Page 185 - The Disneyization of Society

THE DISNEYIZATION OF SOCIETY

centres via galleries and museums. … Every mall, not just every amusement park developer, has to
recognise that Disney has set the standards for large integrated site developments, just as Henry
176 Ford once set standards for factory-based manufacturing. 54
Mills’s reference to world fairs is striking in the light of the growing influence of
the Disney theme parks on these institutions. Roche quotes the director of Expo
86 as saying in response to a question about Disneyland in relation to his plans
for the fair: ‘when you ask me about Disneyland I have to say that it’s one of the
highest quality theme park experiences around, and what we’d like to see is that
kind of operational quality applied to the product of a world’s fair. … We are com-
mitted to high quality education and entertainment’. 55 In a similar manner to
Mills, Zukin writes:

Disney World is not only important because it confirms and consolidates the significance of cultural
power – the power to impose a vision – for social control. It is important because it offers a model
of privatization and globalization; it manages social diversity; it imposes a frame of meaning on the
city, a frame that earlier in history came from other forms of public culture. 56
And another writes:

Whether we see Disneyland as the great spore bed of tastelessness and corporate control or as a
seedbed of flamboyance and folk creativity, it has reshaped American and global landscapes in the
form of theme parks, shopping malls, fast food places, sports centers, museums, resorts, and
planned communities. 57
Davis suggests that ‘urban planners and shopping mall designers draw heavily from
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theme park technique’. In other words, for various commentators the Disney theme
parks provide models for cities, malls, museums and a host of other institutions and
forms of organization. Taking the point slightly further, Zukin describes ‘Disney’s con-
sumption regime’ as one which ‘creates a safe, clean, public space in which strangers
apparently trust each other and just “have fun”. The appeal of this accomplishment
is universal’. This regime is depicted as a major influence on the modern city and its
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consumption settings. Sometimes the process of emulation is fairly direct. Judd has
remarked that it was James Rouse, the architect behind the much-copied Faneuil Hall
in Boston, who extolled the virtues of Disney’s impact on urban planning 13 years
60
before the marketplace opened. Also, it is likely that the imagineers and executives
who have been associated with Disney and its theme parks and who have moved on
have provided a pool of talent that other companies in the entertainment industries
and beyond have been able to draw upon. And of course, Disney’s management train-
ing programmes are themselves likely to influence work and human resource man-
agement practices in many organizations (see Chapter 5). This is recognized by Zukin
when she writes that ‘Disney World’s control over its labor force and their interaction
with consumers have been taken as models for other service firms’. 61
What we see in these various viewpoints is the suggestion that the Disney
theme parks frequently serve as models for a variety of social institutions. They