DISNEYLAND: EMBODYING AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY AND CULTURAL

VALUES FROM 1955 TO THE PRESENT

by

Erin Fee

A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of

The Wilkes Honors College

in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of

Bachelor of Arts in Liberal Arts and Sciences

with a Concentration in English

Wilkes Honors College of

Florida Atlantic University

Jupiter, Florida

May 2016

ii

DISNEYLAND: EMBODYING AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY AND CULTURAL VALUES FROM 1955 TO THE PRESENT

by

Erin Fee

This thesis was prepared under the direction of the candidate’s thesis advisor, Dr. Michael Harrawood, and has been approved by the members of her supervisory committee. It was submitted to the faculty of The Honors College and was accepted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Bachelor of Arts in Liberal Arts and Sciences. SUPERVISORY COMMITTEE: ____________________________ Dr. Michael Harrawood ____________________________ Dr. Daniel White ______________________________ Dean Jeffrey Buller, Wilkes Honors College ____________ Date

iii

ABSTRACT

Author: Erin Fee

Title: Disneyland: Embodying American mythology and cultural values

from 1955 to the present

Institution: Wilkes Honors College of Florida Atlantic University

Thesis Advisor: Dr. Michael Harrawood

Degree: Bachelor of Arts in Liberal Arts and Sciences

Concentration: English

Year: 2016

Disneyland Park, which opened in Anaheim, California on July 17, 1955, has

been a fixture of American culture for over sixty years. Each of its themed “lands” are

constructed to embody the popular perceptions of an abstract idea, such as the frontier,

tomorrow, and adventure. Even areas based on specific locations are primarily invested in

representing places as they exist in the American imagination. Culture is dynamic,

however, and public sensibilities evolve. The constant struggle to maintain societal

relevancy and resonance has revised nearly every facet of Disneyland’s narrative since its

opening, in ways both subtle and substantial.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

TEXT

1. INTRODUCTION ...................................................................................................1

2. CHAPTER 1: MAIN STREET, USA .....................................................................4

3. CHAPTER 2: FRONTIERLAND ..........................................................................8

4. CHAPTER 3: BEAR/CRITTER COUNTRY ......................................................28

5. CHAPTER 4: TOMORROWLAND .....................................................................40

6. CONCLUSION ......................................................................................................53 LIST OF IMAGES

I. Main Street, USA’s Town Square ...........................................................................5

II. Fort Wilderness Cemetery .......................................................................................9

III. A Disneyland visitor “becomes” Davy Crockett in this simple photo opportunity

Cemetery ................................................................................................................11

IV. A side-by-side comparison of the bobcat scene in Mine Train through Nature’s

Wonderland (left) and The Living Desert (right) ...................................................13

V. A side-by-side comparison of the bobcat scene in Mine Train through Nature’s

Wonderland (left) and The Living Desert (right) ...................................................13

VI. Frontierland river traffic (from left to right: a keelboat, the Columbia, a raft to

Tom Sawyer Island, and the Mark Twain) .............................................................16

VII. The Burning Cabin, Version 1 ...............................................................................18

VIII. The Indian War Party, 1957 ...................................................................................20

IX. Explorer’s Map of Tom Sawyer Island ..................................................................21

X. A goat chews a stick of dynamite ..........................................................................24

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XI. The new northern waterfront .................................................................................26

XII. James Baskett interacts with an animated Brer Rabbit as Uncle Remus ...............34

XIII. The sign above the fireplace quotes one of Uncle Remus’s preambles to his

stories: “Now this tale didn’t happen just yesterday, nor the day before, but long,

long ago.” ..............................................................................................................37

XIV. The ride scene to the left, and its film inspiration on the right ..............................38

XV. The ride scene to the left, and its film inspiration on the right ..............................38

XVI. The sleek Moonliner rocket towers over Tomorrowland ......................................40

XVII. The “Tomorrowland of Dairy” according to the American Dairy Association .....43

XVIII. Monsanto Magazine features the House of the Future ..........................................44

XIX. A staged photograph of the House of the Future ...................................................44

XX. The bustling new Tomorrowland of 1967 .............................................................47

XXI. Tomorrowland 1998 ...............................................................................................51

XXII. Tomorrowland today ..............................................................................................52

REFERENCES

1. CITED IMAGES ...................................................................................................55

2. BIBLIOGRAPHY .................................................................................................58

1

INTRODUCTION

The Walt Disney Company has been an incredible force in United States culture

for nearly a century. This media and entertainment conglomerate, which has grown to be

the second-largest in the world, is ultimately rooted in its original, longstanding appeal to

American audiences.1 For the Walt Disney Company continues to find success by tapping

into its mother culture, ingesting public sensibilities, then projecting and even influencing

its trajectory. Though it first connected with a wide audience through its animated

productions, the closest contact between the multimedia power and society takes place in

a different medium: the theme park.

On July 17, 1955, Walt Disney Productions leapt out of the confines of film and

television and into the concrete, tangible world with the opening of Disneyland Park. But

it would be inaccurate to claim that Disney’s first theme park, located in Anaheim,

California, has its feet firmly planted in reality. Disneyland itself denies it. Affixed to the

park’s entrance tunnel, with neat patterns of red brick below and a tiny train station

above, is a plaque which informs visitors of what they will find inside. The gold lettering

reads, “Here you leave today and enter the world of yesterday, tomorrow, and fantasy.”2

This “world” encompasses eight themed areas, officially referred to as “lands”:

Main Street, USA, Adventureland, Frontierland, New Orleans Square, Critter Country,

Fantasyland, Mickey’s Toontown, and Tomorrowland. In Disneyland, however,

“yesterday, tomorrow, and fantasy,” are far from separate concepts. Each land and the

attractions it contains, whether they represent an abstract concept or a real-life location,

1 “The Walt Disney Company.” Media Data Base. Institute of Media and

Communications Policy, 11 Apr. 2016. Web. 2Disneyland. “Entrance tunnel sign.” Anaheim: Disneyland, 1972. Plaque.

2

embodies provocative ideas as they exist in the popular imagination—primarily the

American imagination.

In order to comprehend the cultural forces embodied by Disneyland one must first

understand what a theme park is. The term is often conflated with amusement parks,

though the definition proposed by Margaret J. King in “The Theme Park: Aspects of

Experience in a Four-Dimensional Landscape” explains the subtle yet vital difference

between the two types of spaces:

Thus, theme parks are a total-sensory-engaging environmental art form built to express a coherent but multi-layered message. Amusement parks, on the other hand, are limited experiences whose attraction focuses on the immediate physical gratification of the thrill ride as it mimics near-death risk-taking experiences… Theme parks are symbolic landscapes of cultural narratives… [Theme park] rides expand the narrative experience with appropriate physical sensations, never for effect alone, but always the advance the storyline. It is the architecture, public space design, landscaping, musical cueing, detailing, and the use of symbols, archetypes, and icons—not rides—that define the essence of theme parks.3

Every aspect of a theme park’s design has purpose, contributing to the narrative in the

same way that camera angles and lighting shape a film. Therefore, a close reading of

Disneyland requires consideration of, “architecture, public space design, landscaping,

musical cueing, detailing, and the use of symbols, archetypes, and icons.”3 Countless

scholars have explored the cultural and psychological implications of Disney parks, but

full awareness of the complexity of the medium is needed in order to grasp the messages

of Disneyland. And as these messages are not created in a vacuum, studies of Disneyland

can expose the social forces that birthed popular visions of “Main Street,” “Frontier,”

“Tomorrow,” and more.

3 King, Margaret. “The Theme Park: Aspects of Experience in a Four-Dimensional

Landscape.” Material Culture 34.2 (2002): 1-15. JSTOR. Web.

3

This study will include four of Disneyland’s most symbolic and culturally-rich

areas: Main Street, USA; Frontierland; Critter Country; and Tomorrowland. Each land

will be examined from its opening to the present day. This chronological approach will

unveil both the message of the land and how it changed (or did not change) over time to

reflect evolving social sensibilities. The implications of Disneyland’s narratives will be

addressed, but analysis will take precedent over judgment.

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CHAPTER 1- MAIN STREET, U.S.A. “The Heartline of America”4

“Main Street, U.S.A. is America at the turn of century—the crossroads of an era. The gas

lamp and the electric lamp—the horse-drawn car and the auto car. Main Street is everyone’s hometown—the heartline of America.”

- Main Street, U.S.A. Dedication Plaque4

Main Street, USA is the first environment that all visitors experience at

Disneyland. Its practical function is to funnel crowds toward a courtyard in front of the

park’s icon, Sleeping Beauty Castle, where a circular hub contains paths to the rest of

Disneyland’s areas (akin to spokes radiating out of the center of a wheel).

But Main Street is more than a gateway to more adventurous attractions. It is

themed to resemble, “a typical [American] small town in the early 1900s.”5 The land

paints a consistently clean, idyllic, and comforting picture. Over the years, the land’s

quaint buildings have housed an ice cream parlor, a penny arcade, a book store, a bakery,

and a flower shop. Horse-drawn trolleys and a tiny fire truck welcome riders. Uniformed

marching bands attract passersby, occasionally performing within a miniature town

square overshadowed by a flapping American flag. Music is always present in the

background, however, with hidden speakers playing jaunty period pieces as well as

instrumental versions of songs from musicals such as Hello, Dolly!

4Disneyland. “Main Street, U.S.A. Dedication Plaque.” Anaheim: Disneyland, 1955.

Plaque.5Walt Disney Productions. Walt Disney’s Guide to Disneyland. Racine: Western Printing

and Lithographing Company, 1963. Print. 4-7.

5

I. Main Street, USA’s Town Square

This land was allegedly based on two towns: Marceline, Missouri and Fort

Collins, Colorado.6 Marceline was where Walt Disney spent a short yet formative period

of his childhood,7 and Disneyland/film concept artist Harper Goff was born in Fort

Collins. Thus, the romantic vision of Main Street, USA is understandable; it is nostalgia

for childhood and simplicity given concrete form. The actual Marceline of Walt Disney’s

boyhood was, “a four block long architectural climax punctuated occasionally by empty

lots and devoid of trees in the downtown area.”8 But fond memory proved to be more

6 Iovine, Julie. “A Tale of Two Main Streets; The towns that inspired Disney are

searching for a little magic of their own.” The New York Times 15 Oct. 1998. Print.

