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': tSEFERENCE ONI
Mickey Mouse History: Portraying the Past at Disney World
Mike Wallace
"Industry lias lust credibility with the public, the government has lust credihihtv, but people still have faith in Mickey Mouse .ind Donald Duck.'' (Marty Sklar, vice-president, WliD |-ntei
prises, Inc. i
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Walt Disnev nevetygot a Ph.D., but he was, nevertheless, a passionate historian./At Disnevland in California and Disnev World in Honda, tlwj/ved is poweriullv evoked lor visitors—using music, movies, robots, and the jatesHn special effects. Thirtv-three million people visited these attractions in I4S3; it's possible that Walt Disnev has taught people more historv, in a more memorable ujv, than the\' ever learned in school. As a prolcs-sional historian interested in popular presentations ofthe past, I decided to review tlie work ot this premier interpreter of the American experience.
I soon discovered tliete are tuv Walt Disnevs. The man we might call "Original Wait" built the Magic Kingdom in Disnevland in the ľ-.'pOs. Later, the Magic Kingdom was cloned and transported to Disnev World in I'lorida. j^odav^iothk^              remain .essentially intact, tro/en in time, the[r^presentations of "Main Street," "l:ronderiand_'J'A^cnlyj^e[ajuj^and_^he "Hall of Presidents" retlecd_ngjD_ngmal Wajťs_[430s-stvle approach to historv.
Disnev- died in  1 Lít"'<v-^Čfi!5piľeap?rMsŤe -himself frozen, ančT naa~v--vei be back. But.in a wav he did Ikv on
As WED (Walter Elias Disney) Enterprises, Inc., he was reincar-
'4     nated n.s a corporation.
In the 1970s, this "Corporate Walt," claiming it was carrying
out OriginalWaJť£_wisjTesiJorged an alliance with other corpora-
/ tions (the creme de la creme of U.S. multinationals). Together they
y^built EPCOJ—the Experimental Prototype Community of Tomor-row^andlhoused it in Disney World, next door to the Magic King-dom. EPCOT, too, is saturated with history, but of a remarkably different kind from Disney's 1950s version. It is these two historical perspectives, side by side in Orlando, that I want to explore and juxtapose. While there are intriguing continuities between them, EPCOT's approach suggests that the sixties and seventies had^inextraordinary impact on popular historical consciousness, enough to warrant extraordinary efforts by corporate America to n^ohshhjjje_^                                                               —   ......i
In tki early 1950s Walt Disney set out to build an amusement park t;...: .-.-as clean, wholesome, and altogether different from the seedy carnivals he remembered from his youth. Against great odds (bankers frowned on the project and he had to borrow on his insurance policy to do the initial planning), he brought Disneyland into being in 1955. ^jT the hear^of the project, right along with his fantasy characters, Disney placed a series of history-fla-YOE^djentej^yünrnenis^                                                                  ~~"
This was new for Walt. Aside from the spectacularly successful i").;: :, Crockett: King of the Wild Frontier, a few costume dramas like Rub Roy, the Highland Rogue, and Song of the South (whose idyllic depiction of master/slave relationships drew NAACP fire), Walt had shied away from history. Perhaps his turnaround was influenced by the crowds flocking to John D. Rockefeller, Jr.'s Colonial Williamsburg and Henry Ford's Greenfield Village as 1950s Americans took to the highways in search of their roots. Certainly his technique resembled that used at Williamsburg—he transported visitors back jnjime.
^""TTíělrunute you stroll through the turnstiles into the Magic Kingdom you "turn back the clock," as your gjjid^bwkjgjjsj^u, "to the turn-of-the-century." Your first steps take you to Main Street, the heart of a small American town. It's a happy street, clean and tidy, filled with prancing Disney characters. It has a (j»yÜkj^jquaJjty, perhaps because i ť .ybu il t fi ye-eigh t hs t rulTsTz? ("peorjkJj^ke^ojyKjnj^their world is somehow more grown up than Papajs_was^j. It's like playing in a walk-in doll's house that is simultaneously a consumer's paradise., equipped with dozens of little olde-time shoppes with corporate logos tastefully affixed. But Main Street, ostensibly, is grounded in historic reality. It
was fashioned, we are told, out of Disney's recollections of his Uun-of-lhe-cenlurv boyhood in Marceline, Missouri, a small town a hundred miles northeast of Kansas City. The intent, Walt said, was to "bring back happv memories for those who remember the carefree times it recreates." This is puzzling to those familiar with Disney's own story, which was rather grimmer.
Disney's father Elias, a hardserabble small operator, drifted back and forth between country and city in an unsuccessful attempt to establish himself and his family. After railing at citrus growing in Florida, he moved to Chicago, where he worked as a carpenter on the Columbian Exposition of 1893, and then established a hand-to-mouth small contracting business. Walt was born in 1901, just before the business failed and the family moved again, this time to a forty-eight-acre farm near Marceline, on which Elias entered into the precarious and indebted life of the American small farmer. (Perhaps the then pervasive agrarian resentment of bankers was a source of the elder Disney's socialism— he voted consistently for Eugene Debs and subscribed to the Appeal to Reason). Walt was set to hard farm labor (drudgery which his two elder brothers escaped by running off) and a diet of stern patriarchal beatings. In 1910, Elias failed again. Forced to sell the farm and auction off the livestock, he moved to Kansas City, Missouri, bought a newspaper route, and set Walt and his remaining brother Roy to work as newsboys; Roy ran away the following year. After living meanly in Missouri a few more years, Elias drifted back to Chicago, where he became chief of construction and maintenance in a jelly factory, and put Walt to work washing bottles. Finally, in 1919, Walt made his own break. He spent the early 1920s in Kansas City as a commercial artist, hustling hard to stay alive and ahead of the bill collectors. In 1923 he moved to Hollywood, where his career began to click.                           _______
^-^*The confectionery quality of Magic Kingdom's <^Jain Street < thus bears little resemblance to Disney's real childhoocThome. And indeed a Disney official 7usTo7v~«mTisi^^
spjeaj__n___^thisj^^
yesteryear. Here, everything would always remain fresh and new. ÄTidTfteTÔws of old-time shops and the traffic vehicles and all the other elements would function together in harmony and unison
unlike anything grandfather ever experienced."____________
Original Wjjťs^jtpproaeh to the past was thusiáoLlo repru-cTuce it, but to improve "\ľ).\ Disne^'imagineerlAas the designers •sFj^TJTejiseiže's) e_^jains_Jhpvy the processi works:^''What we create is aQŽHšTuFv"Realism^' sort of<Utopian in nature^where we ea re ŕuljy p rogra m J^jľ^^the^^^                                          t s and
program in the jŤu__sTt_^                     (This vacuum-cleaning ot the
past is reminiscent of Walt's film work in which he transformed Crimm's^oTrT1ŤsttWPTHr,TíThrs into cute and cheery cartoons.) As^* another Disney planner puts it: "This is vvhat thejeal Main Street [ ^ll°J.lM..hJA'ť been like.",/'                                                   "           "
The Disnev people don't consider this retrospective tidying up an abuse of the past—they freely and disarmingly admit its ťal sification, pointing out that this is, after all, just entertainment But they also insist they are bringing out deeper truths. John Hench, a leading member of the organization, expanded on this in an interview, explaining that Disney sought to recapture the ťs-m'ihv of a period. "You take a certain style, and take out the contradictions that have crept in there through people that never understood it or by accident or by some kind of emergency that happened once and found itself being repeated—you leave those things out, purifv the stvle, and it comes back to its old form again." Like the French architect Viollet-le-Duc, who in the 1860s and 1870s strove to restore churches to imagined Gothic puritv, Original Walt aimed to strip away the accretions of time, in the case of Main Street, Hench explains, he was striving to recreate the Victorian era, "which is probably one of the great optimistic periods of the world, where we thought progress was great and we all knew where we were going. [Main Street] reflects that prosperity, that enthusiasm."
