Disneyland SHOULD BE a Museum

“Disneyland is not a museum” is the tried and tired mantra employed by Imagineers and Disney fans alike whenever news of a change to the park is received with anything less than glowing enthusiasm. It is meant to invoke the spirit of Walt Disney, who said that Disneyland would never be completed, against accusations that Walt wouldn’t have done something in a certain way. Whether or not that is true, the phrase “Disneyland is not a museum” is a thought terminating cliché that is less troublesome for what it says about Disneyland than what it says about our attitudes towards museums and our ambivalence towards the preservation of history. In my life beyond blogging, I work as a professional educator in the museums and heritage field whose undergraduate degree focused on exhibit design, and I would like to share with you the argument that Disneyland should be a museum.

I don’t personally know anyone who hates changes at Disneyland for the sake of hating changes. Rather, what I see are people who are justifiably critical given that Imagineering’s track record at actually improving guest experience with new additions is uneven.

Most people can list alterations and renovations that they have liked and that they have disliked, sometimes within the same attraction. For example, when all is said and done, the addition of Disney characters to It’s a Small World was innocuous, but the addition of the America section was just awful. It was not awful in principle, merely because it is a new section, but it was so poorly executed. When I took Ashley to Disneyland for the first time, I decided to run a quick experiment by not telling her that the America section was a relatively recent addition. Afterwards, she volunteered the opinion that this section looked like it was from an entirely different ride.

 Saying that “Disneyland is not a museum” is problematic on the surface because it is an attempt to shame critical engagement with a work of art. By “critical” I do not necessarily mean “negative” (though it can certainly be). Instead, I am using it in the technical sense of a formal analysis of a work of art. Critical thinking means to engage with a work of art, to reflect on it, to absorb it into one’s psyche, to feel it and reason through it, and to consider how it does or does not achieve its goals. It would be to ask why, in my opinion, the addition of Constance to the Haunted Mansion works while the addition of Jack Sparrow to Pirates of the Caribbean does not, and to be able to formulate a coherent argument to defend that point of view.

Yes, I actually like Constance.

This is important because being able to think critically is valuable. Study after study into museum and arts education has revealed that fostering the ability to think critically about art improves our ability to think critically and creatively about other subjects. It is known to enhance math scores and reading comprehension, to stimulate and motivate further learning, to develop creative problem solving skills, boost confidence and self-esteem, promote tolerance of ambiguity and understanding of other people and cultures, encourages sensitivity to others and our environment, train minds to reason logically and think abstractly, deepen our appreciation of history and beauty, increase emotional and psychological health, and improve all-around quality of life and personal satisfaction. Thinking critically about art makes us better people.

The Story of the Flying Dutchman

Few maritime legends were left untouched in the course of the Pirates of the Caribbean sequels. From Greek deities to Robert Louis Stevenson, from Samuel Taylor Coleridge to Davy Jones himself, the rich mythology built by sailors and authors fueled the sprawling and circuitous plot by Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio. But if Davy Jones is going to be turned into a squid-pirate, then a squid-pirate presumably needs a ship. Which one? Well there are no ships more famous and more infamous than the Flying Dutchman!

The Flying Dutchman, by Albert Pinkham Ryder, 1896.

In Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest and Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, the Flying Dutchman acts as a vessel for Davy Jones (then Will Turner) to ferry souls to the afterlife. Amongst professional mythologists, this role is known as a "psychopomp," which derives from a Greek word that literally means "guide of souls." These are figures who, like Charon in Hercules, are meant to conduct the dead safely to the other side. They are not the judges of the dead (as Charon in the Hercules series quips, "I just row the boat."), merely the guides. In some cultures, they work both ways, not only ferrying the dead to the afterlife, but ferrying new souls through birth. Though the ship comes to this use in Pirates of the Caribbean, the actual plot between Davy Jones and Calypso is heavily influenced by the most celebrated version of the Flying Dutchman's story.

The Story of Davy Jones

The first Pirates of the Caribbean movie was a brilliant piece of cinema capturing the rollicking adventure of swashbuckling films of yore. Using the ride as its jumping off point, it brought together great characters, great actors, great action, and a great story (and skeleton pirates!) to deliver the deeply satisfying kind of viewing experience one rarely gets in movies made after 1960. Then they had to make some sequels. Rather than keep up the strategy that made The Curse of the Black Pearl so successful, writers Ted Elliot and Terry Rossio took a queue from Lord of the Rings by trying to cram Dead Man's Chest and At World's End full of mythology and plotlines that never quite jelled together.

However, if you're an aficionado of maritime lore, there were lots of really neat allusions pillaged for content. The title of the second film, and the treasure chest to which it refers, was taken from Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island. Just as "Yo Ho (A Pirate's Life for Me)" sounds like an old sea shanty despite being written by George Bruns and X. Atencio expressly for the ride in Disneyland, Stevenson invented his own suitably pirate-sounding song for his novel, entitled "Fifteen Men on the Dead Man's Chest." The Flying Dutchman is a legend amongst sailors, and the plotline surrounding it is unmistakably adapted from Richard Wager's eponymous opera. Inside the ship is an organ decorated with a relief of Gustave Doré's engravings for Samuel Taylor Coleridge's epic poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Then there is the man playing it, a Lovecraftian tentacle horror identified with Davy Jones.

