Introduction
Walter Elias Disney is the “most influential American of the twentieth century” and has become a myth. He created an empire on a cartoon mouse and everything in this empire carries his signature. For his achievements one could call him the founder of postmodern America, a founder of an industry of fantasy that enriched the western culture. That it why the first part of my essay deals with him and his company. The main part is about one of his greatest realizations – Disneyland. Today, this amusement park is one of the biggest tourist attractions in the whole world.
Walt Disney brought to this theme park “all the skills and showmanship he had learned in three decades as a film maker”. He wanted to bring his Disney vision into material and physical existence, as well as providing a strong dose of American ideology. Disneyland represents the American dream – a world of magic and illusion, prosperity and happiness. It is a showcase for postmodernism and the embodiment of capitalism. But what makes Disneyland so magical. Why are so many people visiting this amusement park? After dealing shortly with the history and architecture of the park I will try to explain the success, the magic and the contradictions of Disneyland. Walter Elias Disney was born in 1901 in Chicago, Illinois. In 1906, his family moved to a farm in Missouri and in 1910 they moved to Kansas City. Soon it became visible that Walt Disney was interested in movies, especially of Charlie Chaplin, and drawing. After he left school at the age of 16, he became a volunteer ambulance driver in World War I where he served as a member of the American Red Cross Ambulance Force in France until 1919. After this experience he worked as an advertising cartoonist and started working on methods to perfect the combinations of animation and life action. Walt Disney started some business but with not much success. In 1923 he and his brother Roy Disney launched the Disney Brothers Studio with saved and lent money: “They bought a used camera, rented a tiny studio in the back of a real-estate office, moved into a one-room apartment together, hired a couple of assistants, and according to Walt began the process of making ‘the name Disney famous around the world’”.
Table of Content
1. Introduction
2. Walter E. Disney
3. The Walt Disney Company
4. The Magic of Disneyland
5. Summary
Bibliography
1. Introduction
Walter Elias Disney is the “most influential American of the twentieth century”[1] and has become a myth. He created an empire on a cartoon mouse and everything in this empire carries his signature. For his achievements one could call him the founder of postmodern America, a founder of an industry of fantasy that enriched the western culture. That it why the first part of my essay deals with him and his company. The main part is about one of his greatest realizations – Disneyland. Today, this amusement park is one of the biggest tourist attractions in the whole world.
Walt Disney brought to this theme park “all the skills and showmanship he had learned in three decades as a film maker”[2]. He wanted to bring his Disney vision into material and physical existence, as well as providing a strong dose of American ideology. Disneyland represents the American dream – a world of magic and illusion, prosperity and happiness. It is a showcase for postmodernism and the embodiment of capitalism. But what makes Disneyland so magical. Why are so many people visiting this amusement park? After dealing shortly with the history and architecture of the park I will try to explain the success, the magic and the contradictions of Disneyland.
2. Walter E. Disney
Walter Elias Disney was born in 1901 in Chicago, Illinois. In 1906, his family moved to a farm in Missouri and in 1910 they moved to Kansas City. Soon it became visible that Walt Disney was interested in movies, especially of Charlie Chaplin, and drawing. After he left school at the age of 16, he became a volunteer ambulance driver in World War I where he served as a member of the American Red Cross Ambulance Force in France until 1919. After this experience he worked as an advertising cartoonist and started working on methods to perfect the combinations of animation and life action. Walt Disney started some business but with not much success. In 1923 he and his brother Roy Disney launched the Disney Brothers Studio with saved and lent money: “They bought a used camera, rented a tiny studio in the back of a real-estate office, moved into a one-room apartment together, hired a couple of assistants, and according to Walt began the process of making ‘the name Disney famous around the world’”. In 1925 he married Lillian Bounds, one of the women he had been hiring. In 1928, he invented Mickey Mouse and his first sound cartoon premiered in New York. From this time on the success came in one fell swoop. Disney won his first of 47 Academy Awards in 1932 for his first cartoon in Technicolor. In 1933 not only his own family grew, his first daughter was born and another was adopted later, but also his company grew and he made his first feature-length animated film: ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs’. With the cash from it, he began building a new studio in Burbank, a $3 million investment and already 1000 employees. In 1954, the artist began with television productions and opened one year later the Disneyland in Anaheim, California. He achieved so much in his life and changed the world in a positive way. Unfortunately, he died in 1966 because of cancer.[3]
3. The Walt Disney Company
Walter Elias Disney and his brother Roy Disney founded the Walt Disney Company in 1923. It started as a small independent animation studio and is today one of the largest media and entertainment corporations in the world. The Company's main operating units are Studio Entertainment, Parks and Resorts, Media Networks and Consumer Products.
