[In November, I
finally visited DisneyWorld for the first time, accompanying my 9 and 8 year
old sons. We hit the Magic Kingdom, Epcot, and Hollywood Studios in a whirlwind
three days—and as you might expect, this AmericanStudier found a great deal of
interest in all three places. So this week I’ll DisneyStudy five such details,
leading up to a special weekend post on themes parks in America!]
On what stood
out most to me and to my boys on Disney’s most interesting ride.
Located within
that big silver sphere that has come to symbolize Epcot, Spaceship
Earth takes its riders on a compelling, multidirectional journey through
time and human history. The ride (narrated by none other than Dame
Judi Dench, whom even an AmericanStudier finds about as cool as it’s
possible for a human to be) first goes back in time to the earliest humans and
their prehistoric struggles for survival, moves chronologically forward through
thousands of years of social and technological changes and innovations until
reaching the 21st century present (located at the top of the ride,
and presumably the top of that famous sphere), and then as it descends back to
its starting point presents an interactive game through which each car’s riders
can create a video depicting their own ideal version of future innovations and
society. The ride was both my and my boys’ favorite at Epcot, for different but
complementary reasons that reflect each of our perspectives and identities.
What this
AmericanStudier appreciated was the central thrust of the social and
technological innovations on which Spaceship Earth focuses at every stage:
communication, both in its most practical and most artistic senses. It was the
invention of cave paintings that made isolated groups of cavemen into organized
societies, in the ride’s opening scenes; from there, sections focus on the
Phoenicians inventing the alphabet, on Alexandria and its great library (and
the way its knowledge was preserved even after the
great fire), on Gutenberg and his printing press, on Michaelangelo and the
Sistine Chapel ceiling, on the telegraph and the radio and the computer and
many more innovations. It stands to reason that a ride sponsored by Siemens
would emphasize the role of technology in human development—but I was very
pleasantly surprised that language and art were the most consistent threads of the
communication advancements through which the ride moves, and the cores of its
argument about what has made us most human. That’s an argument I wasn’t
expecting to find in a theme park ride, and one I can get behind!
What the boys
loved most was the ride’s final section, that interactive segment during the
starry descent back to the start. There’s no doubt that their enjoyment was closely
tied to the video’s most interactive component: having secretly taken a picture
of the car’s occupants at some early point in the ride, the video is able to position
their faces atop animated bodies in the imagined future they have created, a
feature that both personalizes the ride and makes it different each time. And
at least for us, this feature was far more than a gimmick: it really allowed
the boys to think about what kind of future society they would want to create
and how they would want to experience it, and on our subsequent rides they
carefully considered their answers to the questions that help imagine that
future. Of course I hope that language, art, and communication continue to play
important roles in their futures, and they remained important to this part of
the ride to be sure; but at the same time, it’s most important to me that my
boys have a say and role of their own in shaping both their and the world’s
futures, and Spaceship Earth gave them a chance to do so in an imaginative and
inspiring way.
Next
DisneyStudying tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do you
think? Other aspects of Disney or theme parks you’d AmericanStudy?
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