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Frontierland as : and the Architectural Packaging of the Mythic West Author(s): Michael Steiner Source: Montana: The Magazine of History, Vol. 48, No. 1 (Spring, 1998), pp. 2-17 Published by: Montana Historical Society Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4520031 Accessed: 26/05/2010 17:37

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Walt Disney and 1e Architectral

Packaging ofthe Myic West by MichaelSteiner

When opened on July 17, 1955, in Anaheim, ,. , (below, . ; 1955) welcomed tourists:ti version : Disney's ofthe historic .:::'>, ,-i Wild West.

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Sunday,July 11! 1955, was a messy day fol Walt Disileyl After andmousetrap demonstration of a friendlyaton1ic reaction nearlya decadeof obsessiveplanning) eleven months of fren- in Tomorrowlarld.A gas main exploded in Fantasylande ziedconstructiorlu and nine months of televisedprogress re- The excitementcrescendoed, however, in Frontierland. portsnDisney's mental map of the worldwas readyto be born In a dressrehearsal for things to comein theWhite House, in Anaheim.Walt's soothillg fireside chats had involvedmil- C;RonnieReagan, as he wasintroduced, stood before the lionsof TV tray-clutchingfamilies in thebuilding processz and rusticstockade and welcomed Americans to theWild West. now this sharedvision of paradiseregained was aboutto be He beckonedthe televisionalldience to reclaimfrorltier realized.In an actof Prometheanaudacitar, Disney's imaginary gloriesaxld be ;'thefirst to enterthe gates of tiIneinto our worldhad been etchedupon the land and embeddedin the historicpast3 The loggedgates swung openo the throng publicmind. It was a dreamcome true:a fabricatedland of pushedinto the fort,and the camerasfocused on a group neatlypackaged regions that would become the key symbolic of agitatedkids in coonskincaps demandingto see their landscapeof modernAmerica and the best knownand most new frontierhero. ;4WhereXs ?5' they asked copiedplace on earth.Although DisneyXs rage for orderand a worriedArt Linkletter who was n:zightily relieved when reassuringarchitecture would resonate throughout America and Fess Parkerand BuddzrEbsen galloped upon the scene muchof theworld, Disneyland itself had a difficultand untidy stilldripping from an unplanned battle with a quirkylawn birth. ' sprinkler.C;We took a shortcut through the Painted Desert Narratedby the robust triumvirateof , Bob and got sidetrackedby a packof peskyredskirls,X' Davy Cummings,and Ronald ReaganXABCXs televised colrerageof axldhis sidekicktold the widemouthed youngsters. "It took the swelteringfirst day featureda ragged almost carnivalesque us a whileto polishthem off." From this brush with fron- gtparadedown Main Street {J.S.A. with barbershop quartetsX tierbravado and brutality!the scene shiftedto the over- mariachis,Native Americandancers, and people in space suits loadedand listing deck of theMark Twaino where a visibly ¢, and scuba gear, all colliding and vying for attention. Excited distressedIrene Dunne smashed a bottleto launchthe dan- crowds skirted snowdrifts of trash. Womens spike heels gerouslycareening vessel on its maidenvoyage up theRiv- 6,t_ pockmarkedthe asphalt. Children urinatedin conve- ers of America.It was a thrilling out-of-kilterday in t_ nient crannies. There was a botched Ping-Pong ball FrontierlandiIl 1955. MONTANATHE MAGAZINE OF WESTERN HISTORY

Thewestern frontier wasequaly appealing twenty- Southern California landscape, the Disney people had eight years later inJapan and thirty-seven years later deliberately evoked a startling contrast with everyday I in . Opening on a blustery day in April 1983, life.6 was an immediate success. Of those From Big Thunder Mountain, the Grand Canyon present, the largest crush of people-many wearing ten Diorama, the steamboat ride around Monument Val- gallon hats and cowboy boots-patiently waited for the ley, and the forests of saguaro cacti inside the park to Western Rivers Railroad, the riverboat the flashy necklace of postmodern western-themed ride, or the southern fried chicken served at the Lucky hotels flanking it, Euro Disney reeks of the imagined Nugget Cafe in Westernland.2 On that rain-soaked West, particularly the Southwest. "It's truly the leg- opening day, an Australian journalist was moved by ends of cowboys and Indians that rule this land," con- Japanese devotion to the Old West, especially the sight cluded one opening-day observer. "It's just the kind of "iron-willed Japanese Crocketts in dripping coon- of place where John Wayne-loving Europeans can get skins" canoeing furiously to Tom Sawyer's Island, a dose of what they must think is America."7 The power "huddling under umbrellas, paddling with their free of this creative geography is underscored by the thou- hands, and each paying 300 yen for the fun."3 Larger sands of Europeans who wave cowboy hats and yee- and more spacious than its Anaheim parent, the To- haw lustily at Buffalo Bill's Wild West show every night. kyo park, with its Westernland, was designed to pro- The transnational lure of the mythic West is embod- vide a crowded island-bound people-especially ied in the multitudes who forsake French cuisine to Japanese men-with the illusion of open space and chow down on barbecue ribs, chili, and grits at the plenty of swagger-room where good always defeats evil.4 antler-festooned Chuckwagon Cafe or who eagerly stay IfJapanese men seem drawn to the vigorous, samurai- at Antoine Predock's pseudo sunbaked Santa Fe Ho- like morality of the American West, Europeans seem en- tel, where French staff members outfitted as cowpunch- tranced by its sun-bleached immensity. When it opened ers say "howdy" at the drop of a hat.8 in April 1992, Euro Disney was indicted as "a cultural It is a long way from Crockett's rustic stockade in Chernobyl" that "is going to wipe out millions of chil- Anaheim to Predock's enigmatic pueblo in Marne-la- dren," as a gaudy pastiche of "solidified chewing gum Vallee, yet both places indicate that the frontier is and idiotic folk stories taken straight out of comic books America's most potent myth and Disney its most effec- for fat Americans."5 Nonetheless, visitors to Euro tive merchandiser. The mythic power of the frontier is Disney seemed most willingly captivated by the park's well known. It is a compelling story of heroic people rendition of the West, by its transformation of a lush encountering a rugged land, of intrepid pioneers ful- Marne valley beet field into dry, desolate Marlboro Man filling their destiny in an untrod wilderness. It is a country. Condensing the diversity of the American West multileveled narrative fraught with triumph and trag- into a dusty red environment as different from its ver- edy that, for better or worse, unites Americans and dant French surroundings as exerts a tremendous global pull. "What the Mediterra- the greenery of the nean Sea was to the Greeks, breaking the bond of cus- Disneyland river tom, offering new experiences, calling out new is from the dry institutions and activities," Frederick Jackson Turner eulogized in 1893, "that, and more, the ever retreating frontier has been to the directly, and to the nations of Europe more remotely."9 Although Turner urged us to find better myths to . replace the dead frontier, people

