Response: Turner, Hayles, and Disneyland!!

This week I am responding to From Counterculture to Cyberculture by Fred Turner, chapters 2 and 6, and How We Became Posthuman by Katherine Hayles.

While reading the section about cybernetic art worlds in chapter 2, “Stewart Brand Meets the Cybernetic Counterculture” or Turner’s book, his descriptions of the artistic environments created by the various avant-garde movements of the mid-20th century reminded me a lot of something that is generally not considered to be countercultural or subversive: Disneyland.

I am sure that several hippies are now rolling over in their graves. They must be scandalized that I would compare their art to something so corporate, so businessy, so, well, Disneyfied as the Disney parks. But hear me out. I have always perceived a great deal of artistry in the Disney parks, and I think the very reasons why those avant-garde movements found meaning in their particular mode of expression may be applied to the Disney parks and may explain in part why they have achieved such a devoted, enduring fan base. True, the Disney parks are constructed upon a business model, which the avant-garde artists would have shunned, but the parks reach a level and species of artistic and emotional engagement that I find similar to what the cybernetic artists tried to create.

The first passage in which I was reminded of the Disney parks was in the description of USCO’s cybernetic art productions:

Rather than work with a transmission model of communication, in which performers or others attempt to send a message to their audience, USCO events tried to take advantage of what Gerd Stern called “the environmental circumstance.” That is, USCO constructed all-encompassing technological environments, theatrical ecologies in which the audience was simply one species of being among many, and waited to observe their effects (51).

This is exactly what the Disney parks are. In my own private musings (because I am the sort of nerd who muses about the artistic classification of the Disney parks), I have called the parks “immersive, interactive, environmental theatre,” a description which sounds very similar to Stern’s idea of “the environmental circumstance.” Like USCO’s performances, The Disney parks use a variety of technologies, appealing to all five senses, to create intricately themed environments that engage with guests on artistic levels. To me, this is the biggest difference between the Disney parks and the average theme park—for example, a Six Flags. The latter is really just about thrills and fun. Honestly, most of the roller coasters in Six Flags parks are more intense and thrilling than those in the Disney parks. But that’s all, really. Adrenaline rush, yummy food, adrenaline rush, fun show—thrills removed from any sort of artistic engagement. In the Disney parks, on the other hand, the thrills are always part of a greater story, be it an epic adventure—chasing the Yeti on “Expedition Everest” or experiencing the paranormal on “The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror”—or a short, poetic snapshot—the sights, sounds, and smells from a hang glider in “Soaring Over California” or the excitement of rushing to a rock concert in “Rock’N’Roller Coaster.”

Every detail in the parks and the attractions is minutely, carefully crafted to totally immerse guests in environment and story, from the subtly transitioning music moving between lands to the forced perspective used to make the castle and the buildings on Main Street look taller than they actually are. One of my favorite bits of trivia has to do with the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror. The story of this attraction is that one day, at the Hollywood Tower Hotel, sometime in the 1920s, all the guests of the hotel suddenly disappeared in to … (in my best Rod Serling voice) the Twilight Zone. In order to thoroughly create the illusion that everyone had disappeared in a moment, there are several props strewn about in the lobby, including an in-progress Parcheesi game. Rather than just placing pieces on the board, the Imagineers hired two professional Parcheesi players to play for an hour. At the end of the hour, the players had to get up and leave the table, leaving the pieces where they were, to create the illusion that the fictional players had actually disappeared.

Turner mentions many times the techno-mysticism in the work of the USCO artists; they availed themselves of all sorts of technology to explore how they could be used artistically, to create an effect or to heighten the consciousness of the audience. This most definitely applies to the Disney parks. Disney has always been on the cutting edge of examining the artistic potential of new technologies. This tradition goes back to Walt himself, who, upon seeing an audio-animatronic bird, became enamored of the technology, and immediately began considering how to use and improve this technology. Disney continues this tradition today with such attractions as the World of Color water show in Disney’s California Adventure. This show uses fountains, laser projections on screens of water, pyrotechnics, music, and animation to create a spectacular and moving show. However, despite Disney’s use of new technologies to create new types of effects, it is the way it uses technologies that is truly telling. Today, we have ceased to be awed or surprised by audio-animatronic figures, but attractions like Pirate of the Caribbean continue to be beloved because of how they use older technologies to tell a story. They bend these technologies to a greater artistic effect, and so they continue to hold emotional significance even after the technology itself loses its novelty.

Finally, Turner describes a sense of “mystical together-ness” that the USCO artists strove to cultivate: “they aimed not only to help their audiences become more aware of their surroundings but also to help them imagine themselves as members of a mystical community” (52). In my experience, the Disney parks are one of the best environments for creating such a sense of “mystical together-ness.” From the oft-heard “Have a magical day!” to the excitement over seeing a favorite character, to the feeling of camaraderie with other guests, this sense of community is pervasive in the parks. When I was last at Disneyland, last November, I went with my friend Lisa, who had never been before. Upon first entering the park, we went to City Hall to get her “First Visit” button. Throughout our three days at the park, guests and cast members alike congratulated her on her first visit and asked if she was having a good time. That sort of conversation that would be strange anywhere else, but it feels natural within the communal air of the parks. While the avant-garde artists used psychedelic drugs to create this effect, the Imagineers use the much simpler drugs of endorphin highs and adrenaline rushes to create the same feeling.

As is probably clear by now, I could talk about Disney forever. So I will conclude with the thought that, although it is true that the Disney parks have a much larger business component than movements like USCO, they share many of the same artistic qualities and techniques. This all to argue that the Disney parks are not, as many critics would say, merely monuments to consumerism and mass media. They are truly immersive works of art.
One final observation on this front. Disneyland Park opened in 1955, concurrent with many of these avant-garde movements. I am not inclined to think this is coincidence.

A few words on Hayles, now that I have blabbered so long about Disney. I found what she said about the self being an information-processing entity (I can’t find her exact wording) interesting, and I think it might help explain the phenomenon observed by Foucault of or cultural obsession with the idea of an author. If the self is basically information, and the body is just a prosthesis, then one’s writing is, in a way, actually part of oneself. In fact, it may be considered more an expression of self than the body, because writing is made of information, not matter, so it is essentially more similar to an informational self. Hayles does not seem to think that this conception of self as pure information is the best (she seems to want to celebrate, rather than reject, the human material existence), but the existence of that conception may explain why we want to attach an author to a work so badly. We want to have some conception of the “self” behind that piece of writing. If the writing is an extension of the author’s self, it seems to make sense to use the same signifier for the work that we use for the writer—the writer’s name.