Page 146 - The Disneyization of Society

CONTROL AND SURVEILLANCE

members have to employ the distinctive Disney language when interacting with visitors
(see Box 1.2, p. 11).
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5. Technology Disney employees are frequently controlled by the technologies that Disney
has introduced. This is particularly apparent with the rides that are programmed to run
on a regular basis for a set period of time. This McDonaldized aspect of the work of the
ride operator’s job means that to a large extent the work is pre-programmed and
controlled by the pace and frequency of the ride, much like an assembly line. Similar
principles underlie the work in the many fast-food outlets that populate the parks.

In addition, the behaviour of Disney theme parks employees is controlled
through surveillance, about which more will be said below. There is clearly a con-
siderable range of types of control that affect theme park employees and the ride
operators in particular. In spite of this array of mechanisms, control is not total in
the Disney theme parks any more than it is anywhere else, as will be seen in the
context of the discussion of resistance below.

Control over the immediate environment

The Disney theme parks are themselves tributes to the company’s capacity to
control land having created fantasy worlds out of orange groves (in Disneyland) and
swamp land (in Disney World). Indeed, the company revels in its mastery over the
natural order and celebrates such things as importing flora from all over the world to
create the right kind of vista for its attractions, such as the Jungle Cruise in the Magic
Kingdom’s Adventureland and Disney World’s Animal Kingdom. There is therefore an
affinity between its treatment of control as a motif in such attractions as Living with
the Land and its own approach to controlling nature for the massive construction pro-
jects that it initiates. A further aspect of such control is the way in which utilities such
as water, electricity, and waste disposal are banished below ground into huge corridors.
Even more significant is that Disney seeks to control the immediate environment
surrounding the parks. One of the most frequently quoted maxims that Walt came
up with was ‘I don’t want the public to see the world they live in while they’re in the
park’. Most likely, he meant that he wanted Disneyland to be a fantasy land in which
visitors were not reminded of the outside world and its many negative features (work,
traffic, ugly buildings, and so on). Disneyland was built in a way that minimized the
visual intrusion of the outside world while the visitor was in the park. When in 1963
Sheraton sought to build a 22-storey hotel that would have been visible from within
Disneyland, the company successfully lobbied to get it reduced to 16 storeys and also
for a new ordnance that prohibited tall buildings in the park’s vicinity.
Walt was also deeply distressed by the fact that the approach to Disneyland
became populated by a strip of tacky hotels and restaurants. He felt that these estab-
lishments undermined the kind of magical environment he was seeking to create in
Anaheim. In addition, of course, the nearby presence of these establishments meant that