On opening day,Davy Crockettand his ' sidekick George Russell, played by and Ebsen were much S, (left) Buddy (far left), in demand by youngsters wearing coonskin caps in imitation of their hero. SPRING1998 ,s' MICHAELSTEINER everywhere cling to frontier dreams and the belief that 189os. Frontier nostalgia reached the Great Plains al- "America is West and the wind blowing."10 "If there is most the moment the westward movement ended there one fact about the United States that can be stated with- with William F. Cody's first Wild West show-"The out fear of successful contradiction," James Thurber Old Glory Blow Out" in North Platte, Nebraska, on asserted, "it is that Americans, or the vast majority of July 4, 1882-complete with a mock stampede of ragged, Americans, are in love with the Far West, the Old Fron- remnant buffalo, the species a younger Cody and oth- tier."'1 Often a bitter experience for pioneers themselves ers had blasted nearly to extinction. By the end of the and a genocidal nightmare for indigenous people who century, more than seventy Wild West troupes were stood in their way, these grim realities were rapidly touring the United States and Europe, staging mock recast into a triumphant morality play replete with spec- battles between white "Rough Riders of the World" tacular landscapes and a pantheon of heroic figures as and former Indian enemies who, like the buffalo, sur- soon as the real frontier had faded. vived as picturesque reminders of glory days.'2 Endlessly malleable for every need, the frontier has Frontier nostalgia is often mixed with anxiety. far more power as an ongoing story than it did as an People yearn for the things they annihilate. Ever since actual experience. It is a story streaked with nostalgia, Euramericans subdued the continent, an aching sense anxiety, and hope. Frontier nostalgia, which peaked of loss has counterbalanced the hope for a fresh start. in Disneyland in the , has a long and venerable A creeping anxiety that we have obliterated the very history. Easterners were wistful about log cabin days source of our uniqueness has offset an expansive faith as early as the 1840s as they promoted political candi- in new frontiers. Although we may all have the lurking dates with symbolic cabin raisings. Currier and Ives fear that the conquest of the continent was our greatest lithographs idealizing frontier life bedecked Victorian tragedy, we usually remember it as our greatest epic. parlors by the 185os, and frontier homage plates titled More than a century after Turner announced the death "Western Ho!" and "Oh! Pioneers" were popular sou- of the frontier and Cody tried to revive it, the frontier venirs at the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition myth remains our most deeply rooted folktale. It flour- Exposition. Colorado ranchers were boarding urban- ishes in our minds as what has been described as an ites hankering for the genuine frontier by the 1870s, all-purpose "metaphor for promise, progress, and in- and dude ranching became a national institution by the genuity" and as a "zone of open opportunity."'3 Despite all that we know about the profane under- of the historical its sacred 1. On the park's chaotic opening see "The Walt Disney Story," belly frontier, people prefer a film running continuously in the Opera House on Disneyland's Main Street. Published accounts includeJohn Findlay, Magic Lands: West- ern Cityscapes and American Culture after 1940 (Berkeley, 1992), 7. Times, May 3, 1992, sec. L, p. 2. 52-64; and George Lipsitz, "The Making of Disneyland," in True 8. Orange County Register, April 13, 1992, sec. A, p. 22; Rich- Storiesfrom the American Past, ed. William Graebner (New York, ard Corliss, "Voila! Disney Invades Europe. Will the French Resist?" 1993), 179-96. Time, April 20, 1992, pp. 82-84. On Euro Disney's postmodern 2. Los Angeles Times,July 17, 1983, sec. 7, p. 3. On the new American regional architecture see Ross Miller, "Euro Disneyland name, aJapanese spokesperson stressed that "We could identify with and the Image of America," Progressive Architecture, 71 (October the Old West, but not with the idea of the frontier." Mary Yoko 1990), 92-95; and Suzanne Stephens, "That's Entertainment," Ar- Brannen, "'Bwana Mickey': Constructing Cultural Consumption at chitectural Record, 128 (August 1990), 72-79, 121. Tokyo Disneyland," in Re-Made in Japan: Everyday Life and Con- 9. Frederick Jackson Turner, The Frontier in American History sumer Taste in a Changing Society, ed. Joseph Tobin (New Haven, (New York, 1920), 38. 1992), 225. 10. Archibald MacLeish, "American Letter," in his Collected Po- 3. Murray Sayles, "Of Mice and Yen," Harper's, 266 (August ems, 1917-1982 (Boston, 1985), 163. On Turner's search for a bet- 1983), 44. ter myth, see Michael Steiner, "The Significance of Turner's Sec- 4. On the deliberately "scaled up" dimensions of the Tokyo park tional Thesis," Western Historical Quarterly, 10 (October 1979), and the scaled down designs at Anaheim and Orlando see Karal Ann 437-88; and Michael Steiner, "From Frontier to Region: Frederick Marling, "Letter fromJapan: Kenbei vs. All-American Kawaii at Tokyo Jackson Turner and the New Western History," Pacific Historical Disneyland," American Art, 6 (Spring 1992), 105-6. On Japanese Review, 64 (November 1995), 479-501. males, western imagery, and samurai values see Brannen, "'Bwana 11. James Thurber, "How to Tell Government from Show Busi- Mickey'," 225. ness" [1961], in Collecting Himself: James Thurber on Writing and 5. Ariane Mnouchkine andJean Cau inJenny Rees, "The Mouse Writers , ed. Michael J. Rosen (New York, 1989), 232. That Ate France," National Review, May 11, 1992. See also New 12. On log cabin nostalgia see Edward Pessen, The Log Cabin Myth: York Times, April 13, 1992, sec. A, p. 13. The Social Backgrounds of the Presidents (New Haven, Conn., 1984). 6. , senior vice president of On early dude ranching see Earl Pomeroy, In Search of the Golden and responsible for the creative aspects of Euro Disney, argues that West: The Tourist in Western America (New York, 1957), 167-72. the appeal of the arid Southwest is rooted in its exoticism and utter On William F. Cody and Wild West shows see Richard White, contrast to French geography, "a stunning red environment, that is "Frederick Jackson Turner and Buffalo Bill," in The Frontier in as much in contrast with the Marne valley here as the greenery of our American Culture, ed. James R. Grossman (Berkeley, 1994), 7-65; Disneyland River is with the dry Southern California climate. Our and Sarah J. Blackstone, Buckskins, Bullets, and Business: A History aim is to give people a fresh, startling impression." Tony Baxter, of Buffalo Bill's Wild West (Westport, Conn., 1987), 1-9. I am in- interview in "Euro Disneyland," Connaissance des arts [English edi- debted to James Nottage of the Gene Autry Western Heritage Mu- tion], (Paris, 1992), 59-79. seum for information about frontier homage plates.