7 Gabler, Neal. Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination. New York: Random House, 2006. Print.

8 Francaviglia, Richard V. "Main Street U.S.A.: A Comparison/Contrast of Streetscapes in Disneyland and Walt Disney World." Journal of Popular Culture 15.1 (1981): 141. ProQuest. Web.

6

powerful than reality. Visitors are invited to indulge their own sense of wistfulness by

embracing Main Street, as written in a 1960s souvenir book:

Many of us fondly remember our “small home town” and its friendly way of life at the turn of the century… For those of us who remember those carefree times, Main Street will bring back happy memories. For our younger visitors, it is an adventure in turning back the clock to the days of grandfather’s youth.5

This land was warmly received by many midcentury Americans, who accepted Disney’s

invitation with gratitude. A 1959 Baltimore Sun reporter declared, “[I]t is pleasant to sit

in Mr. Disney’s shaded and leisurely town square and know that it is in no danger of

being overtaken by expressways, urban renewal and rotary-traffic signs.”9 Main Street

seized upon a powerful cultural memory that many, fatigued by urbanization, desperately

hoped had been real. Journalists were known to contrast the pleasant simplicity of Main

Street, USA with nearby Los Angeles, usually in the former’s favor.7 Of course, Disney’s

creation is truly far from simple. Its charming appearance betrays an exemplary

understanding of crowd control, armies of employees keep the streets spotless, gift stores

are strategically placed to tempt exiting visitors with last-minute souvenirs, and the

costumed staff adheres to strict guidelines of etiquette and personal appearance. It is a

testament to the land’s evocative theming that the illusion of a small town continues to

convince.

Main Street, USA has experienced minimal changes since its opening in 1955,

making it an anomaly among Disneyland’s themed areas. A show starring an animatronic

Abraham Lincoln, based on a presentation that Disney provided for the 1964 New York

World’s Fair, was added in 1965. Shops have been closed and replaced. This relative lack

9 Findlay, John. Magic Lands: Western Cityscapes and American Culture After 1940. Los

Angeles: University of California Press, 1992. Print.

7

of evolution worried former senior vice president of Imagineering (the official moniker

for Disney theme park designers) Tony Baxter, who spoke to The New York Times in

1998:

[Main Street, USA] was the creation of a generation that grew up in a certain

period and were nostalgic about it and wanted to share their memories with their

grandchildren… [the challenge is] to find new experiences as nostalgia loses its

edge and becomes a curiosity.6

Yet Main Street persists, having morphed from a rosy memory born of dissatisfaction

into a longstanding mythology. Copies of the land have been built in Florida’s Walt

Disney World, Disneyland Paris, Hong Kong Disneyland, and Tokyo Disneyland

(renamed World Bazaar), spreading this American fairytale into other nations.

Architectural historian Richard V. Francaviglia has proposed that the Main Street

archetype has begun to impact how real towns and cities choose to restore their

commercial districts. New buildings are being consciously designed to appear

appealingly “historic,” down to the “old-fashioned” font on their signage.10 The blurry

boundary between preservation and a creative act born of cultural expectations is

exposed, and those expectations stem from popular works such as Main Street, USA.

10 Francaviglia, Richard. Main Street Revisited. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press,

1996. Print.

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CHAPTER 2- FRONTIERLAND “The Hard Facts”11

“Here we experience the story of our country’s past… the colorful drama of Frontier America in the exciting days of the covered wagon and the stage coach… the advent of the railroad… and the romantic riverboat. Frontierland is a tribute to the faith, courage

and ingenuity of the pioneers who blazed the trails across America.”12 – Frontierland Dedication Plaque

Taking the upper left path from Main Street’s hub, visitors will find another

tribute to beloved American spaces. Frontierland was presented to the public with an aura

of solemnity absent from the other four opening day lands. For it was, according to its

dedication plaque, a tribute to hardship. The graves of the revered “pioneers”12 could be

found across Frontierland, from a wooden stockade fort’s tiny cemetery to the lonely

headstones looming across the river. Unlike their more famous counterparts at the

Haunted Mansion, where slyly humorous epitaphs provide the visitors’ first hint at the

imposing manor’s true nature, the Frontierland inscriptions are blunt and unadorned. A

small stone slab reads, “Lieut. Lawrence Clemmings, Fell Here Defending the Right.”13

Nearby lies, “Eliza Hodgkins, died June 7, 1812, age 27 Years.”3 A thin wooden

headstone acknowledged both child mortality and the horrific cholera epidemic that

reached the western U.S. in the mid-nineteenth century: “Llewellyn Lloyd, cholera, aged

24 mo.”14

11 Disneyland. “Disneyland Dedication Plaque.” Anaheim: Disneyland, 1955. Plaque. 12 Disneyland. “Frontierland Dedication Plaque.” Anaheim: Disneyland, 1955. Plaque. 13 Rojo, Heather Wilkinson. “Frontierland Cemetery.” Photograph. Nutfield Genealogy.

Nutfield Genealogy, 2 Sept. 2014. Web. 5 Feb. 2016. 14HBG2. “Llewellyn Lloyd.” Photograph. Micechat. Micechat, 24 Aug. 2015. Web. 30

Aug. 2016.

9

II. Fort Wilderness Cemetery

Frontierland, peppered with unusually austere reminders of mortality, appeared to

deliver the, “hard facts that created America,”1 that Walt Disney promised future guests

during his Disneyland dedication speech. Yet there is an obvious paradox at the heart of

this land. By eulogizing the individualistic struggle of pioneers while inviting visitors to

participate, Frontierland presents itself as an intricately-detailed playground in which one

can act out the myth of the American Wild West. The Walt Disney Company, the

producer of the popular Davy Crockett television series (aired on ABC from 1954 to

1955), its spiritual successor Daniel Boone (aired on ABC from 1960 to 1961), and the

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“Pecos Bill” animated segment of Disney’s 1948 animated feature Melody Time, crafted

their most lasting contribution to the frontier fantasy in Disneyland.

Frederick Jackson Turner, who presented his paper, “The Significance of the

Frontier in American History,” at the World Columbian Exposition in 1893, seeded the

frontier myth and the powerful nostalgia that it would invoke in U.S. society. Turner

claimed that the experience of Western expansion bred the ostensibly American values

of, “individualism, democracy, and nationalism”15:

The frontier is the line of most rapid and effective Americanization. The wilderness masters the colonist. It finds him a European in dress, industries, tools, modes of travel, and thought. It takes him from the railroad car and puts him in the birch canoe. It strips off the garments of civilization and arrays him in the hunting shirt and the moccasin. It puts him in the log cabin of the Cherokee and Iroquois and runs an Indian palisade around him. Before long he has gone to planting Indian corn and plowing with a sharp stick, he shouts the war cry and takes the scalp in orthodox Indian fashion. In short, at the frontier the environment is at first too strong for the man. He must accept the conditions which it furnishes, or perish, and so he fits himself into the Indian clearings and follows the Indian trails. Little by little he transforms the wilderness, but the outcome is not the old Europe, not simply the development of Germanic germs, any more than the first phenomenon was a case of reversion to the Germanic mark. The fact is, that here is a new product that is American.15

According to Turner, when the Superintendent of the Census announced in 1890 that the

frontier no longer officially existed, the, “first period of American history,” came to a

close. 115 The country mourned its passing by raising the Wild West to the space of

national legend. Performances by celebrities who projected a frontiersman image such as

William Frederick “Buffalo Bill” Cody, Will Rogers, and Phoebe Ann “Annie Oakley”

Mosey with met with enthusiasm and adulation. Children cast themselves as legendary

15 Turner, Frederick Jackson. “The Significance of the Frontier in American History.”

World Columbian Exposition. 12 July 1893, Chicago. Wisconsin: Wisconsin Historical Society, n.d. PDF file.

11

Western figures with the aid of toys and accessories. During the cultural frontier fever

sparked by Disney’s Davy Crockett series, the demand for coonskin caps became so high

that rabbit and mink furs had to be substituted for raccoon.16 Frontierland tapped into this

preexisting mythology to an unprecedented degree, offering a safe and accessible place to

indulge one’s frontier fantasy. This is reflected by the large amount of participatory

attractions featured during the land’s earlier years, including the Indian War Canoes, the

Frontierland Shooting Gallery, Tom Sawyer Island (which offered fishing, climbing,

caves to explore, and rifle practice at “Fort Wilderness”) and a ride in a pack mule train.

III. A Disneyland visitor “becomes” Davy Crockett in this simple photo

opportunity

16 Mitman, Gregg. Reel Nature: America’s Romance with Wildlife on Film. Seattle:

Univeristy of Washington Press, 2013. Print.

12

Frontierland’s mine train attraction, which opened in 1956 as the Rainbow

Caverns Mine Train and was expanded in 1960 to become the Mine Train Through

Nature’s Wonderland, appears to be an exception to this trend. The Mine Train Through

Nature’s Wonderland departed from the tiny town of Rainbow Ridge and would pass

through a forest of cacti that had grown into humanlike shapes, past the many waterfalls

tumbling from Cascade Peak, under ominously trembling boulders, and into a dark cave

where carefully-arranged black lights illuminated rocks, pools, and waterfalls in rainbow

colors. The main focus of the ride, however, was on the 204 animatronic animals that

populated the scenery. A pre-opening advertisement from an issue of Vacationland

Magazine promised, “a game and wild-life preserve unlike anything else in the world”.17

The mechanical creatures recreated memorable scenes from Disney’s True-Life

Adventures, a series of nature documentaries released from 1948 to 1960. The bears of

Bear Country scratched themselves against trees, rubbing away the bark. The starring

animals of Beaver Valley and Olympic Elk reprised their roles in animatronic form, and a

bobcat crouched atop a prickly cactus to avoid a herd of snarling peccaries, eternally

frozen in its famous predicament from The Living Desert.

