25
http://jce.sagepub.com/ Ethnography Journal of Contemporary http://jce.sagepub.com/content/11/2/139 The online version of this article can be found at: DOI: 10.1177/089124168201100201 1982 11: 139 Journal of Contemporary Ethnography M. Gottdiener Disneyland : A Utopian Urban Space Published by: http://www.sagepublications.com found at: can be Journal of Contemporary Ethnography Additional services and information for http://jce.sagepub.com/cgi/alerts Email Alerts: http://jce.sagepub.com/subscriptions Subscriptions: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.nav Reprints: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav Permissions: http://jce.sagepub.com/content/11/2/139.refs.html Citations: What is This? - Jul 1, 1982 Version of Record >> at ETH Zurich on May 16, 2012 jce.sagepub.com Downloaded from

Disneyland - A Utopian Urban Space

Embed Size (px)

Citation preview

Page 1: Disneyland - A Utopian Urban Space

http://jce.sagepub.com/Ethnography

Journal of Contemporary

http://jce.sagepub.com/content/11/2/139The online version of this article can be found at:

DOI: 10.1177/089124168201100201

1982 11: 139Journal of Contemporary EthnographyM. Gottdiener

Disneyland : A Utopian Urban Space

Published by:

http://www.sagepublications.com

found at: can beJournal of Contemporary EthnographyAdditional services and information for

http://jce.sagepub.com/cgi/alertsEmail Alerts:

http://jce.sagepub.com/subscriptionsSubscriptions:

http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.navReprints:

http://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.navPermissions:

http://jce.sagepub.com/content/11/2/139.refs.htmlCitations:

What is This?

- Jul 1, 1982Version of Record >>

at ETH Zurich on May 16, 2012jce.sagepub.comDownloaded from

Page 2: Disneyland - A Utopian Urban Space

139

DISNEYLANDA Utopian Urban Space

M. GOTTDIENER

To all who come to this happy place: Welcome. Disneyland isyour land. Here age relives fond memories of the past .. andhere youth may savor the challenge and promise of thefuture.

—Dedication plaque, July 17, 1955

The amusement park, Disneyland, is viewed as a form of settlement space withurban characteristics A sociosemiotic analysis is carried out to uncover the

meaning system of this built environment After an introduction to urban semi-otics, two dimensions are analyzed according to syntagmatic and paradigmaticassociations In the former case, Disneyland is best understood in contrast to thesettlement space directly outside it, namely, the regional sprawl of Los Angeles. Inthe latter case, the park is viewed as structured by two underlying semantic fieldsThe first is the articulation between the late capitalist social formation in theUnited States and space, while the second is the articulation between the personalideology of Walt Disney and space

Disneyland is located in Anaheim, California, just southof Los Angeles. Any sociologist visiting there would rec-ognize immediately that it is a city environment and that it

presents people with a unique urban experience. Severalanalysts have brought a variety of perspectives to bear uponinterpreting this social space. Real (1977) uses primarily aMarxian phenomenological approach, Marin applies literaryconventions to a textual reading of the park (1977), andSchickel utilizes the perspective of the mass culture critic(1968). These attempts do not exhaust the reality of theexperience, and, more importantly, they fail to analyze the

AUTHOR’S NOTE: The author wishes to acknowledge the help of A Ph. Lagopoulosin all phases of this project, while taking full responsibility for the mode of semioticanalysis that is presented.

URBAN LIFE, Vol 11 No 2, July 1982 139-162@ 1982 Sage Publications, Inc

at ETH Zurich on May 16, 2012jce.sagepub.comDownloaded from

Page 3: Disneyland - A Utopian Urban Space

140

urban aspects of this constructed space. This article pro-poses another mode of analysis. The technique of semiotics(or semiology) seems to offer a means for displaying thosecharacteristics of Disneyland that contrast qualitatively withthe condition of people in the surrounding area. The fol-lowing discussion is meant neither as an introduction nords a survey of urban semiotics. Instead, the purpose here isto apply semiotics in order to render an analysis of Disney-land that I hope says more about it than has been possibleso far using other less esoteric techniques. It remains,however, important to sketch the fundamental concepts andlimitations of the urban semiotic approach before we pro-ceed with a look at &dquo;D-land&dquo; (as it is called by many of itsSouthern California repeat visitors). After a brief look aturban semiotics, therefore, we will present an analysis thatcombines sociological interpretation with semiotics. Thisamalgam is called forth because our analysis is based onfieldwork observations, and does not include the discourseof other inhabitants of this settlement space, that is, thesocial groups that, according to semiotics, are the bearers ofmeaning.

AN INTRODUCTION TO URBAN SEMIOTICS

Because semiotics is a comparatively new field, it hasbecome overburdened by confusing and somewhat contra-dictory terminologies. In the interests of consistency I haverelied on the interpretations of Eco (1976) and Barthes(1964) with regard to semiotics in general and on Lago-poulos (1977; forthcoming), and Choay (1969) with regardto urban semiotics in particular, for the concepts I haveused.Semiotics is the science that studies systems of signs and

their &dquo;life&dquo; in society. A sign is an image or an objectproduced so as to intentionally stand for something else,i.e., it is the unification of object and meaning. The basis ofsemiotics is the social activity that links these two aspects

at ETH Zurich on May 16, 2012jce.sagepub.comDownloaded from

Page 4: Disneyland - A Utopian Urban Space

141

and that is called &dquo;signification.&dquo; According to Eco, theprocess of signification involves the coupling of some&dquo;thing&dquo; or object with something else, where the former&dquo;stands for&dquo; that something else (1976: 8). Signification isthus a process by which meaning is both produced andthen interpreted by people. Although conventional defini-tions vary greatly, signification is said to involve the cou-

pling of a signifier with a signified. In linguistics the for merwould be the word or sound, while the latter is the idea ormental image corresponding to it. In the semiotics of

objects, the signifier represents the object itself or its

representation, while the signified is the concept, contentor mental image in the mind of the addressee linked to thatobject. This process of signification can be extended in theworld of culture to a variety of objects or experiences allrelated to each other in some way by a combinatorial rule orcode (Eco, 1976: 8, 9, 36-38). Thus the combinatorial orinterpretive rules governing clothing which is considered&dquo;in fashion&dquo; can be called the &dquo;fashion code.&dquo; This code isthen said to be a system of signification, as Eco states.

