Disneyland Historically Speaking - Essay Example

Disneyland Historically Speaking Since its opening day in 1955, Disneyland in Anaheim, California has proved to be a strong tourist attraction for young and old alike. The theme park was a new innovation in tourism travel and offered visitors a combination of things to do that had not previously been packaged together in quite such a fashion or to quite such a high degree. Disneyland literally remade the American ideals of urban Main Street and country village even as it presented its own conceptions of future ideals and means of expression. The park has proven to be more popular than Washington D.C. as a family destination and continues to attract more adults than children to its concrete walkways and thrilling roller coaster rides in spite of numerous ‘copy-cat’ theme parks being erected such as the Six Flags parks or Cedar Point. Although the park has been widely criticized for its inherent plasticity and its remaking of the American ideals, Disneyland has stood as a cultural icon and popular pilgrimage stop for any and all who wish to feel they have ‘experienced’ America. While many may consider Disneyland to be too full of modernistic pop art meaninglessness, others taking a closer look at the amusement park have found an authentic response to the ideals Disneyland presents to the average visitor as compared with other amusement parks of its type. Part I – Traveler’s responses to Disneyland Origins and popularity Disneyland had its origins in Walt Disney’s desires to create a world of his own, in which people could enjoy the good life and live, if only for a day, in a world of fantasy. Disney, a consummate entertainer, wanted to find a way to make his filmic creations come to life for his audiences, giving them a chance to live in the world of fairy tale. At the same time, he wanted to provide families with a vacation destination that was cleaner and safer than the types of amusement parks that were available elsewhere (King, 1981). Disney’s dream was to create a park that reinforced and validated middle class values and a connection to the nostalgic past through the properties of play. This concept has been proven in sociological research. “Implicit in Bateson’s work … is the notion that culture is built upon the playful capacity, since playing is the first step toward learning that a sign is only a sign” (Moore, 1980: 208). Disney largely succeeded. Mike Wallace (1985) proclaims that the park saw 33 million visitors in 1983, with visitor numbers climbing every year. Although it is designed ostensibly as a children’s amusement park, King points out that there are as many as four adults visiting the park for every child, indicating that there is something more at work than the simple cartoon characters on the imaginations of America. A study of the demographics of Disney World, particularly the EPCOT center, reveals that most of the people who visit this portion of the Disney parks are professionals or managers making a median income of $35,700 annually. “This is not a working-class attraction. Nor do Blacks (3 percent) or Hispanics (2 percent) come in large numbers … A process of class self-affirmation seems to be at work” (Moore, 1980: 53). Disney’s attractions are purposely geared toward the more affluent members of society by building off of those elements of other parks he’d seen in the nation that were considered undesirable or questionable. Forerunners To a large extent, Disneyland, the original park, is derived in part from its primary forerunners, Coney Island and Riverside. Both of these locations offered thrills and excitement to visitors through fast rides, exotic attractions and games of chance and challenge. These were themselves based upon the success of the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition held in Chicago and the 1939 World’s Fair in New York. One of Disney’s goals in creating Disneyland was to “replace the risk-taking, sense of danger, commercialism, salaciousness and morbidity associated with the amusement parks’ standard ‘thrill rides,’ barkers, concession stands, games of chance played for prizes and sex and freak shows, with safety, wholesomeness, patriotic and educational values” (King, 1981: 119). A great deal of the attraction of these types of parks was the ability of the visitors to escape the daily routine of their lives and loosen the strict bounds of social correctness for a little while. However, the earlier world’s fairs had contained ingredients that Coney Island and Riverside missed. These fairs included four types of attractions that were synchronized to provide a total package presentation. These included amusement parks and rides, stage representations of appropriate architecture for the theme, the use of the most updated high technology and the presentation of an ideal urban community (Zukin, 1991). Other ideas Disney ‘borrowed’ from these predecessors included small shows or theaters that depicted other cultures or ways of life depicted on stages that were in keeping with the national ‘vernacular’ architecture, exhibits of the newest available or shortly to be available technologies and an idea of an ideal urban community. Taking the fun elements of the carnival atmosphere and the multiple forms of attractions exemplified in the world’s fairs, Disney mixed in the elements of historic forms of entertainment such as the tableaux and the holiday