“Walt Disney Studio Entertainment, also known as the Walt Disney Studios, is possibly the most important function of the company […]. Until 1955, the company's main form of business was motion pictures. Today, the Walt Disney Studios is the collective name of Disney's movie studios, record labels, distribution companies, television studios, animation houses and any other form of optical media.” The Walt Disney Parks and Resorts builds and manages the theme parks and vacation resorts which Disney is famous for. Disney operates a total of nine theme parks on three continents. The Company’s Media Networks unit is centered on the American Broadcasting Company (ABC) television network and also owns a group of cable networks, local television and radio stations.
The Walt Disney Company has about 129,000 employees and had an income of $31.9 billion US Dollar in the year 2005.[4]
4. The Magic of Disneyland
The vision of an amusement park was spooking in Walt Disney’s mind for a while. He went to county fairs, state fairs, circuses, carnivals, national parks and zoos: “He studied the attractions and what made them appealing, whether people seemed entertained or felt cheated”. He often made the experience that rides were tawdry and the operators were hostile and not into their work at all.[5] He thought that this could be made so much better and his idea of building an own park manifested itself with this vision of children and parents having fun together:
It all started when my daughters were very young, and I took them to amusement parks on Sunday. […] I sat on a bench eating peanuts and looking all around me. I said to myself, dammit, why can’t there be a better place to take children, where you can have fun together? Well, it took me about fifteen years to develop the idea.[6]
It was not difficult to think of a name for the park: Disneyland. And by this time, while the concept grew, he realized that he needed an organization to help him create Disneyland. And in 1952 the subsidiary of his company Walt Disney, Incorporated was found, later renamed WED Enterprises.[7] All in all he spent five years of his life developing Disneyland.
Some of Disney’s studio employees joined the project as engineers and planners, later dubbed imaginers.[8] Walt Disney and the imaginers studied all the cartoons in order to get some ideas for the amusement park. They wanted to create something perfect and unique, something that is not like any other amusement park. They wanted to create a new concept in entertaining which would have success.[9] Walt Disney’s reason for this excitement was the following:
The park means a lot to me. It is something that will never be finished, something I can keep developing, keep ‘plussing’ and adding to. It’s alive. It will be a live, breathing thing that will need changes. […] I just finished a live-action picture, wrapped it up a few weeks ago. It’s gone. I can’t touch it. There are things in it I don’t like, but I can’t do anything about it. I want something live. Something that will grow. The park is that. Not only can I add things, but even the trees will keep growing. The thing will get more beautiful year after year. And it will get better as I find out what the public likes. I can’t do that with a picture; it’s finished and unchangeable before I find out whether the public likes it or not.[10]
The plans for this park and a television show were announced to the public April 2, 1954. “To demonstrate the seriousness of his intentions, Walt declared the series in TV would begin in October of 1954 and the park would open in 1955”.[11] With this announcement he set himself and his planners a very strict timetable. The TV show though was a very good tactic, since this way Walt Disney was able to introduce his dream of an amusement park to millions of Americans, which was perfect advertising.
[...]
[1] Steiner, Michael. Parables of Stone and Steel: Architectural Images of Progress and Nostalgia at the
Columbian Exposition and Disneyland. In: American Studies. Deutsche Gesellschaft für
Amerikastudien. Heidelberg: Winter. 2001. p. 42
[2] Thomas, Bob. Walt Disney – An American Original. New York: Simon and Schuster. 1976. p. 17
[3] Walt’s Biography. Disney online . Disney Insider. The Walt Disney Family Museum. Walt Disney
Company. 8. Mar 2006
<http://disney.go.com/disneyatoz/familymuseum/collection/biography/marceline/index.html>
[4] Wikipedia. Free Encyclopedia. The Walt Disney Company. 8. Mar 2006
< http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Walt_Disney_Company >
[5] Thomas, Bob. Walt Disney – An American Original. New York: Simon and Schuster. 1976. p. 241
[6] Thomas, Bob. Walt Disney – An American Original. New York: Simon and Schuster. 1976. p. 11
[7] Thomas, Bob. Walt Disney – An American Original. New York: Simon and Schuster. 1976. p. 242
[8] Wikipedia. Free Encyclopedia. Walt Disney Imagineering. 8. Mar 2006
< http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walt_Disney_Imagineering >
[9] Thomas, Bob. Walt Disney – An American Original. New York: Simon and Schuster. 1976. p. 245
[10] Thomas, Bob. Walt Disney – An American Original. New York: Simon and Schuster. 1976. p. 244
[11] Thomas, Bob. Walt Disney – An American Original. New York: Simon and Schuster. 1976. p. 249
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