WARNING: Writing about illlusion can be confusing. 
Even though the different attractions have a cinematic nature, the overall nature of Disneyland is Neptunian, so illusion, and confusion can occur as boundaries blur together.  You may might experience this when encountering . . .

The Art of the Show—Behind the Scenes Tour

Disneyland is a fiction, a dream, a three-dimensional story, a world where we can enter and participate.  Disneyland is based on Disney’s films and ideas, and centers around happiness and the wonders and importance of childhood.  Disneyland could not have come about without the skills and talents of Walt Disney and his staff, which were developed and honed during their pioneering animation careers.  These same skills and talents were put in service of developing Disneyland, where like Alice in Wonderland, we step into a different world: Disneyland is a world that has a clean, caring, complementary environment, created through the architecture of reassurance and the language of vision—using cinematic devices of theme, narrative, scale, and the coordination of colors and backgrounds all in service to the story.  Everything in the park works together in service of fantasy and illusion.  It is all an illusion, based on illusions, because much of what is portrayed in the park never really existed in physical reality.  Even if what is portrayed at Disneyland did exist in some fashion, the Disney artists have tinkered with the real and made it their own, and somehow, in many cases, what we see and experience at Disneyland seems “realer than real.” Disneyland, like the animation that inspired it, is carefully controlled to make the illusion possible, making such an amazing play space was and is very hard work, not to mention extremely costly.  Disneyland’s brilliance also has a shadow side, which although I will only refer to as we go along, in passing, because the shadow side is not our primary focus, and also because it has been thoroughly discussed by many such as Bryman (1995, 2004), Shickel (1997), Fjellman (1992) and Ayers (2003) just to mention a few.  First we will explore Disneyland’s illusory nature and then we will go behind the scenes and see or “C” how they do the things they do.

It's All an Illusion

The illusory nature of reality, or maya is an aspect of the Cosmic Game that reigns supreme at Disneyland.  Disneyland is one big illusion, and one that we heartily embrace.  Sorkin (1992) says that “for millions of visitors, Disneyland is just like the world only better” (p. 216).  Disneyland is a simulacra, a “collection of virtual images”  (Isozaki, 1993, p. 175), which has in turn led to simulations of itself in Florida, Tokyo, France and now Hong Kong.  Disneyland is “someplace that is ‘like’ someplace else.  The simulation’s referent is ever elsewhere; the ‘authenticity’ of the substitution always depends on the knowledge, however faded, of some absent genuine” (Sorkin, p. 216).  As we will see later on, in the mini excursion into transitional space, this absence of presence makes play possible, because this is how symbols function.

For Disney, the illusion was everything.  Walt once severely reprimanded a publicity man who had parked his car near the Frontierland station, admonishing him: “your car destroys the whole illusion”(Thomas, 1976, p. 289).  At Disneyland, we have concrete illusions of imaginal figures.  In Disney’s animated films, he reinterpreted stories of literary fantasy figures, such as Alice, Peter Pan, Snow White, and Pinocchio.  These fantasy figures then reappear at Disneyland, as images, three-dimensional models, and are sometimes actually portrayed by real people who represent the cartoon representations.  It's fictions all the way down, baby, illusions, based on illusions, based on illusions! 

We can enthusiastically participate in these illusions because we are so safely distanced from reality, thus we experience the excitement with no real danger—none of the danger, all of the fun! Marin (1984), in speaking of Fantasyland points out that:

This district is constituted by images; of particular significance is the fact that these images are realized, are made living by their transformation into real materials, wood, stone plaster, etc., and through their animation by men and women disguised as movie or storybook characters.  Image is duplicated by reality in two opposite senses: on the one hand, it becomes real, but on the other hand, reality is changed into image.  (p. 245)

Fantasy has become reality in this way, and this is one of the main attractions and fascinations of the Disney theme parks.  Wakefield (1990) explains: “In both producing and confessing to its illusionism, the Disney world epitomizes a new relationship to experience that goes beyond leisure and entertainment” (p. 109).  To paraphrase Mary Poppins: "Very postmodern to Wakefield’s way of thinking."

Illusions Within Illusions 

At Disneyland, everything is also an illusion and is made more believable through the use of illusions—especially filmmaking tricks of scale and forced perspective.  Disney wanted Disneyland to be “intimate and friendly and, at the same time, to be a special world where one could suspend disbelief” (Bright, 1987, p. 93).  For example, Disney scaled down the size of Main Street, making it slightly smaller than life-sized to create an air of “nostalgic fantasy,” making it is impressive but not intimidating.  Forced perspective is used to makes things appear taller than they are in actuality.  This is accomplished by having them proportionately larger on the bottom than at the top:  “by making the ground floor 90%, second floor 80% and third floor 60% in scale.  The result was a charming illusion” (Thomas, 1976, p. 252). 

Waiting in line is made easier through the use of illusion as well.  The different waiting lines for the attractions are divided into smaller ones by mazes which give the illusion of progress and movement, instead of a long single slow moving line, the maze arrangement provides several faster moving lines where people constantly snake back and forth.  Not only does this help alleviate the usual tension and irritation, but the maze configuration promotes interaction between guests as they see each other coming and going along the way. 