camp. For example, the astounding President’s show in Frontierland is said to be largely inspired by presentations that had been a tradition in ages past. “They descend, in part, from the patriotic dioramas, tableaux vivants, and waxworks of the nineteenth century. Disney upgraded the technology … but the red-white-and-blue spirit remained much the same” (Wallace, 1985: 39-40). While Disney had generally stayed clear of covering historical subjects, there is a clear, deliberate and unmistakable effort to ensure history was included at Disneyland, which was later transplanted to Disney World. Wallace (1985) suggests this is a result of amusement parks that were already in existence when Disney began building his first park such as Colonial Williamsburg and Greenfield Village. The holiday camp, to be discussed, provided an atmosphere of family vacation location offering many of the same comforts of home without any of the same responsibilities. The primary draw to these types of camps was the intimate familiarity the guests felt with the staff, at once directed through the provided activities while feeling in complete control of the situation because of the degree of personal service. Again, Disney took the fun elements of these parks, the historical reference, nostalgic atmosphere and sense of participation and worked to overcome the more negative elements. Desires it works on Disneyland works on the desire of the modern consumer to escape the uglier realities of life today and escape back into a more perfect and innocent past. One of the most important desires Disneyland works on is the desire for nostalgia, or a return to childhood as a time we think of as innocent and carefree. “As Kant, in his Anthropologia, suggested, it is really another time, not another place, that we want to re-experience; we want to recapture childhood” (King, 1981: 131). To accomplish this, Disney presented a past recreated and improved to reflect the type of happy past the dominant culture would like to envision for itself. “Disneyland skips over those portions of portrayed history that have a tendency to cause controversy or stress among people of that period or in times since” (Wallace, 1985: 36). Entry into the park is through Main Street USA, which is Disney’s impression of the idealistic quintessential small Midwestern town, distorted just enough to bring the visitor, regardless of age, into a child’s perspective while remaining fully functional as shops and other attractions. Another one of the ways that Disney attempted to ‘clean up’ the park atmosphere was by reducing the visibility of exchanging cash for rides or games, invoking a sense of happier times when money wasn’t the base of all activity. Instead, tickets are exchanged for cash outside the gates and the only cash required within the gates is confined almost exclusively to the gift shops and food vendors. In addition to the reduction of modern-day commercialism within the park, “the playful, romanticized tone of false-front buildings and props create an atmosphere of total theater ‘which exceeds the wildest dreams of avant-garde dramatists.’” (King, 1981: 127). Visitors to the park are able to experience a number of differing themes and environments with themselves playing a central role in the action. Through this process, they are able to do just what was desired, escape from the cares and worries of today into a world of fantasy, history and future technology. Part II – How tourist industry has presented Disneyland Is Disneyland better thought of as modern or post-modern? Disneyland is better thought of as a postmodern self-contained city rather than a modern construction because of the various ways in which it struggles against the corporate construction to present a multi-dimensional environment. While modernism has a tendency to approach humanity as a collective group, mechanizing human behavior into a series of repetitive tasks and elemental parts, postmodernism approaches humanity from a more individualistic perspective, taking into account multiple nationalism and presenting an idealized image of a quintessential American dream. This is reflected in everything from the largely pictorial park communications to the carefully constructed crowd control devices that avoid the sense of being controlled. “Disney’s desire for efficient and humane handling of large numbers of people … to be treated with courtesy and made to feel relaxed, led the Disney research staff into a whole new field of ‘public engineering’” (King, 1981: 122). The parks observe concepts that are only now being considered in the broader scale, such as designing on a pedestrian scale and providing non-polluting machinery to assist in transport over larger distances. At the same time, the emphasis in all concepts is the enjoyment and comfort of the visitor. When ‘people-mover’ technology is employed to transfer from one place to another, the routes are plotted to provide the visitor with a pleasant view and a comfortable, relaxing ride. The natural movements of people are taken into consideration given wide varieties in ages and energy levels and present the ideal impression of a well-designed town. Food and shopping are placed in convenient proximity to rides and simple rest areas with park benches and greenspace are available at frequent intervals. According to King (1981), a great deal of the attraction of this type of design is that it is