Karen Hellekson

Introduction

On Saturday, March 22, Karen Hellekson and Craig Jacobsen were the hosts for a special lunchtime presentation held at ICFA-29 in Orlando, Florida, entitled “To the Axis Mundi: ICFA in the Pull of the Magic Kingdom.” The hour-long PowerPoint presentation was the first in an ongoing project we’re calling DWORPF: Disney World Ongoing Research Project in the Fantastic. We plan follow-up presentations in the future.

We visited the Magic Kingdom on Tuesday and took about 280 pictures between us. Even these were not enough. In addition to the images below, we found a few on the Internet, mostly of attractions that we were unable to photograph, such as the interior of sets, and of attractions that exist only virtually, such as little green CGI monsters. We were at the park from the time of its opening at 9 a.m. to the time of its closing at about 1 a.m., after which we had an entirely new kind of adventure: that of lost taxi driver desperately trying to pretend he knows where he’s going.

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Overview: Why we went

We went for enjoyment and research, but our main focus was to view the park through an academic lens. We found ourselves fascinated by things that were not the point of the attraction—for example, we enjoyed the decor of the little shops more than the objects being sold. In short, we viewed the Magic Kingdom as a cultural theme studies park for academics. We cultivated an ironic distance, which permitted us to reframe what we saw around us. In addition, neither of us has children, so most people’s reason for going is moot for us.

Our presentation was organized around four points: empty signifier, ontological flattening, and commodification, and to conclude, the Monsters, Inc., interactive attraction, which we see as the wave of the future.

Empty signifier

By “empty signifier,” we refer to an attraction that has had information removed from the signifier, leaving it a contextless husk.

Carousel of Progress

Carousel of Progress tableau showing the kitchen as the site of technological change

The Crystal Palace…

…as an eatery, a symbol of progress reduced to lunch

Brer Rabbit

Splashing into the briar patch

Rasta Mickey ears (sized for children, or Craig would be the proud owner of this item), with race elided

Retrofuture Tomorrowland entrance, uniting future and past time

Merchant of Venus entrance

Tomorrowland orrery

A peaceful nonspecific Indian village

Headhunters: culturally marked, stereotypical figures that do not mean anything other than a threat

A realistic elephant on the Jungle Cruise appears next to silly tableaux

Apes destroying an encampment during the Jungle Cruise

Shrunken Neds outside the Jungle Cruise attraction

A kid with a pistol prepares to lift the white man’s burden

Ontological Flattening

By “ontological flattening,” we mean the closing in of landscape and distance, where hierarchy is irrelevant, where subject and object conflate. We found the Jungle Cruise in Adventureland to be the best example of this. In this attraction, you take a ride on all the great rivers of the world, wending through Asia, Africa, and South America in a mere 9 minutes. The queue features 1930s-era props that evoke a sense of adventure commingled with dread, and jokes about dismemberment by big cats and death by disease abound.

The metal trees in Tomorrowland combine the realistic and the constructed

A realistically bucolic yet wholly constructed scene of wildlife on the train ride around the park…

…contrasts with real wildlife in the park, such as this bird

A steamboat plies the waters…

…with extra spray provided by judicious application of dried ice

Conflation of landscape: American Southwest right next to Indian totems (view is of back of totems)

Conflation of landscape: American Southwest right next to Indian totems (view is of front of totem, which is to the far right)

Steaming through the Southwest

Temple ruins in Cambodia during the Jungle Cruise in a serious tableau, right after passing through Africa and South America

Congo map in the Jungle Cruise queue, indicating contraction of geography and time

These Adventureland totems evoke a far-away place…

…and then squirt cooling water on a hot day

The Swiss Family Treehouse has the same level of reality as…

…the Hall of Presidents, where all presidents are in existence at the same time, as well as…

…this Liberty Bell reproduction, cast from the same mold as the real Liberty Bell and with a faux crack sketched on

This statue of the Little Mermaid, Ariel, is presented on the same level as…

…this statue of Cinderella, which is presented as…

…a story that is simultaneously both antique and Disney, with both given the same weight

The Space Mountain Cargo Control Center features modern flat-panel displays juxtaposed against a retrofuture robot (formerly, if Craig’s memory serves, a regular man) wearing a baseball cap

Commodification

We found the commodification at the Magic Kingdom intriguing. Most items were geared to children and would not appeal to (or fit) adults. Disney-owned properties, such as Lilo & Stitch, were ubiquitous. Many attractions exited into a related shop. We liked the way all the shops were uniquely decorated. Although the kiosks and shops around most attractions were related to the attraction, we found pirate gear everywhere, the result of commodification of the popular Pirates of the Caribbean films, which are based on a Disney attraction. The stock in shops was usually limited and targeted around a theme; a larger selection was available near the park’s entrance, on Main Street. Similarly, the Magic Kingdom uses extreme specialization for food service: kiosks sell only a single food item (French fries, turkey legs, waffles and funnel cakes), which helps keeps the lines moving.

