Here, we reach a rabbit hole in the form of a Disney scholarship. By way of introduction to the field, I suggest that Disney scholarship consists largely of two “camps.” The more contemporary strain of Disney scholarship, beginning to blossom in the 1970s, concentrates largely on questions of narrativization politics, including those of Walt Disney’s biography. A non-exhaustive list of examples would include work by Marc Eliot and Richard Schickel, who concentrate on Disney’s politics; Amy Davis and Elizabeth Bell, who have explored the gender, race, class, and political implications of various Disney media outputs; and the small pocket of scholars including Pricilla Hobbs, Erika Doss, and Janet Wasko, who, like myself, are most interested in the Disney theme parks and the particular, often manipulated and idealized, version of American history and culture they envision. These theme park scholars will provide background for the exploration of the political implications of the Alice dark ride I will undertake here.
This project also toes the line between the more contemporary strain of Disney scholarship described above, and the other “camp,” which focuses on theme park studies from continental philosophy. Most notably, Umberto Eco, Louis Marin, and Jean Baudrillard have analyzed Disneyland through the lens of hyperrealism, or the artificial simulation of the real, which Baudrillard suggests “threatens the difference between the ‘true’ and the ‘false,’ the ‘real’ and the ‘imaginary’” (3). Agreement across these scholars centers on the forced passivity of the Disney consumer. Baudrillard labels Disneyland a “simulation of differentiation between active and passive,” and suggests that Disneyland’s ultimate function is to exist comparatively, to mask that America itself has developed into a hyperreality (31). By this logic, as it is no longer possible to identify the ‘real,’ Disneyland becomes a recycling platform for the dreams and imagination of guests, a cyclical process that mimics the act of imaginative practice for guests, while they consume Disney’s strictly mandated material in return (21, 13). Eco similarly terms the park “a place of total passivity” and “an allegory of the consumer society,” and gives Adventureland, one of the five major thematic ‘zones’ that make up the park, as evidence that Disneyland’s technologically simulated amalgamation of Asian, African, and South Pacific jungle offers more reality than nature (48, 44). Marin, considering the negotiation between simulation and historical representation, claims 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” wherein value gained through exploitation is “projected through the auspices of law and order” (Marin 240). This hidden imperialism is evident in several of the main conceits of Disneyland: Adventureland ignores the colonial violence implicit in the process of discovery, Frontierland suggests that the settlement of North America was a peaceful process, and Fantasyland performs shameless cultural appropriation of folklore (figure 4). Like in Carroll’s Wonderland, the Disneyland guest is exposed to imagery that seems outside of reality; however, in Disneyland, this imagery is not imagination but simulation, and guests do not cognitively or physiologically navigate, but consume fabricated history.
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In a media segment during Disneyland’s development, Walt Disney himself described his hopes that Disneyland would be “a place of hopes and dreams, facts and fancy, all in one,” and in his dedication speech claimed that Disneyland was a dedication to “the ideals, the dreams, and the hard facts that have created America” (Walt Disney Introduces Disneyland 1:29; Walt Disney’s Dedication of Disneyland (July 15th, 1955)). However, given the historical inaccuracies Disneyland is seemingly built around, the relationship between Walt Disney’s definition of fact and objective truths is tenuous at best. A detailed analysis of Mickey Mouse's history is not the task of this paper; however, given the lack of control Disney seemingly felt he possessed in his personal and professional life, it is not altogether surprising that the more unappealing aspects of American history have been sanitized and replaced with idealized visions of what could have been. It seems that the parts of Disneyland that were designed before Walt Disney died in 1966, which includes all of the major sections of the park, reflect an attempt at self-fashioning on Disney’s part— again, a figuration of himself as a patriarch of the American dream. While the most blatant alterations of truth for this self-formation occur in Adventureland and Frontierland, the Alice attractions, and much of the other narratives present in Fantasyland, are also appropriations of fact insofar as they are adapted from previously existing narratives. However, Fantasyland, and the rides within it, inherently combine these narrative origins with fantasy; not just through their natures as fiction or folklore, but through the possibilities they presented for Walt Disney. Given the colloquial attachment Walt Disney professed to the Alice texts at a young age, and their emphasis on world-building, the connections between the structure of Disney’s dark ride adaptation of Alice— and Fantasyland— are worth exploring. Through a close reading of Alice dark ride and Fantasyland, and a comparative discussion of the utopian structures of the two Wonderlands envisioned by Carroll and Disney, the remainder of this paper will read Walt Disney’s adaptation of the Alice texts as a microcosm of what would develop into Fantasyland.
