CHAPTER 6: DISNEYLAND HIGHLIGHTSTHE PROMISE OF PLAY
The cultural piece we will consider now is Disneyland, which opened July 17, 1955. Disneyland looks back imaginally to childhood—to Walt Disney’s own childhood at the turn of the Twentieth Century depicted in Main Street USA, and also at the more distant pasts of Frontier America and the geographic past of the colonial period in Frontierland and Adventureland. Disneyland takes us back to our own childhoods in Fantasyland and the promise of the future we felt as children in Tomorrowland.
Through this turn of the "Kaleidoscope of Culture," we will see primarily play’s more Neptunian and Uranian aspects, although other sides of play will show themselves as well. Before we consider Disneyland, we will look to the heavens and explore the astrological aspects present in the 1950s. Then, we will look at the 1950s, when Disneyland was created, and see how the world was gathered at that time (metabletics). We have already considered the turn of the Twentieth Century to which Disneyland in part looks back in the "Introduction to the Kaleidoscope of Culture" chapter. After that, we will go and explore Disneyland itself, by first getting an overview of Disneyland and then exploring its structure more detail. After that, I will introduce optional excursions you may want to take while you are there, and finally we will look at the lessons that Disneyland has to share with us. But before we begin, an archetypal apology is in order.
Just as the planetary archetype Neptune has little regard for boundaries and erases and otherwise blurs them, and just as the idea for Disneyland went from a small kiddie park located on eight acres adjacent to the Burbank studios, to its 160 acre location in Anaheim, so too has "Disneyland," the dissertation chapter, exceeded its bounds. Disney’s extra excursional essays have taken on a life and a chapter of their own, making a name for themselves and through the miracle of hypertext linked themselves to each other and also to the main chapter. Their chapter is appropriately named: "Extra Extra—Read All About It." In the main "Disneyland" chapter, these excursions are alluded to often, and are briefly summarized after the grand tour, with their locations and links available.
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