The decades before and after the turn of the century had their decidedly prosperous moments. But they also included depressions, strikes on the railroads, warfare in the minefields, squalor in the immigrant communities, lynching, imperial wars, and the emergence of mass protests bv populists and socialists. Tlib. history has been whited out, presumably because it would have distressed and repelled visitorsľvAs Hench noted, "Walt wanted to reassure people."
Walt's approach, though it had its roots in Hollywood, was emblematic of larger developments in 1950s America. The domin ant culture, seemingly determined to come up with a happy past to match its own contented present, contracted a selective am nesia. Leading academic historians downplayed past conflicts and painted optimistic, even uplifting pictures oi the American pas-t Colonial Williamsburg's recollection of olden times conspicuously excised the presence of black slaves, 50 percent of its eighteenth-centurv   inhabitants.   Greenfield   Village—another   conflict-free small town—overlooked such realities of rural life as foreclosures and farmers' movements.
Walt's Main Street, therefore, can perhaps best be understood! as part of a larger trend. As a stage set that cultivated nostalgia for | a  fabricated   past,   it contributed  its bit  toward   fashioning an \
image—now deeply etched into popular memory—of: dj^L^jyv nineties" as a world without classe'sT'conflict, or crime, a world of contimTOtR' eoWs'mrrjäfľoTT-T^                                    thé'šá'm'e time,'"
iPWŠtgnHřTtTŤSTfTfagé on rTTuTDTe~just as Colonial Uiiiiamsourg ' provided the modeTŕor thousands or "colonial" suburbs, Disnev-1 anďs Main Street became a model tor the developing .American shopping mall and the "ve oide" entertainment centers beginning to festoon the American landscape. On the face or it, Eisenhower-

era citizens could assume that America's present had evolved gentlv, naturally, and inevitably out oi its past.
There wiv places in Disneyland that recail the bumpier patches of the good old davs. At Frontiertown and Adventureland, contradictions are not deleted but dwelt upon. Here we go on rides that travel to the distant and benighted places which >.<nce threatened Civiii/aiion. In the Wild West. Darkest Atrica, and the Caribbean, we are in the domain oi dangerous opponents—Indians, pvgmv headhunted, pirates. But there is no real danger in these realms. As Hench explains: ' What we do here is to throw a challenge at you—not a real menace, but a pseudo-menace, a theatricalized menace—and we allow you to win."                           -i
Scary but harmless images are a stoek-in-trade oi amusement    I park's. But jt is striking tnat Disney's ' pseudo-menaces" are all   I Historical   ones—trie   ghosts "of'" once   vigorous,   now   defeated   I enemies ot Main Street—transformed into tun-filled characters. J On the ride up the Longo River, your affable host regales vou with such witticisms as "These natives have one thing in mind; they just want to get aheao      l'he robot pirates are agreeably wicked and the robot women seem to enjoy being ravished. In Frontier-land you can hole up in an old fort and shoot Indians, with a barrage of canned gunfire as an accompaniment (this was Walt's favorite part of the park).
For all the whizzing bullets, the experience of reliving ancient passions is a soothing one. For one thing, as Hench comments shrewdly, these are "oldriashioned weapons. They're part of the.-^C" safe past- Nobody worries about the past. ..." For another, cow-boys-and-lndians is a well-established and conventional game, and historical conflict is thus shuttled into a regressive world ot ehikjirood   fantasy.   Frohtierlahd and  Adventureland  brush  un
C against some realities ot the past, but in the end they serve asj ritual reassurance of Main Street's triumph over its opponents.    \
The Magic Kingdom includes a direct portrayal of American history—at the Hall ot Presidents. The hall has a peculiar history of its own. Designed in lŠ5ľ-58,Tit was put on the shelf because
,, Disney imagineers lacked the technology to produce it. Breakthroughs in "audioanimatronics" (robot building) came in the early 1960s, and at the 1964 World's Fair Disney tried out the new engineering. In collaboration with the State of Illinois, he built the "Visit with Mr. Lincoln" pavilion, starring an artificial Abe. In the 1970s, the original Hall of Presidents show was dusted off, and the Lincoln robot became its centerpiece.
The Hall of Presidents is housed at Liberty Square, in a mock-up of the eighteenth-century Philadelphia mansion. Visitors wait tor the next show in the Rotunda, where paintings of the Founding Fathers establish respectful atmospherics. Then they are ushered into a theater (and told that no eating is allowed—"to maintain the dignity of the presentation"). A film begins. It shows the Founding Fathers making the Constitution. We learn that the new document was soon challenged bv the Whiskey Rebels, a churlish mob, and that George Washington crushed them. Then slaveholders, an aristocratic mob, threatened it again. Andrew Jackson threatened to hang them from the nearest tree. Finally the Confederates launched the greatest challenge to date, and Li took up the burden of defense. The movie implies that in disorder remains the chief threat to America's survival.
The film ends. With great fanfare the screen goes up, revealing a stage full of robot presidents. All of them, from Washington to Reagan, are in motion, nodding or solemnly (if somewhat ar-thritically) gesticulating. They are done up with scrupulous attention to detail. George Washington's chair is a precise reproduction of the one in which he sat at the 1787 Constitutional Convention. Their costumes are authentic down to the last stitch. Wig-makers in Guatemala reproduced their hair strand for strand. (The atten-"" tion to detail, characteristic of Hollywood costume dramas, again reminds us of Disney's cinematic roots.)                                        «•
Ä sepulchral voice-over calls the roll of these men "who have defended the Constitution." The audience is hushed—perhaps in awe at the solemnity of the occasion, perhaps in amazement at the spectacle of thirty-odd robots twitching about on stage. When the roll call gets to FDR and the more recent presidents, there is a whisper here and there. But when it gets to Nixon, chortles and guffaws break out. The contrast between the Official History and living memories is too great—Nixon as tiefender of the Constitution?"—and the spell šnaps'undeí the strain. I asked later if this was" simply "a baď'day rut' Ml".' Nixuirrerrd-was told that no, the crowd always rumbles when RN takes his bow.
