Antistructure Excursion

We will begin our excursion by looking a little deeper into liminality and communitas. We already explored rites of passage in the "Cosmic Game" chapter, and in this excursion, we will see Disneyland in a more liminal light. Along the way, we will see how related antistructural ideas of carnival and communitas play out at Disneyland. We will then look at Disneyland as a playful pilgrimage center. Lastly, we will consider the role of rebellion, and how Walt Disney himself may have been a rebel with a cause.

Liminality and Rites of Passage
Carnival and communitas
Playful Pilgrimage Center
The Role of Rebellion
Rebel With a Cause

Liminality and Rites of Passage

Liminality and communitas together represent what Victor Turner calls "antistructure." Liminality is the betwixt and between space, when we are without social identity—we are not what we were previously, and we are not what we will be later on. Fjellman (1992) sums up the liminal phase of a rite of passage as a “ ‘time out of time’—a sacred and sometimes dangerous period in which one has left the normal world and is in a situation quite opposed to it. Those experiencing liminality undergo a heightened sense of shared experience.” Communitas is V. Turner’s term for this state, the perfect fellowship that is experienced by pilgrims “reduced to a human common denominator of perfect equality” (p. 222). Communitas has an especially Neptunian feel to it. During this time, roles are sometimes reversed and there is often a sense of spontaneity and playfulness.

At Disneyland, liminality and communitas can be seen very clearly, as strangers eat and talk together, commiserate about the lines and the heat, share their experiences, and make suggestions on what attractions to see. Adults act more like children than children. Fjellman (1992) says that in order for antistructure’s intensity not to break free of its ritual boundaries, liminality needs to be contained by routinization and supervision. V. Turner (1988) sees play as liminal and thus notes:

Playfulness is a volatile, sometimes dangerously explosive essence, which cultural institutions seek to bottle or contain in the vials of games of competition, chance and strength, in modes of simulation such as theatre, and in the controlled disorientation, from roller coasters to dervish dancing—Callois’s ilinx or vertigo. Play could be termed dangerous because it may subvert the left-right hemispheric switching involved in maintaining social order. Most definitions of play involve notions of disengagement, of free-wheeling, of being out of mesh with the serious, “bread-and-butter,” let alone “life and death” processes of production, social control, “getting and spending,” and raising the next generation. (pp. 167-168)

Play also has the potential to upset the established order, and we will explore this theme in the "Mary Poppins" chapter, and later on, when we consider the role of rebellion.

Liminal spaces and places are sometimes characterized by a carnivalesque feeling that often includes role reversal, wild fantasies, celebration, sometimes a sense of danger and adventure, uncertainty, license and abandon-- behavior that would not be approved in the outside world, for example Mardi Gras in New Orleans, Halloween, and Florida beach cities at “spring break.” New Orleans Square at Disneyland epitomizes the carnivalesque feel, although the entire park has this flavor.

As previously discussed in the "Cosmic Game" chapter, rites of passage were first studied by van Gennep in 1908. To reiterate, there are three stages, which mirror the process of physical birth: separation, transition, and incorporation for van Gennep, and separation, liminality and return for V. Turner. van Gennep felt that rites of passage were akin to the death-rebirth experience, because the initiate often passes through a tunnel or other narrow or dangerous passage. At Disneyland, you enter Main Street USA through a tunnel under the Disneyland Railroad.

van Gennep applies rites of passage more widely than V. Turner and sees them applying to calendrical and societal rites as well as rites of individual transformation, which V. Turner studied in depth. Since we will be looking more closely at liminality in the "Mary Poppins" chapter, only mention a few important points about liminality will be mentioned here.

van Gennep uses the ideas of the threshold and passage as metaphors for rites of passage. Liminality, Victor Turner’s word for the transition phase, comes from the Latin, limen meaning door, and it denotes the between-ness aspect of this state, where one is between worlds. For van Gennep, this was a neutral space, like the no-man’s lands between territories where both parties have rights. This neutral ground, where no rigid identities are held, is important when we think of play, because play permits identities to be held loosely. As we saw in the discussion of the hub, one of the important things about play is this “not to tight” but “not too loose” aspect, “speielraum”—latitude, leeway, room to play. The transitional or liminal phase provides this freedom and is why play can occur during this phase. This in-between-ness is also central to entertainment. In speaking about social dramas of hero’s journeying through hell to attain paradise and the entertainment provoked by them V. Turner (1988) notes:

the very word entertainment means the liminal in English, for it means literally from the Latin “to hold between,” to be neither this, nor that, but the problem in the middle—a problem which staged in liminal surrounds “entertains” rather than threatens. (p. 41)

Similarly, at Disneyland, we are treated to a series of liminal adventures in the parks, where we are able to be entertained by different stories instead of feeling threatened by them.

Various formalities occur in these no man’s lands, and in the transition phase of rituals; the crossing of boundaries between territories can have “magico-religions consequences.” As we enter Disneyland, after leaving our cars in the parking lot, we leave the ordinary world behind, enter a liminal space, participating in the shared experience of the magic and illusion that is the Magic Kingdom.

