Disneyland: A Postwar American Utopia

To all who come to this happy place: Welcome.

Disneyland is your land. Here, age relives fond memories of the past, and here youth may savor the challenge and promise of the future. Disneyland is dedicated to the hard facts that have created America - with the hope that it will be a source of joy and inspiration to all the world.

Disneyland Dedication Plaque, July 17, 1955.

The idea for Disneyland was both revolutionary and evolutionary. It was revolutionary because Walt Disney created a different kind of amusement park from the gaudy carnivals of the day, and it was evolutionary because its creator expanded upon themes in animation, establishing them first in a "land"(Disneyland) and later a ''world" (Disney World, Florida). Today, the products of a Disney " universe" are widely available throughout the American sphere of influence, in Third World countries, and even revolutionary socialist societies. Disneyland (over which Disney had the most personal control, and on which this paper will primarily focus) expresses the values of a culture that shaped its creator' s personality, and that of other Americans born of this century. As mass entertainment, the Disneyland tour is not value free. On the contrary, Disneyland customers are active participants in a mass-mediated morality play of utopian proportions. The Disneyland experience both transmits and reinforces the ideology of its creator and of its largely white, middle-class, suburban participants. Disneyland is,  in fact, a model of a postwar American utopia, with political, economic, and social implications.