The Nixon disturbance is symptomatic of a larger problem with the Hall of Presidents. By the 1970s, for all its technical sophistication, its ideology was old-fashioned, less believable than
ncolj; terna
it was in the hevdav of McCarthvism. The Disnev people denv any dissatisfaction with it, but in retrospect we can see that in the 1960s they began exploring a 11 e r n a t i y es to t h e n at i o n a I i s t i c_a£grj.jjLŕJ'1 ■ The trálfsTHtTnTo^ffi1^                            (EPCOT) was provided bv
another Disnev 1964 World's FaiTéTnTPuTrfTSfTľäTousel of Progress, created in collaboration with General Electric.
At the Carousel of Progress, Disney takes visitors on a ride through time. After thev settle down in the Carousel's small theater, the curtain rises on a robot middle-class family at home in 1900. Mom, Dad, and the kids are chatting about housework. They have the latest in labor-saving devices—gas lights, telephones, iceboxes—and think that life couldn't be any easier, but uv see that poor Mom is still subject to all kinds of drudgery. Luckily, as Dad reads in the paper, some smart fellers down at General Electric are cooking up new gadgets. At this point the theater begins to revolve around the stage (accompanied by a cheery ditty whose refrain is "Now is the best time, now is the best time, now is the best time oi your life") until it reaches a new set, this one peopled with 1920s-style robots. Mom and Dad enthuse about their new machines— percolators, refrigerators, electric irons—but note that those research people at General Electric are still at it. And on we go to 1940, and finally to 1960. Things have really progressed now. Dad is cooking dinner (though somewhat clumsily) and Mom is celebrating passage of a bond issue (on which she had time to work thanks to her GE dishwasher and dryer). At ride's end a hearty voice-over concludes that we live in "the best time" ("one of the reasons is that electricity has improved our lives"), and that things will get even better ("each new year and each new day will bring a better way of life"). Finally we are shuttled toward the Kitchen of Tomorrow to see what General Electric has dreamed up for us next.
The Carousel of Progress is more than simply an extended commercial break. It is a paean to Progress—defined as the avail-ability of emancipatory consumer goods. This was new tor Disney." He had tended to political rather than commercial themes. But it was an old line of argument for industrial corporations. Even the pseudo-feminist claim that household commodities liberated women had been advanced bv advertisers since the 1920s and had been a staple at the 1939 World's Fair. I would like to suggest that the Disney-GE collaboration represents an important merging of several longstanding traditions of American culture.
Consider, first, the roots of Disney's Magic Kingdom shows. They descend, in part, from the patriotic dioramas, tiiblam.x i<iiuint>, and waxworks of the nineteenth century. Disney upgraded the
This extraordinary project might seem quite a jump from an amusement park, but the overheated reaction Disneyland evoked may have been instrumental in EPCOT's creation. Walt had been praised extravagantly as an urban planner. James Rouse, master builder of new towns and historical shopping malls modeled on Main Street (Boston's Faneuil Hall, Baltimore's Harborplace, New York's South Street Seaport), told a 1963 Harvard conference that Disneyland was the "greatest piece of urban design in the United States today." Architectural critic Peter Blake called the Anaheim park the only significant New Town built in the U.S. since World War 11—"staggeringly successful"—and suggested, only halt-humorously, turning Manhattan over to Disney to fix up.
All this went to Walt's head and he floweredJ.nto a Utopian CjU^itaJjsL This was partly a family legacy: as Michael Harrington has perceptively noted, Disney's father had been an admirer of Edward Bellamy's "warmhearted, futuristic authoritarianism." Partly, perhaps, Walt had been inspired by the 1939 World's Fair's Democracity, a scale model of a perfectly planned "World of Tomorrow"—a "vast, Utopian stage set" housed inside the great globe of the Perisphere. Whatever its roots, the hothouse atmosphere of the Kennedy-Johnson years speeded the process. Gigantic projects of social reconstruction seemed plausible in those boom years and though Walt was a Goldwater Republican (and an early financial supporter of Ronald Reagan), he too dreamed of creating a Great Society'.
Like Johnson, Disney acted boldly. By 1965 he had bought up, secretly, forty square miles (twice the si/eof Manhattan) in central Florida. The state,... anticipating mammoth tourist revenues, granted him virtually feudal powers. Democracy for the residents ol the Communitv of Tomorrow would have been a nuisance. ('There vv i ITbe no landownersand therefore no voting control.") To"ensure that EPCOT ran smoothly, Walt would be King.
BuHn 196^                                                                        Walt
died. WED Enterprises considered going ahead with his prototype city, but the company was nervous; it could see lawsuits in its future from disgruntled and disfranchised residents. So it scrapped the notion of a living city and went with a safer version, an exten-_ sion of..Disney's collaboration with General Electric.  WED pro-   j posed to some of the biggest corporations in the U.S. a joint pro-   í ject: the construction of a permanent World's Fair. There the com- / panics, with the help of Disney imagineers, would display evolv- J ing technologies and promote their visions of the future. EPCOT I was thus transformed from Utopian communitv to sound business   j proposition.                                                                                       ^J
By targeting Yuppies instead of Mouseketeers, WED got itself out of an impending crisis—a looming baby bust that promised to shrivel its traditional prime market oi five-to-nine-year-olds. (A similar marketing strategy recently dictated scrapping Dick Van Dyke movies for PG films like Splash: pre-teens no longer flocked to J^aditional Disnev fare and the studio was forced to respond to this cultural shift.) The participating companies would also profit: they could advertise new product lines and drape themselves in the mantle of Disnev respectability, no small matter in the anti-corporate atmosphere of the 1970s. The corporate giants agreed. Kraft declared that sponsorship of a land pavilion was "the-most effective wav we can enhance our corporate identity." General Electric explained that "the Disnev organization is absolutely superb in interpreting our company dramatically, memorably, and favorably to -the public." Kodak observed, somewhat baldly, that "you might entrance a teenager today, but tomorrow he's going to invest his money in Kodak stock." General Motors took a broader view, noting not only that EPCOT'would give them the chance "to make contact with millions of motorists," but that "it will be a good opportunity to point out how technological progress has contributed to the world and the free enterprise system."
In  the end,  major multinationals—notably those who had h^en most successful at the 1939 Fair—signed on to tell Americans what life would be like in the twenty-first century. At EPCOT, Exxon explains Energy and AT&T does Communications. Transportation is presented by General Motors, the Land by Kraft, the Home by Gl', "Imagination" by Kodak.  Each corporation has a high-tech pavilion, the heart or which is a ride. Sealed passengers are conveyed through tunnels which open out into drive-through dioramas—stage sets crammed  with  robots,  videos,  and  holograms. Supplementing each ride are exhibits, films, and hands-on demonstrations. The pavilions are grouped into an area of the park called (echoing 1939) the World of Tomorrow.