A code is a system of signification, insofar as it couplespresent entities with absent units. When-on the basis of anunderlying rule-something actually presented to the per-ception of the addressee stands for something else, there issignification. In this sense the addressee’s actual perceptionand interpretive behavior are not necessary for the definitionof a significant relationship as such: it is enough that thecode should foresee an established correspondence betweenthat which stands for and is correlate, valid for everypossible addressee even if no addressee exists or ever willexist [1976: 8].

The analysis of culture can, therefore, be approached semi-otically by virtue of these concepts, because culture can bethought of as being composed of numerous systems ofsignification each with their separate codes (Schwimmer,1975). These semiotic codes are used socially to organizehuman activity or behavior, as for example in the use of the

at ETH Zurich on May 16, 2012jce.sagepub.comDownloaded from

Page 5: Disneyland - A Utopian Urban Space

142

highway sign system to regulate traffic behavior (alsoregulated by the threat of the police and the courts, i.e., bynonsemiotic systems). Any object or externalized humanartifact can be viewed as a cultural object and can, there-fore, be interpreted by referring to the variety of codesbelonging to the systems of signification that constituteculture (Baudrillard, 1968). Such systems and their inter-pretation are functions of human activity and, as such, areproducts of labor. That is, systems of signification are

produced, managed, interpreted, and used by virtue of

socially defined symbolic work. Culture, therefore, can beinterpreted semiotically because systems of significationlink human labor with symbolic communication and socialbehavior. Finally, a collection of cultural objects that com-prise a built environment located in space can be analyzedas part of the semiotics of objects and this endeavor can becalled the semiotics of settlement space (Lagopoulos, 1977).Given any system of signification, the analysis of mean-

ing proceeds according to two distinct structural axes ofsignification: the syntagmatic (metonymical) and the par-adigmatic (metaphorical) planes. According to Barthes, syn-tagmatic elements are related by contiguity (1964: 62). Theyprovide each other with meaning by virtue of being locatedalongside each other, such as the words of a sentence are.No two syntagmatic elements can be used at the same timeor in the same place. For example, in the garment systemthe syntagm is the contiguous juxtaposition of differentelements of dress from shoes to blouse to hat. The code offashion would then determine what forms of contiguity are&dquo;fashionable&dquo; or appropriate, that is, the syntagm governsthe ensemble of clothing. Applying the semiotic method toan aspect of the built environment thus enables us to makestructural comparisons between objects and the largerspatial context.The paradigmatic axis constitutes the associative plane,

which is composed of various objects that are all related toeach other. Each element within a class can be substituted

at ETH Zurich on May 16, 2012jce.sagepub.comDownloaded from

Page 6: Disneyland - A Utopian Urban Space

143

for any other in use but not in meaning (Barthes, 1964: 63).Thus, in the garment system the paradigmatic plane iscomposed of the types of clothing or the garment classes ofobjects such as the set of all hats, pants, or shoes. Applyingsemiotics to settlement space, therefore, enables us toanalyze it in part as metaphor.The analysis of Disneyland will proceeed by considering

first the meanings created by the syntagmatic structure ofurban space expressed as the contiguity between the placeitself and the space surrounding it-i.e., the seeminglyunending sprawl of Los Angeles. Second, I will interpret the&dquo;meaning&dquo; of Disneyland by paying attention to the par-adigmatic axis, or the associative spheres to be foundwithin this space itself, i.e., Disneyland as metaphor. Beforeproceeding however, let us consider briefly some of thelimitations of the semiotic approach as applied to urbanspace.The most important analytical shortcoming of urban sem-

iotics is that a settlement space does not constitute &dquo;a

language&dquo; i.e., the city is not a &dquo;a text.&dquo; Language is onlythe most developed of the systems of signification, whileothers, especially the system of objects of use, possess theability to convey meaning only in rather limited ways. Themisconception that applies linguistic analysis to the inter-pretation of systems of objects is called the linguistic fallacy(Krampen, 1980). In particular with regard to settlementspace, as Lagopoulos (forthcoming) contends,

We need to distinguish clearly between the settlementenvironment in its semiotic aspect, and the same environ-ment in its non-semiotic aspect. More specifically, settle-ment space is primarily a social system of use which is also asystem of signification.

According to Lagopoulos, urban semiotics as an epistemol-ogical activity must distinguish an object of the built en-vironment that possesses a function (meaning in a non-semiotic sense) from levels of connotation that constitute

at ETH Zurich on May 16, 2012jce.sagepub.comDownloaded from

Page 7: Disneyland - A Utopian Urban Space

144

meaning in a semiotic sense (1977: 55). Thus urban spacecan only be considered as a pseudo-text (Ledrut, 1973),because it is produced by nonsemiotic processes, such aseconomics and politics, as well as semiotic ones. Urbansemiotics, therefore, is a sociosemiotics. That is, the anal-ysis of meaning in settlement space cannot be divorcedfrom the larger society within which that space is found, norfrom the particular historical, ideological, political, andeconomic processes that have combined to produce thatspace (Lefebvre, 1974; Castells, 1977). This sociosemioticsis much removed from an analysis of meaning that tries toapply a linguistic model (phonemes, sememes, and the like)to space, as if it were a &dquo;discourse.&dquo;A second limitation to urban semiotics is that the built

