“To all who come to this happy place – welcome. Disneyland is your land. Here age relives fond memories of the past and here youth may savor the challenge and promise of the future. Disneyland is dedicated to the ideals, the dreams, and the hard facts that have created America … with the hope that it will be a source of joy and inspiration to all the world. Thank you.”
Walt Disney’s father helped build the grounds of the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893 in Chicago. In the 1950s as the population of America for the first time shifted West into desert climes on a mass scale, Walt Disney started receiving letters from people about visiting the Disney Studio, located in Los Angeles. Walt realized that a functional movie studio had little to offer to visiting fans. He began to dream about a site near the studios for tourists to visit; ideas that evolved into the first Disneyland Park located in Anaheim, California. The first Disneyland opened to the public on Monday, July 18, 1955 and crowds started to gather in line to enter as early as 2 a.m. Walt’s brother Roy O’Disney had arranged to pre-purchase ticket number 1, so an adult named David MacPherson became the first official visitor to Disneyland, with ticket number 2. For a park that had to become iconic with children all over the world, MacPherson’s historic ticket was potentially disastrous from a marketing point of view, and recognised as such by the ever-alert Mr. Disney. In a masterstroke of foresight and damage control, he had an official photo taken with two children instead, Christine Vess Watkins (age 5 in 1955) and Michael Schwartner (age 7 in 1955). The photo was captioned, “Walt Disney with the first two guests of Disneyland.”
In 1959, tired of the bad businesses and criminal activity that had cropped up around the first Disneyland, Disney began to look for land for a second park; he wanted further that the new park should be located east of the Mississippi river, where over 90% of the American population lived. Such a place was found in near Orlando in the state of Florida. To avoid a burst of land speculation around the new site, Disney floated various dummy corporations with exotic-sounding names such as the Latin American Development and Management Corporation to acquire 27,400 acres of land (JNU is 1000 acres; at its peak, Disneyworld in Florida was twice the size of Manhattan, and remains undefeated till today as the largest theme park in the world). No existing district was good enough to house the new Disneyworld; so one was created out of thin air; as the icing on the cake, the Florida Supreme Court ruled in 1968 that the new district was allowed to issue tax-exempt bonds for public projects within the district despite the sole beneficiary being Walt Disney Productions. The story of greed, corruption and the American State as willing comprador in the rise of the Disney Empire is a fascinating and depressing one, and a long one. For those interested, please read an excellent book called ‘The Disney Version’ by Richard Schickel (Discus/Avon Books, New York 1968)…
Disneyworld, Mickey Mouse, Huckleberry Finn, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Sesame Street, the vast and extensive folklore around kindergarten…Childhood is a very serious idea in the United States; and as with all other ideas, serious, multi-billion dollar adult business. If it wasn’t for American children’s brands like the clothing company Osh Kosh b’Gosh and the huge toy congolomerate Toys R Us, the rest of the world may not have ever discovered that childhood was a wholly distinct and special time in a person’s life, fully deserving of distinct and special merchandise, which parents must ‘invest’ in, for what is known as the ‘all-round development’ of the child, as if a child was a ripening apple or something. American toy companies have child psychologists on their payrolls and child psychologists recommend particular toys to parents and schools…all this we have come to accept as normal, taken-for-granted.
Its interesting, then to realise that until the II World War, children all around the world, including in the U.S were considered miniature adults. Take clothing for instance. Children’s clothes till the mid-war period were miniature versions of adult clothing. Today American social commentators mourn the fact that American adults dress like children – in colourful, sporty clothes, as if ready for a baseball game at all times. Much has been written about American children growing up too fast with exposure to the media, visual culture, guns…the Columbine high school shootings are generally understood as a case of a dangerous intrusion of adult weapons and ways of being into a time that should be free from such corruptions, spawning a debate in the U.S and elsewhere on gun culture (summarised most effectively of course, in the Michael Moore documentary Bowling for Columbine). However, what if there is a parallel danger of equal consequence – of adults behaving too much like children, of a society in which childhood continues interminably…the average American family in the suburbs has access to the conditions of an idyllic seventeenth century childhood, free of noise, crowds, pollution, billboards, traffic, casinos and all the corruptions of contemporary adult life. The average Americans loves to play – he romps in the vast outdoors which that country is blessed with, goes camping in the woods and cycling on weekends, and if all fails, relaxes at home with a video game…in short, Americans spend huge amounts of money on childish adult pastimes…the strangest indication that childhood may be threatening to become a permanent state in an adult American’s life is one of the fastest growing forms of entertainment in the U.S today – war-reenactments.
