Rhetorical Analysis Walt Disneyland

Sierra Larson
ENG112-16PR
Position Essay
2/10/14

The Mall as Disneyland Almost all Americans have heard the name Walt Disney. He created Disneyland, the happiest place on Earth. Walt Disney plays a large role in American society than just providing entertainment; many developers turned to part of his park, Main Street USA, for ideas when they started to design modern day American shopping malls. In “The Mall as Disneyland” Richard Francaviglia argues that Walt Disney played a key role. His romanticized “Main Street USA,” a re-creation of a small town America’s shopping district for his new theme park, Disneyland, set the standard for carefully designed and managed shopping environments. Malls in America today have been influenced
Indeed, the layout and structure of Disney is similar to the mall with its external parking lots, kiosks, food courts, and invisible infrastructure such as power lines and other utilities. The mall, of course, is familiar enough that its presence in a recreation location is no question. The Disney experience seems incomplete without purchasing meals in Disney restaurants, adorning one’s friends and family in Disney paraphenalia, and, perhaps, sleeping at a Disney hotel. Being caught up in the whole experience, embracing the norm of consumption, the visitor is less likely to show restraint in spending money on non-essential items. Everything is targeted towards the visitor as a customer, a consumer. According to Richard Francaviglia “Main Street USA sounds familiar, and it should indeed, that is because it has in fact become the model of the typical American shopping mall, where the visitor or shopper leaves the car in the parking lot and enters an environment that is climatically controlled, and where the real world is left outside” (447). Disney aims to construct a world apart. They ask of the visitor to suspend belief and enter into a land far away from the reality of the world outside its gates. It is as though Disney wants us to see only the world how it should be. This is the better, brighter side of life where people and place seem naturally and harmoniously co-existent. Such observations reflect the
Recreation, from an individual perspective, involves as an example, watching television, attending an opera, base jumping, mowing the lawn, taking your children to the zoo, playing checkers, downloading music, writing a book, an evening on the town, going to the mall, or whatever one chooses to make it. Theorists even struggle to agree on what to call these types of experiences. Is it recreation, leisure, free time, available time, creativity, selfishness, or hedonism? One’s own perceptions are important in the defining of leisure and recreation that researchers continue to argue its meaning to society, individuals, and culture. According to “The Mall as Disneyland” article it states that “More than twenty years ago, when Edward Tauber insightfully stated that “not all shopping motives, by any means, are even related to the product, he introduced the concept of “sociorecreational shopping.” Several very revealing articles over the last dozen of more years have shown that shopping centers are important places of social interaction where people may wind up meeting future spouses and friends; where families go simply to stroll, to see people and to be seen by them; where young people go to “hang out” and socialize”