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Brittany Myburgh deposited Disneyland and the American Frontiers: A Timeless Utopia in the group
Intaglio Journal on Humanities Commons 2 years, 7 months ago In 1955, Disneyland opened its doors and the American public descended into the fantastical world of Walt Disney. While Disneyland corresponded to the company’s growing brand as a movie-making empire, it also reflected the way that the original American colonies and the ever-developing Western frontier shaped the American mindset. Based on the arguments of Louis Marin in his 1984 book Utopics: Spatial Play, this essay builds upon his statement that Disneyland “is the representation realized in a geographical space of the imaginary relationship that the dominant groups of American society maintain with their real conditions of existence, with the real history of the United States, and with the space outside of its borders.” Through an analysis of the park’s layout and select relevant cultural case studies such as the Monsanto House of the Future (1957), John Turner’s Frontier Thesis, and John F. Kennedy’s rhetoric in the early sixties, this essay looks to understand how Disneyland visually manifests distinctly American narratives and how these mythologies contribute to the theatrical distortion of reality in the park.