Get a sense of the surreal nature of this activity in the video above. Professor Diana Taylor of New York University has been studying war re-enactments as a form of popular culture for some years now and argues that in a classic case of life imitating (children’s) art, U.S GIs preparing for departure to Iraq are enrolled on government money for Iraq war simulations run by private companies! The U.S army believes that given the realistic nature of such enactments (replete with artificial blood, deafening bomb and artillery sounds and American actors dressed as Iraqi resistance fighters or civilians), GIs could prepare psychologically for real war, especially for one of war’s biggest health casualties – Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). The real shocker is that these war re-enactments are only peripherally utilised by the U.S Army; their main purpose is adult civilian entertainment. That is, adult Americans pay good money to enroll in these, and they can take their pick. Although the Civil War remains the most popular, the Iraq war is gaining in followers…
How did things come to this pass? One can conjecture…maybe its a function of history; what is the ideal childhood but the conditions that Europeans must have experienced when they came to North America – a sense of boundlessness, endless territory, devoid of adult notions of borders, of the weight of history and experience…this sense of lightness, along with the possibility of endless re-inventions of the self, constitutes the core of the American self-image till today. Indeed, the founding of America – an event rooted in the massacre of Native American populations, slavery and disease, is described as a ‘discovery’, invoking the wonder and innocence of childhood..
Disney of course beats all the other brands. The plaque at the original Disneyland reads, “Here you leave today and enter the world of yesterday, tomorrow and fantasy.” The biggest empire in the contemporary world – an overwhelming military power, votary of an economic system that has imposed second-to-second contemporaneity on the globe epitomised by global financial markets and 24-hour television news – is also the home of a business empire that receives over a hundred million visitors who “leave today and enter the world of yesterday, tomorrow and fantasy”. Surely such a phenomenon cannot be innocent of history, politics, economics. It is a fact that one of Walt Disney’s closest friends was Ronald Reagan, the most rabidly anti-government, pro-business politician the U.S has ever seen, it is a fact that when Nikita Krushchev came visiting the U.S during a thaw in the cold war, Walt Disney was disappointed because he (Walt!) couldn’t show the Soviet premier his (Walt’s!) private submarine collection!! It is a fact that on the day of the Kennedy assassination, Walt Disney was on his private plane, flying over the Florida site for the new Disneyworld. The mother of all ironies I would say. Business as usual, Walt’s ghost would reply, I am sure.
KAFILA - COLLECTIVE EXPLORATIONS SINCE 2006 
I have once read that “America, Gertrude Stein once said, was the oldest country in the world since it was the first to be modern. With its wealth, unique inventions and distinctive “way of life”, the US had already begun in the early 20th century decisively to shape the experience of western modernity. And when it emerged stronger and richer after the second world war, while Europe lay in ruins, its culture had no rivals anywhere in the world. ”
Today, after seeing corporate greed defeating unorganized democracy is worth saddening. But this point of observation about children and adult of an average american is worse saddening. This is the modern state of America where the whole world is aspiring to go…
LikeLike
Amazing piece – and the video too. Thanks!
LikeLike
Yes, it is morally wrong for companies to be hiring psychologists to productize their inventory by exploiting the cravings of the child’s mind. Well. I guess that is where parents come in. To save them from becoming slaves to each and every other product that companies throw at them. But yes, it doesn’t take away the Corporations’ monochromatic vision towards money making. That is something Marketing Managers can take lessons in. They should be held accountable for things more than shareholder-value.
However, disneyland is a great product. Children love being there. Heck, I used to like Appu Ghar when I was a child. Those rides are fun.! And disneyland is just so much bigger! So part of the reason why it sells is because it actually does give you an exhilarating experience. It is not a money making machine just due to the maligned tactics.
