A Second Look

I've always had a small obsession for Disneyland. It started when I was a child and family vacations were taken to Southern California with the sole intention to visit Disneyland. I was enamored by the entire Disney aura and bought into everything peddled by the Disney Corporation. This love did not dissolve as I aged, but seemed to grow in strength with every new encounter.
I started Chapman University and decided to purchase an annual pass. An annual pass allows you to visit the park repeatedly for an entire year on a single rate. I became an expert in navigating the park and knew more than the average passholder by the end of the year. I renewed my pass again the following year, but my dedication to Disneyland soon began to waiver. At the conclusion of my second year as an annual passholder, I decided to distance myself.
After a year of separation, I once again became a passholder in conjunction with a class entitled: Anthropology of Space and Place. This class challenged how I viewed and interacted with Disneyland by forcing me to think critically about the expectations and behavior Disneyland enforces on its visitors or “guests.” In fact, every time I enter the park now, I am questioning how the park is influencing me and the other people around me.
To completely understand how Disneyland employs its space, we were asked to focus on a particular theorist and relate his work to Disneyland. I choose to study Erving Goffman’s Presentation of Self in Everyday Life and how it applies to the employees or “cast members” of Disneyland. In this blog I share my findings and personal experience on this subject and how I've given Disneyland a second look.