Walt was a chain smoker. Walt could also not resist messing with the boards.

As mentioned above, Walt had a stenographer record story meetings. A typical story performance session could last from one to three hours and involve as many as twenty people. Walt not only gazed the story plots for sellability, he assessed the neatness of the boards. Kinney's (1988) story of Walt's leadership style gives us insight into how Walt had constructed his cartoon machine. Before reading the story, I need to insert that what is postmodern about this story of Walt, is that we are getting one of the very few glimpses of the non-official story of Walt. Kinney is a marginalized character at Disney, an artist who does not get to sign his own work, by his account someone paid less than fair market value for art that is sold for millions. A single frame of a thousand frame cartoon drawn by Jack Kinney now commands thousands of dollars. In looking at Kinney's story, we are deconstructing Walt and Disney's side of the Disney monologue.

Eisner's Gaze is the Script. Instead of storyboard sessions, there are now script meetings. Instead of a visual blueprint, there is a written narrative blueprint. The difference being the script is not quite the control mechanism that the storyboard system was. Walt could walk the corridors of his empire and visually examine the progress of each department by inspecting their storyboards. The script is not so perfect a cage as a network of storyboards in every aspect of the empire. Storyboards give more surveillance opportunities than scripts. Storyboards also give more direct control over production by a central leader. Walt could control and monitor the juxtaposition of dialogue, music, scene design, and scene sketching.