5 MONTANATHE MAGAZINEOF WESTERNHISTORY surface. If the frontier is, in Ray Billington's words, a facturedwestern art, pageantry, films, novels, perfume, land of savagery, it is also a land of promise, and like fashions, and cigarettes, but none has employed the many myths, that of the frontier embraces contradic- ubiquitous power of the built environmentas well as tions and embodies the best and worst aspects of our Walt Disney.16 Describing the Old West as the "the national experience. The pyramids of buffalo skulls and definitive American space" and our most exportable rusted automobiles; the corpses stacked like cordwood commodity, folklorist John Dorst has argued that at Block Island and Wounded Knee; the dust bowl and Disney-spawnedtheme parkshave replacedtelevision the mushroom cloud-such painful features quickly and film as the primaryvehicles for conveyingthe spec- dissolve in favor of the ever-compelling vision of tacle and immensityof that imaginedplace.'7 America as "a geography of hope" and place of fulfill- Disney realized that the lure of refabricatedfron- ment that continues to grip immigrants from Asia and tiers rested in their ability to transformabstract con- Latin America as powerfully as it held pioneers from cepts and flat images into lived experience. He sensed New England and the Midwest.'4 that architecture,more than any other medium, sharp- ens vague feelings into concrete form. Cartoons and movies project two-dimensional abstractions, while people participate in architecture.Combining archi- Thesight of lorean-bornfathersbuying K-Mart In- tecture with theater, Disney's lands are meticulously dian princess costumes for their American-born planned environmentswhere people brieflyescape the daughters underscores the myth's appeal. And even contradictionsof daily life and act out their dreams. victims of the frontier find purpose in its popular mean- "It's not that we're trying to re-create architecture," ing. "When African Americans turn comfortably to the Disney executive Tony Baxter recently argued, "so image of the pioneer," Patricia Limerick writes, "then muchas createan absolutelydisarming backdrop where the idea of the frontier and the pioneer have clearly people's guardis let down and they actuallylive these become a kind of multicultural common property, a experiences."l8 joint-stock company of the imagination." When Spike Transformingthe frontierinto a place wherepeople Lee ends his 1995 film, Clockers, by sending his inner might reenact the past became a passion for Walt city protagonist off for redemption in the open spaces Disney. Remodeling what was often a dirty, brutal, of the West, it is clear that the frontier can serve as a chaotic experience into the cleanest, happiest, most geography of hope for African Americans as well as predictableplace on earthbecame a mission. There is Euramericans and that this tenacious ideal has become, a paradoxin this compulsionto turnunruly nature into in Limerick's words, "the flypaper of our mental world" an ordered artifactthat strikesto the heart of Disney's and a "cultural glue-a mental and emotional fastener life in particularand the frontiermyth in general. At that in some very curious and unexpected ways, works mid-life, Disney seized upon architectureas the force to hold us together."'5 that would most fully satisfy his obsessive rage for or- No one has sold the all-purpose frontier more ef- der and need to recreate a childhood he never had. fectively than Walt Disney, and architecture has been Through an ever-aggressivecontrol of naturehe cre- one of his most persuasive packages. The most power- ated ever-convincingversions of nature;it was through ful mythmaker of our time, Disney merged his child- tightly scripted, ingeniously faked landscapes that he hood memories with a long tradition of frontier nostalgia enshrined the frontier myth of fulfillmentin the wil- to build comforting versions of the western frontier that derness. mirror many of the hopes and anxieties of the last half The urge to carve nature into a monument of his of the twentieth century. A host of entrepreneurs has imaginationcame naturallyto Disney. Conditionedby worked the western market. Albert Bierstadt, William a harsh and abusive childhood on a hardscrabbleMis- F. Cody, Annie Oakley, John Ford, Louis L'Amour, souri farm in the first decade of this century, young Ralph Lauren, Philip Morris, and others have manu- Walt acquired, according to RichardSchickel, a typi- cal rural "hatred of dirt and of the land that needs and and 13. David Wrobel, The End ofAmerican Exceptionalism: Frontier cleansing taming orderingand evenpaving over Anxietyfrom the Old West to the New Deal (Lawrence, Kans., 1993), before it can be said to be in useful working order."19 145; Patricia Nelson Limerick, "The Adventures of the Frontier in the Twentieth Century," in Grossman, Frontier in American Cul- 68. ture, 15. Limerick, "Adventures of the Frontier," 94. I am indebted to 14. Allen Land Land Ray Billington, of Savagery, of Promise: The Martin Ridge of the Huntington Library for the image of Korean- the European Image of American Frontier in the Nineteenth Century born fathers buying frontier outfits for their children. For Wallace of the (New York, 1981). Stegner's description West as 16. Elliott West, "Selling the Dream: Western Images in Advertis- a of see his "Wilderness Letter" in "geography hope" [1960] Wallace ing," in Wanted Dead or Alive: The American West in Popular Cul- The Sound Mountain Water Stegner, of (New York, 1969), 153. ture, ed. Richard Aquila (Champagne, Ill., 1996), 269-92.

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No olle 11axsol(l tlle all-lzlllxo.se fRollticr Illore efTectivel- thawlWalt Dislle,v. allel tl.e f:.llse-fiolltarcllitecture of Frolltierlatle (.II)o-c. vil;l 1()7r))11a.s 1,C.1 olle of llix lcst-luel;age(l eleatiolls. "WhenI startedon Disneyland,"Walt once recalled, beanvoyage restored some balancein 1931,just as a "mywife used to say, 'Butwhy do you wantto build railroadtrip to Chicagopulled Walt out of another an amusementpark? They're so dirty.'I told her that collapsein 1948.These restorative water and railjour- wasjustthe point-mine wouldn't be." And when New neys throughnature may have inspired him to create OrleansSquare was unveiled at thepark in 1966,Walt somethingbigger and moreperfectible than cartoons wasmiffed by a complimentfrom the visiting mayor of or films.2l New Orleansthat it looked"just like home.""Well," BuildingDisneyland seemed to satisfyWalt's rage Waltsniffed, "it's a lot cleaner."20 for orderand perfection. "For twenty years I wanted Dissatisfactionwith the bare earthis a common somethingof myown," he toldMennen. "I worry about Americancomplaint, but coupledwith this suspicion pictures.But if anythinggoes wrong in thepark, I just of rawnature was Disney's inordinate urge to bendit tearit downand put it right.""It's something that will and the entireworld to his will. An insatiableperfec- neverbe finished,"he told an earlierreporter, "some- tionist, perpetuallyfussing and frettingand never thingI cankeep developing, keep 'plussing' and add- pleasedwith a finishedproduct, Walt whipped him- ing to. It's alive.It will be a live, breathingthing that self and his employeesinto a frenzy. Interviewing will need changes.When you wrapup a picture. . . Disneyin 1963,Anglo-Indian novelist Aubrey Mennen you'rethrough.... [I]t'sgone, I can'ttouch it. There wassurprised to meet"a tall, somber man who appeared arethings in it I don'tlike, but I can'tdo anythingabout to be underthe lash of someprivate demon" and who it. I wantsomething alive, something that would grow. spoke candidly of sufferingnervous breakdowns. The parkis that.... The thingwill get morebeautiful "Thingshad gone wrong,"he told Mennen."I had yearafter year. And it will get betteras I findout what troublewith a picture.I had a nervousbreakdown. I keptcrying." A midwesternriverjourney and a Carib- AmericanCity and the End of PublicSpace, ed. MichaelSorkin (New York, 1992), 205-32. 17. John Dorst, "MiniaturizingMonumentality: Theme ParkIm- 19. RichardSchickel, TheDisney Version(New York, 1968), 53. ages of the AmericanWest and Confusionsof CulturalInfluence," in 20. Walt Disney in WaltDisney: Famous Quotes,ed. Cultural Transmissionsand Receptions:American Mass Culturein (LakeBuena Vista, Fla.,1994),29; WaltDisney in David Lowenthal, EuroXpe,ed. R. Kroes, et al. (Amsterdam,1993), 253-70, quotation, "The AmericanScene," GeographicalReview, 58 (}anuary1968),78. 256. 21. Aubrey Mennen, "Dazzledin Disneyland,"Holiday, 34 (July 18. Baxter,"Euro Disneyland," 68-70. See also Michael Sorkin, 1963), 75-76. On Walt Disney's mentalcrisis prior to his 1948 train "See You in Disneyland,"in Variationson a ThemePark: TheNew trip see LeonardMosley, Disney's World(New York,1985), Y14-18.