reminiscent of the quaint old world villages of Italy, France and England in which people were friendlier and more willing to share a seat with a weary walker of an evening. This comprises a post-modern approach as a direct reaction against the dehumanizing and privatized spaces of the modern city, designed for the smooth operation and dependence upon machines. “Disney’s interest in urban planning stemmed from his direct experience of – and despair with – Los Angeles urban sprawl and the attendant problems of transportation, pollution, overcrowding and the transcience and alienation of city dwellers in a huge metropolis formed mainly of suburbs without cohesive community atmosphere” (King, 1981: 123). Describing the layout of Disney World in Orlando, Moore (1980) illustrates how the visitor standing in Town Square on Main Street will find themselves making their choice of direction based upon a large sundial in which theme lands are placed in a certain type of logical opposition. In presenting his world in this way, this is a call to the ancient forms of navigation and time-telling as well as a tendency to avoid making judgments on the available options. “Walt’s original ability to abstract the desires of the powerless from the vernacular of Main Street and the Midway, and project them as a landscape for mass visual consumption, mapped a new vernacular image of a postmodern society” (Zukin, 1991: 230). In his presentation, Disney is able to synthesize the collected memory of an imagined America and distill them into a visual playground equally accessible by all, regardless of their particular approach. What values did it appeal to? Much of Walt Disney’s vision of a perfect American past rested on his own ideas of middle-class Midwestern values. The park clearly encourages the traditional Protestant values of the settlers in prizing a strong work ethic, highlighting strong pragmatism and focusing on efficiency. At the same time, the parks epitomize strongly American values such as an enthusiasm for exploration, having faith in the progress of the nation and encouraging technological inventiveness as a means of furthering industrial expansion. King (1981) provides an entire list of the values the parks speak to including: “the mechanistic, deterministic view of the doctrine of progress; pragmatism, applied science, the Protestant Ethic, materialism; collectivism; the Social Ethic, specialization and centralization. In an American Studies sense, the parks are perfect museums for the study of each of these features of the system of American popular beliefs, as well as American beliefs about other cultures” (King, 1981: 129). However, moving in the more modern context of the EPCOT brings out more of the modern approach of the park as it attempts to lull visitors into a sense of such comfort that they feel comfortable relinquishing all attempts at control and come to believe the corporations will take care of everything. As Moore (1980) points out, “The progression goes like this: history was made by inventors and businessmen; the corporations are the legatees of such a past; this pedigree entitles them to run Tomorrow. Citizens can sit back and consume” (47). This represents classic modernization theory at the 1950s-1960s stage, before maximization of wealth overpowered other ideals. Part III – Compare Disneyland with other holiday destinations Was Disneyland just another amusement/theme park or was it something new? A brief description of Disneyland might tend to link the park with any number of other amusement parks that sprang up around the same period in history, or even in direct imitation of the successful west coast entertainment center. However, in its attention to detail on every level, the park differed significantly from these others in the types of entertainment offered as well as in the degree to which these amusements were couched within their thematic elements. In this, Disney created an entirely new venue, the atmospheric theme park. “That Disneyland significantly departed from the dominant fantasy landscape of the time was dramatized when Disney failed to arouse enthusiasm in a convention of amusement park owners that previewed plans for the park in 1953” (Zukin, 1991: 222-223). Comparing Disney’s proposal to other parks, investors pointed out that Disneyland wouldn’t have near the same number of rides available to the public, would have too much of its available land area wasted in simple parkland and would require extensive, consistent and expensive maintenance efforts to keep it operational. They were unable to appreciate the degree to which Disneyland would entertain in every facet of its existence. “Visitors to Disneyland paid for a variety of entertainment experiences linked by the narrative of the different themes. These in turn provided a narrative for different program segments on the Disney Studio’s weekly television series. Combining narrative with serial expectations, each visual product of the Disney Company fed into the others. Although commercial spin-offs were not a new creation, this commercialization was the most extensive to take place under a single corporate sponsor” (Zukin, 1991: 223). Another area in which Disneyland departed from other amusement parks was in its innovative use of robotics and other state of the art technology to give the park its illusory magic. “This ‘animation in the rough,’ ‘the grand combination of all the