Page 59 - The Disneyization of Society

THE DISNEYIZATION OF SOCIETY

For countries ranging from Canada, Switzerland and Spain, to Russia, Holland and Germany, parks
have been built that offer replicas and reconstructions of buildings, furniture and all manner of other
50 artefacts. Music and crafts are performed by native experts, and there is an abundant stock of food,
drink and ornaments from the area in question, often advertised as exclusive to the location. All this,
domestic [i.e., Japanese] tourists can enjoy without ever leaving their own shores. 141
In the UK and USA some museums, rather than presenting exhibits in glass cases
amid respectful silence and awe, seek to immerse the visitor in an experience that
draws on theme park modes of presentation and representation. The Beamish
Museum near Newcastle in the north-east of England uses recreations of village life
along with ‘inhabitants’ who operate machinery, talk about and demonstrate crafts,
and interact and play out roles with visitors. This process of immersing visitors in a
life that represents a different time and place in effect generates and constitutes a
theme in its own right. Similarly, at Snibston Discovery Park in Leicestershire in the
East Midlands, ex-miners explain the workings of coal mines and machinery at the
site of one of England’s many disused mines. Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia is
renowned for its use of restored buildings and museum staff to recreate the world of
ordinary life in the revolutionary era. The Ellis Island Immigration Museum similarly
seeks to provide an immersive experience for the visitor and in the process, it ‘the-
matizes immigration’. 142 Experiencing the past can be further intensified through
simulations of extreme incidents. At the Imperial War Museum in London, there are
two themed areas: one on life in the trenches in the First World War and one of
living during the Blitz in the Second World War. In each case, there are simulations
of the experience with recreations of a trench and a London street and bunker, along
which the visitor can wander. The visual impact is underscored with sounds and
other special effects (such as smoke in the aftermath of a German bomb when visi-
tors exit the bunker). The success of such themes can often be affected by the degree
to which convincing and aesthetically pleasing simulations can be contrived.
Clever recreations of settings coupled with live displays on the part of museum
staff blur the lines between reality and unreality but the key point is that they are
very much part of the theming process. For their part, museums vary in their
attitude to such a recognition. While visitors sometimes believe that Colonial
Williamsburg is in fact a theme park, the museum’s representatives try to distance
themselves from theme parks. 143 Others such as the Director of Den Gamle By (The
Old Town), an open-air museum in Denmark, are more prepared to concede the
influence of theme parks on their establishments. 144

Other domains of theming

The foregoing discussion has emphasized some of the major spheres in which
theming has taken place in late modern society. However, it does not exhaust all
of them by any means. The following is a catalogue of others along with a brief
discussion of each.