Volume One of The Greenwood Guide to American Popular Culture, which I recently picked up at the library, covers a number of topics. Judith A. Adams-Volpe writes the chapter on "Amusement Parks and Fairs." Not too surprisingly, she writes in some detail about Walt Disney, the man. The next chapter is on animation, so he pops up there as well. And with ol' Walt there is a lot of interesting detail.
Disney was a different kind of figure. Most of the creative work in Disney movies was delegated, of course. Having grown up deprived, he wanted to create a new and better childhood, while casting himself as the benevolent father figure. Having grown up poor, he wanted to be richer and more powerful than anyone could imagine, creating a company more vast and powerful than many nations. And in this second goal he not only succeeded, but is still succeeding to this day. For better or worse.
Disney and his crew developed the basic design elements for his amusement park: a single entrance; a coherent, sequenced layout; wide, leisurely walkways; extensive landscaping; plenty of food and entertainment; attractions unique to Disney; efficient, high capacity operations. The projected Santa Ana Freeway would make the Anaheim property a half-hour drive from Los Angeles, yet out of the range of mass public transportation, thus not accessible to the poorer population and unsupervised adolescents. In a truly inspired move, Disney turned to the television networks, specifically, the then-fledgling American Broadcast Company, to provide financial backing to build the park. He promised to produce a weekly hour-long television program, Disneyland, in return for ABC's financial investment. Thus, from the beginning, this amusement park was essentially linked with the new cultural giant, television. Together they would establish the dominant outdoor entertainment venue of the twentieth century.Interestingly, as Disney and ABC were putting Disneyland on the air, another Hollywood figure was venturing into TV. It's not controversial at this point to say that Alfred Hitchcock was kind of a creep in his personal life. But he was also pretty much a pure artist. While he was interested in making money, and successful in doing so, his goal was always to make more films. Alfred Hitchcock Presents was another way of accomplishing this. Tell shorter stories, get them out in front of the public, and use the revenue to make more movies.
Disney was a different kind of figure. Most of the creative work in Disney movies was delegated, of course. Having grown up deprived, he wanted to create a new and better childhood, while casting himself as the benevolent father figure. Having grown up poor, he wanted to be richer and more powerful than anyone could imagine, creating a company more vast and powerful than many nations. And in this second goal he not only succeeded, but is still succeeding to this day. For better or worse.
2 comments:
Your description of this one makes the book sound pretty interesting. While I remember watching some of the early Walt Disney Presents shows my strongest memories revolve around the daily episodes of the Mickey Mouse Club in the mid-50s when all the kids not only had a favorite Mouseketeer but also wanted to be one of them. The really lucky kids got a beanie with big round mouse ears but for the most part Disneyland was as far away for most of us as I guess it must have been for the poor children who lived nearby and couldn't afford to go. It's odd to think that Walt (and his brother Roy) grew up in poverty and wanted a better childhood for all kids than their own had been yet deliberately built the park where so many couldn't go. Although Jer had no trouble going there when he arrived in CA in the later 60s the place was infamous among hippies because long haired males were not allowed entry - toking up on the premises was verboten.
I never knew much about Hitchcock being a pervert as he always just seemed simply strange. From what I have read it seems he treated his actors as animated props for whatever storyline he was filming. Of course anybody who could come up with Suspicion, Psycho, North by Northwest, Dial M For Murder, Rear Window, and Vertigo among so many more deserves a little cultural leeway. He was a very complicated man. The tv shows are still very entertaining to watch.
Walt Disney certainly did engender a huge business and, as you infer, much of it not for the better.
That was the original cast of Mouseketeers. The one Annette Funicello was part of. That definitely seemed like a cast the kids at home could identify with. The Mouseketeers from when I was a kid also seemed to be "idealized average", although they seem to have been forgotten. The late 80s/early 90s crew, the one that included Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake, seemed to me to be too obviously full of showbiz kids for regular kids to relate to, although time seems to have indicated I was wrong about that.
Yeah, I guess if Disney was an ideal, the original principles were already a little foggy by the time they started building theme parks. The decision to build them way, way out beyond the cities reflected a different calculus. And yes, they were on some subtle level part of the culture wars of the sixties. To the extent that they were on the losing side they've had to adopt and rejigger things since then.
I was sort of being rhetorical about Hitchcock. His biographers have pointed out that he had a prominent dark side, which is to be expected. Melanie Griffith, who was onset when her mother Tippi Hedren was filming The Birds and/or Marnie didn't seem to have good memories of him. His wife and daughter did, though. Certainly it hasn't stopped me from enjoying his movies, where even those that don't quite work out have something interesting about them. And his TV show is a lot of fun to watch even still. I mean, Peter Lorre gambling for Steve McQueen's finger: what's not to like?
I haven't read Against the Day, although I may now. You make it sound interesting. My background on the Chicago Exhibition mainly comes from the nonfiction book The Devil in the White City, which also covered serial killer HH Holmes.
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