Rapunzel Untangled

The adjective used to title Walt Disney Animation’s 50^th animated feature film could just as easily describe the circuitous route taken by the original story transcribed by the Brothers Grimm before it was rendered in 3D CGI. Rapunzel was first published in Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm’s Children’s and Household Tales in 1812. Like my previous piece on Charles Perrault’s Sleeping Beauty in the Wood, I’d like to reprint that story for you, with a few notes to follow. This translation from the original German was by Margaret Hunt, for the two-volume publication Grimm’s Household Tales in 1884.

Spectatorship and Experientialism in Disneyland: Rethinking "Story"

The bread-and-butter of much discussion throughout the Disneysphere is the perceived decline of Imagineering and the attractions it creates. Many of these focus on the question of licensed works as opposed to original concepts, having observed a decided lack of modern classics in the vein of a Pirates of the Caribbean or Haunted Mansion or Journey into Imagination. Most seem to be running statistical tallies on the number of thrill rides or E-tickets, shedding a tear over each new C-ticket attraction and Princess meet n' greet. Despite the Magic Kingdom in Walt Disney World being the best-attended theme park in the world, beating out Universal Orlando's Islands of Adventure by more than 10 million visitors in 2013, well-intentioned fans are frantic over the need for a "Potter-Swatter" or Disney's need to step up to the plate when they already own the field. To put it in perspective, 10 million is a little more than the attendance of The Louvre in 2013, or the total number of visitors to the Grand Canyon, Yosemite and Yellowstone National Parks combined.

Oddly absent is debate over the single most important dialectic problem in Imagineering design today... The problem cutting to the very heart of what a Disney theme park experience is, regardless of whether it is a ride or a meet n' greet, an E-Ticket or a nice bit of place-making, a true themed-park or simply an amusement park encrusted with diverse franchises. It is often mistaken for being the debate between "story" and "theme" but it runs even deeper than that. It reflects the very nature of how a guest subjectively determines the success or failure of an attraction. That problem is the issue of spectatorship versus experientialism.

Form and Content in Disneyland

It likely goes without saying that an overabundant love of Disney and its parks are incomprehensible to most people. The majority of us have experiences of being looked at from down someone’s nose as they mutter something about us going to a Disney park (again) or, in my case, proposing to my fiancée in one. Doubtless many of us are equally familiar with the self-appointed critics who live in a state of utter exasperation that anyone could like a Disney park when there are other amusement parks with newer, larger, and more expensive rides out there.

"Lame."

"Totally Lame."

"That horse isn't even a 3D projection! Way to drop the ball, Disney!"

As incomprehensible and exasperating as our love for Disney may be to them, the inverse is often a more vexing problem to the mouse-eared faithful. What is wrong with these people who don't love Disneyland? Why don't they "get it"? It doesn't help that this “it” that other people don't get is very difficult for Disney fans to explain. More often than not, it devolves into platitudes about Disney's special "magic", how it is the "happiest place on earth" and where "dreams come true"... All the advertising slogans invented by the company marketeers.

Disney Runs Away With the Circus

On the dustjacket of their impressive tome Walt Disney's Imagineering Legends and the Genesis of the Theme Park, Jeff Kurtti and Bruce Gordon reiterate one of the "primal myths" of Disneyland’s origins: “Fifty years ago, Walt Disney utterly transformed the concept of outdoor entertainment venues from tawdry carnivals and seedy amusement piers called ‘amusement parks,’ to an entirely new destination that would come into common vernacular as the ‘theme park.’” When the Imagineers of today added a new area to Walt Disney World's Fantasyland based on the circus – ostensibly the most “tawdry” of American amusements that are legal in most States – it certainly raised some eyebrows and some ire. How could they so betray the spirit of Walt Disney himself by including an area themed to the very thing he tried to get away from?

For as brilliant and creative as they are, I think one always has to take what Imagineers say with a grain of salt. For example, when they are criticized for poor artistic choices, they frequently dust off the thought-terminating cliche that “Disneyland is not a museum.” Nevertheless, when Walt explained what Disneyland was, he had this to say (emphasis mine):

The idea of Disneyland is a simple one. It will be a place for people to find happiness and knowledge. It will be a place for parents and children to share pleasant times in one another’s company; a place for teachers and pupils to discover greater ways of understanding and education. Here the older generation can recapture the nostalgia of days gone by, and the younger generation can savor the challenge of the future. Here will be the wonders of Nature and Man for all to see and understand. Disneyland will be based upon and dedicated to the ideals, the dreams and hard facts that have created America. And it will be uniquely equipped to dramatize these dreams and facts and send them forth as a source of courage and inspiration to all the world. Disneyland will be sometimes a fair, an exhibition, a playground, a community center, a museum of living facts, and a showplace of beauty and magic. It will be filled with accomplishments, the joys and hopes of the world we live in. And it will remind us and show us how to make these wonders part of our own lives.

Oh, sometimes Disneyland is a museum. Walt did a brisk business in nostalgia, and the very first incarnation of Disneyland was very much the sort of thing we would recognize today as a “living history museum” or “historical village.” In 1951, Walt intended to build a quaint historical village in a parcel of land adjacent to his studios in Burbank, where today one finds the headquarters of ABC and Walt Disney Animation. The following rough blueprint was sketched by Harper Goff, showing the intended attractions in this “Mickey Mouse Park.”

You may have noticed the paddlewheeler plying a man-made river, a hub-like town square, a boating canal, a steam train, and other features that would work their way into the park that would come to be built in Anaheim. But what is that in the left-hand corner? Could it be? Yes... A circus!