environment situated in a sociosemiotic system is over-burdened with meaning, or multicoded. There are a varietyof sources for these different codes, such as variability ofinterpretation due to class differences, political or economicconflict over territory, the articulation of several culturalsystems such as fashion, food, and shelter in the same

place, or, finally, the multiplicity of interpretations anyindividual can potentially give for the same object (Gott-diener, forthcoming). There is no way to transcend thislimitation, and it makes semiotic analysis open-ended. Thatis, any analysis of the built environment must consider themany different codes or systems of signification found therewith the understanding that this analysis cannot deal withall possible ones.As practiced, urban semiotic analysis can also be charged

with appearing arbitrary in its interpretations. For example,architectural semiotics has been open to this criticism as

interpreters of the built environment seem to be producing acottage industry of arbitrary architectural criticism usingsemiotics as a form. This turns semiotics into a pseudo-scientific legitimating mechanism for asocial, apolitical in-terpretation. This can be avoided by assuming the socio-spatial posture-that is, by tying the analysis of spatialsignifiers to their relationships with aspects of the larger

at ETH Zurich on May 16, 2012jce.sagepub.comDownloaded from

Page 8: Disneyland - A Utopian Urban Space

145

social system. In particular, any class society will possessideologies pertaining to its social cleavages, and theseideologies can be used to locate semiotic structures assystems of mediation within the larger social formation(Lagopoulos and Boklund, 1979).

Finally, while not a shortcoming of the semiotic approach,we must distinguish between two separate levels of signif-ication : production and conception. Production refers to theproduction of meaning in space where the sender may bean individual or group with or without an intention tocommunicate a message. Furthermore, this message is theexternalized built environment, that is, it is characterized byspatial elements. Conception refers to the &dquo;reading&dquo; of

space or the &dquo;image of the city&dquo; where the addressee is anindividual or &dquo;collective synchronic or diachronic subjecteither known or unknown to the sender&dquo; (Lagopoulos,forthcoming). This reading is characterized by temporalitybecause the receiver encounters the spatial message exper-ientially. Thus the production of signification is qualitativelydifferent from conception. This analysis of Disneyland isconfined to a semiotic interpretation at the level of produc-tion. That is, I have not solicited a statistical sample of usersand collected their respective conceptions of this space as itwas experienced by them. In this sense the analysis is onlythe first part of what could be a broader study that, never-theless, can stand on its own as the production of meaningin space.’

DISNEYLAND: THE SEMIOTIC PRODUCTION OF SPACE

THE PLACE

Disneyland was &dquo;carved out&dquo; of the advancing suburbansprawl of Los Angeles by the purchase of a 160-acre orangegrove adjacent to Anaheim. The &dquo;magic kingdom,&dquo; alsoknown as the &dquo;happiest place on earth,&dquo; is divided up intofour separate realms-Frontierland, Adventureland, Fan-tasyland, and Tomorrowland, and includes visits tu three

at ETH Zurich on May 16, 2012jce.sagepub.comDownloaded from

Page 9: Disneyland - A Utopian Urban Space

146

distinct towns-Main Street, New Orleans Square, andBear Country. Each of these realms is organized aroundsome central unifying theme, which is manifested in thevariety of amusement rides available to visitors, who pur-chases tickets that can then be used to go on whatever ridesthey choose (within their purchasing ability) throughoutthese different realms. The built environment is illustratedin Figure 1. Visitors to the park leave their cars (virtuallytheir sole means of transport in suburbia) and becomepedestrians, making their way on foot through this amuse-ment space. In essence they return to the city, only it is a

city that is a product of a single corporation that has usedtechnology or &dquo;imagineering&dquo; to transform space into ahighly organized and smoothly run operation devoid of themany pathologies common to the urban places of our

society. As an employees’ brochure indicates,

And with our own postal service, full service bank, securityand fire department, Disneyland is almost like a city in itself.James Rouse, highly respected master planner and builder,in his keynote speech before an urban design conference atHarvard University, said, &dquo;I hold a view that may be shockingto an audience as sophisticated as this: that the greatestpiece of urban design in the United States today is Disney-land.... I find more to learn in the standards that have beenset and the goals they have achieved in the development ofDisneyland than any other single piece of physical develop-ment in the country&dquo; [Walt Disney Productions, n.d.: 12].

SYNTAGMATIC ANALYSIS

Disneyland stands at the conjuncture of multivalent codesproduced by the larger social system within which it islocated. There are at least nine meaning systems con-verging on this urban place that are important for under-standing the experience there. Clearly this reveals the

necessarily open-ended aspect of this analysis becausethere are certainly many more codes represented in settle-ment space. We have stopped at nine, however, because wefind these most useful for an understanding of Disneyland.These systems of signification are: transportation, food,

at ETH Zurich on May 16, 2012jce.sagepub.comDownloaded from

Page 10: Disneyland - A Utopian Urban Space

147

Figure 1: Disneyland

fashion, architecture, entertainment, social control, econ-omics, politics, and the family.2

Understanding Disneyland through the plane of conti-guity requires that we consider it as a separate part of thesocial formation that has produced the rest of the SouthernCalifornia region. Consequently, we can compare Disney-land to what is left behind by visitors-the urban/suburban

at ETH Zurich on May 16, 2012jce.sagepub.comDownloaded from

Page 11: Disneyland - A Utopian Urban Space

148

world of Los Angeles. The meaning of Disneyland, there-fore, is revealed by its oppositions with the quotidian-thealienated everyday life of residents of L.A. These opposi-tions exist for each of our nine codes or systems of significa-tion. They are: transportation: pedestrian/passenger; food:celebration/subsistence; fashion: tourist/resident; archi-tecture : fantasy/function; entertainment: festival/spec-tacle ; social control: communion/coercion; economics: themarket/capitalism; politics: participatory democracy/repre-sentative democracy; and family: child-directed/adult-di-rected. The summary aspects of these oppositions areindicated in Table 1, which condenses the contrasts foundbetween Disneyland and Los Angeles.