7 MONTANATHE MAGAZINEOF WESTERNHISTORY the public likes. I can't do that with a picture." In build- most mystical rapport with the American psyche. A host ing his , Disney had realized, in of planners and architects have been awestruck by his Mennen's words, the "strongest desire an artist can untutored populist designs, believing, in postmodernist know": the urge "to create a world of his own where Robert Venturi's words, that Walt's whimsical places everything is just as he imagines it."22 are "nearer to what people really want than anything architects have ever given thein." As early as 1963, the noted planner James Rouse told a shocked Harvard School of Design audience that "the greatest piece of urban design in the United States today is Disneyland" Beginnin in1948 with his simple moilel ofGranny and admonished them to realize that "in its respect for Kincaid's cabin-a miniature frontier log cabin filled people, in its functioning for people" Disneyland con- with ingenious mechanisms-and ending with his tains more positive planning lessons "than in any other sweeping community plans for at his death in single piece of physical development in the country."2T 1966, Walt Disney became a master of architectural con- Surveying the stark grids of glowering glass boxes, trol.:2 Broadly construed as built environment-as the spiritless mass housing, and cookie cutter suburbs many hulman imprint upon space-architecture affects every of them helped create, architects and planners may be moment of our lives. Beyond the simple fact that most paying penance by idolizing Disney's confections as Americans spend more than 90 percent of their time warm havens from puritanical modernism. Disneyland indoors, the very land they inhabit is an artifact-a built has allowed them to smash the glass box and replace environment. This is as true for rural landscapes as it straight-jacket modernism with more playful forms of is for city streets. Architecture as built environment is control. This seemingly untutored, populist design has the ever-present stage and all-pervasive condition of been extolled by planner Bob Hart as "the best example our lives. Everything takes place, and almost all of it of an urban environment where people are treated in a happens in constructed settings that are taken for humane way." Architect Charles Moore described granted like the circumambient air we breathe. Built Disneyland as a joyful public oasis in the "featureless, environments do not determine every aspect of our private, floating world of Southern California."'7 As if lives, but they do establish boundaries and supply pos- fulfilling writer Ray Bradbury's early sibilities. Other expressive forms influence our lives, hype of Disney as "a better architect of world's but none matches the impact of architecture. "When and future metropoli than anyone living," critic Paul you get into architecture," art critic Peter Plagens Goldberger noted that trips to Disney's "Lands" have writes, "it's big casino, real people's real lives." "As become "the sort of obligatory pilgrimages for young engineer and architect once drew," comment two other architects that visits to the great monuments of Europe observers, "people have to walk and live."24 were for earlier generations."25 Disney's architecture truly is the big casino; how With all of these architectural paeans and pilgrim- he and his people drew, many of us have to walk and ages, it is small wonder that Disney has shaped so much live. After its difficult birth, Disneyland flourished to of the modern world. Daniel Burnham, Gutzon become the best-known place on earth, reinforcing, in Borglom, R. G. Le Tourneau, Henry Ford, Robert the words of a recent critic, Disney's role as "the most Moses, William Levitt, and other master builders have influential American of the twentieth century."25 etched deep signatures upon the landscape, but no one Whether we see Disneyland as the great spore bed of seems to have refurbished nature as successfully as tastelessness and corporate control or as a seedbed of Disney or sold such an alluring architectural version flamboyance and folk creativity, it has reshaped Ameri- of America to the rest of the world. The western fron- can and global landscapes in the form of theme parks, tier has been America's most beguiling icon and ex- shopping malls, fast food places, sports centers, muse- portable commodity, and Frontierland as it emerged ums, resorts, and planned communities. Even Disney's most ardent detractors admit that he possessed an al- 24. PeterPlagens, "Los Angeles:The Ecology of Evil,"Artforum, 11 (December 1972), 76; Pauland PercivalGoodman, Communitas: 22. Disnleyin Bob Thomas, WaltDisney: An AmericanOriginal Meansof Livelihoodand Waysof Life (New York, 1947), 3. (New York, 1976), 244; Mennen, "Dazzledin Disneyland,"75. 25. Steven Watts, "WaltDisney: Art and Politics in the American 23. On Walt Disney's ever-wideningrage for order see Michael Century,"Jourral of AmericanHistory, 82 (Juie 1995), 84. Hlarrington,"To the Disney Station:Corporate Socialismy in the Magic 26. New York Times,October 22,1972, sec. 6, p. 41;JamesRouse Kingdom,"Harper's, 58 (January1979), 35-44; AlexanderWilson, in Thomas, WaltDisney: An AmericanOriginal, 358-59. The Cultureof Nat2re:North American Landscapefrom Disney to the 27. Bob Hartin Goldberger,"Mickey Mouse Teaches the Archi- Exxon Valdez(Blackwell, Cambridge, Mass., 1992), 160-90; and tects," 40; CharlesMoore, "You Have to Pay for the Public Life,"in Stephen M. Fjelman, Vinyl Leaves: and America CharlesMoore and GeraldAllen, Dimensions: Space, Shape, and Scale (Boulder, Colo., 1992). in Architecture(New York, 1976), 116-17.

8 SPRING1998 ,-' MICHAELSTEINER in 1955 remains the brainchild and prototype for the the basis for Disneyland. After being away from his architectural merchandising of the frontier myth. studio workbench for decades, Walt began building The frontier was at the heart of Disneyland's de- small-scale models of scenes from the movie. He poured sign from the beginning. One could argue, in fact, that most of his energy into an intricately furnished minia- the park started with Disney's urge to re-create a pleas- ture of Granny Kincaid's cabin complete with a tiny ing version of the midwestern frontier he thought he dummy of Granny in her rocker reminiscing about fron- had glimpsed as a child. Carl Jung's belief that "the tier days via the dubbed voice of actress Buellah Bondi. little world of childhood with its familiar surroundings Ultimately dissatisfied with the constraints of these is a model of the greater world" helps explain the world miniature worlds, Walt moved from automating toys that Disney created in Anaheim, and So Dear to My to controlling people, from mechanized puppetry to Heart, an achingly sweet movie that Walt made in 1948, the life-sized realm of architecture where people would was an important catalyst.29 live momentarily in his mental map of the world. Walk- A sentimental coming-of-age movie, So Dear to My ing through the Magic Kingdom, Anthony Haden-Guest Heart could reduce Disney aptly observed, is "like a to tears. Its opening lines- stroll through somebody's "Sometimes from a small head. Walt Disney's head," beginning come the forces and Frontierland along with that shape an entire life"- Main Street U.S.A. is where suggest its deeper, personal we encounter most of Walt meaning. Set in bucolic jip- - Disney's scrubbed up boy- turn-of-the-century Kansas hood memories and sense with images of a dying fron- 4 of America's past.31 tier and a nascent Main Disney's earliest thoughts Street, the film paralleled about the park are con- Walt's early life and repre- tained in an August 1948 in- sented a mid-life effort to F L house memo that describes cast a golden glow around three general areas: a carni- his harsh childhood. Just as val section with "typical In Ronald Reagan scripted , Walt Disney recast the frontier midway stuff'; a "Main Vil- of his Missouri into a Andy Hardy images from boyhood sentimental, colinlg-of- lage, which includes the story. In the movie still above, Uncle Hiram (Burl his miserable beginnings in age Railroad Station"; and a Ives) spins a tale for young buddies Jeremliah Kincaid western Illinois, Walt "Western Village" with a (Bobby Driscoll) and Tildy (Luana Patten). Disney invented a Tom general store, pack mules, Sawyer and Becky and stage coaches that Thatcher idyll from his work-worn boyhood in east- would pass by an Indian encampment, a farm, and an ern Missouri. Recalling steamboat rides during his for- .32These amorphous ideas coalesced into a full- mative years in Marceline, "only sixty miles from blown blueprint when, in September 1953, Disney and Hannibal, Mark Twain's home town," Disney con- artist Herb Ryman created a detailed aerial-view paint- cluded toward the end of his life: "These boyhood ing of the park. During a characteristically frenzied and memories are the reason for my fondness for sleepless weekend work session, Ryman and his boss Frontierland.... It was a thrill for a boy to grow up in developed a masterful cross axial design with a turn- rural Missouri after the turn of the century when ele- of-the-century American Main Street as the only en- ments of the frontier were still visible."30 trance and exit and with a fairy tale castle near the So Dear to My Heart allowed Disney to recast these central hub with four lands radiating around it. A frontier elements in a redeeming form. The movie twenty-foot earthen berm carrying a steam driven rail- touched an emotional wellspring, compelling him to road surrounded the entire park, separating it from the transformit into three-dimensional models that became messy distractions of the outside world. In this inge-