17 “Nature’s Wonderland.” Vacationland Magazine Summer 1960: 7. Print.

13

IV, V. A side-by-side comparison of the bobcat scene in Mine Train through Nature’s

Wonderland (left) and The Living Desert (right).

Yet even this observational, animal-centric attraction comfortably exists within

Disney’s tribute to frontier mythology. For despite the title of the ride’s source material,

True- Life Adventures, Disney’s documentaries inspired critical debate concerning the

truthful portrayal of animals on film. As Gregg Mitman pointed out in Reel Nature:

America’s Romance with Wildlife on Film, “While Disney’s True-Life Adventures

revealed the purity of nature through a wide-angle lens, they simultaneously purified

nature through anthropomorphic conventions that introduced familiar portraits of animal

life.”18 Through musical cues and constant narration, identifiable personalities and goals

were assigned to the films’ subjects. The beaver of 1950’s Beaver Valley was a,

18Mitman, Gregg. Reel Nature: America’s Romance with Wildlife on Film. Seattle:

Univeristy of Washington Press, 2013. 110. Print.

14

“plodding, patient hero.”19 A roadrunner from 1953’s The Living Desert is named a,

“practical joker,” after nipping at a snake, taking off the tip of its tail.20 In an effort to de-

villainize wolves in the eyes of the public, the animal is commended for being, “an

admirable provider, mate, and head of family.”19 Several critics, such as New York Times

writer Bosley Crowther argued the humanization of animal behavior to fit comfortable

societal roles was a, “synthetic reconstruction of nature… passed off as real.”21 In a

particularly infamous incident, the filmmakers of 1957’s White Wilderness, desperate to

capture the most well-known activity of lemmings on camera, staged a scene where the

supposedly suicidal animals leapt off a cliff into water.22 Such behavior was later proven

to be an urban myth, though the film would color public knowledge of lemmings for

decades. Yet prominent ecologist and American Museum of Natural History curator

Robert Cushman Murphy, in his review of 1952’s Water Birds, defended Disney’s

documentaries are a cultural necessity:

A foremost aim in our branch of education is to instill a love of nature that will redound to its appreciation and protection. There is no better way to accomplish this than by taking advantage of aesthetic opportunities. This Walt Disney has done supremely well in this film. The product is even more important because of its emotional effect upon the observer than because of what it teaches in the field of ornithology. It is primarily a work of art.23

19 The Best of Walt Disney’s True-Life Adventures. Dir. James Algar. Walt Disney

Pictures, 1975. Digital Download. 20 The Living Desert. Dir. James Algar. Walt Disney Pictures, 1953. Online. 21 Mitman, Gregg. Reel Nature: America’s Romance with Wildlife on Film. Seattle:

Univeristy of Washington Press, 2013. 121. Print. 22 Korkis, Jim. “Walt and the True-Life Adventures.” Walt Disney Family Museum. Walt

Disney Family Museum, 9 Feb. 2012. Web. 8 Feb 2016. 23 Mitman, Gregg. Reel Nature: America’s Romance with Wildlife on Film. Seattle:

Univeristy of Washington Press, 2013. 122. Print.

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The Mine Train Through Nature’s Wonderland inherited True-Life Adventures’

strategy of anthropomorphizing animals. The ride’s recorded narration, delivered in the

folksy tone of an old miner, commentated on the animatronic scenes just as the

documentaries’ voiceovers characterized the onscreen creatures. The miner warned that

nature is as dangerous as it is beautiful, calling it, “a mighty rugged place to live. Out

here in the wilderness the struggle for survival leaves only the strong and sometimes the

lucky.”24 He then goes on to valorize a pair of bull elk, locking antlers over the affection

of nearby females, as representative of the wilderness struggle. The anthropomorphized

animals of Nature’s Wonderland carried out a part of the frontier myth as they fought for

life against an inhospitable environment. The train of passengers also embarked on a

journey evocative of the Western fantasy; after abandoning the safety of Rainbow Ridge

to brave a rickety bridge, an arid desert, carnivorous creatures and other “mean

varmints,” visitors were rewarded with a trip to the unique and memorable Rainbow

Caverns.24

If one were to select one place in early Frontierland that presented a high

concentration of symbolically-loaded and nostalgic Western imagery, it would be the

Rivers of America. The Rivers of America, a waterway wrapped around Tom Sawyer

Island, covers a sizable portion of Frontierland. There visitors can forego the exercise of

the Indian War Canoes in favor of a ride on the steam-powered Mark Twain riverboat or

the Sailing Ship Columbia, the latter of which which was modeled after the first

American ship to circumnavigate the globe. Two modest keelboats, representing Davy

24 Weiss, Werner. “Mine Train Through Nature’s Wonderland.” Yesterland. Yesterland.

n.d. Web. 1 Feb. 2016.

16

Crockett’s Bertha Mae and Mike Fink’s Gullywhumper as featured the 1956 Disney film

Davy Crockett and the River Pirates, also prowled the water. A trip to Tom Sawyer

Island required the use of an even simpler vehicle: a broad raft.

VI. Frontierland river traffic (from left to right: a keelboat, the Columbia, a raft to

Tom Sawyer Island, and the Mark Twain)

Considering names alone, the many attractions on the Rivers of America represent

some of most influential pieces of literature, history, and popular culture that shaped

frontier mythology. The vehicles themselves are diverse symbols of adventure and

romance; the Mark Twain personifies elegant travel, occasionally offering live music and

even, in its earlier years, non-alcoholic mint juleps. The Columbia recalls exploration and

adventure, and the keelboats remind guests of Davy Crockett’s legendary race against the

boastful Mike Fink. The raft, molded and painted to give the appearance of a humble

wooden contraption, prepares riders for the childish charms of Tom Sawyer Island. But

the crowded river itself may be the most evocative image of all. In his thorough study

17

“Walt Disney’s Frontierland as an Allegorical Map of the American West,” cartographer

and historian Richard Francaviglia dissects the cultural resonance of the Rivers of

America:

[Walt] Disney used water to create boundaries and delineate arteries of travel. If Frontierland's essentially circular or kidney shape encloses a body of water and island at its center, these features are at once geographical and metaphorical: in the American West, especially in the West of popular imagination of the nineteenth century, water both beckoned settlers and entrepreneurs into the frontier and defined the perimeter of the known world. Water fascinated Disney as it has our culture for centuries. To Disney and generations of Americans preceding him, the western waters were alluring, even seductive. They both defined the physical world and hinted at the rejuvenation or regeneration of the American character that would be attained by following them to their sources, and then beyond… Frontierland's design reaffirms both the actual importance of the western rivers to transportation and their symbolic importance to Disney's (and America's) imagination.25

The Rivers of America represent the intermingling of popular imagination and

geographical and historical fact that constitutes the Old West myth. Yet there is still

another layer. Arranged along the banks of Tom Sawyer Island, visible to all forms of

river transport, were tableaus of varying complexity and scale. The Mark Twain riverboat

soundtrack, which features a mixture of music and narration to entertain and inform its

riders, contextualizes these scenes.

The river tableaus experienced few major aesthetic changes during the first

several decades of Frontierland’s operation. The narration aboard the Mark Twain,

however, has been revised numerous times to reflect the public’s evolving sensibilities

concerning particular frontier images on display. For alongside the simple wildlife figures

25 Francaviglia, Richard. “Walt Disney’s Frontierland as an Allegorical Map of the

American West.” Western Historical Quarterly 30.2 (1999): 155-182. Web. 5 Feb. 2016.

18

and sculpted waterfalls were mechanical representations of Native Americans. Situated

across the river from Frontierland’s main thoroughfare and beyond Tom Sawyer Island’s

Fort Wilderness, “the last outpost of civilization,”26 these animatronic aboriginals existed

on the periphery. In an early version of the Mark Twain narration, delivered from 1969 to

1979 by the pre-recorded voice of the steamboat’s fictional captain, Native Americans

are presented as a dangerous obstacle for the white frontiersman and a source of thrills

for visitors. The captain points out a, “hostile Indian tribe,” on the riverbank just

moments before the riverboat encounters a ferociously burning cabin, its occupant

sprawled outside with an arrow protruding out of his body. “Often settlers in this area are

not welcome because of unfriendly tribes,” the narrator explains grimly. “And, as you can

see, some fall victim to Indian arrows.”16

VII. The Burning Cabin, Version 1

26 “The Rivers of America: Frontier River Excursions.” Disneyland: A Magical Audio

Tour. DisneyChris, n.d. Web. 1 Feb 2016.

19

The blazing cabin is implied to be the handiwork of an, “Indian war party,”

slightly farther up on the riverbank. Leading them was a man on horseback wearing a

large war bonnet and a stoic expression. His hand was upraised, signaling to the warriors

who stood behind him atop a slight incline, wearing woven breastplates and grasping

round shields, bows, and lances. This particular tableau prioritizes recognizable images of

Plains Indian warfare in American popular culture over factually-correct representation.

For instance, it is probable that the leader’s war bonnet was included due to its

widespread association with Native American clothing. It communicates a message that

can be read in a single glance, an important strategy to follow when creating a ride that

moves quickly past show scenes. Yet fact is sacrificed for the sake of tapping into

popular imagination; real war bonnets are rare ceremonial pieces awarded to men to

distinguish themselves in combat, and were mainly restricted to tribes in the Great Plains

region. Decorated warriors were unlikely to wear the treasured regalia outside of ritual

and significant battles, let alone a small raid.27 A similar issue arises with the many of the

war party’s breastplates, which appear to be crafted from hair pipes. Hair pipe

breastplates, believed to be an invention of the Comanche, were popular amongst several

Southern Plains tribes by the mid-1800s. This fashionable ornament was not built for

protection in battle, however.28 Though the Mark Twain’s narration suggests a close call

with a dangerous war party, the figures are in fact dressed for ceremony, not combat.

27 Killsback, Leo. “Crowns of Honor: Sacred Laws of Eagle-Feather War Bonnets and

Repatriating the Icon of the Great Plains.” Great Plains Quarterly 33.1 (Winter 2013): 1-23. ProQuest. Web. 10 Feb. 2016.

