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Abstract

This dissertation considers the relationship between emotional labour and theatrical detachment and how this relationship is affected by staff experiences and hardship in American Disney parks. Walt Disney strived to create a place for everyone away from the outside world, and achieved this through introducing theatrical detachment and employee performance throughout the parks. Therefore, show became a key aspect of the running of Disney parks and employees became known as cast members who were trained to perform emotional labour as part of their service work. By exploring the type of emotional labour performed by cast members, it could be considered that emotional labour has been developed further within Disney, adding a depth to the presentation of a character rather than a heighted presentation of one’s self, thus creating a sense of detachment from an individual’s personal feelings. A literature review was produced to give sociological context to these concepts alongside semi-structured interviews. This allowed for personal narratives from present and former cast members to be collected to generate conclusive findings surrounding both emotional labour and theatrical detachment. The relationship between these two concepts has been found to rely heavily on cast members’ experiences and hardships throughout their employment. All cast members reported using emotional labour during their shifts as well as feeling a sense of detachment from reality. However, differences arose dependant on cast member experiences as negative experiences would result in surface acting with dehumanising theatrical detachment, whereas positive experiences would result in deep acting with theatrical detachment due to enjoyment. There was also a difference in motivation of cast members compared to other service workers. Therefore, this study concluded that there is a distinct recognition of a relationship between emotional labour and theatrical detachment which can in turn cause emotional turmoil and cases of dehumanisation to occur.

Course: Sociology - BSc (Hons) - C0315

Date Deposited: 2022-06-06

URI/permalink: https://library.port.ac.uk/dissert/dis13918.html