28. Ray Bradbury,"Los Angeles is the Best Place in America," hood see Gary Wills, Reagan'sAmerica: Innocents at Home (New Esquire,83 (October 1972); Goldberger,"Mickey Mouse Teaches York, 1987), 7-52, and MichaelPaul Rogin, Ronald Reagan, the Movie the Architects,"41. and OtherEpisodes in Political Demonology(Berkeley, 1987), 1-43. 29. CarlJunginJohn A. Jakle, "Childhoodon the Middle Border: 31. Anthony Haden-Guest, The Paradise Program (New York, RememberedSmall Town America,"Journalof Geography,85 (July/ 1973), 227. August 1985), 159. 32. For Walt Disney's early memo see Karal Ann Marling, 30. Walt Disney, "Frontierland,"True West,5 Uune 1958), 10- "Disneyland, 1955," AmericanArt, 5 (Spring 1991), 169-207, esp. 11. On Ronald Reagan'sefforts to glorify a grim midwesternchild- 162-207.

9 Bruce Gordon and David Mumford, TheSNicel Tour (, 1995), 30

Eleveii thousand orange, waltiut, and eucalyptus trees fell to the bulldozer in 1954 to miiakeway for Disilevland. Said one eyewitness: "The neighlborhood was obliterated."

nious plan, a series of bipolar ideals counterbalance bulldozed and burned. "No distinguishablelandmark each other:New Worldand the Old Worldfantasylands remained,the neighborhoodwas obliterated,"lamented in the southern and northern quadrants;past and fu- an eyewitness."Those of us workingon the Disneyland ture frontierlandsin the western and eastern regions. project felt we were bringing 'progress' to a farming Main Street America is juxtaposed to Fairy Tale Eu- community,"recalled a prominentDisney employee in rope, while yesterday'sfrontier of open land is balanced 1991."In the nameof progresswe replacedthe fragrance by tomorrow's frontier of adventure in outer space.33 of orange groves with the smell of smog ... comfort- To realize this scheme, Disney needed land and an ablehomes with motels,shopping centers, and fastfood architect. He chose the Anaheim site for a number of restaurants."35 In the mid-195os, the citrus landscape reasons: it seemed free from Los Angeles's urban was erasedso that Disney could makehis own hills and sprawl; it abutted the rewritenature according to a movie scriptthat included nearly completed Santa plastic trees and robot animals. AnaFreeway; and it "had Finding an architect to follow this script proved certainthings that I felt I difficult. Dissatisfied with preliminarysketches by ar- needed, such as flat land chitects WilliamPereira and CharlesLuckman, Disney becauseI wantedto make decided to heed the advice of his close friend, archi- my own hills."4 One tect Welton Beckett. "No one can design Disneyland hundred sixty acres of for you," Beckett told him, "you'll have to do it for orange, walnut, and eu- yourself."36 Disdaining trained architects, Disney as- calyptus groves were sembled a dedicated cadre of young animatorsand art- bought, and by Septem- ists who would respect his every whim. Like Frank ber 1954eleven thousand Lloyd Wright at Taliesen, Disney surroundedhimself trees and all but two with talented acolytes in his Burbankcompound. And farmhouses had been like Wright'sprairie house, which was an effortto plant the imaginedwarmth of the ruralMidwest amid the cold anonymity of Chicago in the 189os, Disney's Magic Kingdomwas designed as a small-townref- uge from burgeoning Los Angeles in the 195os. In the same mannerthat Louis XIV designedVersailles

With no architectural training but highly skilled in imagining places that would work as Hollywood sets, Disney Imagineers (upper left), Sam McKim (lower left), and others lielped shape Frontierland from Walt Disney's raw conceptions.

0

10 9 _ I;. "' : - _ _ .

Sami McKiiii's visualizations fitorFroiitierlanid, such as Fort Wilderness (above), drawni for Tolm SaswyerIsland in l()56, grew oulit of hllisilleiorics of' pulpe) sterns. cowboy movies, and Ilis experienice as a bit actor on westeil sets ill tile tl();os.

and Marly, Walt would throw out ideas for his devoted an amalgam of many mythic Wests constructed to un- disciples to render into sketches, paintings, and scale fold like a movie. models that would eventually meet with their master's Throughout the park, Hench recalled, "visitors approval.37 Herb Ryman, , Marvin Davis, would move from scene to scene, and everything in each John Hench, Sam McKim, and others had little or no scene-all the sights, the sounds, the smells, the work- architectural training. They were highly skilled, how- ers' uniforms, even the trash cans-was carefully de- ever, in imagining places that would work like film signed to fit each theme." In Frontierland, Hench scripts where people could participate in an orderly added, "You get some of the story by walking into a sequence of planned events. fort, and it's made of logs and there's banjo-playing The largest and most lavish region of the park, and you hear shots from the shooting gallery. So, gradu- Frontierland was carefully choreographed so that guests ally, the story unfolds-Scene i, Scene, 2, Scene 3."39 could feel they were actors in a movie. "Walt had rough As in the other lands, the visitor is involved in a crafted ideas about Frontierland in his head," Sam McKim sequence of camera shots: long, establishing views; recalled. "The West is so vast and immense. Walt had medium shots; and close-ups. From Crockett's raw ideas and materials and we helped shape them." Cumberland stockade at the head of the Ohio a care- The frontier "visualizations" of Indian tepees, stock- fully planned vista stretches westward to a Mississippi aded forts, and false front saloons that McKim worked riverboat ready to take you on a regenerative journey up for his boss grew out of McKim's memories of pulp into the wilderness and back to civilization again. Rep- westerns, cowboy movies, and McKim's experience as licas of nature meant to be more satisfying than the real a bit actor hanging around Hollywood western movie thing, such perfectly predictable adventures supply a lots in the late 1930s.38 Based largely on a multitude of sense of mastery and reassurance. "What we're selling western film images-including his own The Living throughout the Park is reassurance," Hench explained. Desert (1954), The Vanishing Prairie (1954), and Davy "We offer adventures in which you survive a kind of Crockett (1955)-as well as Walt's midwestern memo- personal challenge.... We let your survival instincts ries and stories gathered from his father-in-law, who triumph over adversity. A trip to Disneyland is an ex- had been a sheriff in Idaho Territory, Frontierland was 36. Welton Beckett in Thomas, Walt Disney: An American Origi- nal, 243. On Disneyland's construction, see Findlay, Magic Lands, 52-116. 33. See Louis Marin, "Disneyland: A Degenerate Utopia," Glyph, 37. For a comparison between the Sun King and Disney see Yi-Fu 1 (1977), 50-66. I am indebted to my research assistant Paul Stewart Tuan with Steven Hoelscher, "Disneyland: Its Place in World Cul- and my teacher Yi-Fu Tuan for their insights regarding Disneyland's ture," in Designing Disney's Theme Parks: The Architecture of Reas- spatial dynamics. surance, ed. Karal Ann Marling (New York, 1997), 191-98. 34. Walt Disney in Smith, ed., Walt Disney: Famous Quotes, 41. 38. Sam McKim to Michael Steiner, September 9, 1995; "Visual- 35. Earnest W. Moeller, "An Historical Sketch," July 14, 1980, izing Disneyland with Sam McKim, "E" Ticket, 18 (Spring 1994), 8- Anaheim History Room, Anaheim Public Library, Anaheim, Califor- 21. See also Kevin Brownlow, The War, the West, and the Wilderness nia (hereafter APL)., Window on Main Street: (New York, 1978). Thirty-five Years of Creating Happiness at , ed. Steve 39. John Hench in Peter Carlson, "More Real Than Reality," Fiott (Nashua, N.H., 1991), 19. Washington Post Magazine, May 15, 1994, p. 13.