Everyday life in Los Angeles requires reliance upon theautomobile, the rational planning of meals and specialtrips to suburban shopping centers, housing as propertyvalue or equity, clothing as career image, adherence tonorms because of compulsion or coercion, participation incompetition out of necessity, and limited access to themeans of social decision making through representativedemocracy. Above all else, Los Angeles is the archetypicalsprawling urban space where miles and miles separateindividuals from each other and the ordinary activities ofdaily life, such as shopping and recreation. Debord (1970:174) has remarked that such deconcentration representsthe end of urban life. While not referring to L.A. in par-ticular, he states:

The present moment is already the moment of the self-destruction of the urban milieu. The expansion of cities overcountrysides covered with uniformed masses of urban res-sidues is directly officiated by the imperatives of consump-tion. The dictatorship of the automobile, pilot-product of thefirst phase of commodity abundance, inscribed itself onearth with the domimation of the highway, which dislocatesancient centers and requires an ever-larger dispersion. Atthe same time, the moments of incomplete reorganization ofthe urban tissue polarize temporarily around &dquo;distributionfactories,&dquo; enormous supermarkets constructed on bareground, on a parking lot; and this centrifugal movementrejects them when they in turn become overburdened sec-

at ETH Zurich on May 16, 2012jce.sagepub.comDownloaded from

Page 12: Disneyland - A Utopian Urban Space

149

N_0.NsQ.a0’0e<oN4)

r 0

~ <3-J &horbar;,~0

< 4-1 M

’~ 0.Ns’50CO0?Er-</:

at ETH Zurich on M

ay 16, 2012jce.sagepub.com

Dow

nloaded from

Page 13: Disneyland - A Utopian Urban Space

150

condary centers, because they brought about a partial re-composition of agglomeration.

In contrast to L.A., Disneyland is a utopian urban space. Itinvokes the essential condition of the citizen in classic

cities-being a pedestrian wanderer. It is a built environ-ment that entertains. What is most surprising about oursyntagmatic analysis is that it reverses previous criticismsof Disneyland, because the quotidian world of Los Angelesis far more open to a sociospatiat critique. In fact, the whollypositive attitude of the Disney corporation about the virtuesof this park as a settlement space, a view also shared bybuilders such as James Rouse, now seems eminentlyreasonable. Let us detail these comparisons as outlined inTable 1.

Food. Food in Disneyland becomes part of the festival. It isavailable whenever one is made hungry by pedestrianactivity. It is festival food, state fair food, snacks boughtalmost anywhere and at any time. Los Angeles, in contrast,is the space of food as subsistence. It is the everyday worldof planned meals, budgets, organized shopping trips by carto the &dquo;temples of hurried consumption.&dquo; Food is thehousewife’s burden and the husband’s terminal illness.

Fashion. In Disneyland, appropriate attire is the uniformof play, of being a tourist. Although the Disney authoritiesdo regulate appearance by insisting upon the middle-classleisure outfit, nevertheless this is a qualitative departurefrom the work uniforms of everyday life. (Recently theyrefused entrance to several &dquo;punk rockers&dquo; with short hair.In the 1960s they used to prevent long-haired youth fromentering the park.) People in D-land can often be seen inHawaiian print shirts or wearing mouse ears and otherfamous Disney icons. Their clothing signifies their status asworkers during leisure time, i.e., during the circulation ofpeople themselves for consumption purposes. In Los An-

geles people dress in the career-oriented fashions for theirroles as part of the labor force, i.e., they &dquo;dress for success&dquo;or to conform to the appearance expectations of others at

at ETH Zurich on May 16, 2012jce.sagepub.comDownloaded from

Page 14: Disneyland - A Utopian Urban Space

151

work. These styles are dominated by the &dquo;logo-techniques&dquo;of the fashion industry and by class distinctions.

Entertainment, In Disneyland, entertainment is group-oriented and presented in a wide variety of forms from livemusic to costumed street theater to the various ridesthemselves. Disneyland entertainment captures the feelingof being at the participatory festival of the Medieval city. Asa broch u re states,

Up until now, audience participation in entertainment wasalmost non-existent. In live theater, motion pictures andtelevision the audience is always separate and apart fromthe actual show environment.... Walt Disney took theaudience out of their seats and placed them right in themiddle of the action, for a total, themed, controlled experi-ence.

The urban cultural element of serendipity thrives in this

space as live action can pop out at passersby almostanywhere and at any time. This resurrects the spontaneous,stimulating aspect of the aristocratic city because it com-bines play with independence-the air of freedom.

In contrast, Los Angeles possesses a pathological form ofserendipity-random street violence and one of the highestcrime rates in the country.3 The culture of Los Angeles isdominated by the spectacle, i.e., the &dquo;organization of aliena-tion and representation in everyday life&dquo; (Lefebvre, 1971 ).Entertainment is the commercialized commodity of BigBusiness with the audience as passive voyeur-not am-bulatory participant. In fact, L.A. is the production capital ofspectacular culture.

Social Control. In Disneyland, this is refined to an art,the art of moving crowds by their own motivation instead ofcoercion. D-land represents the ideal in this regard. It is theperfection of subordination-people digging their own fan-tasy graves. Los Angeles, in contrast, is the site of thecoercive mechanisms of wage-labor, ideology, and statepower. This space also controls by the separation andisolation of people. As Debord (1970: 172) states,

at ETH Zurich on May 16, 2012jce.sagepub.comDownloaded from

Page 15: Disneyland - A Utopian Urban Space

152

Urbanism is the modern accomplishment of the uninter-rupted task which safeguards class power: the preservationof the atomization of workers whom urban conditions of :production had dangerously brought together. The constantstruggle which had to be fought against all aspects of thepossibility of encounter finds its privileged field in urban-ism.