For the most part, the Alice dark ride follows genre conventions: the Disney guest is transported through a dark space in a thematically appropriate vehicle (in the case of Alice, a caterpillar), accompanied by narration, sound, and animatronics. After climbing into their caterpillar car, guests fall down the rabbit hole, meet the Tweedle twins, the White Rabbit, the singing flowers, and the Caterpillar before losing their way in the Tulgey Wood, being guided by the Cheshire Cat, then playing croquet with the Queen (figure 5). After nearly losing their head, guests take a brief detour to the exterior of the ride (which is decorated with leaves and vines), before joining the mad tea party, celebrating their unbirthday with an exploding cake, and escaping back to reality.
Several individual aspects of the Alice dark ride are notable. The ride was opened in 1958, early enough that Walt Disney was alive to directly oversee the attraction’s development. Like the other dark rides in Fantasyland that were constructed before Walt’s death, such as Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride, Peter Pan’s Flight, and Snow White’s Scary Adventures, the original iteration of the Alice in Wonderland dark ride did not originally feature its title character, and wouldn’t until the ride underwent extensive updates in 2014 (Strodder 441). The rationale behind this move, as it was for all the dark rides, is that the rider would replace the title character, and experience the narrative of the dark ride, and therefore the associated film, through their eyes. The implications of this change for the Alice ride are particular, as the guest is traveling through environs that are, ostensibly, Alice’s imagination; in Alice’s absence, however, the narrative the rider consumes is one manufactured by Disney. Additionally, while the narrative sequence of the dark ride generally follows the narrative structure of the film (except the movement of the mad tea party to the end of the ride, which is likely to facilitate the unbirthday spectacle that follows), there are some notable omissions. These include the pool of tears, the White Rabbit’s house, the Pigeon’s accusation that Alice is a serpent, and the trial scene: the moments in which Alice’s size changes. While it would be impossible for guests to change size, it does not seem too far-fetched to imagine the possibility of perspective changes inside the ride, which would mimic growth or shrinkage. While the omission of this narrative staple of the Alice tales is likely logistical, it does remove one of Alice’s key tools for navigating Wonderland and her ability to stand up to the Queen during the trial, emphasizing the passivity of the Disneyland guest.
Additionally, the Alice dark ride has a few unique components relative to the other rides in Fantasyland. One of these, which marks Disney’s indebtedness to Carroll’s work, is a model of Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland book atop a mushroom (figure 6). Intentionally or not, the presence of the book, followed by a dive down the rabbit hole, mimics the multiple thresholds present in Carroll’s work. However, the recursiveness of Disney’s dark ride negates the suggestion inherent in folkloric works that employ the threshold motif, and Carroll’s texts, that the character has grown by the end of the story. Alice evolves so in both Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass, by physically growing while confronting the Queen in the former and being crowned Queen herself in the latter. In both cases, she doesn’t exit Wonderland or Looking-Glass World the way she came, suggesting a continuation of the storyline, and her maturation process, rather than a repetition. In opposition, Alice's dark ride narratively and spatially resembles a circuit; the ride ends with the explosion of an unbirthday cake, which suggests the possibility of rebirth, or new beginnings, on any day of the year (Hobbs 143). The caterpillar car then returns to the front of the ride, where the guest exits given the entrance queue, allowing the circuit to continue uninterrupted; much like children watching Disney films on repeat, guests are symbolically drawn back into Disney’s version of the Alice narrative, eschewing the independence the Alice texts espouse (figure 7). While the proximity of entrance and exit queues is not unusual in amusement parks, this occurs infrequently in Disneyland park overall, and Alice is the only ride to do so in Fantasyland. Generally, the rationale for the strategic placement of exits away from entrance queues is to de-emphasize the inconvenience of lining up in general; Disneyland queues are usually considered a part of the attraction and are decorated thematically to make attractions feel like an overall experience, including the wait time. However, the visibility of the Alice queues emphasizes the commodification inherent in Disney attractions, and, as Kérchy suggests, “reinforces visitors’ collective self-identity as visitors queuing for a popular cultural fantasy product” (54). This merge into commodified collective identity, like so much of the ethos of Disney’s adaptation, negates the individual free-thinking spirit of Carroll’s Alice, whom it is difficult to imagine waiting in line.
