Slides of the presentation I gave at the Philosophy for All Kant’s Cave (7th October 2009, London). My aim was to introduce the concept of Heterotopia by Michel Foucault using the example of Walt Disney World. It allowed me to dig into Post-Modernist philosophy, involving philosophers such as Jean Baudrillard and Umberto Eco. http://bruchansky.name/exhibitions/the-heterotopia-of-walt-disney-world-post-modernism-and-consumerism/

1. Utopia and Heterotopia
Post-modernism and Consumerism
The Heterotopia of Walt Disney
World
Bruchansky Christophe, October 2009
www.bruchansky.name
www.pfalondon.org

2. Walt Disney World
Quick facts:
 Opened in 1971 - Orlando, Florida, USA.
 It was the second Disney park built. The first was
Disneyland, California (1955).
 Contains four theme parks, two water parks, 23
hotels.
 17 million visitors in 2008, to compare with 5 million
visiting the British Museum, for example (source:
Forbes).
 2008 revenues for all Disney theme parks around the
world: 11 billion USD.
2

3. My assessment
Walt Disney World is a post-modernist utopia of
happy consumerism, a pre-emptive heterotopia of
deviation, both of illusion and compensation.
3

4. References
4
Of Other Spaces,
Michel Foucault, 1967
Vinyl Leaves,
Stephen M. Fjellman
Westview Press, 1992
http://foucault.info/documents/heteroTopia/foucault.heteroTopia.en.html
http://books.google.ca/books/about/Vinyl_leaves.html?id=P1fwc7GupCUC

5. Agenda
 Introduction to Utopia
 Disney World and the concept of Heterotopia
1. Heterotopias are everywhere
2. Crisis heterotopias and heterotopias of deviation
3. Juxtaposition of incompatible places
4. The roles of heterotopia
5. Heterochronies
6. Opened and closed spaces
 Conclusion and interrogations
 Q&As
5

6. Introduction to Utopia
6

7. “Utopia” is taken
from the title of a
book written in
1516 by Sir
Thomas More. It
describes a
fictional, pagan,
and communist
city-state in which
the policies were
entirely governed
by reason.
7

8. 8
Comparison between Thomas More‟s Utopia and Walt
Disney World‟s Magic Kingdom.

9. Definition
Utopia is “an ideal commonwealth whose inhabitants
exist under seemingly perfect conditions”.
[Encyclopaedia Britannica]
 Eu-topia derived from the Greek εὖ, “good” or
“well”, and ηόπος, “place”, is defined as region of ideal
happiness or good order.
 Ou-topia derived from the Greek „ou‟ for “no” and „-
topos‟ for “place,” is a fictional, unrealistic place.
 Dystopia (from the Greek δυζ- and ηόπος) is an
imaginary place or condition in which everything is as
bad as possible. [Oxford English Dictionary]
9

10. Roles of utopia
 Revealing assumptions underlying a society by
providing an imaginary alternative.
 Criticizing characteristics of a society without naming
them.
 Escaping reality to better maintain the status quo.
 Inspiring change by making people believe in an
ideal.
 Providing a feasible alternative to a type of society.
10

11. Walt Disney World
Walt Disney World is a utopia:
 It envisions a world of happiness.
 It is a „magic‟ and unreal world.
 It tells fairy tales.
But it is also a real place, in a real location.
=> need of a new concept
11

12. “Heterotopias are something like counter-sites, a
kind of effectively enacted utopia in which the
real sites, all the other real sites that can be
found within the culture, are simultaneously
represented, contested, and inverted.” [Michel
Foucault]
12

13. Walt Disney World and the concept
of Heterotopia
13

14. Context
 Michel Foucault (1926 – 1984) was a French
philosopher, sociologist, and historian. Among his
work is his comparison between the Panocticon of
Jeremy Bentham and modern society.
 Heterotopia was introduced by Michel Foucault in
1967, part of his lecture “The Other Spaces” (“Des
espaces et autres”) to a group of architecture
students.
 Michel Foucault never published his notes on
heterotopia. They are sketchy and inconsistent but
became however central in theories such as post-
modern urbanism and sociology.
14

15. The analogy of the mirror
 The image from a mirror is an utopia: it is an
unreal virtual space.
 The mirror is an heterotopia: it exists.
“It makes the place that I occupy when I look at
myself in the glass at once absolutely real, and
absolutely unreal.” [Michel Foucault]
15

16. 1. Heterotopias are everywhere
16

17. 17
museums
cemeteries
prisons
gardens
Schools, libraries
Heterotopias
are present
in every
culture.

