BREAKING NEWS: Moana
is fantastic. Go see it.
We
Disneyland fans often enjoy discussing the Tomorrowland Problem—i.e.,
how do you go about portraying “the future” in an age when
technology progresses as quickly as it does in this day and age? What
you don't hear about much is the Frontierland Problem, which I will
identify in a moment. To the best of my knowledge, this phrase
doesn't even exist as a widely recognized term for a phenomenon that
most guests may not think about, or want to.
The
Frontierland Problem, in brief, is this: How do you depict a
superficially exciting but very ugly
phase in American history in a theme park setting, without either
whitewashing the nasty parts or bumming out your guests? It's a
problem that might not have arisen had Disneyland been built in any
decade other than the 1950s, when white American machismo (of a
clean-cut variety that seems paradoxical to modern eyes) was perhaps
the dominant value in
American pop culture. Nowhere was this better exemplified than in the
Western genre of film and television, which had its absolute heyday
in the Fifties. In any other decade, Walt Disney—or at least his
advisors—might have deemed the Frontierland concept not nearly
marketable enough for mainstream audiences, and chosen a different
theme for this largest of the themed lands, or at least diminished
the “American history” presence in favor of nature or modern-day
America* or something else related.
Might
have. It is by no means certain.
But it is well worth looking at all the small ways in which the
sights to see in Frontierland have been tweaked
over the years, as the guest base has grown more diverse and less
forgiving of the whitewashed, white-centric
Old West narrative. The Indian attack was removed from the backstory
of the Burning Cabin and the Indian War Canoes were retooled into the
Davy Crockett Explorer Canoes,** leaving only allied tribes among
Frontierland's Native population. The Golden Horseshoe's long-running
show, featuring mild burlesque elements, came to an end. Gunplay was
progressively downplayed. It's safe to say that mainstream America no
longer considers Westward Expansion a period of unalloyed heroism on
the part of white settlers and the U.S. Cavalry.
And
that leaves both Management and Imagineering in a bit of a fix. What
do you do when the
entire theme of an important land has gone out of fashion? For the
time being, the answer seems to be “Put it off for another day.”
Tomorrowland is suffering from a lack of solid direction, but
Frontierland is suffering from neglect,
to the extent that large chunks of its real estate were deemed
expendable in order to make way for Star Wars. The closest thing to a
new permanent attraction it has received in over twenty years is the
out-of-place Pirates' Lair overlay of Tom Sawyer Island. Granted,
adding attractions to a land whose atmosphere relies on a sense of
wide openness is automatically tricky business, but it's no wonder
Frontierland's overall popularity has been declining when it never
has anything new to say, when its former messages have become
unpalatable but it has nothing meaningful to replace them with.
So
what can they do?
Well, in some respects the experiments are already being performed.