11 show. Confusion. and ambiguiq were - [_ '. '.+.tl: :

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Disneyland'sinitial embrace of diverseif stereotypical ethnicity,illustrated }:sy the Africaxl American-staffed Aunt Jemimakitchen (left) created in the l950S, succumbedin the 1960S andafter to considerationsinvolving people of color.Rather than grapple with questions concerning race andthe frontIer, llisneyland simply erased its presence,as it did in 1966by replacingAuntJemima's kitchen with ar all-whiteNew Orleans Square (below).

4, ercise ln reassurance aboutolleselfand ;;.-o.o.^ one'sability to . . . handlethe real chal- lengesof life."40 To makepeople feel lske heroic fig- _ ures in the Wild West, and thus emboldenthem fcer the vicissitudesof dailylife, requiredmore than carefill _ choreography.It alsomeant eliminat- - t] ing mes#yCO ntradictions that would _ confuse the sstuationand spoil the all-too-mucha partofthe worldbeyond the bermX and ciples, and these imperativeswere reflectedin the Waltbelieved that Disneyland offered escape to anen- toned-downarchitecture of the placeand the colorof richedlevel of experience,to a purifiedreality that thepeople who worked thereo Bothered by the chaotic wouldliberate people to theirbetter selves. While sit- scrufEmessof westernvernacular architecture Gretel tingin thepark with Billy Graham once, Walt admon- Ehrlich,for examplesdescribes Wyoming as the "the ished the evangelistfor calling Disneyland"a nice doingof a madarchitect"- --Disney turned to more stan- farltasy.'?;'You know the fantasy isn't here. This is very dardizedforms.43 DisdainiIlg the rancouswigwam real,"Walt insisted. "The park is realiq. The people motels,dinosaur parks, corn palaces, reptlle gardens, are naturalhere; they're having a good time;they're snakepits, honkeytonks, hitching post saloons,and comInunicatingThis is whatpeople reallyare. The otherwestern roadside wonders, and displeasedwith fantasyis out there,outside the gatesof Disneyland, the ramshaclulelayout of neighboringKnott's Berry wherepeople have hatreds and prejudices. It's not re- Farm,Disney built a cleaner,simpler movie set alter- allyreal!"4 Although Walt might agree with T. S. Eliot native. Frontierland'stwo generic stockadedforts, that"human kiIld/ Cannot bear very much reality," he cookie-cutteradobe and plaxltation-stylerestaurants, wouldadd that they crave better forms of it. A devoted silhouettedghost town andfalse-fronted Main Street utopist,I)isney was convinced that people yearned for witlia board-and-battengeneral store and filigreed sa- a clearer,more predictable realiq thanthe unneces- loon-----all came straightfrom Hollywood rather than sarychaos of everyday lifeaHe wouldapplaud John fromfhe Inessy West.44 Wayne'sfamous quip: "They tell me everythingisn't Frontierland's"inhabitants" were at firstmore dis- blackand white. I say,Why not?"42 tinctivethan its architecture,although they, too, would Eliminatingcontradictions and providing pro- be affectedby theurge to eliminatecolltradictions that grammedadventures were Frontierland's guiding prin- would make the place a completelywhitewashed

40. John Hench in Randy Bright, I)isneyland:Insidc Story (New HistoricMining Districh (IowaCity, Iowa, 1992);and Jane and York, 1987), 237. MichaelStern, URoadside Wonders of theWest," in WayOut Wcst 418 Walt Disney inJohn Findlay, Mapc Lands, 70, (NewYorlQ, 1992), especially 224-39. 42. T. S. Eliot,Foxr Quartets(New York, 1943), l5;Johll Wayne's 45. Onearly Fronterland see Bruce Gordon and David Mumford, remarlcsmay be apocryphal. Disneyland,IheNickel Zowr:A Postcard Xournv through theXappi- 43. GretelEhrlich, Ehe Solacc of OpenSpaces (New York, 1986), 3. estPlacc on Earth(Santa Clarita, Cali£, 1995);Jon Wiener,"Tall 44. On western vernaculararchitecture see Elliott West, Ehe Sa- Tales and True," Nation, January31, 1994, pp. I33-35; loon on thc RockyMountain Mining Frontier (Lincoln, 1979); Rich- "Frontierland'sFirst Frontier," "E" Ticket, 16 (Sllmmer1993), 30- ardV. Francarriglia,Hard Places:Reading thcLandscape of America's 33;and Disneyland emphemera and press releases preserved at APL.

12 DGuidedP safe wouldb adventuresall vIllder^atelbe its, vivid Frontierland rail.contrast the toillul)k offers the outside 'IiBusanctuaryi/ world.

SPRING 1998 , MICHAEL STEINER

potemkinvillage by the early 1970S. While enthusias- can frontier."Nor areracial subjects broached in neigh- tically endorsing the Anglo-Americanconquest of na- boring"" erected in 1989, a themeride ture,with Davy Crockett,AndrewJackson, Mike Fink, derived from the Uncle Remus-based film, TheSong Texas John Slaughter, Black Bart, and Sheriff Lucky of theSouth (1946). Although it largely depicted hum- as the major protagonists, 1950S Frontierlandhad a bling stereotypes, Frontierland'soriginal piebald cast small but significant non-Anglo contingent. Disney's of Anglos, Mexicans, Indians, and AfricanAmericans Hispanic television heroes, Zoro and E1 Fuego Baca, resembled the real frontiermuch more than the bland made frequentappearances into the 1960S. Mariachis place we visit today. During the race-sensitive1960S, performedin a centralspace called "E1Zocolo," which however, the subservient roles and mere presence of containeda bandstand, a Mexican imports store, and people of color in Frontierlandsparked troubling ques- the Casa de Frito Mexican restaurant. A "Salute to tions. Ratherthan confrontthese painfulimpediments Mexico" production ran briefly in 1963, and an Afri- to the wonders of westward movement, it was much can Americanemployee dressed as AuntJemimasigned easier, more pleasing, and consistent with Disney's autographsoutside "her" kitchen, which was staffed utopianism simply to erase them from the script. with black chefs, until it was shoved aside by an all- This ethnic erasingillustrates Walt's need to elimi- white New Orleans Squarein 1966. A series of Indian nate contradictionsas well as his desire to createa con- villageswith dancers,artisans, and canoe paddlersfrom trastwith the outsideworld. Frontierland'searly variety seventeen tribes entertainedvisitors along the Rivers was a relief from the sea of sameness outside the park of Americauntil the Indians were replaced in 1972 by in the 1950S, whereas today's monotone enclave is a "BearCountry," with its race-neutral,paw-stomping shelter from the multiculturalworld swirling around mechanicalcritters.45 it. Once an island of diversity surrounded by insipid Frontierlandwas far more diverse in the 1950Sthan suburbs, the place is now a calm refugeamid a cultural it is in the l990S. Friendly Indian robots are the only maelstrom.And while the parkonce teemedlargely with nonwhitepresence today. There is no inkling of black white suburbanitesseeking some variety,it now serves culture nor slaveryin adjoiningNew Orleans Square, a more polyglot, cosmopolitan clientele that may be which was touted as the gleaming"Paris of the Ameri- curious about this white world so different from the one they have left behind. A soothing realmof |_ |