arts – using sculpture, painting, drama, theatre and film, combined with advanced electrical and engineering skills – made possible lifelike replicas of humans and animals capable of complex programmed motion and sound” (King, 1981; 119-120). One of the challenges facing Disney and his design team was discovering new means of incorporating available technology into the park. Only by introducing new functions for this old machinery would the park emerge as something new and different from what was available elsewhere. “The originality of these custom-made rides has given the parks a reputation for technical expertise and progressiveness as much as for entertainment” (King, 1981: 120). Among these innovations were the von Roll skyrides, the Alweg monorail, Circle Vision and the swivel car. Is Eurodisney less authentic or more exploitative than Disneyland (Anaheim)? There is valid concern that the recreation of Disneyland in other regions such as Eurodisney will not experience the same degree of success. Disneyland, built on the unique values and traditions of America, may lose a great deal of its charm and thus be exposed as more exploitive or less authentic than the original. “The internationalization of commodity forms in leisure (and other) industries means that tourists recognize the theme park formula as familiar whatever country they are in. When travel is structured around the search for an experience of cultural difference, the theme park is rejected as just more of the same and hence as international rather than national culture” (Hawkins, 1990: 224). The difficulty of simply transplanting a formula themed approach from one country to another is illustrated through the attempt to Australianize the formula of the Wild West used in America and Canadian parks. This was done in the case of the Canadian-based Wonderworld parks which transplanted Disney’s basic formula for Frontierland into Australia as the Goldrush. The only true changes made in this transition were found in the substitution of attraction names that more accurately reflected Australian history. For the most part, though, it has been discovered that there is not enough difference from one country to another for consumers to feel they need to waste time touring the site rather than visiting uniquely Australian locations. Hawkins (1990) suggests a large part of Wonderland’s failure to appeal to Australia’s public to the same degree that Disneyland has appealed to the American public is partially the result of awareness of the commoditization of history and children’s entertainment and the associated resentment of this manipulation. It is also the result of a failure on the part of the park to incorporate themes that actually would appeal to Australians. The cartoon characters used to promote the park don’t have the same deep cultural history with Australia that Mickey Mouse enjoys with his audience while the other themes, such as Medieval Times, don’t apply to a period actually experienced within the confines of Australia. “Here, the Goldrush theme is the single area that makes a gesture towards Australian content” (Hawkins, 1990: 223). It is important to note, however, that this is only a gesture. Like Disneyland, the history offered is itself a pseudo-history offered by the corporation and largely imaginary as it focuses on the positive and ignores the negative. Does the inauthenticity at Disneyland lead to an obsession for authenticity elsewhere? Paradoxically, the inauthenticity of Disneyland seems to lead to a heightened sense of reality. This builds on the concepts of the front room and back room. The front room refers to the areas that guests and staff utilize while the back room refers to that area that staff alone is permitted to enter. This is where the real work gets done. Over the years, tourists began to question the authenticity of their experiences, realizing that they were being given the ‘front’ seat view of the regions they were visiting, but leaving without any real sense of the people or culture they had gone to learn about. The tendency has increasingly been to invite the tourist into the back room as a means of providing them with a sense of authenticity in that they are able to view the inner workings of the locality. However, in these cases, the back room tourists are invited into what might be termed a false back. This is a room designed to reveal the inner workings of the location but that has been cleaned up and Disneyfied to remove the negatives and accentuate the positives. “The lie contained in the touristic experience … presents itself as a truthful revelation, as the vehicle that carries the onlooker behind false fronts into reality. The idea here is that a false back is more insidious and dangerous than a false front, or an inauthentic demystification of social life is not merely a lie but a superlie, the kind that drips with sincerity” (MacCannell, 1999: 102-103). As a result, tourists or visitors have become jaded to the concept that they are being permitted into the back room and suspect there is something they’re missing. Again, Disney seems to have learned by example. Another popular destination point was the ghost towns of the old West. “In the ghost town … since the theatricality is explicit, the hallucination operates in making the visitors take part in the scene and thus become participants in that commercial fair that is apparently an element of the