Economics. Disneyland presents the illusion of cornu-copia. After paying a lump sum at the entrance to the park,participants enjoy an abundance of opportunity for amuse-ment. The best rides are made scarce by a high price andportioned out with limited tickets, but there is alwayssomething to do for free and all visitors can participate inany of the amusements, even only once (in July 1981 theyare switching to unlimited rides with one ticket-thus truecornucopia). In this space, class distinctions are minimizedand ignored, because the poor have been screened out ofthe park by the price of admission (around $10). In this

world, corporate control is benevolent and even paternal. Aride is &dquo;brought to you by,&dquo; &dquo;with the complements of,&dquo; and&dquo;presented by.&dquo; These epithets are unobtrusive and sub-liminal. They are extended in the manner of a gift; therefore, I

they invoke the traditional economy of a tribal society. Theinsidious implication here is that such courtesies are re-ciprocal (Mauss, 1967). In Los Angeles, by contrast, wehave late capitalism with its class divisions, production forprofit, and periodic crises of accumulation. Everything herehas a price, and due to stagflation the price keeps rising.There are no bargains outside the park, only the tryanny ofthe budget. Here corporate control is predatory, not pater-nal.

Architecture. In Disneyland, the built environment is

entertaining. Every edifice has symbolic value (see theparadigmatic analysis below) much like the ancient andmedieval cities. In Los Angeles, housing signifies equity andis built for a profit. Design is conformist and regulatedthrough zoning and building codes. Business and commer-cial establishments are housed in functionally designed

at ETH Zurich on May 16, 2012jce.sagepub.comDownloaded from

Page 16: Disneyland - A Utopian Urban Space

153

centers that have only one semiotic value (i.e., monosemic),the signification of the mundane activities of production andconsumption themselves (Choay, 1969).

Politics. Disneyland is also an exercise in group decisionmaking. The goal of social control is ambulation. Withcrowds moving all the time, it matters little that individualsare allowed to make their own choices about what to dothere. In addition, people are ushered out of amusements sofast that they never get to consider whether they shouldchange the ride or make it more to their liking. Formally thisparticipation without social change is like an audience witha powerful religious or political leader, such as the pres-ident, and it invokes the child’s version of the adult &dquo;treat.&dquo;You are given the honor of a special occasion, whether ornot it is satisfying is irrelevant, because the treat is its ownreward. Fittingly, Disneyland even includes a special visit tothe &dquo;greatest&dquo; American president of them all, AbrahamLincoln, cloned into action by the hydraulic, plastic tech-nique of audio animatronics to look real.

Family. Finally, Disneyland inverts the structure of familyauthority. While most families, regardless of class, are

adult-directed even if they are child-centered (Gans, 1966),a visit to D-land is ostensibly for children (or tourist visitorswho then are ascribed the status of children). Here the childgets to direct the adults. Invariably they choose the rides,the food, and the schedule. Parents become chaperones orvicarious thrill seekers through the eyes of their own

offspring. Once outside the park and back in the quotidianworld of L.A., the father returns to his role as &dquo;the master&dquo;(Reich, 1974: 76), with both parents reassuming theirfamilial division of labor in &dquo;bringing up&dquo; the children.

In sum, the urban environment of Disneyland offers aworld free from the energy crisis and gas lines, free ofpathological forms produced by an inequitable and classsociety such as slums, ghettos, and crime. It is a safe placein all its dimensions in contrast to the security precaution~taken by average c~ -ens even in the privacy of their own

at ETH Zurich on May 16, 2012jce.sagepub.comDownloaded from

Page 17: Disneyland - A Utopian Urban Space

154

homes. Disneyland embraces people in the bosom of a

paternal corporate order. It entertains them and stimulatesthe externalization of their private fantasy lives. Visitorsassume the status of a pedestrian wanderer and participatein a festival of self-directed entertainment. This is especiallytrue for children who get to taste this freedom perhaps forthe first time. In contrast to Los Angeles, Disneyland is a

utopian built environment. It possesses the &dquo;illuminatingpotentiality&dquo; of a space occupied by the symbolic and theimaginary (Lefebvre, 1974: 423), in which something fan-tastic can and usually is always happening.4

PARADIGMATIC ANALYSIS

As we have indicated the space of Disneyland is sub-divided into four separate realms. Each is organized aroundsome distinct, unique theme. Within these realms elementsof the built environment are associated with each other in

support of the theme, i.e., their design has been structuredby the associative relationship. According to a Disney bro-chure,

Disneyland was the first to use visually compatible elementsworking as a coordinating theme avoiding the contradictory&dquo;hodge-podge&dquo; of World’s Fairs and amusement parks.

This observation about other parks holds as well for themodern city, which also possesses the same anarchy ofarchitectural styles because buildings last longer than thechange in design fashions. Each of the subspaces of Dis-neyland, in contrast, is a miniature medieval city in thesemiotic sense, because of the unity of meaning in all itsarchitecture. For example, Adventureland is designed as atrip to the Third World. It contains the popular rides &dquo;JungleSafari,&dquo; which seems located in Africa complete with Black&dquo;natives&dquo; (perhaps the highest minority population in thepark), and &dquo;Swiss Family Robinson&dquo; representing coloni-alist adventure at its most rustic. Frontierland, in contrast,contains &dquo;Tom Sawyer’s Island,&dquo; a Mississippi paddle-

at ETH Zurich on May 16, 2012jce.sagepub.comDownloaded from

Page 18: Disneyland - A Utopian Urban Space

155

wheel boat ride, along with a western section-log cabins,Indians, and a calvary fort. It is designed as a visit to