- | from the truefrontier of ethnic interactionand g F raucousuncertainty that roars beyond the berm in the streets of Anaheim and throughout pp [# Southern California.The jostling hubbub of - nearbyKatella Avenue, Beach Boulevard, Little 4= Saigon, or East Los Angeles is much closer to T the substance and spirit of the frontier than . k i M Disney's creation.Yet it was his genius to know X thatpeople yearnto escatesuch challenges.He .5St¢i:Sx real thing. The park's attraction, therefore,

..... The dialectic between the Magic Kingdom LjE and the messy world mirrorsdynamic contrasts - within the parkitself. As previouslymentioned, _ Disneyland's blueprint is powered by a lively

- -

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l_ (left. circa 1963)takes tourists oll a l)rogralllllled advelsturetllrougll a fabricatedlalldscal)e tllat

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13 MONTANATHE MAGAZINEOF WESTERNHISTORY dialectic of counterbalancing ideals that surge through- a fabricatedlandscape crawlingwith automatedcrea- out the park and within Frontierland. Entering this land, tures and cigar store Indians safely recapitulatesthe visitors pass from the bumptious Central Plaza to a sim- frontier myth of forging a new life in the wilderness. pler, earth-toned world, from the uncertain present to This ever-repeatingcircuit into natureand back allows the reassuring past. From the vantage point of us to reenact the hopeful side of this myth, but it also Crockett's sheltering stockade, a rustic Main Street hints at darkerpossibilities, especiallyas we churnpass stretches down to a river where a steamboat beckons the devastatedslopes of Big Thunder Mountainor lis- with whistles blowing and paddles churning. Immedi- ten as our pilot, MarkTwain, laments:"You know, with ately immersing people in the past, this frontier vista all the trafficon the riverthese days, it's a wonderthere's then pulls them forward in time and westward in space, any wilderness left." from a fort at the head of the Ohio The tension between nature and in 1800 to a Mississippi steam- civilization within Frontierland is, fi- boat at the end of that century. nally, a microcosm of the park's mas- Walking down Main Street ter plan and key to further cultural toward the river wharf and the patterns. A bird's-eye view above the .... L end of the frontier, one passes a !! Central Plaza shows an east-west ar- westering progression of land- rangement of two frontiers attracting scapes and buildings that evoke and repelling each other like twin two parts of this evolutionary stars: Frontierland in the west balanc- process: the adventure of open- ing Tomorrowland in the east, the ing the wilderness; and the se- rough-hewn past contrasted with the curity of settling it. On the gleaming future, nostalgia versus right-hand side are the rough- progress, nature versus civilization. hewn landscapes of the open e IV The spatial arrangement and chang- frontier-a shooting gallery, a ing relationship between these two southwestern ghost town, and lands embodies myriad American the wild expanses of "Nature's hopes and fears. If Disneyland is, in Wonderland" (replaced by the cultural critic Michael Real's words, mine-blasted flanks of "Big "a trip deep inside the American Thunder Mountain" in 1977). psyche," then our collective sense of On the left is the architecture of the past, present, and future is found Fashlioned in a time when America settled regions: a midwestern in these two frontiers.46 confidently celebrated progress, general store, the far western With their log and concrete por- Tomorrowland. with its hopefiul Golden Horse Shoe Saloon, and tals facing each other across the Plaza future emlbodied by "Space Maln" a southern house in and with the Mark Twain and the plantation and ;Space Girl" (above), contrasted the distance. Moonliner toward each well with Frontierland's nostalgia for pulling people Main Street dialectic be- Frontierland and Tomorrow- The the ,iation's golldeii past. gate, tween frontier and region, nature land represented a tug of war between and civilization, is reDeated on the glorious past and the promising the Rivers of America where, unerringly guided by an future. Just as the 1893 Chicago Columbian Exposi- underwater rail, the Mark Twain takes tourists around tion offered a choice between a clangorous Machinery Tom Sawyer's island and past a crazy quilt of many Hall teeming with technology and the secluded Wooded Wests. As a folksy rendition of Twain's voice narrates Island-complete with the Hunter's Cabin honoring the journey into wilderness and back, we see the Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett-Disneyland cel- Haunted Mansion and Splash Mountain in the South ebrated future and past frontiers. As Thomas Hine has give way to in the Northwest; we watch argued, these two realms seemed perfectly compatible the dark woods of the Upper Mississippi merge with in the 1950S and early 196os, the golden era of TV the dusty buttes of the Southwest. Hardly a trip to the westerns and science fiction, when John Kennedy heart of darkness, this programmed adventure through touted "a New Frontier" and Americans "embraced the

46. MichaelReal, Mass Mediated Culture (Englewood Cliffs, NJ., 1977), 52-53. 49. On the "New West" see Michael L. Johnson, New Westers: 47. Thomas Hine, Populuxe(New York, 1986), 8. The West in ContemporaryAmerican Culture (Lawrence, Kans., 48. 'swords were recalledby Tony Baxterin per- 1996); RichardRodriguez, "RalphLauren's Teepee," in SandraS. sonal conversationswith author,September 9 and October20, 1995. Phillips, et al., Crossingthe Frontier:Photographs of the Developing

14 SPRING1998 ' MICHAELSTEINER rocket and the covered wagon with equal fervor."47 The Disney people know that the western frontier Being in Disneyland's hub was like standing in the ves- may be a model for the future: urban visions of a "Great tibule of either a 1950S ranch or Cape Cod house-each Big Beautiful Tomorrow" seem increasingly archaic, with its futuristic kitchen on one side and rustic living while the Old West appears ever more viable. One day rooming on the other. Comfortable as Jetsons in the in 1989, while chief designer Tony Baxter was finish- kitchen and early Americans in the living room, visi- ing plans for Tomorrowland 2055, Disney CEO tors were equally attracted to Tomorrowland and Michael Eisner stopped by to check up on the project, Frontierland as retreats from the uncertain present. and he was dismayed by the plan's images of a gleam- Eager for the future, nostalgic for the past, and anx- ing megalopolis. "This isn't the future people want," ious about the present, Disneyland's early visitors could he told Baxter. "People no longer believe in dazzling relish the plastic wonders visions of monorailsand ev- of Monsanto's House of eryone wearing gold lame the Future as well as the jumpsuits with zippers rugged simplicity of Fort down the front," Eisner Wilderness. They could continued. "It'simpossible take a rocket to the moon to see anything but the or ride pack mules across 'Blade Runner'in these ur- the Painted Desert, visit ban visions of the future. the Bathroomof Tomor- What can you tell people row or explore Tom about the future when Sawyer'sCave, bask in the Montanais the future?Put heroic presenceof "Space a PC in the log cabin. Mon- Man"and "SpaceGirl" in tana, Wyoming-they're the promised future or the places that represent a Zoro and SheriffLucky in wonderfulvision of tomor- the golden past. Progress row." "You could put the and nostalgia reinforced sign'Tomorrowland' in front each other nicely in the of 'Frontierland',"Disney's 1950s and 196os. i heirconcluded, "And people This dynamicrelation- would be happy."48 ship has saggedever since. E After Eisner's lecture, In a curious reversal of images of "The Montana fates, Frontierlandflour- The dynamic tension between future and past, inaugurated Future"with a computerin ishes while Tomorrow- in Disneyland's Tomorrowland and Frontierland, the cabin became guiding land fades. Predictably continued in the Disney imagination with the popular 1995 principles for the Disney enough, Tomorowland animated movie, , in which the Old West people. The allure of the overcomes the as Sheriff outdoes proveddifficult to sustain. Space Age Woody (left) frontierin theJapaneseand astronaut Buzz Not only do images of the Lightyear (right). French parks indicates a future age at a terrifying deeper hungerfor the open pace, but people have become increasingly skeptical West among urban, mostly upscale Americans that of the urban future and wary of space-age wonders. In Disney's Imagineershave learned to capture and per- an ironic flip-flop, Tomorrowland, with its naive em- petuate. Aware of the much discussed "New West" of blems of progress and cheesy remnants of more hope- Ted TurnerandJane Fonda, Robert Redford and Ralph ful times, has become a locus of nostalgia and a Lauren, the Disney Corporationpackages the dreams monument of the past. Asking themselves "Wasn't the of frazzledbaby boomers yearningfor a simpler future future wonderful?" people are wistful about the anti- out west.49In Toy Story (1995), Disney's immensely quated Submarine Ride and the Adventure through popular animatedfable of two frontiers, the Old West Inner Space, while they remain awed by the Mark outduels the Space Age as ever-dependable Sheriff Twain and the Big Thunder Railroad. Woody proves more than a match for klutzy astronaut