fiction but in fact represents the substantial aim of the whole imitative machine” (Eco, 1986: 43). In other words, the theatricality is exaggerated but lifesize, making it possible for visitors to join in or remain aloof, depending upon their individual inclination. This concept is applied to Main Street, Disneyland in which the street is presented as absolutely realistic on the ground floor. The inclusion of shops and food vendors in this portion of the park nearly forces visitors to take on their own roles as consumers in the town as they make their way down the street. At the same, the second stories of these buildings are constructed on a two-thirds scale “so they give the impression of being inhabitable (and they are) but also of belonging to a fantastic past that we can grasp with our imagination. The Main Street facades are presented to us as toy houses and invite us to enter them, but obsessively, believing that you are still playing” (Eco, 1986: 43). In presenting reality as fake, Disneyland manages to move beyond the presentation of other similar parks. It fully admits the presentation it provides is fake, but at the same time, to be usable by its visitors, it must also be real. Everything is presented as it might appear in actuality even when it is something such as a robot hippopotamus or alligator. “A real crocodile can be found in the zoo, and as a rule it is dozing or hiding, but Disneyland tells us that faked nature corresponds much more to our daydream demands” (Eco, 1986: 44). Disneyland’s inauthenticity is freely and openly acknowledged, but suggests a nostalgic sense of connecting with nature. It provides all the thrills on cue with none of the danger or discomfort. How do you explain the differences between Disneyland and other holiday destinations such as Port Macquarie in the decades after World War II? Following World War II, citizens in many nations suddenly found themselves ready to travel. As White (et al, 2005) explains, the war years forced everyone to remain very close to home thanks to limitations in petrol or other resources and working long hours thanks to high demand for the products required for war. People were separated from family either as men went to fight the war or parents went to work in the factories to support the war. Once the war was over, families had a strong desire to spend quality time with each other, had extra income to spend on consumer goods and a strong urge to explore. However, the construction of tourist destinations could not keep up with the demand because housing shortages took precedence over the building of vacation properties. As the concept of a ‘holiday’ moved into a required benefit for all workers, the need rose for family destinations away from home. Therefore, some of the first entertainment centers to be built were designed with traditional ‘country’ ideals in mind. “In 1948 the NSW Branch of the Australian Railways Union opened a camp at Sussex Inlet, with seven family cabins, a store, six fishing boats and later a tennis court” (White et al, 2005: 124). Originally, most Australians made their way to the beach to camp out for a few weeks, but the more popular camping locations soon began to become more developed as vacation properties were developed to provide more comfortable, ‘home-like’ accommodations and new amenities such as swimming pools, barbeque pits and tennis courts were installed. The concept that tourists to natural sights and locations were still seeking some sense of the familiar is reinforced by reports by Davidson and Spearritt (2000) that indicate explorers into the Australian plains during the 1800s frequently gave landmarks the names of locations they were familiar with ‘back home’ and had a tendency to construct more comfortable accommodations at those sights that were considered beautiful, picturesque, healthy or somehow a ‘retreat’ from the everyday. This pattern was repeated in many locations as ‘holiday camps’ developed. In this setting, families or singles would spend a week or two on vacation in a resort-type community. The customers would receive full treatment for everything and activities, such as daytime events, mealtime service and evening entertainment, were typically arranged by the staff. “The culture of the holiday camp is largely set and dominated by the young singles rather than the families, by staff rather than by campers, and by individual expectations rather than by the public roles” (Bandyopadhyay, 1973: 248). It is within the type of intimate give-and-take relationship between the staff and the camper, though, as it differs from the ideas of the total institution that begins to break down the camper’s sense of tourism and increases their feelings of comfort in belonging while still being able to experience something outside of their normal social bounds. “In the traditional models of total institutions, such as prisons and mental hospitals, there are certain dominant features. The interacting population is divided into two categories, the staff and the inmates. The latter are administratively and coercively controlled by the former” (Bandyopadhyay, 1973: 251). In the holiday camp as well, the staff remains in control, broadly speaking and the campers simply make their choices among the available options. In creating Disneyland, Disney understood this basic interaction and its importance in making his customers both feel a part of the action while