28 “Uses of Hair Pipes by Plains Indians Prior to 1880.” Smithsonian Libraries. Smithsonian, n.d. Web. 10 Feb. 2016.

20

VIII. The Indian War Party, 1957

Not all of Frontierland’s representations of Native Americans were as dangerous

obstacles for the mythical frontiersman to overcome. The captain of the Mark Twain

identifies, “a village of friendly Indians,” who frequently trade with local trappers.29 In

early Frontierland, aboriginal tribes exist in a simple dichotomy: good Indians

accommodate American settlers, bad Indians oppose them. The lone challenge to this

simple structure, whether it was intended or not, was printed in a 1957 brochure titled

“Explorer’s Map of Tom Sawyer Island in Frontierland.” The northernmost tip of the

island, where the burning settler’s cabin resides, is labeled, “Indian Territory: terms of

treaty prohibit entry.”30 This piece of supplemental material reframes the cabin tableau,

with the settler as a foolhardy trespasser and the so-called war party as representatives of

29“The Rivers of America: Frontier River Excursions.” Disneyland: A Magical Audio

Tour. DisneyChris, n.d. Web. 1 Feb 2016.30Explorer’s Map of Tom Sawyer Island in Frontierland. Burbank: Walt Disney

Productions, 1957. Print.

21

a group infuriated by the breaking of a treaty.

IX. Explorer’s Map of Tom Sawyer Island

Frontierland’s Indian Village, which opened with Disneyland in 1955, attempted

to provide a more factual overview of Native American cultures. Visitors could ride the

Indian War Canoes, purchase crafts at the Indian Trading Post, and read informative

signs posted near reproductions of tipis, totem poles, and other objects. The Ceremonial

Dance Circle featured several daily performances, each tailored to reflect the culture of

whichever group of tribal dancers currently held a six-month housing contract with

Disneyland.31 Advertising stressed the authenticity of the experience; “full-blooded

Indians”32 performed, supervised the canoes, and met with curious visitors. Public

31 DeCaro, Dave. “The Indian Village.” Daveland Blog. Daveland Blog, 3 Apr. 2016.

Web. 13 Feb. 2016. 32 Walt Disney Productions. Walt Disney’s Guide to Disneyland. Racine: Western

Printing and Lithographing Company, 1963. Print.

22

memory of this attraction is extremely mixed. The retrospective of Dave DeCaro, who

compiled the comprehensive theme park photo archive Daveland, is common amongst

Disneyland aficionados: “All of the photos I see of this ‘attraction’ show a ton of guests

enjoying what they see while learning a bit about a culture different from their own.

Walt's Edutainment rarely [shone] this bright!”21 In his coverage of Disneyland’s 30th

anniversary, Tim Rawitsch of the Los Angeles Times cited the Indian Village as a

noteworthy chapter in Disneyland’s, “battle between stereotypes and the celebration of

ethnic diversity.”33 Eric Avila’s 2004 book Popular Culture in the Age of White Flight:

Fear and Fantasy in Suburban Los Angeles argued that the attraction’s focus on

entertainment, contrary to its stated purpose, affirmed traditions ethnic division and

exploitation:

Like the Igorot Village of the St. Louis World’s Fair in 1904, or the Dahomey Village of the Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893, where earlier generations of Americans marveled at the exotic spectacle of what was touted as “savagery,” Frontierland’s Indian Village displayed popular conceptions of indigenous ways of life for tourist consumption.34

Frontierland’s Indian Village closed in 1971 due to conflict with the Native American

performers’ union, the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, which arose

when Disneyland attempted to increase the amount of daily dance shows to a minimum

of five.35 The former attraction became the site of Bear Country, an entirely new land

33 Rawitsch, Jim. “Moving Right Along: The Residents of the Indian Village Have Been

Replaced with Audio-Animatronic Bears. Disneyland Grows Ever More Sophisticated.” Los Angeles Times. Los Angeles Times, 13 July 1986. Web. 13 Feb. 2016.

34 Avila, Eric. Popular Culture in the Age of White Flight: Fear and Fantasy in Suburban Los Angeles. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004. Print.

35 Wiener, Jon. “Tall Tales and True.” The Nation (January 1994): n.p. HighBeam Research. Web. 13 Feb. 2016.

23

carved out of a portion of Frontierland (despite the common name, it had no association

with the Bear Country segment of the Mine Train Through Nature’s Wonderland).

Although the Indian Village now resides in the domain of retrospective, the remainder of

Disneyland’s Old West fantasy has been continuously altered to reflect changing

perceptions of the frontier. Davy Crockett’s presence in Frontierland has decreased as

public memory of the 1954-1955 miniseries fades away. In 1977, the aging Mine Train

Through Nature’s Wonderland closed. Its replacement, the rollercoaster Big Thunder

Mountain Railroad, tempered Frontierland’s celebration of expansionism and innovation

through its cautionary storyline.

In The Disney Mountains: Imagineering at Its Peak, Disney historian Jason

Surrell relates the tale of Big Thunder Mountain Railroad:

… gold was discovered in Big Thunder country in the 1850s…leading to the formation of the BTM Mining Company. But the locals believed Big Thunder Mountain and the land around it to be sacred, and a protective supernatural force dwelt deep within the mountain to protect it from anyone who might deface it in the pursuit of profit… as the miners began using explosives to blast deeper and deeper into the unforgiving rock and laying tracks for the mine train that they’d use to retrieve its golden bounty, the mountain’s ancient fury was unleashed… Cave-ins became common occurrences. And then the narrow-gauge engines began rolling out of the station with no human hands at the controls. Entire trains, most times packed with unsuspecting passengers, would race driverless… [The miners] abandoned their posts, the BTM Company went bust, and soon Big Thunder became just another ghost town dotting the Old West.36

The choice of setting an attraction within a ghost town, a space where American industry

dissipated in the face of tribulation, inherently challenged the triumphant message of

Frontierland. Though the land’s official plaque still decreed the purpose of honoring the,

36 Surrell, Jason. The Disney Mountains: Imagineering at Its Peak. New York: Disney

Editions: 2007. Print.

24

“faith, courage and ingenuity of the pioneers who blazed the trails across America,” the

formerly pristine image of the heroic frontiersman was now blemished by the

acknowledgement of greed, ignorance, and failure.2 This is not to claim that Big Thunder

Mountain Railroad is a grim attraction; several comedic wildlife tableaus were retained

from Nature’s Wonderland, and the abandonment of the boomtown is never framed as

tragic. One of the ride’s most prominent animatronics, a goat greedily feasting on a box

of explosives, embodies the attraction’s outlook on the mining enterprise’s self-

destruction.

X. A goat chews a stick of dynamite

While Big Thunder Mountain represented a substantial shift in Frontierland’s

narrative, the most active site of change was a far older attraction: The Rivers of

America. By the early 1980s all references to hostile Native Americans had disappeared

from the Mark Twain riverboat narration. The so-called war party was also removed,

leaving the leader on horseback to gesture mutely at passing boats. Later versions of the

script re-contextualized his presence; he was now, “an Indian chief giving us a sign of

25

peace.”19 Beginning in the early 1990s, the old, “village of friendly Indians,” was no

longer referred to in terms of their relationship with American settlers.19 A new

animatronic storyteller became the tableau’s focus, as he told his young audience the

Lakota legend of how a woodpecker gave humanity the secret of crafting flutes.37 The

village would not be formally identified as a Lakota encampment until the 2010 Mark

Twain script revision, though they were given the vague moniker of, “Plains Indians,” in

2007.19

The river’s most dramatic tableau, the burning cabin, also experienced the

greatest amount of alterations. The gas crisis of the mid-1970s led to the fire effect being

shut off,38 and the arrow linking the settler’s death to the nearby Native American

encampment was removed.39 The corpse was now said to be the handiwork of marauding

river pirates. The fire returned in 1984, along with a new narrative: an irresponsible

moonshiner’s exploding still set the cabin aflame.28 Jeb the moonshiner was outside in

the dirt, curled up contentedly with a jug of his wares. In the 1990s, the alcohol gag was

replaced with an environmental message. The cabin still smoldered, but the narrator was

far more concerned with the nearby eagle nest that had nearly been destroyed. The flames

would disappear for good in later years, and the cabin was refurbished to appear

inhabitable. In 2010 it became the dwelling of Mike Fink, and passing boats could hear

him challenge Davy Crockett to the keelboat race featured in 1956’s Davy Crockett and

37 “The Legend of the Flute.” Akta Lakota. Akta Lakota Museum Cultural Center, n.d.

Web. 14 Feb. 2016. 38 Strodder, Chris. The Disneyland Book of Lists. Santa Monica: Santa Monica Press,

2015. Print. 39 Weiss, Werner. “Burning Settler’s Cabin.” Yesterland. Yesterland, 2009. Web. 1 Feb.

2016.

26

the River Pirates.

Frontierland exists in constant flux, rewriting aspects of the American frontier

myth with every addition and alteration, both major and subtle, that it experiences. The

next several years will bring an unprecedented amount of change to the area’s landscape,

however. On January 11, 2016, all attractions on the Rivers of America were closed for

an indefinite period of time.40 The entire waterway was drained several days later, and its

path will be shortened and rerouted in order to create space for a new land based on the

Star Wars franchise. A large segment of the river will be re-themed as a part of this

project, and it is currently unknown if any of the historic tableaus will be moved or

retired. On the same day of the closure, the official Disney Parks Blog released a piece of

concept art for the new riverbank.

XI. The new northern waterfront

Dramatic, rugged scenery defines the future waterfront. The concept painting suggests an

emphasis on the frontier landscape, known as the mythological Western wilderness. Yet

the inclusion of traditional Frontierland transport, aside from reassuring devotees that the

old river attractions will reopen, creates an overall image of human works slicing through

an inhospitable environment. One can only wait to see where the narrative of Frontierland

40 Niles, Robert. “Fans Crowd Disneyland’s Rivers of America on its Final Day of the

Year.” Theme Park Insider. Theme Park Insider, 10 Jan. 2016. Web. 10 Jan. 2016.

