Disneyland and history of it - Essay Example

Ultimately, rather than merely being an entertaining environment for families to spend leisure time, Disneyland was intended to be something of a historical/cultural interpretation of America, the American dream, the American past, the American future, and the American president. Through such a delineation and discussion of these different time frames and interpretations, it was Walt Disney’s distinct hope that Disneyland could be representative and indicative of the way in which individuals understood the country in which they live or indeed the country in which they visited.

As a function of understanding this particular dynamic, the following analysis will be concentric upon discussing the way in which Disneyland was representative of the United States, its experience, culture, and potential future, as well as discussing whether or not this representation was merely imaginatively fanciful or in fact was effective and ultimately represented a realistic/crude interpretation of life. Moreover, a unique discussion of what defined American greatness, at least with respect to Walt Disney himself, will also be engaged. . However, within this “Main Street USA”, Walt Disney represented a close-knit community that, although exhibiting a level of development and modernity that reflected the era in which it represented, nonetheless had a very small town feel and emphasize the importance of community interaction above many other aspects.

Yet, rather than representing Disneyland as something that was entirely concentric upon an idealized nation of Midwestern life, Walt Disney also created another identification of the United States with respect to what was termed as “Adventureland”. This particular representation was unique in that it represented the global reach and power that the United States was able to impact upon the world. A psychological or sociological analysis of this particular representation might lend the reader to assume that an element of colonize Asian or empire building was contingent upon Walt Disney’s personal interpretation of what made the United States great.

In short, “Adventureland” represented a Caribbean or Asian complement of the United States; indicative of territories that the United States held overseas as a result of both the Spanish-American war and the second world war. Naturally, and identification of Hawaii and the global reach of the United States, as well as the interaction between different cultures that represented the United States, was also part and parcel of this particular representation. Interestingly, “Adventureland” is one of the only interpretations the United States the Walt Disney made which emphasized cultural diversity.

Whereas Walt Disney was continually criticized for representing only a handful of African-American employees at Disneyland, first opened in the early 1950s, this representation of a