Nation-states were also invited to EPCOT. England, France, Germany, Italy, Japan   China, Mexico, Canada—usually in con-unction with national businesses (Japan Airlines, British Railways, Labatt  Beer)—exhibit  their wares and  promote  travel  to their-, shores. Disney imagineers helped them design terrains that portray the "essence" oi their culture. Presiding over this World ol Nations is the host pavilion, the Anierican AďveijT^ě (presented i oih'Vľy bv 'American' ľ.\p're>>' ^\ni.\ Côca-Cola)TdeTT>Te7rT^nvív iii/ P r^^Jtin&jhi^                                                                      "     ~~~~
In 19S2 EPCOT opened   ]t hilled itself as "a community ot ideas and nations and a testing ground wheiv tree enterprise can
explon>Aad demonstrate_jind_älio^\:easť new, ideas, thrit relate to man's hopes and dreams." In its first year, over twenty-two million people visited. More businesses and countries signed on. Bv 1984, total'investment had reached SI.75 billion and was still climbing.
An amazing amount of the World ol Tomorrow is devoted to the world of yesterday. Virtually all the rides are time travels. Passengers settle themselves into moving vehicles which carry them from the dim past to an imagined future. Voice-over narrators, like those on TV commercials, explain the passing views and propound an interpretation of historical development.
Fach multinational historian has its own stvle. GM's tends toward the relentlessly cheery; the past was endlessly droll, even "wacky" and "zany." AT&T's is more portentous: "Who Are We? Where Are We Going?" it asks in sepulchral tones as we climb aboard our Time Machines, and informs us that the answer must be sought in the "Dawn of Recorded Time." But it is the similarities that compel attention.                                                                         *
There is a discernible corporate vision ot history. At first blush it appeaľsnTTeTrt^ttTatnrf-trT^                                                      his-
tory is a record of the invention of commodities which allow Man to masleŕ'his ěiu'imh'menť'"Buf EľCOT goes bevonu this. T^je'jvnv^l poral dimensions are tar grander—from the cave men to outer spaccrAndTMgnTiTL'ä' ni I v".....ľ^i'cTTToTpľM:atu>n á'Jm i ts měřena ve been
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**T!áTn|ourneyhegins in prehistoric times. GM's history oi transportation has robot neanderthals "stumbling around" bv foot-power. Exxon's history til energy commences with robot dinosaurs (reminiscent ol those in Ftinttisia) battling tine another in a primeval swamp as fossil fuels cook beneath their feet. AT&T's history of communication starts with cave men attacking mammoths and painting on walls.
Then Man climbs out of primitive times. GM's Man does this in an unrelievedlv hearty wav. As we ride along (accompanied bv a background ditty proclaiming that "It's fun to be free, to go anywhere, with never a care"), we watch Man slowly produce improved forms oi transport—canoes, horse-drawn vehicles—until we reach that favorite corporate period, the Renaissance. Here GM's robot Leonardo turns from culture to engineering: he is shown tinkering with a flying machine while a scowling robot Mona Lisa model taps her foot. Then it's on to the Era of Inventions and a cornucopia of improvements—bicycles, horseless carriages, trains, airplanes—that bring us to the present.
AT&T's trajectory is similar. It tracks the slow progress of communications—Egyptians invent scrolls (a robot pharoah gives dictation to a robot secretary). Greeks give birth to theater (robots declaim on stage), and monks illuminate manuscripts (one is shown cutely snoring at his desk). When AT&T hits the Renaissance, it tilts (unlike GM) toward the cultural dimension, featuring a robot Michelangelo, on its back, laboring at the Sistine ceiling. Then AT&T's Man also enters the jet stream or Progress, and inventions tumble out on what seems a sell-sustaining basis.
But when the rides reach the near past, there is a sudden departure from triumphalism. Each corporation acknowledges some blemishes on the record. To be sure, many were inconsequential: one General Motors diorama jovially depicts the first traffic jam (which it blames on a horse). Other problems were serious. Kraft reminds us graphically tit Dust Bowl days. Exxon reminds us that an energy crisis emerged. The past was not the best oi all possible pasts.
^ ne corporate histories are less than clear as to ^ja^problems emerged. Some seem facts Of nature—dinosaur days bequeathed UKumit'ed quantities ol lossil tuel. But people are responsible lor others. Kraft tells us that "we" (or, occasional!'. technological man") made mistakes. "We" abused the environ;:' a. "We" polluted the air. There is a hint that "unplanned development" had something to clo vvith it la practice, presumably, in which multinationals do not engage).
"~~~ Luckily, we are given to understand, people (or, more precisely, corporations) are working on these problems. The adjacent exhibits expand on this", and we shall return to them.
[-'.ich ride then hreaks through the troubled recent past into the Future. The_Fjjj;ufeJis_ajwj^^                              The narrative tapes
and ditties shut off, C/esc Encounters of the TliirA Kind music comes on, laser beams flash, and we are launched into awesome starry expanses in which space stations and satellites hover. In the Future, Problems have been eliminated, presumably bv the corporations, whose logos are visible everywhere (as in the movie 2i'»U). Life in space looks remarkably like lite on sitcom IV. Mom back on earth communicates (via AT&T's Network) with Sis up on the space station, and they chat about homework and boyfriends. Tbauxl^a sense of serene ordinariness about the Future, which is not acci-dentaTľTréTTčTrlx^rRnes "uppolK wwiies about the- rtiTírŕTTT>ečäTrsTp'' that's going to be up in space, in the space colonies." And Martv Sklar, WED VP, savs: "We admit to being optimistic over man's future. You can call FPCOT our answer io the gloomy future predictions of the Club ol Rome."
Subsidiary exhibits explain the basis for this optimism—corporate problem solvers are at work. Kraft, in lull environmentalist regalia, talks about the need for "symbiosis" with the land, shows films about replanting forests and reoxygenating rivers, and explains the artificial farms of the future. AT&T appropriates Bucky Fuller's environmentalist imagery—its geodesic dome pavilion is called Spaceship Earth—and shows how AT&T's Network will overcome communications bottlenecks on earth and in outer space. Exxon tells us it is working awav at solar power (the roof of its pavilion is bejeweled with photoelectric panels). Solar, sadly, still seems far from practicable. So, Exxon explains, until the big breakthroughs come, we must rely on oil (videos sing the romance of offshore rigs and ecologically correct pipelines) and coal (films prove that strip mining can be beautiful). Exxon also wants us to keep the nuclear option open and visitors can play at running a nuclear plant. But the company is not heavy-handed about plumping for oil or atoms. All options must be kept open and in competition, including geothermal and biomass. Let the best one win.
