Disney

Historical Disney Milestones

The entire list of culture-shaping events from Disney enterprises could be rather long. Even a short list, however, should include the following milestones:

• 1928: first two Mickey Mouse short films released
• 1937: other key characters—Donald Duck, Pluto, Goofy, and so forth—introduced; also, first animated feature film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs released
• 1950: Disney television special launched
• 1955: Disneyland opens in Anaheim, California
• 1971: Walt Disney World Magic Kingdom opens in Orlando, Florida
• 1982: EPCOT Center opens in Orlando
• 1983: Tokyo Disneyland opens
• 1987: first Disney Store opens
• 1992: Euro Disney (now renamed Disneyland Paris) opens
• 1996: Capital Cities/ABC acquired
• 1998: Disney Cruise Line sets sail
• 2006: Apple and Pixar cofounder Steve Jobs becomes largest Disney shareholder because of acquisition of Pixar by Disney

Disneyfication

The cultural-economic success of Disney, especially of the theme parks, triggered emulative processes of Disneyfication. This is the process of non-Disney contexts employing the operational principles of Disney [Page 464]parks to achieve cultural appeal and economic success similar to Disney's. Nikhilesh Dholakia and Jonathan Schroeder outline the basic building blocks of Disneyfication: spectacles, themes, dreams (fantasies), and adventures. The key is the “intensification and management of experience” via playfulness, acceleration, integration, and classification. Ersatz elements of nostalgia, atavistic imagery, and folklore are employed liberally to achieve instant identification by and engagement of consumers.

Disney environments have expanded to create diverse immersive and interpretive consumer spaces, from museums to retail shops—and also virtual worlds. EPCOT Center in Orlando, combining futuristic pavilions with crafted national simulacra in the World Showcase Section, is an example of the prototypical visionary, fantastic, and novel Disney context (Beard 1982). Disney's emphasis on creating and panoptically managing risk-free, clean, and sanitized immersive spaces is reassuring to consumers and reinforces the power of vision, fantasy, and novelty.

The theming used in Disney parks is presentational rather than representational. Rather than simply replicating what is in the “outside” world, they either present something completely new and unique (e.g., newly developed technologies showcased in pavilions, such as Innovations at EPCOT Center) or they transform something that already exists into ersatz but relatable forms (e.g., the sanitized and simplified version of American history found in the U.S. pavilion of the World Showcase Section at EPCOT Center, excluding the unpleasant narratives of slavery and civil war). Disney parks offer fun infused with manufactured meaning; they are contexts that offer “edutainment.”

Disney Parks are, to use Michel Foucault's term, a heterotopia. They are real sites but they represent the society in a distorted way to emphasize the simplified and sanitized ideals of a culture. As heterotopic spaces, Disney parks make the magic real. In other words, they create the feelings of magical authenticity. Imagineering, which emphasizes the key roles of both imagining and engineering in creating effective designs, is pioneering Disney-invented process for realizing this magic. Disney parks are museums of idealized pasts and futures (King 1981). Linking to noble and desirable ideals makes Disney settings attractive to many companies for showcasing their brands and corporate social-responsibility programs.

...