Audience Participation in the Illusion

The familiar “life as theater” metaphor, prevalent from Shiva to Shakespeare, is one of the main features of Disneyland for the guests.  At Disneyland, we, the audience, become participants and not merely spectators, as we cross over into realized fantasy.  This was a natural progression for Disney, who brought his filmmaking experience to bear at Disneyland: “He thought in movie terms: transporting his audience from one scene to the next with smooth transitions, combining controlled elements for a total experience” (Thomas, 1976, p. 17).

At Disneyland, we are invited to enter into the experience.  The attractions and adventures actually involve us physically in the show, and we have many opportunities to participate, although sometimes very passively in the stories that the rides portray.  According to Waldrep (1993), this ability to participate provides the primary enjoyment of the park.  Bukatman (1991) remarks that “the combination of simulation and transportation” puts the body “in motion in Disneyland” (p. 75), as real movement of our physical body occurs as we participate in the various attractions. 

Bukatman (1991) further points out that in many attractions such as "Star Tours," the film is no longer separated from the auditorium.  "Hale’s Tours," at the turn of the century were a prototype for this phenomenon, where the onscreen action is augmented by the theater itself actually moving.  By providing a safe and reassuring context for the “enjoyable anxiety the audience felt before the illusion of motion.”  Bukatman, in part quoting Lynne Kirby's discussion of the "Hale’s Tours" argues that they were:

“a symptomatic response to an urban-induced ‘hysteria’, and that the simulated transport served to equip its audience with an illusion of mastery over, or at least accommodation to, the mighty technological forces which were being increasingly deployed.” Kirby refers to Walter Benjamin on the role of cinema in a dramatically technologized world: “the film is the art form that is in keeping with the increase threat to his life which modern man has to face.  Man’s need to expose himself to shock effects is his adjustment to the dangers threatening him.  The film corresponds to profound changes in the apperceptive apparatus.”  (p. 76)

Once again we see a key requirement for play and one of play’s key functions together: the provision a safe space, so that one can master an anxiety-producing situation.

Intermixing Illusion and Reality

Disneyland is not the only place where reality and illusion are mixed.  Babies mix fantasy and reality everyday, as we will shortly see in the mini-excursion into transitional space below.  We mix the two when we play, create art, and when we dream.  We are constantly going between these two worlds.  If we stay in one to the exclusion of the other, that is when trouble occurs: If we stay exclusively in the real world and do not let ourselves dream, all the fun goes out of life, and life becomes hard and dry.  If we only “live in a fantasy world” we are not able to deal with life, and if our illusions are ours alone, and no one else shares them, that is the definition of madness.  What is so wonderful about Disneyland and other cultural creations, such as movies, is that they are shared illusions.  We enjoy them because they enable us to escape from ourselves and to commune with others.  Disney is so good at creating these shared illusions, that the Disney version has outshown the original stories in many cases.  People sometimes do not even realize that there are other versions.  This creates another one of those fleeting shadows that we keep seeing:

Disney materials can seem to serve as a common cultural denominator for many groups.  On a more personal level, members of the vast Disney film audience, along with visitors to the theme parks, are re-creating for themselves as powerful images the materials manipulated by Disney, and those re-created images are gradually taking the shape of the originals . . . . Disney’s version becomes the original version, which is actually more powerful than history since its form is concrete, containing “real people” and “lifelike” people with plenty of action and drama by both.  (D. M. Johnson, 1981, p. 164)

Disney’s version is so clear and convincing that the Disney version becomes “the” reality, and people do not bother making up their own ideas.  Personal imagination gives way to Disney imagination, and we can get lost in the Disney imagination, and lose an important part of ourselves in the process.   Wakefield (1990) notes that:

The technology of enactment can give us more reality than nature ever could. Umberto Eco has this in mind when he writes that the pleasure of imitation, as the ancients knew, is one of the most innate in the human spirit:  but here we not only enjoy a perfect imitation, we also enjoy the conviction that imitation has reached its apex and afterwards reality will always be inferior to it. The “here” that he refers to, however, greatly exceeds the limited confines of hyperreality that we observe as a feature of Disneyland.  It is the here and now of the whole “real” America, based as it is on a new ecology of fantasy and leisure, that marks the ascent of the simulacrum, the reign of imitation, the twilight of the real. (p. 110)

On a recent trip to London, I caught myself looking at some historical building marveling to myself “It's just like Disneyland.”  In this way, Disneyland has become more real than the real thing, essentially switching places with the original, which has become the referent.  I had gotten things backwards and should have said, "Disneyland really captures the look of this building well,” but instead I compared the real building to its fantasy version. 

We play video games and watch television shows, DVDs and movies instead of creating our own games using our own imaginations.  The danger of having one version is that one version is limiting, for example, in one’s imagination, Cinderella can be any race at all, because this fairytale is common to many cultures, from India to France.  However, ever since Disney’s 1950 version, Cinderella has become only blond and blue-eyed.  Disney, to their credit in the television version of the Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella (Iscove, 1997), cast African-American singer/actress Brandi as Cinderella.

Continued on page 2

© 2005-2007 Karen Pohn
Karen Pohn is not associated in any official way with the Walt Disney Company, its subsidiaries, or its affiliates. The official Disney site is available at www.disney.com. This web site cosmicplay.net is my dissertation for my PhD in Depth Psychology at Pacifica Graduate Institute, www.pacifica.edu
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