relinquishing control to park staff. Disney’s mastery of this sort of interaction is seen in the methods of crowd management used at the park. As customers move through the park, there is a logical, ordered sequence provided that tends to direct visitors to specific areas in a specific sequence. Moving through the lines, customers are kept turning often as they make their way through mazelike structures and happily discover that the line is divided into several just before getting on the ride. Each line corresponds directly to an available seat on the ride’s car and each ride is manned by several polite and helpful attendants that ensure you are placed on the ride with your friends, are seated safely and are able to exit safely as well. The importance of a feeling of developed relationship with the staff is further emphasized in the employee training program, “University of Disney” in which employees are trained to always treat the visitors as greatly respected guests. “The cleanliness, courtesy and quality of the product on offer in Disneyland, combined with the well-heeled yet relaxed posture of the guests creates a universalizing particularity; a club-like atmosphere” (Hunt & Frankenberg, 1990: 117). In a similar way, the rides themselves represent this blend of camper/staff interaction. Describing the strictly scripted presentation of rides such as Haunted Mansion suggests the high degree in which the ride (as staff) manipulates the options of the rider (camper) just like a film, but that the ride offers a chance for the rider to glimpse beyond the scenes of the film to the ‘back room.’ “Unlike in a film, however, the visitor can … look round, which adds to the pleasure of submitting to deception, the joy of seeing partly how the illusion is created, which is denied to all but the most sophisticated moviegoers” (Hunt & Frankenberg, 1990: 112). The visitor is encouraged to become and certainly feels a part of the action, but is able through it all to know that this is the real experience, rather than something hidden in the back room. Conclusion Disneyland as a tourist destination has often been criticized as being too commercial, plastic and artificial. In some ways, this was exactly what Walt Disney had in mind – presenting the world with a playground of fantasy and nostalgia that could not be rivaled. This playground was completely false in that such a perfect world was not thought to be possible, but Disney brought it to life by making it life-sized, enabling children and adults to return to their childhood in ways they did not expect. This is primarily through his appeal to a widespread common value system that existed in the hearts and minds of the typical Midwest American Protestant. In recreating the amusement parks and giant fairs of Coney Island and the World’s Fair, Disney improved the design by including more of the attractions that delighted visitors at the World’s Fairs and excluded some of the more disagreeable elements of Coney Island. He incorporated an approach to the concept of the whole theater, in which audience and actors worked together to create a unified experience of playtime pleasure. Because much of the appeal of the park is based upon the nostalgia of America, it seems reasonable that success of Disney parks in other nations should be re-equipped to focus on the unique experiences and themes of the nation in which the park is placed. A negative example of this can be found in parks such as Wonderworld Australia. Because the park is similarly themed to parks located in the United States and Canada, very few tourists feel the need to visit the park as a unique part of the Australian experience. In its many paradoxes, Disneyland presents a unique experience unparalleled by others. Works Cited Bandyopadhyay, Pradeep. “The Holiday Camp.” Leisure and Society in Britain. Michael A Smith et al. London: 1973. Davidson, Jim and Peter Spearritt. “Origins.” Holiday Business: Tourism in Australia since 1870. Carlton, Victoria: The Miegunyah Press, 2000. Eco, Umberto. Travels in Hyperreality. London: Picador, (1986): 39-48. Hawkins, Gay. “Too Much Fun: Producing and Pleasure at Australia’s Wonderland.” Sport and Leisure: Trends in Australian Popular Culture. David Rowe & Geoff Lawrence (Eds.). Sydney: Harcourt Brace, (1990): 209-231. Hunt, P. and R. Frankenberg. “It’s a Small World: Disneyland, the family and the multiple representations of American childhood.” Constructing and Reconstructing Childhood: Contemporary issues in the sociological study of childhood. A. James and A. Proust (Eds.). London: Falmer, 1990. King, Margaret. “Disneyland and Walt Disney World: Traditional Values in Futuristic Form.” Journal of Popular Culture. Vol. 15, N. 1, (1981): 116-140. MacCannell, Dean. “Staged Authenticity.” The Tourist: A New Theory of the Leisure Class. Berkeley: University of California Press, (1999): 91-107. Moore, A. “Walt Disney World: Bound ritual space and the playful pilgrimage centre.” Anthropological Quarterly. Vol. 53, N. 4, 1980. Wallace, Mike. “Mickey Mouse History: Portraying the Past at Disney World.” Radical History Review. Vol. 32, (1985): 33-57. White, Richard; Sarah Jane Ballard, Ingrid Bown et al. “The Heyday of the Holiday, 1945-1975.” On Holidays: A history of getting away in Australia. North Melbourne: Pluto Press, (2005): 119-152. Zukin, Sharon. Landscapes of Power: From Detroit to Disney World. Berkeley, CA: 1991. Read More