LikeLike
Nitin I absolutely agree with you; the rides at amusement parks are fun. When I was a kid going to Appu Ghar was like the most important event in the year! And I am sure nobody does rides better than Disneyland; I mean, this is DISNEYLAND!! My intention is not to sit at a distance from the world and point fingers here and there saying “I have a moral problem with that; I have a moral problem with this’…I am only trying to understand how all of us, you and me included, are very much implicated in, and part of the world, and its dominant notions. The idea of pleasure is not outside of companies and the products that as you, they ‘throw at us’ And I would be hypocritical if I blamed children for succumbing to commodity fetishism, when as adults we barely have control over our desire for goods. But I certainly hope you are not saying ‘Its fun, dammit, don’t spoil it by analysing it’ because that would be sad and unfortunate, not to mention a little selfish, dont you think?. My point is that ‘fun’ shouldn’t be out of our scrutiny simply because its ‘fun’. That ‘fun’ has been produced by an empire that is clearly rapacious and unethical in its tactics. So lets think about that, and lets think about alternative ways of producing ‘fun’. We claim to be the most creative species on this planet; we should earn that claim by creating something that our conscience can live with.
LikeLike
No, I dont intend to justify the greed under the garb of fun and entertainment. One should be held accountable for its actions. I do not generally understand the wrapping up of everything that won’t produce profits. That’s escapism.
A dominant notion can’t sustain itself if the people involved can question the efficacy of the notion itself. To persist, either the notion be ‘fair to all’ because it is the best available, Disneyland works because it actually entertains people ; or one fills up (ads!) people’s mind to make sure they dont think enough to question (tell everyone that Disneyland=good-childhood). => People should be willing to reason prevailing notions as to why a thing should be the way it is. So that Disneyland then may be amusing and fun to kids but never necessary to define ideal childhood.
As for the reenactments you pointed, it is a pretty similar scene in video-game industry. The industry speculates that market demands violent, aggressive games. So, more bloody and war-like, virtually reenacted worlds are supplied to the market space. Why do people have a liking for playing such anti-human games ? — I have very little intelligence here. Do humans essentially crave for violence ?
LikeLike
Sunalini, this short response should become a full fledged essay/article; not pass away as a mere response to a post. The idea of “fun” and “alternative ways of producing fun” is an issue of great creative potential. This is important not necessarily from a popular culture perspective, but from the perspective of creating a radical aesthetics and a new social imaginary of pleasure.
LikeLike
Thanks Manash, I agree there’s a great need for a ‘new social imaginary of pleasure’ as you put it. I think we need a little freedom from the kind of pressures that corporatised media puts on us to like something immediately, here, NOW because its the flavour of the month, and it will soon pass. I mean, desire is a slippery thing to capture and define, as we all know very well (!), and the dizzying pace of capitalist modernity doesn’t leave too much room for spontaneity if you are a consumer. If you are the creative head of say an advertising firm, you are required to be creative in various ways, and the results can be stunning. But according to me, the real issue is how many humans in the world have the conditions to produce pleasure for themselves, in diverse ways. This is not a tradition-modernity debate I want to clarify, because traditional societies regulated desire in very rigid ways too. But whats happening now, with the utter passivity of consumption worries me…
Nitin, I m sure humans are attracted to violence and have always been. Just like they have been attracted to peace, laughter, happiness, desire, beauty…so we can’t escape the difficult ethical consequences of our actions. We still need to ask, why is this society creating these forms of violence, and is there no way out?
LikeLike
Hmm. In strict evolutionary terms, violence is one of the mechanisms to achieve survival. Leaving apart this scenario, I find it hard to think of examples where violence is necessarily needed. One would be able to find an alternative way out, provided one is willing to think through. I believe sophisticated civilizations (strictly in terms of knowledge available) have the ability to make fair choices. So, I guess there is a way out.!
FYI, to break the anonymity behind the internet cloud, I was referred to this website by a friend at LSR. Interesting and thought stimulating articles on various topics. Pretty cool website you guys have!
LikeLike
Thanks Nitin! Do keep reading and engaging…
LikeLike