The commodification crossover between Wonderland and Fantasyland continues in the other most unusual aspect of Alice's Dark Ride: the outdoor component between the trial and the unbirthday scene. This segment, taking place on a raised platform that gives guests an ample view of Fantasyland, implies a comparison between the colorful, chaotic Disneyland and the fantastical landscape of “Wonderland” through which the guest is traveling (figure 8). This comparison between Disneyland and Wonderland as forms of Hortus conclusus dedicated to childhood imagination certainly works to Disney’s advantage, as Disney is ostensibly attempting to achieve the fantastical spirit of Carroll. To this end, an important aspect of Disneyland (especially Fantasyland) mythos is the sense that it has been pulled from a fairy tale, like the settings of Disney features adapted from folklore, such as The Little Mermaid, adapted from the Russian legend of the Rusalka, or Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, from The Brothers Grimm’s nineteenth-century tale. To signify the passage between the mundanity of Anaheim, California, and the fantastical utopia— a term I use deliberately, as I will expand upon momentarily— of Disneyland, the threshold motif is employed again. Much like Wonderland is entered through the rabbit hole, to enter Disneyland you must pass through one of two archways, both bearing a sign that reads: “Here you leave today, and enter the world of yesterday, tomorrow, and fantasy” (figure 9). While the establishment of the international Disney parks has necessitated cultural variance, the “yesterday, today, and tomorrow” that is being referred to at the Anaheim park is purely that of America. While Walt Disney aimed for the parks to embody “both facts and fancy,” we have seen that issues arise with the authenticity of said facts (Walt Disney Introduces Disneyland 1:29). These collective misinterpretations of American history do not present an educational vision, but the homogeneity and narrative policing typical of a utopia.
The concept of the utopia—perhaps a more extreme version of the hortus conclusus comparison previously made between Fantasyland/Disneyland and Carroll’s Wonderland— applies to both Disney and Carroll’s texts beyond the conceptual similarities of idealistic world-building. Here, Disneyland is to Wonderland as Looking-Glass World is to Victorian England; as Looking-Glass World functions as the inverse of Victorian England, emphasizing movement backward instead of the onward march of progress that traditionally marks advancing civilization, Disneyland is the inverse of Wonderland, wherein the exploration, danger, and nonsense of Carroll’s world is replaced by home, safety, and sense. While the difference in these spaces does not immediately mark them as utopias, they can be read to follow a similar demarcation formula as the island of Utopia in Thomas More’s Utopia, the ur-text of the genre, which imagines concrete walls that keep the “perfect” inside—homogeneity, population control, controlled agriculture, and recourses— and the abject outside—slaughterhouses and hospitals. This framework once more presents Carroll’s Wonderland and Disney’s adaptation as inversions of each other, and the original Wonderland as an inversion of More’s Utopia (figure 10). The homogenous and planned functioning of Utopia is the antithesis of the nonsense that reigns in Wonderland; outside of Wonderland’s walls are domesticity and the education that Alice’s sister is undertaking, while inside is the lack of sense inherent in Wonderland’s society, represented bodily by the uncanny strangeness of its creatures, such as animals, flowers, and objects that speak bread-and-butterflies, and a child that can grow and shrink alternately. Walt Disney’s vision of Alice, on the other hand, more closely resembles the cleanliness-based economy of More’s Utopia. While Utopia designates the vague space outside of its walls as abject otherness, this profane space in Disney’s Alice is represented by the underground; while Carroll’s Alice embraces her fall into the