Out of this world: Theme parks' contribution to a redefined aesthetics and educational practice

International Journal of Art and Design Education

Volumn 21, Issue 1, 2002, Pages 24-35

  Stanley, Nick ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 34249156740     PISSN: 14768062     EISSN: 14768070     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/1468-5949.00293     Document Type: Article

References (37)

1. 'Walt Disney World Vacations' The Chicago Tribune, 23 October 1999
2. Green, J. [1999] Chairman of Disney theme parks, South China. Morning Post, 2nd November
3. Bukatman, S. [1991] 'There's always tomorrowland: Disney and the hypercinematic experience' October 1991, No.57, 61
4. Eco, U. [1986] Travels in Hyper-Reality, p.42
5. Stanley, N. [1998] Being Ourselves for You: The Global Display of Cultures, Middlesex University Press p. 58
6. The responsibility is onerous: 'Disney's technical wizardry and capacity to present the view has to be acknowledged. It has long been recognized that Walt's versions of fairy-tale classics became in most people's minds the way in which they conceptualized these classics in the future'. Bryman, A. [1995] Disney and His Worlds, Routledge, p.190
7. Wade, J. Gillenwater, S. and Ritz, S. [1992] Disneyland and Beyond: The Ultimate Family Guidebook, Ulysses Press, p. 41
8. Ibid, p. 75
9. Duncum, P. [1999] 'Towards an art education of everyday aesthetics' manuscript, citing
10. M. Featherstone [1991] Consumer Culture and Postmodernism, Sage.
11. Read, H. [1958] Education Through Art, Faber and Faber, p. 133
12. Wade et al: 'About five minutes before attendants drop the rope on Main Street to let visitors into the park, head for the China Closet or Carefree Corner, the last two shops on the right of Main Street as you face Sleeping Beauty Castle. They both have back doors that are opened when the Main Street rope is dropped, which let you zip through and get a 100-yard head start on the crowd that inevitably surges towards Space Mountain and Star Tours. Angle to your right to Tomorrowland and you will be one of the first on either ride. As soon as you're off one, speed on to the other (which will be 30 seconds away.) Having polished off these two, you can now dash across the park to the Haunted Mansion and Pirates of the Caribbean, two other attractions that develop lines quickly. If you do it right, you will have ridden four major attractions within an hour of opening time' p.34.
13. Among the more sympathetic, and the less conspiracist studies is that conducted by Jane Kuenz and her colleagues and published as The Project on Disney: Inside The Mouse: Work and Play at Disney World, Duke University Press, 1995.
14. Louis Marin offers one of the most theoretically interesting hostile reviews in his 'Disneyland: a degenerate utopia' Glyph, 1, 1978
15. 'casual estimates made to me of the park's gay and lesbian population ranged from 25 to 75 per cent depending on the department'. Kuenz op.cit., p.153
16. Marin, loc. cit., p.59
17. Keene, E. 'Brú na Bóinne: achieving sustainable balance in heritage landscape management' The European Tourism and Environment Workshop, Kinsale 2-3 April 1998.
18. The new ride at Walt Disney World is called The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror'. The publicity states: 'Walt Disney Imagineering has made the Tower more terrifying than ever, dropping guests 13 stories into "the Twilight Zone" again and again - and again. There's a brief moment of panic when cables "snap" and electrical sparks join a shower of screams.
19. I am grateful to Pat Cooke here for his observations on the dystopia of terror.
20. Nelson, S. 'Walt Disney's EPCOT and the world's fair performance tradition' Drama Review, 1986, Winter, 107-8
21. D, Ley. and K, Olds. 'Landscape as spectacle: world's fairs and the culture of heroic consumption' Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 1988, p.6, p.199
22. Burg, D. [1976] Chicago's White City of 1893, University of Kentucky Press, p. 230
23. Dewey, (1958) Art as Experience, Capricorn Books p.337
24. Disneyland Paris website July 1999
25. Eco, op. cit., p.44
26. Perhaps the most unexpected of these are the 'American Dream Park' in Shanghai and 'Beijing World Park'. See Beaumont, P. and Parr, M. 'Taking the Mickey' (London) Observer Life section 28 February 1999
27. The largest example that I know of is the shopping mall in Minneapolis that draws an international clientèle. This mall is built around a roller-coaster and contains a large range of other attractions and rides.
28. Davis, S.G. 'The theme park: global industry and cultural form' Media, Culture and Society, 18, 1996, p. 418
29. Davis, M.J. 'Disneyland and Walt Disney World: traditional values in futuristic form' Journal of Popular Culture, 15, 1981, p.126
30. Ibid: p. 80
31. Alton Towers website, February 2002
32. Ibid: p.40
33. Ibid: p. 133
34. Ibid: p. 48
35. The term is Nicos Hadjinicolaou's. He defines it as 'a specific combination of the formal and thematic elements of a picture through which people express the way they relate their lives to the condition of their existence, a combination of which constitutes a particular form of the overall ideology of a social class' Art History and Class Struggle, Pluto Press, 1978, p.95
36. Disneyland Paris website July 1999
37. The politics of display is always an interesting and provocative topic, whether it be in relation to linguistic and cultural divisions in Canada, religious in Ireland, or indigenous/ settler in South Africa, USA, Australia or New Zealand. In the case of Disneyland Paris there were major negotiations between Disney and the French Ministry of Culture including the Minister, Jack Long, over gallicising of American themes.