America’s past, especially the &dquo;Wild West.&dquo; Fantasyland isthe centerpiece of the magic realms and is crowned by thefairy-tale castle of Sleeping Beauty. Tomorrowland presentsthe world of science and technology at its most spectacular.It includes a trip below the polar ice cap in one of Disney’sfleet of atomic submarines and an &dquo;outer space&dquo; rollercoaster ride.The town areas also contain amusements and are unified

around a single theme. New Orleans Square is an open airfestival of sidewalk cafes. It is host to the very popular ride&dquo;Pirates of the Caribbean&dquo;-a visit to a treasure trove. OnMain Street you can ride in a horse-drawn carriage along-side smalls shops and pass under the window of WaltDisney’s private apartment, where he used to sit afternoonsand watch the crowds of visitors to his land. Finally, BearCountry contains an old-time country music hall with audioanimatronic &dquo;hill-billy&dquo; bear entertainers.Given this appearance, our paradigmatic reading of Dis-

neyland requires us to ask the following question: Is thereany underlying semantic field that the associative themesorganizing the separate realms tap into and that serves tostructurally unify the separate messages?5One way of addressing this question is to proceed socio-

semiotically in the general sense by linking the productionprocess of Disneyland to the larger society that contains it.Given that we dwell within an American, capitalist, socialformation, the separate realms can be viewed as corre-sponding to the various states of capital, or, rather, as linkedwith the different &dquo;faces&dquo; of capital throughout the latter’shistorical development in the United States. This associa-tive link exists at the connotative level necessary for sig-nification, i.e., these places connote such meanings not bytheir function, but by their appearance and, thus, becomemetaphors.6 The signifiers &dquo;Frontierland,&dquo; &dquo;Adventure-land,&dquo; &dquo;Tomorrowland,&dquo; &dquo;New Orleans Square,&dquo; and &dquo;MainStreet&dquo; can be linked to the signifiers of &dquo;the faces of

capitalism&dquo; as follows:

at ETH Zurich on May 16, 2012jce.sagepub.comDownloaded from

Page 19: Disneyland - A Utopian Urban Space

156

~ Frontierland-predatory capital~ Adventureland-colonialism/imperialism. Tomorrowland-state capital~ New Orleans-venture capital~ Main Street-family capital

While &dquo;Bear Country&dquo; seems a signifier for &dquo;the country&dquo; or&dquo;the idiocy of rural life,&dquo; Fantasyland signifies bourgeoisideology in mythical form. 7

In the above interpretation Disneyland becomes the fan-tasy world of bourgeois ideology, a kind of capitalist familyalbum documenting the development of its different per-sonality manifestations in the United States. The space ofDisneyland has thus been produced by the formal represen-tation of this ideology articulated with the processes ofurban construction and real estate development. Such aresult, however, leaves us with a puzzle. Disneyland is themost popular attraction in the United States (surpassed nowby Disneyworld in Florida, which is ten times its size and themost popular attraction in the world), receiving more visi-tors each year than even the monuments of the nation’scapital (Real, 1977). There are, however, many other pre-sentations of bourgeois ideology as entertainment, andthere are even other amusement parks offering &dquo;fantastic&dquo;rides on the same scale. In fact, two of the largest in theUnited States, both surpassing Disneyland in size, are

located nearby-Knotts Berry Farm and Magic Mountain.We must, therefore, ask the question why Disneyland,in particular, is so much more popular than all these otherpublic amusement places, which might also be analyzed asrepresentations of bourgeois ideology.8

It is my contention that Disneyland is more than just ashowplace of capitalist images. Taking a sociosemiotic

perspective in the particular sense, we need to tie this spacewith the background and intentions of its creator, WaltDisney. As a corporation brochure states,

Disneyland, the dream, was born long before 1955, in thecreative mind of Walt Disney. As a pioneer in the motionpicture industry, Walt developed an intuitive ability to know

at ETH Zurich on May 16, 2012jce.sagepub.comDownloaded from

Page 20: Disneyland - A Utopian Urban Space

157

what was universally entertaining. When his daughterswere very young, Walt would take them on what he latercalled &dquo;very unsatisfying visits&dquo; to local amusement parks.He felt there should be something built where parents andchildren could have fun together. He wanted Disneyland tobe a place where &dquo;people can experience some of thewonders of life, of adventure, and feel better because of it.&dquo;

Familiarity with Disney’s personal background (Gartley andLeeborn, 1979; Schickel, 1968; Thomas, 1977) supports thecontention that the park can also be &dquo;read&dquo; as a fantastic

representation of Walt Disney’s lost youth. D-land, there-fore, stands at the intersection of two overlapping andsomewhat contradictory semantic fields, one of which is theideological representation of the faces of capitalism, asseen above, and the other, the personalized self-expressionof its creator. The park is a creation of a corporation that islinked to other corporations, but it is also the artistic

production of an exceptional talent that seems capable ofentertaining millions of people on an ongoing basis.

Considering the map of Disneyland above (Figure 1), it isour contention that each of its areas corresponds to com-partmentalized aspects of the world of a young boy growingup in a midwestern town.9 Following our significationscheme we can present this as follows:

. Adventureland-childhood games, comic-strip superheroes,backyard play

. Frontierland-summer vacation, Boy Scouts

. Tomorrowland-spectacular careers in science and tech-

nology. Fantasyland-dreams/fables, bedtime stories

In our schema, Adventureland signifies the backyard gamesor empty-lot world of everyday play among children. This isthe staging ground for group games such as &dquo;cowboys andindians,&dquo; &dquo;Tarzan,&dquo; or other jungle adventures. Frontier-land, in contrast, connotes escape to the rustic regions,such as a camping trip or a summer vacation, especiallythose family excursions to historical sites and Americanmonuments to the colonial past. Fantasyland connotes the

at ETH Zurich on May 16, 2012jce.sagepub.comDownloaded from

Page 21: Disneyland - A Utopian Urban Space

158

world of dreams and nursery fairy tales, such as the tradi-tional fables brought to the screen by Disney-&dquo;SnowWhite,&dquo; &dquo;The Three Little Pigs,&dquo; and &dquo;Cinderella&dquo;-whichconstitute the oral tradition of young people in our society.These are the bedtime stories that Disney knew so well andwhich enabled him to make his fortune through animation.Little wonder that Sleeping Beauty’s castle in Fantasylandhas become the centerpiece of the park. Finally, Tomorrow-land signifies the world of work and industry as it is pre-sented to children, and not as it is experienced in actualityby adults, such as in the annual &dquo;science fairs&dquo; of smalltowns. It is industrial society glamorized with a 1950s sheenso that even the military looks appealing with spectacular,technologically oriented careers in atomic power and outerspace.

Disneyland also presents three visits to small towns.Main Street serves as the opening area for people enteringthe park. It is an icon and is a self-referencing recreation ofthe small town fetishized by Disney-complete with &dquo;ma-

and-pa&dquo; shops, horse-drawn carriages, and &dquo;tin-horn&dquo; cops.It is a replicated midwestern settlement space that providesthe material foundation for the utopian fantasies in the restof the area, because it recreates the urban place of Disney’syouth. In contrast, New Orleans Square signifies this samesmall town glamourized in festival form. It is the small townas a population center, liberated from the cyclical time ofholiday-a perennial celebration with sidewalk cafes andambulating Dixieland bands. Finally, Bear Country, whichstudies have shown to be the least popular part of the park(Real, 1977), signifies a visit to rural relatives or the

&dquo;country bumpkins&dquo; who never quite made it to the petitebourgeois life of their small town relatives back on MainStreet. These final significations can be illustrated by thefollowing:

~ Main Street-small town as icon~ New Orleans Square-small town as festival~ Bear Country-lumpenproletarian relatives

at ETH Zurich on May 16, 2012jce.sagepub.comDownloaded from

Page 22: Disneyland - A Utopian Urban Space

159

CONCLUSION

Disneyland has been called variously as illusionary, ide-ological, capitalist, fantastic, and even utopian by socialanalysts. In some of the more trenchant discussions muchhas been made of its invocation of the middle-class virtuesof small-town, mid-American life, and of the morals andvalue system of Walt Disney himself (Real, 1977). In whatways then, have we improved upon these observations bysubjecting Disneyland (and the reader) to an arcane sem-iotic analysis? It seems that further insight has been derivedby our demonstration of the juncture of two separatesemiotic fields, one personal and the other specific to thecurrent social formation, which play themselves out in theconstructed space of the park. This articulation is a meta-

linguistic construct (Barthes, 1972) because space definedby capitalism is articulated by space as interpreted from thepersonalized referent of an idealized youth. That is, Disney-land is overdetermined with meaning and mythical in form.

Disneyland is the myth of small-town America if ad-vanced industrial society would have articulated with thissettlement space without changing it, except by leveling itsclass and racial distinctions. It is not only a spatial repre-sentation of capitalist ideology, as believed by previousobservers, but also the fantasy of a Walt Disney whoyearned as much for an idealized youth as he did fetishizethe benevolence of the system itself. That is, there is both asocial and a personal message in this space. In the largersociety, especially Los Angeles, the massive regional sub-urban environment has evolved from the small town. Onlyhere aerospace industries, mass media, multinational glo-bal involvement, and technology have obliterated this formand its social order. Los Angeles is the real future that hasalready unfolded for small-town America. Confronted bythis vista we must pause and wonder why Disneyland hasdrawn criticism when the area around it represents thiswell-acknowledged failure of urban planning.

at ETH Zurich on May 16, 2012jce.sagepub.comDownloaded from

Page 23: Disneyland - A Utopian Urban Space

160

Disneyland is the wish of its creator and it is as much areflection of his personalized code as it is of corporatesignifiers. In this sense, therefore, it is a consumate, three-dimensional work of populist art-entertainment for themasses. It invokes the structure of small-town life, wherethe only price for participating in the benevolent, moralorder of America was the loss of individuality and theadherence to strict social conformity. It is the &dquo;happiestplace on earth,&dquo; because many of its visitors, especiallythose from California, subscribe to the very same values asDisney and come from similar backgrounds. These attitudeshave been ignored more by advanced capitalism and its

specific urban growth patterns than they have been ap-propriated by the system for its ideological productions.

In sum, Disneyland can be understood best by a semioticcomparison with the world directly outside of it, the sub-urban sprawl of Los Angeles. The contribution of such ananalysis is to show that the underlying structure of theamusement park is a somewhat contradictory amalgam oftwo distinct semantic fields both articulating in the samesettlement space. The first is the personalized self-expres-sion of its creator, and the sceond is the articulationideology/space within the American capitalist system. It isthe former quality that gives the place a uniqueness that isappreciated by the massive volume of visitors coming to iteach year. The park indicates as much about the victimiza-tion of small-town life as it extols the same system thatperpetuated that victimization. This is the contradictionshared by Disney and the larger society in which he lived.

NOTES

1. This distinction is important from a semiotic point of view Since the objectof analysis for semiotics is systems of signification, or ideology, it is imperativethat the discourse of people be analyzed This is so because social groups orclasses are the bearers of meaning in society at the level of production as well asconception Because the following is based only upon field observations, itcombines sociological interpretations with semiotic analysis, and is therefore, nota pure semiotic reading of Disneyland (see also notes 2, 6, 7, and 9 below)

at ETH Zurich on May 16, 2012jce.sagepub.comDownloaded from

Page 24: Disneyland - A Utopian Urban Space

161

2 Our nine codes have been picked as frames of references for analysisThey do not necessarily derive from people’s concepts themselves, but from theauthors own field observations This is perhaps the best illustration of the

sociological/semiotic nature of the present analysis Such a procedure is quitecommon as a mode of interpretation, especially in architectural semiotics.

3 Recently Disneyland had its first shocking crime, a fatal stabbing. Accordingto reports of the incident from the news media, this was handled poorly by themanagement, who whisked the still alive youngster off the park premises insteadof calling for paramedics to treat the victim where he fell. The youngster diedenroute Despite this citylike event and one or two other fatal accidents, mostpeople still would probably consider Disneyland a very safe place to be.

4 It is important to note that Disneyland is a utopian space in the Lefebvriansense we have indicated, but it is not a candidate for status as a utopiancommunity According to historian Robert V. Hine, a true utopian communitypossesses the long-term commitment of its residents to the realization of itsideals In this sense, D-land is not a community, but a temporary collectivity ofpeople consuming a utopian space This is more akin to Lefebvre’s "isotopia"(1974) The staged nature of this experience is brought out by the manycontradictions of the park itself It is, for example, monetarily free, despite havingto pay admission; existentially free, despite highly sophisticated crowd control andmotivational techniques It has food without nourishment, shelter without prac-tical function, grassroots politics without social change, and the classless society,but only because the lower strata have been screened out at the ticket booths bythe price of admission.

5. We proceed here without inquiring after the transformational rules neces-sary to prove the underlying nature of the following semantic fields (i.e., systemsof signification).

6 Once again it is necessary to point out that the "appearance" referred to inthe text means appearance to the author.

7 The bearer of meaning (the object of semiotic analysis) for these signifiers isan "exosemiotic" one, the social formation of American capitalism, or more

specifically, the articulation between the mode of production and space. That is,these signifiers are not derived from any particular social group ideology, but fromthe historical content of the social formation itself. These correspondences wereconstructed, however, by the author and are part of his interpretation.

8. I am here using ideology in the Althusserian sense, as the symbolicdimension of human labor alongside economic and political structures (1970) (seealso Lagopoulos and Boklund, 1979)

REFERENCES

ALTHUSSER, L and E BALIBAR (1970) Reading Capital London New Left Books.BARTHES, R (1973) "Semiology and urbanism," in Structures Implicit and

Explicit. Philadelphia University of Pennsylvania, Graduate School of Fine Arts&mdash;&mdash;&mdash; (1972) Mythologies New York Hill & Wang&mdash;&mdash;&mdash; (1964) Elements of Semiology. Boston Beacon.BAUDRILLARD, J. (1968) Syst&egrave;me des Objets. Paris Allimard

at ETH Zurich on May 16, 2012jce.sagepub.comDownloaded from

Page 25: Disneyland - A Utopian Urban Space

162

CASTELLS, M (1977) The Urban Question Cambridge, MA: MIT.CHOAY, F. (1968) "Urbanism and semiology," pp 27-38 in C Jencks and G Baird

(eds.) Meaning in Architecture. New York George BrazillerDEBORD, G. (1970) The Society of the Spectacle Detroit. Black & RedECO, U. (1976) A Theory of Semiotics. Bloomington Indiana Univ. Press&mdash;&mdash;&mdash; (1972) "A componential analysis of the architectural sign/column

"

Semiotica 5, 2.GANS, H (1966) The Levittowners. New York: VintageGARTLEY, L. and E LEEBRON (1979) Walt Disney A Guide to References and

Resources. Boston G. K. Hall.GOTTDIENER, M. (forthcoming) "The semiotics of urban culture," in T Sebeck et

al. (eds.) The Encyclopedic Dictionary of Semiotics. Bloomington: Indiana UnivPress.

KRAMPEN, M. (1980) Meaning in the Urban Environment. London. MethuenLAGOPOULOS, A Ph. (forthcoming) "The semiotics of settlement space," in

T Sebeok et al. (eds.) Encyclopedic Dictionary of Semiotics. BloomingtonIndiana Univ. Press.

&mdash;&mdash;&mdash; (1977) "L’image mentale de l’ agglomeration "Communications 27 55-78&mdash;&mdash;&mdash; and K. BOKLUND (1979) "Social structures and semiotic systems theory,

methodology, some applications and conclusions "

Presented at InternationalAssociation of Semiotic Studies meetings, Vienna, Austria.

LEDRUT, R. (1973) L’image de la Ville. Paris: Editions Anthropos.LEFBRVE, H (1974) La Production de L’ Espace, Paris Editions Anthropos&mdash;&mdash;&mdash; (1971) Everyday Life in the Modern World. New York Harper & Row

MARIN, L. (1977) "Utopiques Jeux d’Espaces " Excerpted in M Real, MassMediated Culture. Englewood Cliffs, NJ Prentice-Hall

MAUSS, M (1967) The Gift New York: NortonREAL, M. (1977) Mass Mediated Culture Englewood Cliffs, NJ Prentice-Hall

REICH, W. (1974) The Sexual Revolution. New York: Farnar, Strauss and GirouxSCHICKEL, R. (1968) The Disney Version. New York: Simon & Schuster.SCHWIMMER, K. (1975) "Semiotics and culture," in T. Sebeok (ed.) A Profusion

of Signs. Bloomington Indiana Univ Press.

THOMAS, B. (1977) The Walt Disney Biography. New York: Simon & Schuster

M. GOTTDIENER is an urban socialist at the University of California, Riverside. Heis the author of Planned Sprawl and articles on suburban issues such as planning,growth control politics, crime, and regional deconcentration. He has publishedpapers in urban semiotics and the semiotics of fashion.

at ETH Zurich on May 16, 2012jce.sagepub.comDownloaded from