GM, another corporate environmentalist, also believes in open options. In its "Engine of the "Future" Show; films project cartoon characters onto large overhead screens. Each promotes a different energy-conscious design. On the left, CM's own persona, a jolly cowboy, pitches for an improved internal combustion engine. Then alternatives are presented: an Archie Bunker sort favors coal, a Yuppie lady pushes solar, even the omnipresent Leonardo has a better idea. All these notions are shot down for one reason or another. Finally, on the extreme right, we meet a character who looks like a cross between mad scientist and Japanese dwarf, and sounds like Peter Lorre. He is working—fanatically—on a totally pollution-free and inexpensive water engine, using hydrogen. In the grand finale this crackpot blows everything up, and flames sweep across all the screens.
Then cowboy Tex gets the floor back, applauds the others, says they have a wavs to go before they beat out the "good ole reliable internal combustion engine," but assures them General Motors wants them all in competition, so the consumer will benefit in the end. (Consumers are indeed never far from GM's mind; the last exhibit fs'a showroom of current-model GM cars. GM is the most vulgar self-promoter—a hucksteriSm perhaps related to declining car sales?—but even the suavest of the multinationals have their tack v moments.)
EPCOT's sensitivity lu.social and environmental problems-is
rooted in the 1970s corporate world's awareness ol its image prob-
rusr^usmess wanfecT with the aid of Disnev pubričists/to'réťur-
bish itself in thejxibh^mjnd. EPCOT designers knew,Magic Kingdom boosterism wouldn't suffice. So Üieirnat^meersach^^ to problems in the past but rejected corp,oratcre?íŤw More"''?m'a'g1i1aľľvelv"TnTÍ, thev presented business as the cutting e d ge]*ňl**^e'T?ľM"ôgv" movement." America's probfeňľs" Corporate Wall^avsTareni^cTTnicaTones; responsibTe corporations are tlie~Mr. GooawrénčTTeT*TvRô can fix "them. A Kraft VP summarized the strategy: "Hopefully [visitors to our pavilion will] be aware that major organizations are working at new ways of controlling the land—without disrupting the ecology—to ensure an adequate food supply. To our benefit will be the message that here is Kraft with that kind of concern."
This is a difficult message to sell. Exxon the champion oi alternative energy? General Motors the promoter of mass transit? Kraft and agribusiness the practitioners oi symbiosis with the land? AT&T the savior oi Spaceship Earth? As m the case ot the Nixon robot, the discrepancy between claim and reality invites ridicule. Corporate Walt, a skillful communicator, tries to bridge the gap not only through bald assertion but in more indirect ways as well.
As in the Magic Kingdom sets, a "whiteout" approach is at work—silence blankets the sorry environmental record of the corporations. (This doesn't fool people who know better, but it doesn't enlighten those—particularly children—who don't.)
Another technique is EPCOT's bravura display of technological mastery and management capacity, which seems intent on inducing awe at the capabilities of the corporations, as machines in Greek temples once impressed the populace with the power of the _4^UcLv'Imagine,  the place implies, what business could do if let I   loose on America's ills (and never mind it created many of them in /   the first place,  or that the cost of attaining EPCOT-level effi-J   ciericy—-$1billion per hundred acres—seems a mite high). EPCOT thus forms a chapter in capital's longstanding attempt to control social space as it controls production space; it echoes company-town experiments trom Lowell to Pullman (all of which failed- -but hope springs eternal). •f         But   the   most   subtle   and   perhaps   most   powerful   oi  the
methods at work is the historical analysis.that permeates the entire operation. The Wojld ot tomorrow implies that capitalist develop-ment is natural and .''^ujabie. It does so by riding visitors, lileraiTv tw^aTTšTlfrorn äpowdlcri/ed presentation of the p^st tu -m im-poverished vision ol the future. The progression goes like this; hjs-torv was made bv inventors and businessmen: the corporations jrc
the legatees of such a past (their slogan might be: "From 1 eonardo
i          —~-iT! „_____--------------------t----------------------.—u-----------a--------------—--------                —
Ír  lo I'won"); this pedigree entitles them to run Tomorrow. C'ili/ens
can ši t "back and coiTsiime.
;"'""      Disney  did   not   invent   this  approach:   it   had   respectable   I academic roots in "modernization theoi'v." I'his analvsis, tashiona-   í
- ble during the 1950s and 1960s, updated the Victorian belieť in a / march of progress trom "savagery" to "civilization," substituting a I trajectory from "traditional" to "modern" societv, with the latter- / day terminus understood to be contemporary America. It is worth 1 noting that EPCOT's popularization or modernization theory, reac- 1 tionary though it is, was the product of a relatively liberal corporate J culture. Had EPCOTbeen designed in the tooth-and-claw world of Y the 1980s if would probably have argued that the driving force of \ history was profit maximization, an approach that might make the J actual version seem positively benign.                                             0
Corporate Walt's history is bad historv. All historical interpre-lalioifs"TČ~nocěššarilv selcctrTeTIľTHTčTľ la et s, btii here the silences | are_j^naji)ujidly_ja^              Consider,   tor  example,   that in  all
EPCOT's depictions of the past as a continuous expansion of man's possibilities through technology, there isnol a word about war. «—■* Nojhjjig_about the_oJjM^aJJnTpetiis itpro\ ided through the ages to^ scientific development. Norabout the phenomenal destruction suclT^devtHITpmeriPwriuight. And nothing about the contempo-ranT-poSSlbllities u I" plaTWtáTv^ěxtěTmTrTaTIoTr^erhč^ the im-agTneěřs stuck thcMřHieadš in the sand on this one because they wanted us to think only the most positive thoughts. But the Magic Kingdom's juMilicalion ,tor ostnehism ( this is only an entertainment park") doesn't wash here—EPCOT is explicitly devoted to enhancing understanding. Perhaps, as in Fantasyland, they think the wish is parent to the fact. Or perhaps the silences are related to the fact that many corporations are producing armaments as well as toasters, and that if they and Reagan have their way, the outer-space dioramas of the Future will have to be reconstructed to include killer satellites.
Corporate Walt's historv, like modernization theory, is iini-, directional. There were never any forks on the path ol I'logress. never anysharp political struggles over u inch way to go. EPCOT visitors would  never guess that millions ot Americans once ob-   i jected   to motoring down  the capitalist  road.   The implication, HF*
mc2E£!21^JjJJ2!lLl{]:£IL' c1rt' n0 'ilternatives now. If tTTcTJTTTavITbeen.....
problems, they have been The price of progress; the only solution is lull'spěeujflŤěalTlMi^^
recfiíírTs~cal7T5cn7fT^"TrTir]Ťnot. Corporate Walt and the multinationals nave přočTučed a pasPThat leads ineluctablv toward their kind of" future.