27

will be brought next.

28

CHAPTER 3- BEAR/CRITTER COUNTRY “A Honey of a Place”41

“Entering Bear Country

‘A honey of a place since 72’ Permits must be obtained for tree climbing, fishing, scratching and hibernating.

Permanent residents excepted. No permit necessary for feeding bears.” – Bear Country entrance sign41

Bear Country opened in 1972, replacing Frontierland’s Indian Village. This small

“land,” encompassing a thick forest with rustic wooden buildings on either side of a

shallow creek, evokes Frontierland’s constructed wilderness. Yet the two areas are

distinctive in more than just name. Frontierland’s attractions promise struggle, danger,

and excitement. Bear Country, “a honey of a place,”41 is placid and nonthreatening. It

makes no pretentions of reverent historical representation, openly embracing its

absurdity. The land initially existed to house a single attraction: Country Bear Jamboree.

The comedic, animatronic musical revue was a copy of the Florida-based original that

opened with Walt Disney World’s Magic Kingdom in 1971. The decision to house

Disneyland’s version in an entirely new land, despite Magic Kingdom’s being located in

its own Frontierland, suggests a resistance to undermining the area’s claim to credibility

with something as fantastical as talking animals. The Wild West is, of course, a fantasy in

itself, yet the intrusion of musical bears would have disturbed the careful balance

between remembered history and wish-fulfillment that sustains the frontier myth.

The Country Bear Jamboree is not without cultural roots, however. Henry, the

show’s ursine master of ceremonies, promises to deliver his audience, “a bit of

41Disneyland. “Bear Country entrance sign.” Anaheim: Disneyland, 1972. Sign.

29

Americana—our musical heritage of the past.”42 In particular, the revue explores country

music and its many subgenres, including traditional “mountain” style dominated by the

fiddle and banjo, patter-heavy “hillbilly” comedy, blues, honky-tonk, Nashville style, and

Hollywood-influenced cowboy ballads. The show’s versions of both classic and obscure

songs were specially recorded by the Stonemans, a family band specializing in

Appalachian and bluegrass music. “The Music of Country Bear Jamboree,” a series of

articles written for the theme park design/criticism website Passport to Dreams Old and

New, argues that the Stonemans’s distinctly traditionalist and natural sound leant to the

attraction’s longstanding appeal:

Country Bear Jamboree… [dates] from pretty much the dead center of the shift towards a pop-rock sound, and many of the songs heard in the show are from the sixties—in 1971, most audiences would've recognized these songs from less than ten years ago. But the show itself has a more classical sound, most akin to bluegrass or the early "Hillbilly" records, which is part of the reason why it's played for so long - it quite literally is Your Grandfather's Country. In 1971, the show took popular music of its day and hauled it back towards its roots, demonstrating how very different sounding styles were in fact, at their root, related.43

The show’s old-fashioned, relatively unpolished musical interpretations are delivered by

an equally eclectic cast. The bears’ appearances range from sloppy to comically

overdressed, ridiculously tall to tiny, impossibly slim to massive. They playfully heckle

each other, dance badly, and even experience the inevitable turbulence of a live

performance; when the drunken, bleary-eyed oaf “Big Al” reappears onstage far past his

42Country Bear Jamboree. By WED Enterprises. Dir. Marc Davis and Al Bertino.

Disneyland, Anaheim. 1972-2001. Performance. 43Foxxfur. “The Music of Country Bear Jamboree.” Passport to Dreams Old and New.

Passport to Dreams Old and New, 2013. Web. 2015.

30

cue, armed with an out-of-tune guitar, the rest of the cast intervenes to drown him out

with a frantic rendition of “Ole Slew Foot.”

The spontaneity is, of course, an illusion. Every single one of the bears’ gestures

is deliberately programmed, their appearance and attire are chosen by concept artists, and

their voices belong to human musicians. Country Bear Jamboree represents an

intersection between two mediums that are frequently subject to debate concerning

authenticity: country music and theme park attractions. Nicholas Dawidoff’s In the

Country of Country: People and Places in American Music bemoans the increasing

glossiness of the former, while invoking the latter as shorthand for artificiality. He

claims, “To call today’s mainstream country music country at all is a misnomer… A lot

like Disneyland, in some ways its model, contemporary country thrives because it is sleek

and predictable, a safe adventure in a smoke-free environment.”44 From this perspective,

Country Bear Jamboree is the ultimate artistic offense: a pre-programmed performance

designed to repeat itself over and over again with no variance. Such prioritization of

“authenticity” begs for interrogation, however. In his review of country music literature,

David Eason argued that authenticity itself often constructed:

Authenticity eventually became stylized into a set of conventions about how to dress (from old-timer to hillbilly to cowboy), how to sing (sincerely as if from one’s own experience), how to present oneself (a common person, unaffected and genuine), how to tell one’s story (accented with the rhythms of rural places and working-class jobs)… Sometimes the term suggests a historical relationship among the performers, songs, and the culture from which the old-time songs sprang, sometimes a set of conventions for appearing to be authentic, sometimes a felt quality cultivated by a particular singing style. To others, the term seems to blend with the meanings of the larger culture to suggest a particular down-home variant of the genuineness and unaffectedness that the larger culture periodically craves. Finally, sometimes the term seems to expand to mean merely distinctive, a

44 Dawidoff, Nicholas. In the Country of Country: People and Places in American Music.

New York: Pantheon Books, 1997. 309. Print.

31

usage that muddles more than it clarifies amidst all those more specific meanings of the term.45

The quest for realness in the country genre is further complicated when applied to

Disneyland’s musical revue. Does the bears’ nature as designed, mechanical characters

instantly sap all “authenticity” from the Country Bear Jamboree? Such a question,

steeped in values of artistic integrity, would result in a muddled answer. Several

observations about the show should be recognized, however. Country “conventions,” as

outlined by Eason, translate smoothly into the Jamboree’s cartoonish aesthetic. Marc

Davis, a former Disney animator who became exceptionally well-regarded in the field of

theme park design for his character-based humor, used easily-readable genre signifiers to

distinguish each bear during their few minutes onstage. Preexisting music and the

stereotypes it bred are interpreted as an exaggerated three-dimensional cartoon, making

the Country Bear Jamboree an elaborate spoof.

When the Country Bear Playhouse was unexpectedly shuttered in 2001 to build a

ride based on the 1977 animated film The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, the

Jamboree gained one more parallel to country music: a fanbase infuriated by a perceived

loss of artistic integrity. Werner Weiss, founder of the Yesterland website which

documents closed attractions, summarized the reaction:

Cynics suggested there was exactly one reason why Disneyland executives of that era invested in the new ride. It wasn’t because they wanted to a create a delightful ride experience for all ages. It was because the ride’s exit could funnel guests into a large Winnie the Pooh retail store. And unlike [the Country Bears] Winnie was a bear who could move merchandise.46

45 Eason, David. “Real Country.” Journal of Communication 49.4 (1999): 206-211. Web.

20 Mar. 2016. 46Weiss, Werner. “Bear Country.” Yesterland. Yesterland. 2014. Web. 10 Mar. 2016.

32

By this time, Bear Country had already undergone a significant identity shift. No longer

an isolated outpost for an attraction that was too fantastical for Disneyland’s Frontierland,

the area became the realm of animal fables. Renamed “Critter Country” in 198946 to

reflect the land’s more diverse population, the residents’ miniscule houses are now

tucked away in trees and on riverbanks. The Winnie the Pooh attraction contains some of

the most recognizable talking animal characters of the last century, originally created by

British author Alan Alexander Milne. The inhabitants of Critter Country’s nearby thrill

ride, however, have not received nearly that amount of exposure. The film that inspired

Splash Mountain has not been shown in American theaters since 1986, and it never

received a home media release in the United States. Despite (or likely due to) this

deliberate unavailability, 1946’s Song of the South is regarded as one of the most

controversial films to be discussed in academia as well as popular culture. And as long as

Splash Mountain stands, affirming the existence of a single piece of media that the Walt

Disney Company has staunchly refused to release to contemporary American audiences,

Song of the South’s infamy will continue to grow.

Song of the South, like many Disney films, was inspired by preexisting stories.

The precise origins of “Brer Rabbit” fables have been debated, though Jonathan Brennan

provides a general map of the complex cultural exchange that formed the character:

The African American Brer Rabbit is a uniquely American creation, having been influenced not by European-based Rabbit stories, as some have claimed (at least, not much), but by the transmission of stories from a variety of African cultures, by contact with Native American communities, and by the subsequent evolution of the tales to reflect unique aspects of the slave experience in the American South.47

47 Brennan, Jonathan. When Brer Rabbit Meets Coyote: African-Native American

Literature. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2003. Print.

33

Parallels between the tales of Brer Rabbit and slave resistance narratives are unavoidable.

The character, though small and disadvantaged, undermines and defeats predators

through sheer cleverness and nerve. He steals from Brer Fox’s garden and, when trapped

in a snare, convinces the dim-witted Brer Bear to take his place. When caught again, Brer

Rabbit employs reverse psychology in order to escape by begging his bloodthirsty captor

to please never throw him in the prickly briar patch—which is actually his home. 48 The

use of animal characters allowed these subversive stories to circulate amongst slaves

without drawing suspicion, giving them, “a chance to create alternate realities in which

they could experience revenge and other forbidden impulses… [and impart] practical

knowledge and survival and coping strategies to listeners.”49

The exploits of Brer Rabbit came to national attention in 1880, when white

folklorist Joel Chandler Harris began publishing compilations of the tales. Harris also

introduced a framing narrative that would forever affect reader perceptions of the stories:

an elderly former slave, Uncle Remus, imparting the fables to a young white boy.

