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2. Disney’s Animal Kingdom: The Wild That Never Was
- University of Minnesota Press
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In 1992 Michael Sorkin published a picture of the sky over Disney World in his edited volume entitled Variations on a Theme Park: The The New American City and the End of Public Space. He did so to illustrate that the sky was the only thing that could be pictured without violating the copyright that the Disney Corporation has placed on the park. To Sorkin, Disney World serves as an example of the “contraction of the space of freedom ” (1992, 207) that has become commonplace in American cities like New York and Los Angeles. For my purposes, it has meant that any pictureItookinmyresearchatDisney ’sAnimalKingdominOrlando,Florida, can never illustrate my assertions in this chapter. Indeed, those who have used Disney images without permission have often suffered the wrath of a corporation with almost limitless means (for examples, see Budd 2005). It is not only the images that Disney protects, but also what its employees say about the corporation. When I attempted to secure an interview with the director of the Disney Wildlife Conservation Fund and the Director of Animal Programs at Walt Disney World Resort (a process that initially proceeded quite smoothly), I was sent a release to sign from Disney’s legal department. If signed, I would agree to: (1) have Disney review and approve how the interview material was incorporated into my dissertation; (2) portray the theme park and Disney’s Wildlife Conservation Fund in a “positive light”; (3) not disclose any confidential information that came to me as a result of the interviews without seeking permission; and (4) not use the interviews for anything other than my study unless I received written approval from Disney first. Of course, I could not agree to these stipulations and had to cancel the scheduled interview. These examples of Disney’s vigorous attempts to defend its proprietary interests, often via threats of litigation, probably come as no surprise. Disney’s control over its brand—its movies, television channels, animated characters, theme park environs, merchandising, and so on—is fundamental to Disney’s business strategy. By strictly managing how their products • CHAPTER 2 • Disney’s Animal Kingdom: The Wild That Never Was • 43 • can be used, in what contexts, and to what effects, Disney attempts to govern the way people can come to know and consume all the goods, discursive and material, that Disney sells. This chapter delves into one facet of this governing by considering how Disney packages and sells nature as part of its repertoire of goods at the Disney Animal Kingdom Theme Park. Always a leader in reimagining (or “Imagineering,” to use Disney’s lexicon) and commodifying the structuring narratives of Western culture, Disney entered a new terrain with the opening of the Animal Kingdom Theme Park in 1998. With the park’s catch phrase “The wild was never this wild,” Disney seeks to reimagine and (re)produce nature as a site of sanitized, controllable, “family-friendly,” adventure-filledfun.Andindoingso,theAnimalKingdomworkstoremake nature as commodity, shaping popular imaginations of how it can be understood . Drawing on the work of those who have considered the cultural impacts of theme parks, like Susan Davis (1997), Susan Willis (2005), and Scott Hermanson (2005), I argue that places like Disney’s Animal Kingdom are powerful sites for disciplining how nature can be conceived. However, what differs in my approach is the assertion that this power is also productive. Disney not only attempts to harness the affective registers and playful dimensions generated by a connection with nature in the quest for ever-increasing profits, which of course it does quite well. Its efforts also produce: they authorize Disney as a legitimate scientific actor and corporate citizen, they generate particular knowledges of and about nature, they empower particular subjectivities that rely on neoliberal economics, and they have “truth” effects that range far beyond the boundaries of the Disney Animal Kingdom Theme Park. In the end, Disney operates as a biopolitical institution, an important example of a corporation that successfully governs how nature can be experienced as fantasy, play, and spectacle. In order to flesh out this argument, this chapter proceeds as follows. First, to provide context, I address Disney’s influence as a cultural producer . Next, I turn to Disney’s longstanding project of reimagining nature, which has culminated most recently in the construction of the Animal Kingdom. I then embark on an extended examination of the park itself, which draws upon the discourse analysis I conducted at this site. Next, I explore...