The Case of Disney's America

Memory as Entertainment? The Case of Disney’s America Masterarbeit im Ein-Fach-Masterstudiengang English and American Literatures, Cultures and Media der Philosophischen Fakultät der Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel vorgelegt von Sina Delfs Erstgutachter: Prof. Dr. Christian Huck Zweitgutachter: Dennis Büscher-Ulbrich Kiel im Dezember 2015 Für meine vier wunderbaren Großeltern und all die kostbaren Erzählungen Für meine besten Schwestern und all unsere gemeinsamen Erinnerungen Für meine Mama und meinen Papa, für alles Table of Contents 1 Introduction..................................................................................................................................... 1 2 Disney’s America – the Commercialization of Nostalgia .............................................................. 4 2.1 Inside the Park - How Disney Imagined America ................................................................... 5 2.2 A(n Un-)Predictable Opposition .............................................................................................. 9 3 The Memory Discourse – A Focus-guided Introduction .............................................................. 14 3.1 The Transdisciplinary Field of Research ............................................................................... 14 3.1.1 Maurice Halbwachs and the Collective Memory............................................................ 15 3.1.2 Pierre Nora and the Lieux de Mémoire........................................................................... 16 3.1.3 Collective Memory and Cultural Identity ....................................................................... 17 3.2 Cultural Memory and History in the Case of Disney’s America........................................... 21 3.3 Remembering the American Way.......................................................................................... 23 3.3.1 American Exceptionalism............................................................................................... 23 3.3.2 A Dual Experience of Identity ........................................................................................ 24 3.3.3 American Cultural Memory and Civil Religion ............................................................. 25 4 Mediating the Past – The Real and the Quasi-Real ...................................................................... 27 4.1 Heritage Tourism ................................................................................................................... 28 4.2 Authenticity or Authenticities? .............................................................................................. 30 4.3 Civil War Battlefields in American Cultural Memory........................................................... 32 5 Themed Entertainment in the USA............................................................................................... 35 5.1 Re-enactments and Living-History ........................................................................................ 35 5.2 Insights into Theme Park Culture .......................................................................................... 38 5.3 Disney’s Theme Parks as Archetype Entertainment.............................................................. 40 6 American Cultural Memory as Memotainment ............................................................................ 43 6.1 How much Fun Does Cultural Memory Permit? ................................................................... 46 6.2 The Plot Behind the Kaleidoscopic Past................................................................................ 56 6.3 The Spiritual Experience and the Commodification of Place................................................ 64 6.4 An Appeal to the Senses – Providing a Fantastic Feeling ..................................................... 72 6.5 Memory Etiquette – “Do not Throw a Frisbee”..................................................................... 77 7 Concluding Remarks..................................................................................................................... 82 Appendix.......................................................................................................................................... 86 Works Cited ..................................................................................................................................... 94 Nachbauen, nachspielen, nachfühlen – Erinnerung mit Unterhaltungswert? .................................... i 1 Introduction Anniversaries are like gregarious animals. They seem to feel comfortable in the company of others just like them. The year 2015 appears to have been particularly cozy in this respect as it marked a number of important remembrances. For instance, it has been seventy years since the end of World War II and the dropping of the atomic bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Forty years have gone by since the fall of Saigon and the end of the Vietnam War and Germany and Europe celebrated the 25 th anniversary of Reuni- fication and the formal ending of the Cold War. Societies all over the world held public (and private) commemoration ceremonies and many reconsiderations of the past were covered extensively by the media. Most acts of remembrance show a predominantly contemplative character, tinged with a mantra of “never again” (Winter 2008: 62). Quite the opposite could be witnessed on June 19 and 20, 2015 in Belgium. Two hundred years after the defeat of Napoleon’s French army by an alliance of English and Prussian forces, over 5000 re-enactors, 300 horses, and 100 canons made the Battle of Waterloo come to life again outside of history books or ceremonies. Several thousand spectators bought tickets to the event and watched from front row spots on the safe side- lines of the battlefield as masqueraded soldiers performed Waterloo. Prior to the bicen- tennial spectacle, the official website advertised “[t]hese shows [to ] be different, fun for all, and full of emotions – Come and participate from the very front line” (Parmentier “Waterloo 2015 English”). The German version of the page even stated: “Diese Darbie- tungen versprechen, nicht nur gesellig und zugänglich, sondern vor allem episch, laut und sehr farbenfroh zu sein” (Parmentier “Waterloo 2015 German”). The visitors were invited to be part of the engaging recreation of a historically decisive event. The battle was depicted as a family-fun attraction and aimed at making the spectators feel included by offering them a visual and emotional approach to war. A strikingly similar, yet less choreographed, incident has been recorded for the First Battle of Bull Run at Manassas, Virginia, in the year 1861: “When word reached the nation's capital that the first major battle of the Civil War was to be fought at Bull Run, a little stream near Manassas, Va., all of social Washington packed luncheon baskets and turned out in buggies to witness it” (Safire 1994). With the above-mentioned examples, the memory of war shows itself in two mark- edly different garments. There is a stark contrast between official commemoration ceremonies and the colorful, social and family-fun re-enactments. Solemn memory meets entertainment, facts meet fantasy, and (some kind of) authenticity meets recreation. Are 1 these pairs completely irreconcilable instances in the way a society remembers? Or can they somehow be merged in fruitful complementarity? This thesis will focus on a proposed American case of combining collectively remembered events with popular entertainment. At the beginning of the 1990s the Walt Disney Company announced its plans for building a history theme park in the small vil- lage of Haymarket in the state of Virginia. The entertainment giant intended to make the past of the United States readily accessible to the general public through its – at the time – fifth amusement paradise by the telling name of Disney’s America (DA ). Fun was to be mixed with education and emotion merged with information as Disney planned to develop the park around selected topics and events from American history. However, in close proximity to the proposed site lay the above-mentioned Manassas National Battle- field Park , the site of two central Civil War battles in 1861 and 1862. First reactions to the project still oscillated between enthusiasm and skepticism but in the end DA failed in a storm of outraged protests from historians, journalists, writers, and preservationists. Discussions became extremely heated during the spring of 1994 when the topic evolved from a local concern over the multi-million dollar investment into a nationwide cam- paign against Disney and its plans. Eventually, in September 1994 Disney’s former CEO Michael Eisner announced the complete cancellation of DA and plans for the park were put on the shelf to gather dust. From the perspective of cultural studies, this thesis will conduct a case study to un- cover the factors that ultimately led to proclaiming Disney’s popular entertainment in- compatible with the socially shared memory of America’s past. It will revolve around the following two central questions: (1) Why was the collectively remembered past of the United States of America declared unsuitable for the entertainment approach of the DA theme park? (2) Why was Disney as THE (inter)national symbol for entertainment deprived of the ability to represent American memory in an adequate manner? Commonly, memory is thought of as a personal recollection of events that one has ex-

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