Corporate Walt's history is also a top-down version. Popular political movements don't exist in this past. RenderiQj£.jQrdiiM*v—
V
(iř
-fcr">
people invisible as makers or historvl*ardlv embraces visitors to bťfeřM—jaiLiudkUiiUUimMUrť■ (And EPCOT s impact goes tar beyond visitors: its sponsors have launched a massive outreach program to the nation's classrooms; thev are mass-marketing lesson plans and videos on land, energy, and communications.)
Corporate desire to fudge the past combined with Disnev's ability to spruce it up promotes a sense oi historv as a pleasantly nostalgic memory, now so completely transcended by the modern corporate order as to be irrelevant to contemporary' life. This diminishes our capacity to make sense of our world through understanding how it came to be. The Disney version of historv thus creates a way ot not seeing and—perhaps—a wav ot not acting..
Good historical analysis informs people about the matrix ot constraints and possibilities thev have inherited from the past and enhances their capacity tor effective social action in the present. EPCOT's World of Tomorrow does the opposite: it dulls historical sensibility and invites acquiescence to what is. It should, consequently,''be regarded not as a historical, but as a historicidal enterprise.
fc
-T
Ľ PCOT'S American Adventure—American Express and Coca -Cola's direct exploration of U.S. history—is intripnin^lv different
from"Tlie.....high-tech pavilions; it also marks a startling departure
from Original v\alťs~l9?0s approach to the subject.
Like the 1 lall ot IVesidents^he/NaTTerjcaiyAdy in a simujaJte^Q^jio^^                                 by costumed hosts_and
Hostesses^ Again there is an inspirational antechamber, with quotes bv authors ranging from Herman Melville to Ayn Rand. Bui here there are no films, no rides. The model is closer to a TV variety shovvTwľl
ďtäŤrtw¥TYttged-lTr-ft^
Twain robots. The American Adventure consists of a series ot turns
by conT^ternvpéfaTecT robot ensembles, alternately raised and low-
ered bv a 3r>0,000-pound apparatus below the floor boards. The technology, as usual, is stunning. The robots are the latest in lifelike humanoids. The Franklin robot actually walks up stairs. The research into details (the size of Revolutionary War cannon-balls, Alexander Graham Bell's diction) is scrupulous as ever. And this dazzling technology ._when sej in motion, proceedsto tell, in twenty-nine minutes flat, the entire history of the United States. At fu^FTIieTHöw seems merely a spitfed-up Mali ol Presidents. It begins with an inspirational reading of the Pilgrims-to-Revoiu-tion period (robot Rebel soldiers chat at Valley Forge while a George Washington robot sits dolefully on a robot horse). But with Independence won, and westward movement underway, the show departs dramatically from the expected. Emcee Twain tells us
, that "a whole bunch oř folks found out 'we the people' didn't yet mean all the people," and a Frederick Douglass robot is hoisted up on stage. As he poles (somewhat improbably) down the Mississippi, Douglass speaks of the noise of chains and the crack of the^ whip, and of his hope that "antislavery will unlock the slave prison." A subdued Civil War sequence follows, using Brady photographs to stress costs rather than glory.                                 Jb
The Civil War over, a new wave of immigrants pours in. This, Twain tells us, heralds "a new dawn to the American Adventure." But as we resign ourselves to melting-pot platitudes, a clap of thunder introduces a Chief Joseph robot. He notes that the New Dawn means a "final sunset" for his people who are being shot down like animals. He gives his famous "1 will fight no more forever" speech, reminding us (as Twain says) of "our long painful journey to the frontiers of human liberty."
Then it's on to the 1876 Centennial. But before launching into a Carousel-of-Progress-type paean to inventions, a Susan B. Anthony robot surfaces. In ringing voice she says: "We ask justice, we ask equality be guaranteed to us and our daughters forever," and adds, quoting Edison (with whom she most improbably shares the, stage), that "discontent is the first necessity of progress."
Edison, Carnegie, and the roll call of inventions then have their moment, but after hearing about zippers, trolley cars, vacuum cleaners, and airplanes, a robot naturalist John Muir reminds us that all this growth posed a threat to America the Beautiful, and urges a robot Teddy Roosevelt to build national parks. Next comes World War I—"ready or not, we were thrust into the role of world leader"—and Lindbergh's flight. But then comes the Crash of 1929, which "tarnished the golden dreams of millions," and we are into the Depression era. Here the set is a weatherbeaten southern post office-cum-gas station. Two Black and two white robots sit on the front porch (there is a lot of implausible retrospective integration in the show). They strum "Brother, can you spare a dime," chuckle about ex-millionaires in New York, and listen to FDR on the radio talking about "fear itself." (There is also a momentary descent into tacky self-promotion: the shack is plastered with contemporary Coca-Cola and American Express ads.) Then Will Rogers plumps for military preparedness, FDR announces Pearl Harbor, and we are into World War II—which consists entirely of a stage set featuring Rosie the Riveter fixing a submarine.
The postwar materia] plays it safer. History becomes popular culture. A series of filmic images of personalities is projected—like People magazine covers—which then float up into clouds, to the accompaniment of ethereal music about America spreading its golden wings and flying high. It's an eclectic and distinctly inte-
grated assortment, including Jackie Robinson, Marilyn Monroe, Jonas Salk, Satchmo, Elvis, Einstein, Walt Disney, Norman Rockwell, John Wayne, Lucy, Billie Jean King, JFK (giving his "Ask not" speech), Martin Luther King (giving his "I have a dream" speech), Muhammad Ali, Arnold Palmer, the U.:r. Olympic hock--—« ey team, and the men on the moon. We end with .: blaze of traditional Disney patriotism, with Ben and Mark perched atop the Statue of Liberty foreseeing a long run for the American Adven-ture.
The American Adventure is thus a dramatic departure from the Hail of Presidents (and the spirit of the World of Tomorrow). American Historv is P.L'Ji^^^j^^^p.yLS1'.6^ w,^|te mer[; indeed
*üe~Taruelv
n* snnw doľsn t ivlroratc Itrwcfnu urcrer; i
rrrettfWIWr
wordTöT criticf^untheface'ôrTtTtn'e*^^ sents^anextraordtnarv step forward.
Tiow do we account tor it? One answer is the impact, by the mid-1970s, of the Black, women's," antiwar, and environmentalist movements that had heightened popular consciousness. After a generation of protest, 1950s celebrations would no longer do for public historical presentations; even Colonial Williamsburg had to restore Blacks to its streets. As a Disney briefing pamphlet for hosts says: "we couldn't ignore certain major issues that questioned our nation's stand on human liberty and justice." Even the sponsors ____d: a Coca-Cola executive told me "the warts-and-all perspective is appreciated by most visitors because our country is not perfect and thev know it." In the last analysis, 1 believe, shirts in popular opinion forced the"Disney people to'upd..;e their ideology.
