Page 103 - The Disneyization of Society

THE DISNEYIZATION OF SOCIETY

Themed restaurants and themed hotels

94 It would be a mistake, of course, to view merchandising purely in terms of movies
and cartoon characters, though these areas have certainly been ones in which
merchandising has been particularly developed. The themed restaurant chains all
follow the lead of Hard Rock Cafe of developing extensive lines of merchandise,
including the ubiquitous t-shirt which simultaneously informs where wearers
have been on their holidays and literally acts as a walking advertisement for the
chain. You do not necessarily have to eat in the establishment in order to pur-
chase the items. Very often, if not invariably, you can enter the shop area with-
out needing to eat the food. In the case of the Rainforest Cafe chain, the shopping
area is frequently as big as many restaurants. The ESPN Zone in Chicago has some
of the features of a museum presentation but sells its branded merchandise and
some other items (see Figure 4.2). Previously, many of the themed restaurant
chains just had small merchandise booths attached to the restaurants, but nowa-
days the areas are much larger. This combination of themed restaurants selling
items with their licensed logos on them has become a prominent strategy.
Some themed hotels have adopted a similar approach. In particular, the large
themed hotel-casinos in Las Vegas have large shopping areas in which they sell a wide
range of goods relating to the overall theme, including licensed merchandise. Hotel
Luxor, for example, has a shop selling lots of fake ancient Egyptian artefacts along
with t-shirts, mugs and many other objects with the hotel’s logo and signs on it.

Zoos

All of the large American zoos sell extensive ranges of merchandise – t-shirts, base-
ball caps, wallets, pens and pencils, and so on. However, there is evidence that
this feature is becoming much more widespread. The Director of Zoo Atlanta,
Terry Maple, has argued that such merchandise is important because it produces
revenue and also provides publicity and enhances the zoo experience. He has
written that ‘we must be prepared to provide our supporters, partners, and guests
with specialized bumper stickers, pins, T-shirts, ties, and coffee mugs’. 54 In addi-
tion, he proclaims that in his own zoo, ‘we adopted some of the techniques and
methods commonly used by entertainment and amusement enterprises, like
Disney World and Six Flags’. 55 Merchandising is reinforced through the creation
of representations of ‘iconic’ animals (e.g. tigers, manatees, giant pandas) and
other species seen as threatened with extinction or as having a particular mag-
netism. Such representations can then be directly incorporated into merchandise
items. Thus, the presentation of animals and animal performances by zoos can
feed directly into the generation of commodified images, which can have consid-
erable commercial potential. As Desmond observes, the commodification of wild
animals is ironic because they are invariably depicted as symbols of pristine