Disney’s Song of the South, which adapted Harris’s writings, would greatly expand the

role of the boy to that of the main protagonist. The live-action film begins when the child

visits his grandmother’s plantation with his mother, having been dropped off there while

his father takes an undisclosed yet supposedly controversial job. The boy quickly

becomes attached to Uncle Remus, one of the plantation’s many African-American

workers, whose Brer Rabbit stories (told via animated segments) inspire the protagonist

48 Harris, Joel Chandler. Uncle Remus: His Songs and Sayings. n.p., 2003. Project

Gutenberg. Web. 1 Mar. 2016. 49 Sambol-Tosco, Kimberly. “Education, Arts, and Culture.” Slavery and the Making of

America. PBS, 2004. Web. 1 Mar. 2016.

34

as he navigates bullies, encounters everyday disappointment, and ultimately deals with

his father’s absence. Song of the South’s idyllic portrayal of a post-emancipation South

where former slaves appear to happily work for their former masters drew criticism even

in 1946. “Put down the mint julep, Mr. Disney!” New York Times critic Bosley Crowther

famously wrote in New York Times.50 But the most passionate outcry came from those

who objected to the film’s use of strongly socially-coded fables as guidance for a mildly-

troubled white child from a wealthy, plantation-owning family. New York’s Local 27 of

the American Federation of Teachers criticized the picture of, “the Negro in service to

white people, the Negro apparently whose only thought is to help solve the problems of

the white people.”51

XII. James Baskett interacts with an animated Brer Rabbit as Uncle Remus

50 Crowther, Bosley. “Spanking Disney: Walt is Chastised for Song of the South.” Rev.

of Song of the South, dir. Wilfred Jackson and Harve Foster. New York Times 18 Dec. 1946. Print.

51 “Teachers Union Raps Song of the South.” Atlanta Daily World 7. 12 Jan. 1946. Print.

35

Yet even this heavy criticism was accompanied by occasional praise. The

sequences blending live-action and animation, predating more widely-beloved films such

as 1964’s Mary Poppins and 1988’s Who Framed Roger Rabbit, continue to attract

admiration for their seamlessness. And although the character of Uncle Remus was

regarded as archaic even in the 1940s, James Baskett’s performance was commended by

many for its dignity and infectious charm.52 Baskett would receive an honorary Academy

Award for Song of the South in 1948, the first to be given to an African-American actor

(Hattie McDaniel, who played a secondary role in Song of the South, was the first

African-American actress to win in 1939 for Gone With the Wind). The film was also

nominated for Best Score and Best Song (“Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah”), winning the latter.53

Though Song of the South’s contentious portrayal of African-Americans is

undoubtedly its most discussed aspect, the film’s characters and soundtrack remained

relatively popular into the 1980s (aided by periodic theatrical rereleases). When Disney

park designer Tony Baxter first proposed a Song of the South-themed log flume in 1983,

he regarded the film as, “the perfect property to allow us to reconnect with classic Disney

characters.”54 The attraction was formally approved in 1986, the same year that Song of

the South had its last theatrical release before it was officially made inaccessible in the

United States. It cannot be determined for certain why the Disney Company chose that

particular time to cease American circulation of the film, especially when a costly theme

52 Bernstein, Matthew. “Nostalgia, Ambivalence, Irony: ‘Song of the South’ and Race

Relations in 1946 Atlanta.” Film History 8.2 (1996): 219-236. JSTOR. Web. 53 “Song of the South: Notes.” TCM. Turner Classic Movies, 2010. Web. 54 Rafferty, Ken and Bruce Gordon. Walt Disney Imagineering: A Behind the Dreams

Look at Making the Magic Real. New York: Disney Editions, 1996. Print.

36

park adaptation was in development. Comments from former Disney CEO Michael

Eisner, who approved the ride for funding, are illuminating:

[Song of the South is] a great, innovative movie with the combination of live action and animation, but we’d never released that movie on home video because you’d have to do so much explaining, historically, about the time it was made and the attitudes people had. But that doesn’t negate the strong music, or the characters other than Uncle Remus.54

Splash Mountain was not merely a translation of film into a three-dimensional

experience. As Jason Sperb, one of the most prominent contemporary voices in wholesale

condemnation of Song of the South, wrote in Disney’s Most Notorious Film: Race,

Convergence, and the Hidden Histories of Song of the South: “Instead of celebrating the

source material, Splash Mountain replaced it.”

The attraction, which opened in 1989, focuses on Song of the South’s animated

Brer Rabbit segments. The ride floats past animatronic recreations of scenarios from the

film (Brer Rabbit tricking Brer Bear into taking his place in a snare; Brer Rabbit leading

Brer Fox and Brer Bear into a beehive) and culminates in passengers physically

experiencing the rabbit’s tumble into his briar patch as a long, watery drop into a tunnel

of thorns. New renditions of popular songs from the original film’s soundtrack (“How Do

You Do?,” “Everybody’s Got a Laughin’ Place,” and “Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah”) signal

scene/mood transitions.

Hints at the original film’s Georgia plantation setting, or reality in general, are

scarce and subdued. This contrasts with Song of the South, which was mainly live-action

with occasional animated interludes. Visitors enter Splash Mountain’s queue through a

rustic barn, and farm equipment is periodically strewn in line and on the ride. The ride’s

sculpted riverbanks are red, and the animatronic characters speak in strong Southern

37

accents. An article from Passport to Dreams Old and New, “Song of the South: Disney’s

Loaded Gun,” points out the attraction’s most explicit reference to Song of the South:

“… the queue moves past a fireplace with a cast iron pot, and is routed so guests must walk across the hearth. This represents the fireplace where Remus tells [the film’s boy protagonist] the Br’er Rabbit tales in the film, and to make the connection clear, a direct Remus quote from the film is painted on the wall just above the fireplace.”55

XIII. The sign above the fireplace quotes one of Uncle Remus’s preambles to his stories: “Now this tale didn’t happen just yesterday, nor the day before, but long,

long ago.”

This scene, along with other Uncle Remus quotes hanging throughout the queue,

acknowledges the role of storytelling in summoning fictional universes (as embodied by

the thoroughly cartoonish ride that riders will soon embark on). Yet these quotes are, very

notably, unattributed. The more time passes since Song of the South played in U.S.

theaters, the less likely it is visitors will recognize the words as belonging to Uncle

Remus. In addition, these obscure idioms are the only reference to the character in the

55 Foxxfur. “Song of the South: Disney’s Loaded Gun.” Passport to Dreams Old and

New. Passport to Dreams Old and New, 2015. Web.

38

entire attraction. A palpable effort was made to detach Splash Mountain from the

problematic racial politics of its source material. This is not just evidenced by the erasure

of Uncle Remus and downplayed real-life setting; one ride scene in particular departs

from its film inspiration in a revealing fashion. In one segment of Song of the South, Brer

Fox fashions a human figure out of black tar. The villain places his creation on the side of

a road, where Brer Rabbit soon passes by. Brer Rabbit greets the tar figure and,

interpreting its silence as rudeness, aggressively swings at it. He quickly becomes stuck,

much to Brer Fox’s delight. In Splash Mountain’s version of the scene, the tar is swapped

out for sticky honey. Although the “tar-baby” motif was a staple of African fables long

before it was carried by slaves to the United States, it can be assumed that the figure’s

uncomfortable racial connotations (amplified by the version in Song of the South

resembling African-American caricatures) played a role in its replacement. This choice

was certainly prudent, as today many consider the term “tar-baby” to be a racial slur.

XIV, XV. The ride scene to the left, and its film inspiration on the right

Disneyland’s Splash Mountain represents a unique effort on the part of a large

and longstanding media company. A controversial work was surgically stripped of its

39

most problematic elements, leaving only the components that were deemed to valuable

(the songs and the animated characters). These components were rearranged into a new

narrative, Splash Mountain, while the old work was locked away from public access. The

success of this gambit was mixed. Splash Mountain itself was received as an

exceptionally well-crafted and entertaining attraction, spawning duplicates in Walt

Disney World’s Magic Kingdom and Tokyo Disneyland (which contained even fewer

references to Song of the South and Uncle Remus). The ride’s international appeal and

longevity has arguably surpassed that of source material. But Song of the South is far

from forgotten. The appeal of a forbidden Disney film, one which is rumored to be

offensive, has catapulted the work to legendary status. Copies of the film survive on the

Internet, fueling contemporary debates on its racism and the ethics of withholding a piece

of art out of fear of public retribution. 2012 alone saw the release of two books

chronicling the Song of the South debate in unprecedented detail: Jason Sperb’s Disney’s

Most Notorious Film: Race, Convergence, and the Hidden Histories of Song of the South,

and Jim Korkis’s Who’s Afraid of the Song of the South? Splash Mountain proves that the

cultural imprint of a piece can never be entirely erased, no matter how popular its

intended replacement becomes in its own right. This is especially true if, like the Brer

Rabbit stories, the work is fundamentally socially-coded.

40

CHAPTER 4- TOMORROWLAND Past Futures

“A vista into a world of wondrous ideas, signifying man’s achievements… A step into

the future, with predictions of constructive things to come.

Tomorrow offers new frontiers in science, adventure and ideals: the Atomic Age… the challenge of outer space… and the hope for a peaceful and unified world.”

- Tomorrowland Dedication Plaque56

Tomorrowland very nearly failed to open with the rest of Disneyland on July 17,

1955. The last of the park’s themed lands to be built, major construction was still taking

place less than a week before opening.57 Early visitors encountered white and cream-

colored buildings peppered with bright colors, each exemplifying the geometric and bold-

angled Space Age “Googie” style.

XVI. The sleek Moonliner rocket towers over Tomorrowland

56 Disneyland. “Tomorrowland Dedication Plaque.” Anaheim: Disneyland, 1955. Plaque. 57 Disneyland: Secrets, Stories, and Magic. Dir. Bob Garner and Pete Schuermann. Walt

Disney Home Entertainment, 2007. DVD.