The writers, though not academics, were also influenced bv the new social historians who reconstructed U.S. history- in the 1960s and 1970s. Dr. Alan \arnell, a UCLA historian consulted on the project, insisted that "the Jesse Lemisch approach—history from the bottom up" replace the great-white-men verities. The corporate sponsors went along vyith this approach—the heavy intervention of businessmen into World of Tomorrow scripting was missing here, perhaps because it was an area of lesser political concern. Amex and Coke simply assumed from the Disney track record that nothing embarrassing would emerge from the design process.
In the end, they were right. Despite the trappings of the new social historv, the American Adventure rejnáms,Dísr """  ~: ' ne iniaviinoors imposed a tlieme ot   üq show;.the past had to be portrayed in an upbeat manner. So Susan
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'_*B. Anthonv, Chief Joseph, and Frederick Douglass notwithstanding, American History is still a saga of progress. The dissatisfac-tions of Blacks, women, and prnlngisN are -pm^má-i ac havSao been opportunities in disguisp. As Disney literature puts it: "In-evrtarjľyT Americans have overcome the tragedies of their controversies, which ultimately led to a better way of life." in the« American Adventure, serial contradictions are .transcended *is eas-ilyjrsare natural ones at the World of Tomorrow, lhe agents of, change, moreover, were indiviTfulH^peTEers and writers, not cöPf lectjve social movements.. The spokespersons of the discontented*" knocked, and the door was opened.
Some "controversial" aspects of U.S. history remain completely unacknowledged—most notably, the history of labor. While the show embraces individuals associatedlňlTie^ublic minci with the struggle for civil rights and civil liberties, i.e., the indi-viduahrjgJitS-oi-p«ir-t4c~ii4a-r-gftmpj^JLilacĽiiis_elť unable to deal wifhj a movj^mejntjong.founded on principles of collective rights and coL: lective action—namely unions. This reluctance, perhaps, is also rooted in the ongoing challenge labor represents to the capitalist si/s/i'?» as well as to the particular corporations bankrolling the exhibits.
The silences get louder the closer the show gets to the present. There-aTe^no 1960s ghetto uprisings, no campus protestsTnV feminjsJ_oj ecMügT^^^
tlTéreJisnothhig about Vietnam. One of the designers explained   J that "1 searched for a long time'for a photograph of an antiwar / demonstration that wmúd-he-&péfm&ii€^-buXJ never found one.    I (A   picture   of  a   helicopter   was   recently   added—a   distinctly minimalist response to complaints.)
Th»ugh_willing to accegtjthat the pas^_wj£jTia^lej2y_Jj]echs-eontented, thVshow disconne^^                    ŕronvthaf tradition. It
abancTöTiTtheTi^aTrlüpTe line on reaching the"pöstwar period—~King is there, but as an icon, not as spokesman for-a movement—and-it implies our problems are things of the past. At show's end, Mark ančTBen counsel worry only aboTTFthe perils of plenty, the problem of how to use leisure time, and how each individual can fulfill his or her dreams. But because the show refuses to acknowledge the social constraints on individual actors—sexism and racism, poverty*"" and unempkn ment remain obstiňäTŕ"(ľOŕWporTents of contemporary U.S. culture—it peters out into complacent boosterism. Forced to confront a cliangečrÁmerican~pTÍpuIäTTiistoncal consciousness   I and to incorporate the work of radical scholars, it opts for damage J control. It defuses the danger inherent in the intrusion of "real" history by redeploying it within a vision of an imperfect but still inevitable progress.
X
Does Corporate Walt's history have an impact? How does it affect the millions of people who,visit? There is little direct evidence /r    one way or the other. Only a tew hundred have written letters, the ^v      largest single response coming from Vietnam veterans eomplain-} ing about the obliteration of their experiences. But what do such J  cavils mean when set beside the tact that Disney World is now the (     biggest single tourist destination in the entire world? A tenth of the \    entire U.S. population travels there in a year: what accounts for this stupendous success?
Demographic statistics provide an avenue to an answer. The class spectrum of EPCOT visitors is dramatically narrow. They come from groups doing best in terms of pay and personal power on the job: the median income is $35,700, and fully three-quarters are professionals or managers. (Professional and technical personnel account for 48 percent of attendees,"managers and administrators for 26 percent.) This is not^^a^vvorkjjnj^^J^íBrfBsiMM^fcifeMiUtóJ^j,, (Craftsmen, 4 percent; operatives, 4 percent; sales, 8 percent; ser-
rvice, 2 percent; laborers, 2 percent.) Nor do Blacks (3 percent) or Hispanics (2 percent) come in large numbers. (To"a degree these demographics simply reflect the cost of getting there: only 22 percent of visitors come from Florida; 71 percent are from elsewhere in the U.S., chiefly the Northeast and the Midwest.)
A process of class self-affiTmation seems_ tcibe; at work. Certainly DTšrTeyWorld seems intent on providing reassurance to this class, on ptesenting it with its own pedigree EPCOT's seventies-style liberal coiporatisrn seems tailor-made tor professionals and technocrats It's^calibrated to their concerns—npUhmg^qn Jabor, heavyon ecology, clean, well-managed, emphasis on indiwdual solutions, good restaurants—and it provides |ust the right kind ot past for their hipper sensibilities Perhaps, therefore, professionals and managers (many ot whom, after all, function as subalterns ot capital) flock there because it ratifies their world. ^P^-haiLjstlrvjj^ don't want to know about reality—past or present—and prefer comforting (and plausible) stereotypes.
Yet many in this class are at least potentially antagonistic to the multinationals. Their members have spearheaded the ecology movement. It was their growing sophistication that made it impossible for Disney to recvele 1950s approaches, either in films or theme parks (approaches now dismissed by a younger generation as "Mickey Mouse"). We must be suspicious of blaming messages on the receiving public, even such an affluent one as this.
Would accurate .history bore or repel them? Perhaps not. Au-diences often respond favorably where conventional wisdom sav? they won't. (A dramatic and relevant comparison might be with
the spectacularly successful Roots—which for all its Hollywood devices and elisions was a striking departure from Goiiľ with the Wind.) Do Disney's sitcoms in space work because people want reassurance, or because that's all they're being given? Are visitors getting what they want, or what corporate publicists want them toy
want?