A. Moore (1980) mentions that the structure of the rides and the theater attractions follows this same separation-transition-incorporation pattern: after going through the entrance, we experience the attraction, and then reunite with our group at the end. Moore’s description of the rides is reminiscent of the birth process since he also notes that these rides often take place in the dark and you end up back in the light and many of them are “tubular.” On some of the rides, you actually end up at the beginning again, so there is a sense of the eternal return, and because many of the rides involve audioanimatronics figures, a playful robotic repetition compulsion is present as well.

Carnival and Communitas

As previously mentioned, New Orleans Square especially has a carnivalesque feeling to it. Let us look a bit closer at the ideas of carnival and communitas and see how they are present at Disneyland and how they relate to play.

Bakhtin (1963/1968) describes carnival as containing both the ritual spectacle of religious processions and displays, as well as the liminality of feasts and celebration, while being sharply distinct from more serious official political and religious activities, because carnival and feasts are based in laughter:

Carnival is not a spectacle seen by the people; they live in it, and everyone participates because its very idea embraces all the people. While carnival lasts, there is no other life outside it. During carnival time life is subject only to its laws, that is, the laws of its own freedom. It has a universal spirit: it is a special condition of the entire world, of the world’s revival and renewal, in which all take part. (p. 7)

Disneyland is a highly irreverent place, although it can be seen as being reverential about its irreverence! At Disneyland, we are encouraged to participate, and one of the forms of participation that is highly encouraged is shopping. Bakhtin (1963/1968) notes that carnival and commerce go hand in hand, since the marketplace festivals and carnivals “were the second life of the people, who for a time entered the utopian realm of community, freedom, equality and abundance” (p. 9). Bakhtin further explicates how the marketplace was intimately involved in carnival:

the temporary suspension both ideal and real, of hierarchical rank, created during carnival time a special type of communication impossible in everyday life. This led to the creation of a special form of marketplace speech and gesture, frank and free, permitting no distance between those who came in contact with each other and liberating them from norms of etiquette and decency imposed at other times. A special carnivalesque, marketplace style of expression was formed. (p. 10)

Disneyland, too, is an mixture of commerce and communitas, as Bailey (1982) notes at the end of Walt Disney's World of Fantasy: "Disneyland was a natural development of the Disney dream, which began in two dimensions and finally became three—some would say four. Its message is simple, its aims a judicious blend of altruism and commercialism" (p. 246).

Bakhtin explains that carnivals began to be channeled and encroached upon by the state; they were repressed, and became smaller and more trivial; the spectacle was reduced to parades, and the celebrations were tamed. They became less public and were centered in the home instead:

The carnival spirit with its freedom, its utopian character oriented toward the future, was gradually transformed into a mere holiday mood. The feast ceased almost entirely to be the people’s second life, their temporary renascence and renewal . . . this carnival spirit is indestructible. Though narrowed and weakened, it still continues to fertilize various areas of live and culture. (Bakhtin, 1963/1968, pp. 33-34)

This diminution of carnival is reminiscent of the feeling I had about play and Tinkerbell when she drank the poison and her light was fading. Like Tinker Bell, carnival now has a permanent home at Disneyland. Carnival should feel at home in Disneyland, because as Bakhtin (1963/1968) describes it: “Carnival was the true feast of time, the feast of becoming, change and renewal. It was hostile to all that was immortalized and completed” (p. 10). Disneyland, too, is always becoming. Disney said that Disneyland would never be finished, and as we will see over and over again, this feeling of renewal prevails as well.

One of the most important things about carnival was the suspension of hierarchy, because during carnival, traditional social divisions were cast aside and all were considered equal. An essential element of the carnival spirit were the free, familiar contacts that were deeply formed and felt:

People were, so to speak, reborn for new, purely human relations. These truly human relations were not only a fruit of imagination or abstract thought; they were experienced. This utopian ideal and the realistic merged in this carnival spirit, unique of its kind. (Bakhtin, 1963/1968 p. 10)

What Bakhtin has just described is V. Turner’s (1969) communitas, the feeling of perfect fellowship that occurs during the transitional phase of rites of passage, on pilgrimages, and at other liminal times.

During carnival, participants, like pilgrims or initiates, shed their previous social identities and distinctions are not as pronounced. There is a commonality of experience leading to the feeling of “we’re all in this together,” due to the separation from the outside, ordinary world and the uncertainty engendered by the betwixt and between nature of the liminal state itself. There may be a dropping of defenses, since there is not as much to defend, so during communitas experiences people can relate to each other directly without being encumbered by social roles. When individuals return from their liminal status or the liminal space, their experience of communitas may “allow for return to structured interactions with different conceptions, leading either to reconciliation or to the emergence of new social groupings” (Hunt & Frankenberg, 1990, pp. 107-108).

"It’s A Small World" epitomizes this sense of communitas, and its location in the Neptunian domain of Fantasyland, and watery means of conveyance is fitting. Hunt and Frankenberg note that:

The sense of togetherness and unity in a bright secure, wholesome and unambiguous world of playtime expressed in this attraction epitomizes Disneyland as a whole; its sponsorship by the Bank of America is an ironic reminder of the park’s history and its unashamed allegiance to capitalist and American ideals. (p. 101)

The togetherness of togetherness and the market is also a reminder of Disneyland’s carnivalesque nature as well. Interestingly, this same ride will come into view again later, and figure prominently when we discuss Walt as being a rebel with a cause, but first, let us look at Disneyland as an entertainment Mecca.

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