41

Judging by the selection of attractions within those modernist buildings, the road to

tomorrow would be paved by benevolent corporations. The Monsanto Hall of Chemistry,

Trans World Airlines’ towering statue of a rocket dubbed “The Moonliner,” The Kaiser

Hall of Aluminum Fame, Dutch Boy Paint’s Color Gallery, and Richfield Oil’s

presentation “The World Beneath Us” welcomed 1955 visitors. They would soon be

joined by the American Dairy Association Dairy Bar, the Crane Plumbing Company

Bathroom of Tomorrow, and the Monsanto House of the Future. In Disneyland: The

Inside Story, former Disney attraction developer Randy Bright pointed to

Tomorrowland’s early budgetary issues, which were also to blame to its rushed

construction, as the reason for the pervasive corporate presence:

With time and money running short before the opening of Tomorrowland, [Walt Disney] had been forced to accept several corporate county-fair-type exhibits to populate the buildings. The Monsanto “Hall of Chemistry,” the Dutch Boy Paints “Color Gallery,” and Kaiser’s “Hall of Aluminum Fame” did little more than promote the companies themselves, and even less to promote the future.58

The connection between the exhibits and the land’s Atomic Age atmosphere was often

strained. This was perhaps most apparent with the Dairy Bar, which attempted to justify

its existence with the slogan, “Today’s Food Builds Tomorrow’s Man”. Though

Tomorrowland’s early attractions were the result of reluctant compromise, the message

that they conveyed was far from unusual for Disneyland visitors. The use of futurism to

advertise and sell products has been, and continues to be, a prevalent American

marketing strategy.

58 Bright, Randy. Disneyland: The Inside Story. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1987.

Print.

42

In futurist advertising, the idea of tomorrow is tied to the acquisition of

commodities. The phenomenon is described in Yesterday’s Tomorrows: Past Visions of

the American Future:

By focusing on improving technology— rather than improving relations between classes, nations, or races, or changing the distribution of wealth or standards of living —the future becomes strictly a matter of things, their invention, improvement, and acquisition. Commodity futurism is, of course, a self-fulfilling prophecy: the more we are led to believe that the future is about things, the more we are led to act on that belief.59

By attempting to integrate themselves into the area’s theme, the corporate exhibits of

early Tomorrowland claimed that their products would be a component of the ideal

future. The Dutch Boy Paint Gallery presented “Our Future in Colors,” which featured an

interactive color wheel that played a musical note when guests had selected an appealing

color combination. Kaiser Aluminum’s exhibit pointed out the various applications of the

newly commercialized metal, while historical characters lamented that they could have

had a better life if only they had known the wonders of aluminum. The Monsanto Hall of

Chemistry displayed the chemicals, plastics, and later fabrics used in their products.

59 Corn, Joseph and Brian Horrigan. Yesterday’s Tomorrows: Past Visions of the

American Future. New York: Summit Books, 1984. Print.

43

XVII. The “Tomorrowland of Dairy” according to the American Dairy Association

The most elaborate of these exhibits was the Monsanto House of the Future,

which opened on June 12, 1957. The cross-shaped, slightly elevated house sat within a

small garden. Its walls and furniture were plastic, and it boasted then-luxurious

appliances such as a microwave oven, an electric toothbrush, a wall-mounted television,

and a retractable dishwasher and cabinets. It promised an incoming world of synthetics

and comfort, emulating other models of futuristic living such as Buckminster Fuller’s

transportable Dymaxion House and Dr. Philip Lovell’s steel-and-concrete “machine for

living,” the Lovell House.59 In its presentation, however, it most closely resembled an

appliance showroom. The RCA/Whirlpool Corporation’s “Miracle Kitchen,” which

began its US tour in the same year that the Monsanto House debuted, featured models of

laborsaving devices such as a television monitor overlooking the nursery, a robotic floor

cleaner, and lighting that adjusted to suit climate conditions.59 It was a set where actresses

played the role of a future housewife before an audience. Similarly, the summer 1957

44

issue of Monsanto Magazine included staged photos of tomorrow’s American family

enjoying life in the House of the Future.

XVIII. Monsanto Magazine features the House of the Future

XIX. A staged photograph of the House of the Future

As the 1960s approached, these exhibits were gradually replaced with fully-

fledged attractions. Corporate sponsorship persisted as a means of funding, but the

45

elaborate showrooms symptomatic of major budgetary and time issues would no longer

dominate Tomorrowland. Instead, technology was showcased via innovative ride

systems. Not all of these novel ride technologies proved successful; 1961’s Flying

Saucers, in which visitors would steer pods suspended by jets of air, closed in 1967 due

to maintenance troubles and general inefficiency. Successes were plentiful, however. In

1959, the Disney-ALWEG Monorail (the first monorail system in the western

hemisphere, which was designated as an engineering landmark by the American Society

of Mechanical Engineers in 1986)60, the Matterhorn Bobsleds (the world’s first tubular

steel rollercoaster)36, and the Submarine Voyage (drolly promoted as “the eighth largest

submarine fleet in the world”)61 opened. The monorail demonstrated a perspective form

of mass transit, and the Disneyland’s bobsleds and submarines celebrated the conquest of

environmental challenges by technology and will. The Submarine Voyage, influenced by

the 1958 expedition of the nuclear-powered USS Nautilus under the polar ice cap, largely

treated its subject matter with gravitas. The gunmetal-gray vehicles—with militaristic

names such as George Washington, Patrick Henry, Ethan Allen, and Nautilus—plowed

through a lagoon while the voice of an austere captain shouted orders to an invisible crew

and pointed out creatures. Playfulness surfaced in isolated scenes featuring mermaids and

a cross-eyed sea serpent (and the captain’s befuddled reactions), but the overall tone was

reverential.

60 Deffree, Suzanne. “1st Monorail in Western Hemisphere Begins Operation, June 14,

1959.” EDN. EDN, 14 June 2015. Web. 61 Sklar, Martin. Dream It! Do It! My Half Century Creating Disney’s Magic Kingdoms.

Disney Electronic Content, 2013. Web.

46

Tomorrowland entered its second era in 1967. The area’s Space Age architecture

was refined and expanded, gleaming a clean white. A slew of new attractions opened,

each continuing the theme of positive progress through technology. The PeopleMover,

another mass transit concept, took visitors on a tour through Tomorrowland via elevated

tracks. The constantly-moving trains had no motor; they were pushed along by rotating

tires in the track. The PeopleMover, the monorail, the Skyway to Fantasyland, and the

spinning Rocket Jets ride infused the land with kinetic energy, portraying the future as a

lively “Nation on Wheels.”62

The Carousel of Progress, a rotating theater attraction, was the spiritual successor

of the land’s original corporate showrooms. Commissioned by General Electric for the

1964 World’s Fair and later moved to Disneyland, the show followed an animatronic

family across several decades as their lives were enriched by (General Electric)

appliances. An unabashedly consumerist interpretation of the traditional image of the

American family (middle-class, white; a wise father, a hardworking mother, children, and

a dog), the Carousel of Progress’s ideology is outlined via its original opening narration:

Welcome to the General Electric Carousel of Progress. Now most carousels just go 'round and 'round without getting anywhere. But on this one, at every turn we'll be making progress. And progress is not just moving ahead. It's dreaming and working and building a better way of life. Progress is the sound of a motor, the hum of a turbine, the heartbeat of a factory, the sound of a symphony, the roar of a rocket. Progress is people getting release from drudgery, gaining more time to enjoy themselves and live richer lives. And as long as man dreams and works and builds, this progress will go on... in your life and mine.63

This speech, given by the show’s father character (amiably voiced by Rex Allen), ties

62 Bruns, George. “Nation on Wheels.” The Legacy Collection: Disneyland. Walt Disney

Records, 2015. CD. 63 Allen, Rex. “There’s a Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow.” The Legacy Collection:

Disneyland. Walt Disney Records, 2015. CD.

47

progress to industry, materialism, and and leisure. The traditional family is treated as a

constant. Though later versions of the Carousel of Progress would reference evolving

perceptions of gender roles via the mother and daughter characters, Disneyland never saw

those changes. Upon General Electric’s request that the attraction be shown to a new

audience, the Carousel was packed and moved to Florida’s Walt Disney World in 1973. It

continues to play there, now sponsor-less, though the revised introductory narration

stresses the show’s age and frames the presentation as a preserved piece of the 1964

World’s Fair.

XX. The bustling new Tomorrowland of 1967

1967’s Adventure Thru Inner Space ride was, in several ways, an anomaly. It

would initially appear to be no more than a continuation of the corporate future;

Monsanto sponsored it as a means to advertise their work in chemical engineering at a

48

microscopic level.64 Yet the tone of the ride itself is at odds with its optimistic packaging.

Adventure Thru Inner Space was a surreal science-fiction journey into a snowflake. After

being assured by an unseen narrator that scientists were, “carefully plotting every phase

of this incredible journey,” riders boarded their vehicles and were “shrunk” by the power

of “Monsanto’s Mighty Microscope.”65 Indeed, the authoritative voices of the scientists

supervising the process could be heard from somewhere overhead, but they soon faded,

leaving only the narrator. The vehicles entered the snowflake’s crystals, passing water

molecules, then atoms, then electrons, then the atom’s nucleus. The narrator’s voice

gradually turns from wonderment to anxiety and terror. The chiming music intensifies,

accelerates, and warps into screeching discordance. A thudding heartbeat increases in

volume—but does it come from the pulsating nucleus or the voyagers?

“Do I dare explore the vastness of it’s inner space?” The narrator muses, “No! I

dare not go on. I must return to the realm of the molecule before I go on shrinking,” his

voice drops to a frightened hush, “forever.”65

Suddenly, the tone sharply reverses. As the vehicles return to normal size, the

narrator assures the riders that they are perfectly safe now. Visitors emerge out of the

pitch-black darkness of the ride and into a bright Monsanto showroom. A chipper song

hails, “Miracles from Molecules,” and, “discoveries for happiness in a fabulous array.”66

On the wall behind the unload station is a statement: “This is Monsanto.” Whether or not

64 Gennawey, Sam. The Disneyland Story: The Unoffical Guide to the Evolution of Walt

Disney’s Dream. Birmingham: Menasha Ridge Press, 2013. Print. 65 Wesson, Steve. “Adventure Through Inner Space Full Virtual Ride-thru.” Online

video. Youtube. Youtube, 20 Feb. 2011. Web.66Disney Studio Chorus. “Miracles from Molecules.” The Legacy Collection:

Disneyland. Walt Disney Records, 2015. CD.