rabbit hole, pondering whether she “shall fall right through the earth” into Australia or New Zealand (not to mention the original title of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland being Alice’s Adventures Under Ground), the underground of Disney’s Alice is marked by Alice as “trouble” before she falls into the rabbit hole and she spends the majority of the movie attempting to escape (Carroll 1865 13; Disney 1951 4:53). Alice’s quest to get back above ground, where her sister is learning European history and they can return home for tea, is the narrative of a citizen of More’s utopia who is stuck outside the walls and desperately wants to return. She does not belong in the world of her creation; the omission of the line that conflates Alice with the other residents of Wonderland, “‘I’m mad. You’re mad,’” demarcates Alice from the creatures she encounters, and the aforementioned violence that Alice encounters throughout Disney’s film alienates her so that she is enthusiastic about her return home, and, unlike Carroll’s Alice, there is no hint that she will return to another imaginary world (Disney 1951 34:12).
Given the Disney Alice’s resistance to Carroll’s version of Utopia, what would hers look like? Unlike Carroll’s Wonderland, atypical for the cultural zeitgeist he was writing in, Fantasyland is very much a product of 1950s America. Erika Doss, in her appropriately titled “Making Imagination Safe in the 1950s,” discusses the advertising strategy of Fantasyland’s promise to cater to the 50s American obsessions with the “affirmation and sustenance of family life” (179). Using Warren Susman’s discussion of Disneyland, which Susman describes as a “‘collective fantasy, an immense metaphor for the system of representations and values unique in postwar America,’” Doss situates Fantasyland as caught between the contemporary fascinations with “fantasy— the bizarre, the eccentric, the grotesque, the unconventional, the unrestrained” and “impulses toward order, containment, and control” (Susman quoted in Doss 180; Doss 180). This tension is due, Doss and Susman suggest, to the range of possibilities opened up in the postwar era, and the reprehension of what changes, societal and moral, these possibilities may bring about (180). Fantasyland abates these fears by providing a highly ordered environment that indulges the urge for fantasy through familiar mythical narratives. As Doss puts it, “Fantasyland is the physical playground of Disney’s celluloid, and consumerist, visions. But it also provides a temporal space where audiences may individually and imaginatively engage with and negotiate familiar myths and rituals on their terms” (181). This is true, with the addendum that these familiar narratives have been filtered through Disney’s rewrites.
This censorship, however, is the purpose of Disney’s creation of Fantasyland; as Carroll had ulterior motives for his children’s literature undertakings, Disney followed Carroll’s model and modified content for children, allowing him to oversee their engagement with imagination. The ‘happily ever after’ messaging of Fantasyland, for the consumer, is the provision of happiness, while the dangers of imagination are discouraged; for Walt Disney, however, it is the opportunity to re-birth himself and exercise his patriarchal dream. Hence, Fantasyland, and Disneyland generally, is the macrocosm for the Alice dark ride, which is a mimesis of Carroll’s Alice texts; this complicated chain can be simplified by imagining a child, perhaps one that has been to Disneyland, in Alice’s place. In Carroll’s texts, despite the pre-existing template of Wonderland, the child’s imagination is encouraged; in Disney’s version of Alice, Wonderland is there, but enjoying it comes with shame; in Fantasyland, everything is safe and magical, but the child isn’t given the tools to create magic themselves. They can, however, happily follow the circuit of the Alice dark ride, over and over, and never grow up; or, at least not critically and flexibly that Carroll hoped for Alice.
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