50. Jack Kerouac,On theRoad (New York, 1957), 33, 77-78, 309. West, 1849 to the Present (San Francisco, 1996), 51-53; Patricia 51. Los Angeles Times, August 29, 1995, sec. A, p. 21. Nelson Limerick,"The Shadows of Heaven Itself," in Atlas of the 52. F. Scott Fitzgerald,The Great Gatsby (New York, 1925), 182; New West:Portrait of a ChangingRegion, ed. WilliamE. Riebsame Perry Miller, "Nature and the National Ego," in Errand into the (New York, 1997), 151-78. Wilderness(New York, 1956), 216.

15 MONTANA THE MAGAZINE OF WESTERN HISTORY

Buzz Lightyear. The West flourishes at the Anaheim in cowgirl attire" who fired off blanks and "bustled and park where a new frontier historyland called Califor- whooped on the wooden sidewalks of Old Cheyenne." nia Adventure, the largest addition to Disneyland since "In my first shot at the West," Sal concluded, "I was 1955, will open in 2001. While Frontierland is expand- seeing to what absurd devices it had fallen to keep its ing, Tomorrowland is being recast as a self-consciously proud tradition." And weeks later, at the end of the nostalgic place featuringJules Verne and Buck Rogers road, facing west from San Francisco's shores, versions of a long lost future.Just as Ridley Scott's Blade Kerouac's hero realized "How disastrous all this was Runner (1982) ends with Harrison Ford and his an- compared to what I'd written ... from Paterson.... droid girlfriend escaping the grimy city for a lush big Here I was at the end of America-no more land-and sky place in the West, Disney's Imagineers truly be- now there was nowhere to go but back."50 lieve that the western frontier rather than the space age Forty-eight years later, while vacationing in the city is the great big beautiful tomorrow. upscale, Ralph Lauren-styled environs of Wyoming's Grand Tetons, another western pilgrim echoed Kerouac's regrets. After rafting down the crowded Snake River and camping overnight in the Tetons with laptop computer at hand and gourmet chefs in tow, after n1947, while Frontierlald was gestatingin Walt golfing and spending several days in Jay Rockefeller's Disney's mind, Jack Kerouac's hero, Sal Paradise, mountainside ranch, Bill Clinton mused that he wished lit out from New Jersey for the freedom and exhila- he had been part of the opening of the West. "I was ration of the West. Drawn by the promise of "all that channel surfing the other night," he told reporters, "and raw land that rolls in one unbelievable huge bulge over stumbled upon a movie about the Lewis and Clark to the West Coast, and all that road going, all the people Expedition. I've always been fascinated by it. That was dreaming in the immensity of it," Sal's first encounter some trip. I wish I'd been on it."51 with the West, in Cheyenne, Wyoming, hardly matched "That was some trip. I wish I'd been on it." "No his dreams. "Hell's bells, it's Wild West Week," he was more land" and "Nowhere to go but back." These told, as he elbowed through "crowds of fat business- words have been the nagging subtext of the frontier men in boots and ten-gallon hats, with their hefty wives myth since Europeans began conquering the Ameri-

Euro Disney outside Paris has captivated tourists with the park's rendition of the imagined, wide-open American West, especially the cowboys and Indians of its mythic past. Below visitors paddle Indian canoes in France's Marne-la-Valle.

,i .- . :~~Y _ I II * I.. I

16 SPRING 1998 MICHAEL STEINER __ _ _; . *.

canwilderness. Like the disillusionednovelist and the blingparadox, this lurkingsuspicion that the frontier nostalgicpresident, people everywhere have had a bit- is a self-destroyingprocess and a bittermess of pot- tersweetromance with the frontier West, and for nearly tageto boot, nagsat us like a guiltyconscience. This halfa century,the Disneypeople have manufactured smartingsense of complicity,this dreadthat our ma- landsthat nurture the sunny side of thisaffair showing chinesare destroying the garden, that, in historianPerry us how the Westwas fun. Beginningforty-three years Miller'swords, "we arebeing carriedalong on some ago amid the bulldozedorange groves of Anaheim, massiveconveyor belt such as Cole's'Course of Em- Disneybuilt a magicrealm with a seductiveversion of pire"'into a BladeRunner world, is a deep-seatedfear Kerouac'sWild West Week that helped us forgetabout thateven Disney cannot smother. All the architectural thedeath of the frontierand our complicity in thepro- reassurancein the world fromever-slicker Frontier- cess. Disney'sFrontierlands allow us to safelyreenact landsto thehigh-tech Montana Future-will never dis- themyth of redemptionin thewilderness, airbrushing guise the troublingmeanings of westwardconquest. powerfulambiguities that hauntthis grippingstory. Riddledwith paradox,rife with tragedy,the frontier Valorizingthe Europeanconquest of America,they mythremains our most compelling and our most tragic mufflememories of plunderingthe landand killing its story.52 0 inhabitants,and they postpone the realizationthat the frontieris dead, thatthe realtrip is over and there's "nowhereto go but back." MICHAELSTEINER is professorand chair of Ameri- Justas Disney obliterated nature in orderto celebrate can Studies, CaliforniaState University,Fullerton, it, so too havewestward-yearning Americans ravaged wherehe hastaught courses on Americanregionalism, the very thing they most cherish,cutting down the environmentalhistory, folk culture, architecture, and wildernessas if it werea hatefulpresence. Forever es- SouthernCalifornia culture since 1975.He is author capingto someWild West, we busilytransform it into of numerousarticles on regionaltheory, sense of place, a replicaof the civilizationwe havejust fled. F. Scott culturalgeography, and New WesternHistory, and Fitzgerald'svision of the"fresh green breast of thenew coauthorof Region and Regionalismin the UnitedStates world"that "flowered once for Dutch sailors'eyes" (1988), Matting American Culture(199R), and Many wouldbecome Jay Gatsby'sgarbage heap. This trou- Wests:Place, Culture,and RegionalIdentity (1997).

WaltDisneyt conferring below with NativeAmerican entertainers in 1957,built a paradox-obliteratingnature in order to celebrateit and whitewashinghistory to reenacta sanitized,mythical version of redemptionin the wilderness.

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