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Disney-Land
5.2 Cultural Folklore
Fig. 71 Disneyland California
Fig. 72 Disneyland Hong Kong
Fig. 74 Disneyland Florida
Fig. 75 Disneyland Paris Cinderella’s castle shown in different Disneylands across the world remaining fairly unchanged. It is Characteristically Disney
Fig. 73 Disneyland Tokyo
“Storytelling was one of humankind’s basic and earliest method of effective communication- and one of the first ways we learned about the world as children,”[6] resulting in a plethora of stories and folklore from all around the world. Some of these stories were rooted in a specific culture that Disney couldn’t escape from. Here, Disney takes these myths and legends and twists them, creating a Disneyfied version of the story, and as Disney did with Alice in wonderland, it often becomes the authoritative version through its media platform, like the Legend of Hercules, from Greek mythology. The Greek respondents from the Global Audience study show evidence that they are were not pleased with the particular version of Hercules Disney popularised, although appreciate that “they are using a Greek myth and they [had made] it known all over the world.”[7] For the sake of its globalisation, Disney had to re-interpret the story just as it did from the French Culture (The Hunchback of Notre Dame), the Danish (The Little Mermaid), English Literature (101 Dalmatians) and even Arabic mythology (Aladdin) in order to mediate it to the rest of its audience. The Greek respondents in the study “did not mind, and even appreciated the distortion”[8] of these other Disney stories in the name of globalisation but offended at the Disney branding of their cultural reference. All in all, “even though some respondents were insulted by representations of their own culture… they were forgiving and even amused by other disneyfied stories and characters from other cultures,”[9] to which was important to Disney as they gained 6 Dunlop, B. (1996) Building a dream. New York: Disney Editions. 7 Wasko, J., Phillips, M. and Meehan, E. (2001) Dazzled by Disney?. London: Continuum. 8 Ibid 9 Ibid
acceptance into a vast number of cultures around the world. Once they had a perceived global acceptance on the screen, the parks could hence create vague references to different places across the world from its media platform and depending on your interpretation and relation to the Disney stories, your narrative would slightly differ. The themed shops containing merchandise from different parts of the world suggest Disney’s implicit authority to sell suggestions of various cultures, an authority obtained from the audience’s acceptance of its media. The combined effect of merchandise on display “creates a themed environment…vague in its reference to real places and cultures,”[10] making the merchandise themselves stage props themselves, as they help aid the story of an all-inclusive Disneyland.
5.3 Disneyland’s Context In the Imagineering chapter, we followed a journey through a master planning exercise where the story was as the only brief for the site chosen Disneyland and everything else is retrofitted. The context in which is lives therefore does not matter, as the same concept can be applied around the world, in an almost identical architectural form, and accepted anywhere. Because the basis of Disneyland is derived from the stories which been worked into cultures around the world from its mass-media, its architecture from this story is given access to almost anywhere across the world, with parks in America, Europe and Asian countries, all relatively successful. Although Disneyland’s Main Streets architectural form is based of old American towns, to which has resulted in some 10 Willis, S., Kuenz, J. and Waldrep, S. (1995) Inside the Mouse. Work and lay at Disney World. North Carolina: Duke University Press.