“How to wash your hands” plaques in the bathrooms, sponsored by Sparkle paper towels, commodify the going-to-the-bathroom experience

Rank upon rank of guns, tying into the Pirates of the Caribbean attraction

Pink snakeskin cowboy hats for girls have a pirate theme (note that the eye patch on the skull is a Mickey)

Star Tours gear is still on sale (Goofy as Darth Vader!), although this is no longer an attraction

Commodification of the self and of the child: a little girl with a princess makeover, complete with hair, makeup, tiara, and dress

Karen outside the ladies room, with the sign tailored to the Tomorrowland theme; Tomorrowland was originally a future-utopia progress-based attraction, but it has been replaced with media tie-ins

Shop display with a metanarrative of the park itself: the Magic Kingdom in a bubble, like a snow globe, untouchable by the outside real world

Monsters, Inc.

Mike Wazowski, your Monsters, Inc., host and star of the Disney-owned film

The Monsters, Inc., attraction, which opened in April 2007, features digital puppetry and is part of Disney’s Living Character initiative. We had a while before the park was going to close, and we decided to go through it because there was no line. It ended up being the most interesting attraction. Monsters, Inc., is a 2001 Disney-owned film.

The Laugh Floor; to the right is the yellow canister that the audience must fill with gigglewatts of laughter to provide power for the monsters’ city—a new mode of power that replaces the hideous screams of terror formerly used to power Monstropolis, and a continuation of the narrative of the film

The attraction is an interactive experience, where cartoons on a big screen interact with audience members. Audience members are targeted by a pinpoint spotlight, and a crew member hurries over to hold a mike up while herself remaining completely hidden. The chosen audience member is shown on the large middle screen. Also on the screen, computer-generated cartoon characters move and speak. We saw Mac and Jeeves, a two-headed monster; different names are used for different comedians’ voices. It was clear that they could see us and that was happening was done on the fly; it was not precisely scripted, like every other event in the Magic Kingdom. The oohs and the aahs were generated by the interactivity and the seamless way live action meshed with the CGI. It has a definite “how do they do that?” flavor that definitely impressed an audience all too used to animatronics.

During the long wait to get into the attraction, we were held in a room and entertained with a cartoon story told on monitors. During this long wait, I noticed that we were under video surveillance. We theorize that some of the jokes used were decided on during this wait. One joke involved two people wearing the same T-shirt, for example. We think that there is a limited palette of jokes or scenarios that are chosen during surveillance by the team, with only some of it done on the fly. Spontaneous responses from audience members tap into a repertoire of jokes and references where jokes can be slotted in as needed. Interactive moments interspersed with canned moments, where we watched prerecorded things on big monitors. In addition, big signs in the waiting area invited audience members to text jokes, and three of these were read. We don’t know if these were three from our audience or whether they used old ones.

Monsters, Inc., like the Carousel of Progress that began our tale, is a Tomorrowland attraction. Disney abandoned the tenet of progress and the future 15 years ago. Now, the focus is not the story of progress that the Carousel tells, but rather the technology used to tell individual stories related to Disney properties. Monsters, Inc., draws attention to itself as being different, and its interest lies in precisely its contrast with the other attractions, which look static, even irrelevant. However, some older attractions are still really good: we enjoyed the Haunted Mansion, an attraction that premiered at Disney Land in 1969, even though it’s been basically unchanged (it has been slightly freshened over the years) and we both saw it as children.

We sketched the implications of the Living Character initiative: instead of totally controllable attractions, there will be interactive ones, and with it comes a need for talented employees (such as comedians) who can handle the complex tasks required to entertain audiences widely mixed in age, including lots of children. We plan to follow up on this initiative. Disney plans a Muppet attraction featuring Dr. Benson Honeydew and his assistant, Beaker.

Epilogue

While we were walking through the park, I noticed what could only be stasis or cryonics pods. Craig foolishly thought that they were lights. I had to talk him around.

Stasis pods

If you look closely, can you see Walt himself inside one of them? Or is the story of Walt freezing himself simply an urban myth?