Page 58 - The Disneyization of Society

THEMING

criticism of the school from which a great deal had been anticipated by residents. 137
Other New Urbanist developments include: Rosemary Beach, WaterColor, and
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Windsor in Florida; Kentlands, Maryland; Mashpee Commons, Cape Cod; Fort
Mill, South Carolina; and DuPont, Washingon. Views about New Urbanist devel-
opments vary considerably. Some see them as models of future suburban devel-
opment which will give people back the sense of community and civic life that
sprawling suburbs and the motor car took away. Critics see them as exclusionary
because they are most likely to be accessible and appealing to the white middle
class and because they essentially ignore the problems of American cities by cre-
ating enclaves that turn a blind eye to what is going on in the wider world. Still
others decry the reliance on a sentimental nostalgia as the route to suburban
redemption. 138
New Urbanist towns are themed in that they are based on a narrative of nos-
talgia for both an era and a style of living in towns that projects a sense of other-
ness on the urban and suburban landscape in which most Americans live. In
addition, in some cases the housing styles are themed too in the sense that a lim-
ited range of housing prototypes is specified and these draw on external narra-
tives. At Rosemary Beach in Florida, the house style prototypes are based on
Caribbean and early Spanish Florida styles. In Celebration, there are six housing
styles: Classical; Victorian; Colonial Revival; Coastal; Mediterranean; and French.

Museums

Theming in museums can be seen most notably in the surge of specialist museums
that can be viewed as examples of theming. In a sense, museums have always
been themed, but as museums have proliferated and become increasingly special-
ized, they have looked more and more like themed institutions. Concerning
England, Urry has written: ‘Some apparently unlikely museums are the pencil
museum in Keswick, a museum of the chemical industry in Widnes, various
Holocaust museums, a dental museum in London, and a shoe museum in Street
[in Somerset]’. 139 His list by no means ends there. Other museums include: a
colour museum in Bradford in Yorkshire; a Greater Manchester Police Museum; a
Guinness Museum in Dublin; the International Spy Museum in Washington DC;
and the Museum of Sex in New York. In addition, as Gottdiener points out, many
of the more eclectic museums have special exhibitions which draw upon general
themes. 140
It is also relevant to this discussion that as many commentators have observed,
the distinction between theme parks and museums has increasingly become
blurred, a trend which has contributed to the growth in the theming of museums.
In Japan, the gaikoku mura (foreign country villages) which were built following
the opening of Tokyo Disneyland have elements of both a museum and theme
park. As one commentator puts it: