Selling Fun:1

Cedar Fair’s “Thrills Connect” Advertising Campaign and White Male Superiority

On January 3, 2012, Dick Kinzel stepped down as CEO of Cedar Fair Entertainment

Company, a publicly traded corporation headquartered in Sandusky, Ohio.2 In Kinzel’s 25 years

as CEO, Cedar Fair grew from owning two amusement parks—Cedar Point in Sandusky and

Valleyfair! in Shakopee, Minnesota—to owning 11 parks3 from the mid-Atlantic to California.4

Kinzel’s successor, Matt Ouimet, was hired in June 2011 after of industry experience years with

Disney, including serving as the president of Disney’s California resort from 2003 to 2006.

Ouimet’s priority with Cedar Fair has been to change the chain’s brand from being geared pri-

marily thrill-seekers, with coasters such as Cedar Point’s 420’ tall, 120 mph Top Thrill,5 to being

more aimed at families.

To change its brand in this way, Cedar Fair launched the Thrills Connect advertising

campaign in 2012, designed by Cramer Krasselt of Chicago.6 The concept behind Thrills Con-

1 Inspiration for the essay’s title comes from Stephen King’s Joyland and quotes by Ouimet2 Judith Robin, “CEDAR FAIR names former Disney exec MATTHEW A OUIMET to succeed Dick Kinzel as president of the company,” In Park Magazine, June 11, 2011, accessed Novem-ber 20, 2013, http://www.inparkmagazine.com/cedar-fair-names-former-disney-exec-matthew-a-ouimet-to-succeed-dick-kinzel-as-president-of-the-company/3 Similar to the concentration found in the entertainment and media industries (as discussed in Press and Williams chapter 2 and McChesney’s Digital Disconnect), theme park ownership is heavily concentrated to a few major players, the biggest of which are (in the United States) Dis-ney, Six Flags and Cedar Fair. Six Flags and Cedar Fair are publicly traded and have licensing agreements with other media companies (for instance, Cedar Fair has licensing rights to Charles Schulz’ Peanuts). Neither Cedar Fair nor Six Flags is owned by a large media conglomerate such as TimeWarner or Fox.4 Jon Chavez, “Kinzel reflects on wild ride,” The Blade, December 25, 2011, accessed November 20, 2013, http://www.toledoblade.com/local/2011/12/25/Kinzel-reflects-on-wild-ride.html5 “Top Thrill Dragster,” accessed November 21, 2013, https://www.cedarpoint.com/rides/Roller-Coasters/Top-Thrill-Dragster6 For the majority of this paper, I am assuming that Cedar Fair is the author of the advertise-ments. While, as discussed in MediaMaking chapter 2, authorship of a media text is incredibly difficult to determine, the Thrills Connect campaign is constructing Cedar Fair’s brand; there-

nect, Ouimet told the Toledo Blade, is “to remind people that time with family, time with friends

is precious. This is the place to spend it.”7 In another interview, with industry magazine Fun-

world, Ouimet said that the campaign was to let people know that “you can still have fun [at a

Cedar Fair park], even if you’re not brave enough to get on [an extreme coaster].”8

The two television spots produced for the campaign in 2012, “Embrace” and “Language

Barrier,” contradict Ouimet’s claims. Both spots are based around the concept that people who

experience a thrilling ride such as a roller coaster can become closer. In Ouimet’s words, “I don’t

care if you’ve never met the guy sitting next to you, when you go over the top of Top Thrill

Dragster at [420] feet, by the time you get done the two of you are smiling at each other and

there’s a connection there.”9 Beyond Ouimet’s anecdotal claim, research conducted by Dr. Paul

Zak, a psychologist at Claremont Graduate University, shows that “activities that are moderately

stressful and done with one or more other people” raise levels of oxytocin,10 a chemical messen-

ger which has been dubbed “the trust molecule.”11

Though there is nothing inherently contradictory about selling amusement parks based on

the release of oxytocin caused by thrill rides, the spots themselves are more focused on selling

fore, Cedar Fair has a high responsibility for the content of the ads, as the ads shape the public’s perception of the company. Furthermore, as discussed towards the end of the essay, there is a correlation between the makeup of Cedar Fair’s leadership and the advertisements themselves, supporting this decision.7 Jon Chavez, “New CEO has fresh outlook on fun,” The Blade, April 1, 2012, accessed Novem-ber 12, 2013, http://www.toledoblade.com/local/2012/04/01/New-Cedar-Fair-CEO-has-fresh-outlook-on-fun.html8 Jeremy Schoolfield, “Right People, Right Time,” Funworld Magazine, accessed November 12, 2013, http://www.iaapa.org/news/funworld/funworld-magazine/right-people-right-time9 Ibid.10 Paul Zak, “My Favorite Ways to Raise Oxytocin,” Psychology Today, November 7, 2013, ac-cessed November 17, 2013. http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-moral-molecule/201311/my-favorite-ways-raise-oxytocin11 Paul Zak, “The Trust Molecule,” The Wall Street Journal, April 27, 2013, accessed November 17, 2013. http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304811304577365782995320366

the dominant hegemonic ideology of white male superiority than they are focused on selling

family, friends or fun. Both “Language Barrier” and “Embrace” star white men who appear to be

visiting the park on their own. “Language Barrier” ignores family completely. While “Embrace”

shows a family, it focuses more on women’s need to cling to the nearest man when they experi-

ence a scary ride like a roller coaster than on the value of the time the family spends at the park.

Language Barrier

“Language Barrier,” as the title suggests, centers around a language barrier. The spot

opens with four people sitting in the front row of a steel inverted coaster,12 nervously getting

ready for dispatch. They are, from left to right, a white girl, a black man, a white man and an

Asian man. The white girl, black man and white man look like friends. At any rate, they’re talk-

ing up the ride they’re about to face: “I’m pumped for this.” “Let’s do it!” The Asian man sits

silently to the side until the white man turns to him and asks if this is his first roller coaster ride.

Hilarity ensues when the Asian man, capable of speaking Mandarin but not a lick of English,

fails to respond properly, leading the white man to pantomime a roller coaster. The Asian man

nods, flashes a thumbs-up. His white companion responds, “That works.” The coaster sets off.

We see the white man and the Asian man screaming and laughing as the coaster roars through

the course. By the end of the ride, the language barrier is gone: while his black and female com-

panions look on flabbergasted, the white man converses with his Asian seat partner in fluent

Mandarin about how thrilling the ride was. As a male announcer reminds us that “sometimes

12 Inverted coaster: the seats hang beneath the track (think Alpengeist at Busch Gardens Williamsburg). The spot was filmed on the Silver Bullet roller coaster at Knott’s Berry Farm, Cedar Fair’s Southern California park. Silver Bullet, built in 2004 and designed by Bolliger & Mabillard, seats four riders per row (compared to the more common two riders per row), which is critically important for the dynamics of the spot. The coaster was identified for this essay by comparing the color scheme of the track, train and supports with other Cedar Fair inverted coast-ers via the Roller Coaster DataBase (rcdb.com).

finding common ground happens ten stories above it,” we cut to the standard closing shot for a

Thrills Connect spot: park logo, park website and the “Thrills Connect” slogan on top of the ver-

tical loop of Dominator at Kings Dominion.13

“Language Barrier” is not about the roller coaster, which we see running for less than

three seconds—just long enough to get an impression of speed. “Language Barrier” is also not

about the positive experience of a Cedar Fair park. The spot never travels beyond Silver Bullet.

We see the coaster’s station, a rather generic functional space with a concrete floor and a set of

empty lockers off to the side. We see a brief glimpse of roller coaster supports. That’s it. There is

no mention of any of the other fun things one might encounter at a Cedar Fair park—no mention

of the food, no mention of other rides, no mention of anything. In short, “Language Barrier”

shows the experience of the park as nothing but riding a big coaster, making Ouimet’s claim that

the campaign tries to show that you can have fun at a Cedar Fair park without going on the big

coasters rather dubious.14

In fact, the main narrative of the spot has nothing to do with having fun at the park with-

out riding a coaster. It has nothing to do with experiencing the park with friends—assuming the

three Americans are friends in the beginning of the spot and not just strangers getting pumped up

for a thrilling experience, rather than strengthening their bonds of friendship, the roller coaster

13 Cramer Krasselt, “Language Barrier,” May 9, 2012, accessed November 12, 2013. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WsCkVdrj9EA14 There is the fact that the advertisement has a grand total of 30 seconds to make its claim, hardly time for what Postman would call “rational.” Then again, these television spots are what McLuhan would call a “hot medium,” visually “high definition.” As McLuhan states on 23 after noting that hot media can “unify spaces horizontally, both in political and entertainment em-pires” (such as Disney or, to a lesser extent, Cedar Fair), “Any hot medium allows of less partici-pation than a cool medium.” Additionally, using Lazasfeld’s two-step flow of information and the concept of opinion leaders as set out in MediaMaking and Press and Williams chapter 3, the spots are not aimed at people knowledgeable about amusement parks (opinion leaders) as those will be harder to persuade, but rather the less knowledgeable people who might be on the fence about visiting and who might not have the incentive to visit the park website without the spot.

puts a language barrier between them. Instead, “Language Barrier” is about how the coaster

builds up the white male protagonist.

As stated earlier, the spot features a white male, a black male, a white female and an

Asian male. It seems like “Language Barrier” does pretty with racial and gendered diversity. But

while the spot may show a wide range of people, it has a strong pro-white bias, as revealed by a

semiotic analysis of the clothing worn by the actors in the spot.15 Of the four leads, all except for

the black male are wearing slacks which would be appropriate the workplace. The black male is

in jeans, which are not as appropriate for work. Of the three male leads, two have on collared

shirts. The black has on a t-shirt, continuing the pattern we saw in the actors’ pants. Second, the

three Americans are wearing fairly unremarkable shoes. Both American males, white and black,

have on lace-up shoes (the black has on black lace-ups); the girl wears slip-ons. The Asian man

has on that classic combination of socks and sandals, a signifier of ultimate ignorance. After all,

a 2013 poll by British retailer Debenhams labeled socks and sandals as the worst fashion faux

pas of all time.16

Beyond the prejudices encoded in the model’s clothing, the spot’s physical placement of

racial minorities on the screen is problematic. There are three blacks visible in the spot—the

aforementioned man in the front row and a man and woman in the second row, very obscured by

the front row seats. The man in the front row has a much lighter skin tone than the barely-visible

second row presences, perhaps to make him more palatable to white audiences.17 The barely-visi-

15 Throughout the rest of the essay, “Language Barrier” and “Embrace” are analyzed through a combination of semiotic analysis in the vein of Stuart Hall’s “Encoding/Decoding” and content analysis, as set out in MediaMaking chapter 6.16 Debenhams, “Socks and sandals voted the worst fashion faux pas of all time,” July 30, 2013, accessed November 20, 2013, http://debenhams.pressarea.com/archive/news/debenhams/News-1/3417 This is similar to the discussion of The Cosby Show and white viewers as compared to other shows featuring black families in the Jhally and Lewis article. White viewers were able to sym-pathize with the Cosbys much better than the other families (such as the Jeffersons) because of

ble people waiting in line throughout the station are all white.

Furthermore, the spot’s construction of the Asian man is racist and xenophobic. First,

there is no good reason for the white male to assume that he has never ridden a roller coaster be-

fore. Remember, at this point in the spot, the Asian man has yet to speak and there is no indica-

tion that he does not know English; in short, there is no reason to assume that he is not American

other than his skin tone. With this much information, it is impossible to make any reasonable de-

termination as to his roller coaster experience. He could have been to multiple American parks

prior to the spot. He could have been in the park for hours before getting on Silver Bullet. Even

if he wasn’t American, he could have ridden a coaster at home—Asia is the world’s fastest-

growing theme park market, with an estimated 290 million admissions in 2012.18 That the white

man’s assumption turns out be correct is a strong indication that, to borrow semiotic terms, the

dominant code in “Language Barrier” is that of American white patriarchal society. Secondly,

there is no particularly good reason that he does not speak English. Assuming he is from China

based on his speaking Mandarin, he could still feasibly speak English: an estimated 200-350 mil-

lion Chinese are familiar with English,19 a sizeable 15-27% of China’s 1.3 billion.20 Also, just be-

cause the man has a skin color and facial features consistent with those from Asia, there is no

reason he has to be from Asia, as opposed to being Asian-American. That the only person of

the familiarity inherent in the Cosbys’ upper-middle class standing. Similarly, the black man in “Language Barrier,” while not dressed as well as his seatmates, still has a comfortably light shade of skin and still looks clean-cut, with well cared-for clothing which, while not incredibly expensive, also doesn’t look like it was bought from the bargain bin. In short, he’s been quite carefully constructed not to be poor—considering that Cedar Fair gets a large portion of their revenue from in-park spending, this makes sense from a target demographic perspective.18 International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions, “IAAPA Amusement Park Benchmark Study, 2011-2012,” accessed November 18, 2013.19 Jian Yang, “Learners and users of English in China,” English Today 2 (2006), accessed No-vember 17, 2013. doi: 10.1017/S026607840600202120 Central Intelligence Agency, “World Factbook,” accessed November 20, 2013. https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/ch.html

Asian descent in the spots cannot communicate with the white male protagonists is certainly eye-

brow-raising.

From everything we have discussed thus far, there is no doubt that this spot caters to a

white American audience. Therefore, it makes sense that the spot positions the white male as the

protagonist: every shot, save for the one in which the black and the woman are astonished by our

white male’s newfound Mandarin abilities, features the white male, placing him near the center

of medium shots and giving him at least a fourth of the frame in close ups. The story of “Lan-

guage Barrier” is his story. It is not the story of how thrills connect—though “thrills connect”

sure does sound good—but the story of how thrills elevate the white male.

Consider: at the beginning of the spot, the white male is the black male and the white

woman’s equal. They are all Americans getting ready to enjoy a roller coaster. At the end of the

spot, he has learned Mandarin because he is connected to the foreigner sitting next to him by the

thrills they just experienced together (the framing of the shot with Silver Bullet in action care-

fully excludes both the black man and the white woman). It isn’t that the Asian male can now

speak English and communicate with the three people he’s sitting with. It isn’t that the Asian

male’s linguistic abilities are at the level of the Americans. Rather, the Asian male’s linguistic

abilities remain in stasis while the white male’s linguistic abilities increase to above those of the

black male and the female.

“Embrace”

“Embrace” fares little better than “Language Barrier” when subjected to similar semiotic

and content analysis. The similarities the two spots share go deeper than that they were filmed at

the same park (Knott’s Berry Farm) and feature roughly the same amount of roller coaster

footage (one shot, long enough to let us know that the roller coaster goes fast): both spots are

about the elevation of a white male through the experience of a roller coaster.

While “Language Barrier” shows thrills connecting via the process of magical three-sec-

ond language acquisition, “Embrace” shows thrills connecting in a more conventional way. The

spot opens with a man and a woman, both white, sitting in a wooden coaster train,21 ready for

dispatch. The woman tells the man that she’s “not scared, maybe a little scared.” Her seatmate

tells her she’s “going to be fine” in a nice, assuring tone. A bell rings and they’re off. We see the

train zooming through a curving drop and before we know it we’re back at the station, the

woman clinging desperately to her seat mate, who pats her arm reassuringly while wearing a

look which lets the viewer know he doesn’t mind having this woman clinging to him.

Here we arrive at the punch line: GhostRider seats a maximum of two riders per row.22

The woman is actually a part of a family of three that had to split up due to the coaster’s seating

configuration, with her husband and son sitting in the row behind. Naturally, her husband is not

amused to see her clinging to a stranger, leading to some awkward conversation. In an attempt to

meliorate the situation, the wife proposes that the family goes off for funnel cake. Her seatmate

is not invited. The closing voiceover? “Hairpin turns have a way of bringing people together.”23

In some ways, “Embrace” solves the problems of “Language Barrier” in that it bothers to

suggest that there is a park outside of roller coasters by including the funnel cake line towards

the end. The spot is also less overtly racist, though it helps all the featured actors are white, giv-

ing the spot less ability to encode stereotypes through its portrayal of ethnic minorities. This is

21 GhostRider. This identification was made in the same way as the identification for “Language Barrier” (comparing train styles and color schemes using the Roller Coaster DataBase). 22 Philadelphia Toboggan Coasters, Inc., “Active Rides—Coasters” and “Products—Cars,” ac-cessed November 20, 2013, http://www.philadelphiatoboggancoastersinc.com/cars.php23 Cramer Krasselt, “Embrace,” May 9, 2012, accessed November 12, 2013. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvtntznKI5g

not to say that the spot does not have non-white extras—five of the 18 people visible on the train

are non-white.24 Of those five, four are in the extreme background of the shot, while another, an

Asian woman, is three rows behind the lead actors. The non-white extras, barely visible in the

background of four shots (this is counting shots with at least one non-white extra; only two shots

have more than one non-white extras), are much less prominent than the white leads, who are

featured in essentially every shot. The world of “Embrace” is a world where minorities exist but

are nowhere near as relevant or important as whites, again upholding the dominant power struc-

ture in American society.

More problematic is the spot’s portrayal of gender. While there are female extras who

can ride GhostRider and chat lightly about the experience afterwards, the spot treats them just

like set dressing. The spot’s central focus is on how the primary woman (the mother of the fam-

ily of three) is scared and the man is not, on how the woman needs the man for protection and on

how the man’s masculinity is upheld through the woman being scared. This upholding of mas-

culinity is particularly conveyed by the facial expressions of the lead actors when the train pulls

into the station. Both have their eyes closed. The man is smiling, looking blissful. He’s absent-

mindedly stroking her (exposed) arm. The woman is breathing deeply, inhaling the scent of the

man’s shirt. Her hand, wedding ring proudly visible, cradles the stranger’s neck. She looks thor-

oughly at peace, thoroughly protected. She’s survived the scary thrill ride, after all.

What is more, the spot (for an establishment aimed at families) is selling illicit sex. The

man and woman embrace in front of her husband, who looks older than our protagonist—at the

very least, if he’s not older, he’s got a some facial hair (our protagonist is clean-shaven), glasses

(our protagonist has none) and a receding hairline (our protagonist, needless to say, has no such

24 “Visible” here meaning “with at least part of their face visible.” There were some extras with only their hair was visible; they were not counted towards that total.

concerns), all of which code for more advanced age and convey some sense of stodginess. There

is also the fact that the woman is dressed fairly conservatively. She’s wearing short sleeves but

otherwise, no skin is visible (we can’t see her legs, given that she’s sitting in a coaster train).

Though her clothes do not mark her as an easy target, our protagonist’s masculinity and courage

are such that he still gets a nice, prolonged embrace.

Granted, the woman and man react with shame after her son, witnessing the action going

on in the row in front of him, utters a less-than-amused “Mom?” She points out that “that’s my

family.” “That’s your family—wow,” her seatmate contributes before the mother goes into fun-

nel cake damage-control mode. Maybe the thrill-driven connection didn’t last particularly long,

but once again, we see Cedar Fair’s advertisements upholding the dominant white male ideology.

Conclusions

For spots supposedly designed to encourage people to spend “precious” time with family

and friends at the parks, “Language Barrier” and “Embrace” do a poor job showing family and

friend connections being strengthened by roller coasters. “Language Barrier” shows a white man

being elevated by thrills to a linguistically superior place compared to his supposed friends,

whereas “Embrace” shows a family day at the park made awkward by thrills.25

In the context of the amusement industry, this seems rather off at first glance. After all,

according to the International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions (IAAPA), 78%

25 One shudders to think what Neil Postman would have to say about these advertisements, which seek to sell the park by intriguing white males with disposable income to click onto the park website and buy season passes through these flashy stories of thrill rides increasing white male superiority, given that Postman condemns the decline of advertising from what he describes as an “essentially serious and rational enterprise whose purpose was to convey information and make claims in propositional form” from the 1890s onward (59-60).

of parks list “families with children 2-18” as their primary demographic.26 “Language Barrier,”

however, shows nobody recognizable within the 2-18 age range; “Embrace” only shows the child

who catches his mother cuddling up to a stranger on the coaster. Neither spot shows any recog-

nizable teenager, the secondary demographic for amusement parks according to IAAPA.27

However, looking at Cedar Fair’s leadership structure, the values portrayed in the adver-

tisements begin to make more sense. Popular culture teaches us that amusement parks are owned

by white males28—look at Walt Disney (as portrayed by Tom Hanks in the upcoming film Saving

Mr. Banks, partially filmed at Disneyland),29 or John Hammond, the dreamer behind the ill-fated

dinosaur park in Jurassic Park (both the Michael Crichton novel and the 1993 Steven Spielberg

film). This holds true with Cedar Fair: the chain’s leadership skews heavily male and heavily

white. Nine of the chain’s 11 general managers are male. Only three are non-white. Of the 11,

only Pat Jones (Kings Dominion) is both female and a minority. Beyond general managers, the

Cedar Fair Board of Directors is entirely white. Of the nine members, only two are female. The

picture is similar among Cedar Fair’s executive officers. Of the nine, eight are male. Seven are

white.30

Thus far, we have determined that “Language Barrier” and “Embrace” imprint messages

of white male superiority in line with Cedar Fair’s leadership structure. But are the spots effec-

26 International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions, “IAAPA Amusement Park Benchmark Study, 2011-2012,” accessed November 18, 201327 Ibid.28 An obvious exception to this rule is Dollywood in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, which is owned by Dolly Parton’s Dollywood Company and operated by Herschend Family Entertainment (an-other amusement park chain)29 Sarah Tully, “Tom Hanks as Walt Disney closes off parts of Disneyland,” Orange County Reg-ister, November 6, 2012, accessed November 21, 2013. http://www.ocregister.com/entertainment/disneyland-376876-hanks-park.html30 This data was not readily available through the Cedar Fair website, but was obtained by putting the lists of executive officers and Board of Directors through Google Images. Google searches (such as “kings dominion general manager”) were used for the park general managers.

tive? While we do not have the word from anybody outside the production and broadcasting of

the spots, Ouimet credited the campaign with driving record online season pass sales prior to the

2013 season,31 Cedar Fair’s best ever (according to its third-quarter earnings conference call, the

chain is projected to take in between $1.125 and $1.135 in revenue).32

In other words, while we might disagree with everything the spots sell (white superiority,

male superiority), it’s hard to deny that the spots do exactly what they’re supposed to do. They

sell, increasing ticket sales for Cedar Fair parks33 and continuing to proliferate the dominant

codes of American society.

31 “Cedar Fair announces first-quarter results; anticipates record-setting performance in 2013,” May 8, 2013, accessed November 18, 2013, http://cedarfair.com/ir/press_releases/index.cfm32 “Cedar Fair reports record third-quarter results; increases quarterly cash distribution by 12%,” November 7, 2013, accessed November 20, 2013, http://cedarfair.com/ir/press_releases/index.cfm33 There are other factors which could lead to increased ticket sales, such as the addition of new rides (2013 saw Cedar Point add Gatekeeper, a $30 million wing coaster, which surely led to some increase in attendance) or even the weather at various markets.

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34 Sources were not necessarily included in the essay proper but were consulted during its writ-ing. “Virgins for Jesus” was particularly important as tonal inspiration for this essay. An argu-ment from McLuhan, looking at the particular roller coaster used as a medium, was considered and abandoned due to a lack of general relevancy.