There is no simple answer to these questions. Some of EPCOT's consumers may be inclined to adopt the comfortable and convenient ideologies purveyed there. Others have no vested interest in or are profoundly disserved by doing so. Regardless of predisposition, however, EPCOT's casual subordination of truth to "entertainment" impairs visitors' ability to distinguish between reality and plausible fiction. The consequences for the country are serious. George Kennan recently noted that "when an individual is unable to face his own past and feels compelled to hnild hjs view himšelŕTrn^rTo^           of iHmä-iin-tbi' creation 0ř myths to pul
its pníčeTthTsJsnormallv regarded as a sign of extreme neurosis. A sinüTaTcilSgnosisT he argued, was warranted for a society "thajjs incapäbTe or seeimTTtsplf rgäinTfícälly-jnn ranfiye onjy by the syj» temafic distortion or repression of its memories .-ihnnt jts''lf .i n H ík early behavior." Kennan was referring to the Soviet Union. But the UnTtě*čr5Ta"fes sut fers from a similar malady. ^^^-^^J^UßzätUT*3 ~          ?atrrrrtve~had"bl?fter get bevond MicKevMouse history
ŕ ľiL in
J
Postscript: Mickey Mouse Amid the Big Bad Wolves
Disney VVorlďsjnTa^giutliU^spin wondrous fantasies^bojjiilie^ nature of capitalism for their twenty nTitlidn \1^íto7š~r~But there is another Disney World story, reserved for readers of the Wall Street journal. Peeking behind EPCOT's sugar plum facade reveals how the real capitalist world works.
In 1940, Walt found himself in a financial bind. Riding the wave of his first big success, Snow White, Disney had set aside his inherited distrust of bankers—his films, like Capra's, consistently portrayed them as villains—and plunged into debt to construct an expensive new studio. This and a full load of feature films ate up his capital just as war closed the crucial foreign market to him. When his debt to bankers reached 54.5 million, they shut off his credit line entirely. He was thus forced, for the first time, to make a public stock offering and dilute his control of the company. Worse yet, the stock soon started tumbling in value.
Some of the stock he had distributed to employees. Its slide worsened already bad labor relations In 1941, a bitter strike broke out at the Disney studio, a conflict which Disne\ chose to regard as
His next encounter with finance capital came when he reluctantly sought bank backing for Disneyland. Cautious bankers turned him down: "they stepped on my neck" was the way he put it. His project was rescued by the big corporations to whom he sold concessions, and by ABC-Paramount, which bought a third of the shares of Disneyland, Inc., chartered in 1951. This time, however, Disnev insisted on getting an option to repurchase the shares, and did so bv 1961. He had, he thought, finally achieved financial stability and independence of the financial community.
Luckilv tor him, Walt died without having to witness the re-cent mauling and near dismemberment of his corporation bv the sharks of Wall Street.
In March 19S4 Saul P. Steinberg, a New York financier, began purcrTäsíng Disney stock Rumors of a takeover bid swept Wall Street. Disnev management, led by Walt's son-in-law, Ronald W. Miller, prepared tor a tight He was backed by Disney's widow, Lillian; her daughter, Sharon Disnev Lund; Disnev's investment banker, Morgan Stanley .v Company; and a crack a:v.i-takeover law firm. The defense team arranged to triple Disney in. s $400 million line of credit with a Bank ot America-led consortium.
holder) onto the defense team.
gether a group ol raiders who lusted after parts of the Disnev company. Kirk Kerkorian, the majority stockholder of MGM-United Artists, would be given Disnev's rich film library to sell in the
'" home video market. The Fisher brothers, major New York developers, would get the extensive Florida landholdings worth hundreds or millions. Steinberg also announced he would launch a proxy fight to make all stockholders who bought stock in the company after May 25 (i. e., the Bass brothers) ineligible to vote, and then unseat the Disney management.
At this point, management panicked and decided to buy Stein-be re ofP^vnlcTTm ä y have beeňtvhat he was hoping foFiii theTirst place. They agreed to pay^hirn S70.35,a share, substantially a^bove marKervaTue, plus $28 million for "expenses," if he would give backliis block of stock and promise not to třu v any more tor ten years. Steinberg cleared $60 million on the deal.
isney was not alone that year m being stung by what is called "greenmail." In the first six months of 1984, companies shelled out over $2 billion to buy off unwanted outside investors. Commenting on the incident, one institutional investor said, "I think Steinberg did exactly what you would expect someone to do, given the existing laws and free-market society we live in."
The fight to stay independent left Disney bloodied. The company's debt soared from $350 million to $850 million. Disney's stock value fell by more than 25 percent. In mid-June, with the price down to $45 a share, a new group of raiders began buving stock, this one led by Irwin L. Jacobs, a Minneapolis investor.
The Jacobs group and the Bass brothers then combined to force Disney management to renege on the agreed-upon—-but as yet unconsummated:—purchase of Gibson, thus freezing out William Simon, who would have shown a profit of $70 million had the deal gone through. One Paine Webber analyst, noting that management had again caved in to blackmail, suggested that "this company is going to continue to be very, very vulnerable to threats from the outside." This proved an accurate forecast: on September 7, Ronald W. Miller was forced to resign as president and chief executive.
The stage was now set for a gunfight at the Disney corral. The Bass brothers increased their share of the company to 8.6 percent, overtaking the Jacobs group's 7.7 percent. Jacobs threatened to buy enough stock to take over and break up the company. The Bass brothers countered by buying $148.2 million more stock (at $60 a share), bringing their holdings to nearly 16 percent. Jacobs, having decided there was "not a place for both of us," offered to buy out the Basses at $65 a share. They refused, and countered with an offer to buy out Jacobs at $61. He capitulated, sold at a tidy profit, and left the Basses in command.
All this wheeling and dealing took its toll. For the operating quarter ending September 30, 1984, the company posted a loss of
$64 million. It sought to deal with this in time-honored corporate fashion, by putting the screws to its workforce. In September, management told workers that wages had to be controlled to keep profits at an acceptable level. They announced pay cuts of 16.1 percent over the next three years and cutbacks in health benefits.
On September 25, Disneyland employees struck. Nineteen hundred picketing workers, wearing "no-Mickey" T-shirts, asked for a 2 to 5 percent increase in wages and maintenance of health benefits. The company kept the park open using clerical and managerial personnel; went to court tor a restraining order against picketing; sued the unions tor a quarter-million dollars; <-\nd began hiring scab replacements, who, the strikers were warned, would be taken on permanently if workers did not return. The unions responded with a boycott threat, and the Employees Association served notice it would bring class action suits against potential greenmailers or any who would dismember the organization.
Despite these militant initiatives, the workers were in a weak position, and knew it. In October, they ended their strike, accepting a two-vear wage freeze and some cuts in benefits. In November Walt Disney World laid off one hundred employees.
EPCOT has no immediate plans to include a "Disney Does 'Dallas' " exhibit sponsored by the AFL-CIO.
Note
i would like to thank, tor their advice, counsel, and encouragement: Jean-Christophe Agnew. Jeanie Attie, Paul Berman, Ted Burrows, Jeanne Chase, Hope Cooke, Peter Dimock, Liz Fee, Brooks MacN'amara, Bob Padgug, Roy Rosenzweig, Danny Walkowitz, Jon Wiener, the summer 1984 members oi the Cummington Community oi the Arts, and the staff at Walt Disney World.