49

it was intended by design, the leap from terror to reassurance is jarring and unnerving,

leaving riders to ponder the prospect of such great power in the hands of corporations.

Even the extensive 1967 Tomorrowland update quickly became dated. The

longstanding Flight to the Moon theater attraction became outmoded after the first lunar

landing, so it was halfheartedly altered to become Mission to Mars. 1977’s Space

Mountain became the last attraction to adhere to the land’s clean white aesthetic, which

was beginning to resemble plain concrete. Two major attractions debuted in the 1980s:

Star Tours (a collaboration between Disney and George Lucas that involved a new story

set in the Star Wars universe) and Captain EO (an elaborate 3D music video starring

Michael Jackson). Both represented popular culture outside of Disney, and their only

connection to Tomorrowland was an outer-space setting.

In the 1990s, several influential Disney park designers proposed shifting

Tomorrowland completely into the realm of fantasy. After all, a creatively-driven land

inspired by longstanding futuristic/science-fiction tropes (aliens, outer-space, etc.) would

not be restricted by the constant (and expensive) updates needed to represent real-life

contemporary technologies. Also, corporations were no longer widely seen as upright

heralds of the future. Tony Baxter, who spearheaded the movement for a fantastical

Tomorrowland, believed that films such as 1982’s Blade Runner had permanently

“polluted” the idea of a corporate tomorrow. “Dreams fuel the future,” Baxter stated, and

the elaborate concept that his team produced was indeed fantastical.67 The new

“Tomorrowland 2055” would be a landing site for aliens, who were happy to share their

67 “The Tony Baxter Interview Part 4.” Feat. Baxter, Tony. The Season Pass Podcast.

Web. 4 Jan. 2015.

50

culture and technology with earthlings. An “Intergalactic Revue” would entertain visitors

with otherworldly music and extraterrestrial performers. The update’s centerpiece

attraction, the ExtraTERRORestrial Alien Encounter, was themed around a sales-pitch by

a sleazy intergalactic corporation that viewed Earth as a promising new market. The

company chooses to bypass scientific and ethical regulations in their haste to demonstrate

teleportation technology to human customers, resulting in a man-eating alien being sent

to the theater instead of their CEO.68 The message was cynical and cautionary; a

refutation of futuristic consumerism.

Far along in the creative process, the team’s budget was suddenly slashed. The

dream of “Tomorrowland 2055” was no more. Alien Encounter was sent to Florida’s

Walt Disney World instead, and the group of designers were left with miniscule funding.

The pre-existing Space Age buildings were given a new steampunk-eque color scheme of

green and bronze. Old ride vehicles were pulled out of storage, repainted, and used as

economical decoration. The PeopleMover was briefly transformed into the speedy Rocket

Rods, but the designers were unable to afford a new banked track (forcing vehicles to

awkwardly brake for turns) and the unsuccessful attraction was shuttered two years later.

The Tomorrowland that reopened in 1998 was regarded as a disappointment, especially

to its design team. In a post-retirement interview, Baxter lamented that the reaction of

many visitors to the underfunded update was a charitable, “Oh, they did really well with

what they had.” “God, I can’t believe what they did,” he reflected, referring to his

68 Hill, Jim. “The ExtraTERRORESTRIAL Files- Part 3.” Jim Hill Media. Jim Hill

Media, 2000. Web.

51

executive superiors.67 Just as when the land opened in 1955, a grandiose promise was not

met by reality.

XXI. Tomorrowland 1998

1998’s Tomorrowland has gradually faded into remnants. The

PeopleMover/Rocket Rods track has sat untouched for over a decade, the skeletal

remains of a once innovative transportation concept. Most of the 1998 color palette has

been repainted in white, blue, and silver, but the occasional bronze can still be spotted. It

would be inaccurate to claim that Tomorrowland has entered a new, creatively unified

era, but a trend is clear. The past decade of new attractions, following the example of Star

Tours and Captain EO, represent successful intellectual properties. The Buzz Lightyear

Astro Blasters opened in 2005, the Finding Nemo Submarine Voyage followed in 2007,

and a new version of Star Tours debuted in 2011. A superhero meet-and-greet opened in

2015. Coinciding with the release of Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens in late

2015, Tomorrowland was draped in Star Wars décor that has not yet been removed as of

52

Spring 2016. The 3D theater shows clips from the Star Wars films, a character meet-and-

greet was placed in the old Carousel Theater, and Space Mountain is now Hyperspace

Mountain. In short, Tomorrowland is currently a stage for brand exposure, and there is no

indication that another major reworking will be announced. Arguably, however, an

uncertain and undelivered vision of the future is appropriate in its own fashion.

XXII. Tomorrowland today

53

CONCLUSION

This review approached several Disneyland areas as embodiments of resonant

American mythologies, cultural values, and conflicts. Main Street, USA embraced small-

town nostalgia with impeccable timing, contributing to the formation of an archetype.

Frontierland represented the ultimate realization of Old West mythology and longing.

Critter Country addressed one of the most controversial films in American popular

culture, spurring discourse on how to regard art that is mired in problematic connotations.

Tomorrowland, like Frontierland and Main Street, was inspired by an evocative idea, yet

it constantly struggles to meet shifting expectations of the future.

This is only a small sampling of the social insights that can be unearthed in

Disneyland. The lands not covered in this study, Adventureland, New Orleans Square,

Fantasyland, and Mickey’s Toontown, each emerged from different circumstances and

addressed a distinct idea. The upcoming area based on the Star Wars franchise will, for

the first time in the park’s history, attempt to bring a single culturally-significant set of

films into the realm of concepts such as “adventure” and “tomorrow”. And the

Disneylands built outside of the United States, located in Tokyo, Paris, Hong Kong, and

soon Shanghai, adapted American-based narratives and properties for new audiences with

wildly varying success.

Theme parks—highly sensory and controlled spaces where every attraction,

animatronic, bench, and brick serves a creative and functional purpose—provide an

overwhelming variety of opportunities for research and criticism. This is especially true

of the original Disneyland, arguably the first theme park ever built and a chief product of

one of the world’s most pervasive media and storytelling powers. Any subject that is

54

regularly described as “magical” warrants discussion on why and how it has inspired

such intense and widespread emotions for over sixty years.

On January 5, 1960, a Missouri columnist scolded Nikita Khrushchev for not

visiting Disneyland during his 1959 trip to the United States. “[Y]ou missed out on

seeing a great big chunk of America,”69 he declared, a statement doubtlessly rooted in

Cold War jingoism yet containing an undeniable kernel of truth.

69 Qtd. in Findlay, John. Magic Lands: Western Cityscapes and American Culture After

1940. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1992. Print.

55

CITED IMAGES

Bricker, Tom. Tomorrowland Today. Photograph. Disney Tourist Blog. Disney Tourist

Blog, 2015. Web. 7 Apr. 2016.

The Burning Cabin, Version 1. Photograph. Disneyland Report. Disneyland Report, n.d.

Web. 5 Feb. 2016.

The bustling new Tomorrowland of 1967. Photograph. Davelandweb. Daveland, 1968.

Web. 1 Apr. 2016.

A Disneyland visitor “becomes” Davy Crockett in this simple photo opportunity.

Photograph. Davelandblog. Daveland, 1955. Web. 5 Feb. 2016.

Explorer’s Map of Tom Sawyer Island in Frontierland. Burbank: Walt Disney

Productions, 1957. Print.

Frontierland river traffic (from left to right: a keelboat, the Columbia, a raft to Tom

Sawyer Island, and the Mark Twain). Photograph. Davelandweb. Daveland, Feb

1967. Web. 5 Feb. 2016.

Frontierland Cemetery. Photograph. Davelandweb. Daveland, 2006. Web. 5 Feb. 2016.

Glover, Erin. The new northern waterfront. Digital Image. Disney Parks Blog. Walt

Disney Company, 11 Jan. 2016. Web. 5 Feb. 2016.

A goat chews a stick of dynamite. Photograph. Davelandweb. Daveland, December 2008.

Web. 5 Feb. 2016.

Indian War Party, 1957. Photograph. Davelandweb. Daveland, April 1957. Web. 5 Feb.

2016.

56

James Baskett interacts with an animated Brer Rabbit as Uncle Remus. Song of the

South. Dir. Foster, Harve and Wilfred Jackson. Walt Disney Productions, 1946.

Film.

Main Street, USA’s Town Square. Photograph. Davelandweb. Daveland, n.d. Web. 1

April 2016.

Monsanto Magazine features the House of the Future. Monsanto Magazine. Summer

1957. Print.

The ride scene to the left, and its film inspiration on the right. Photograph. Davelandweb.

Daveland, Dec. 2012. Web. 1 Apr. 2016.

The ride scene to the left, and its film inspiration on the right. Song of the South. Dir.

Foster, Harve and Wilfred Jackson. Walt Disney Productions, 1946. Film.

A side-by-side comparison of the bobcat scene in Mine Train through Nature’s

Wonderland (left) and The Living Desert (right). Photograph. Davelandweb.

Daveland, August 1977. Web. 5 Feb. 2016.

A side-by-side comparison of the bobcat scene in Mine Train through Nature’s

Wonderland (left) and The Living Desert (right). Digital Image. Parkeology.

Parkeology, n.d. Web. 5 Feb. 2016.

The sign above the fireplace quotes one of Uncle Remus’s preambles to his stories: “Now

this tale didn’t happen just yesterday, nor the day before, but long, long ago.”

Passport to Dreams Old and New. Passport to Dreams Old and New, 2015. Web.

The sleek Moonliner rocket towers over Tomorrowland. Photograph. Davelandweb.

Daveland, 1955/56. Web. 1 Apr. 2016.

A staged photograph of the House of the Future. Monsanto Magazine. Summer 1957. Print.

57

The “Tomorrowland of Dairy” according to the American Dairy Association.

Photograph. Davelandweb. Daveland, n.d. Web. 1 Jan. 2016.

Weiss, Werner. Tomorrowland 1998. Photograph. Yesterland. Yesterland, n.d. Web. 7

Apr 2016.

58

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