18. Disney theme parks are an international phenomenon.
18
Disneyland
Resort, California
Walt Disney
World Resort,
Florida
Tokyo Disney
Resort
Disneyland Paris
Hong Kong
Disneyland
Resort

19. 2. Crisis heterotopias and
heterotopias of deviation
19

20. 2 types of heterotopia:
 Crisis heterotopias: privileged, sacred, or
forbidden places, reserved for individuals in a
state of crisis.
 Heterotopias of deviation: those in which
individuals whose behaviour is deviant in relation
to the required mean or norm are placed.
20

21. 21
Crisis Deviation
Club Med
Psychiatric hospital
Brothel
Military service
Church
Retirement home
Cabaret

22. Disney World is a pre-emptive heterotopia of deviation:
 Disney World is a sacred place devoted to
consumerism.
 It reinforces the idea that consumerism is the path to
happiness.
22
a. Disney
World
c. Visitors
(more generally any
customer)
b. USA
(more generally any
State)
d.
Culture

23. a. The Disney corporation
According to Stephen M. Fjellman:
 Disney is a major corporation that has a vested
interest in promoting a consumerist society.
Disney World is not merely a collection of
fantasies for children, it is actively advocating the
utopia of happy consumerism.
 In this context, here is how Disney World is
defined: “Walt Disney World produces, packages
and sells experiences and memories as
commodities.”
23

24. b. Utopian dictatorship of happiness
 “A good way to make sure that people police
themselves is to get them to believe essentially
the same stories about what the world is and why
the way it is good, true and beautiful. The world
needs to be described, and it needs to be justified
by arguments about nature, philosophical
principle, history, or the gods. People will find their
place in such a world. They will learn what hopes
they might reasonably hold for themselves.”
[Stephen M. Fjellman]
 cf. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, 1932
24

25. c. Visitors
Visitors know that when entering Disney World, they
are entering a place where all their activities are
controlled and conditioned (e.g.
queues, soundtracks all over the parks, visual
magnets such as the Cinderella castle) .
They know that their experiences and souvenirs will
be manufactured and probably not so different
from the ones of another visitor. But they still buy
the package because they know they will get a
very enjoyable experience
25

26. d. Culture
“Our lives can only be well lived (or live at all)
through the purchase of commodities. As the
commodity form becomes a central part of culture,
so culture becomes available for use in the interest
of commodification, as a legitimation for the entire
system. We must be taught that it is good,
reasonable, just, and natural that the means
necessary for life are available only through the
market.” [Stephen M. Fjellman]
26

27. 27
Disney
Culture
Disney
commodities
Cultures that
don‟t
introduce
commodities.
Commodities
that don‟t
promote
culture.

28. 3. Heterotopia: juxtaposition of
incompatible places
28

29. The heterotopia is capable of juxtaposing several
spaces and sites that are in themselves
incompatible, all in a single real place.
29

30. 30
Garden
All qualities of
nature in a
single place.
Zoo
All animals on
earth in a single
place.
Museum
All art and
history in a
single place.

31. The “Magic” of Walt Disney World
31
Magic
a. cognitive
overload
b. decontextualization

32. a. Cognitive overload
 Someone is constantly overloaded by stimuli in
Disney World, “it is with the overriding of visitors‟
capacities for making discriminations that Disney
metathemes may take effect.” [Stephen M. Fjellman]
 Disney World is a patchwork of enchanted medieval
castles, colonial history, future technologies,
Moroccan markets, zoos, characters from Disney
cartoons, American presidents, rides sponsored by
car manufacturers, Mount Everest, astronomy,
dinosaurs, and so on. It is the world summarized.
32

33. b. Decontextualization
 “By pulling meanings out of their contexts and
repackaging them in bounded informational
packets, decontextualization makes it difficult for
people to maintain a coherent understanding
about how things work.” [Stephen M. Fjellman]
 It is then easier to tell Disney‟s version of history:
“Idealized United States as heaven, history is
decoration. Colonialism was fun, the colonized
cute (but a little stupid). How nice if they could all
be like us – with kids, a dog, and GE appliances.”
33

34. “The Disney strategy is to juxtapose the real and
the fantastic (real birds mixed with fake sounds of
birds), surrounding us with the mix until it becomes
difficult to tell which is which. A kind of euphoric
disorientation is supposed to set in as we
progressively accept the Disney definition of things.
We are asked to submit to a wilful suspension of
disbelieve in the ostensible interest of a complete
entertainment experience.” [Stephen M. Fjellman]
34

35. Application 1: Disneyfication
 The term is generally used in a negative way, and
implies homogenization
of consumption, merchandising, and emotional
labour. It can be used more broadly to describe the
processes of stripping a real place or event of its
original character and repackaging it in
a sanitized format. References to anything negative
are removed, and the facts are watered down with the
intent of making the subject more pleasant and easily
grasped.
 In the case of places, this typically means replacing
what has grown organically over time with an
idealized and tourist-friendly veneer reminiscent of
the "Main Street, U.S.A." attractions at Disney theme
parks.
[Wikipedia]
35

36. Application 2: cute animals in Disney
 Animal characters are, for the audience, at the same
time inferior (often victims of human activities) and at
the same time anthropomorphic.
 The Disney movies and rides often alternate scaring
or frightening scenes with cute and happy
ones. Bruno Bettelheim made the point that this
technique used in fairy tales is useful for kids‟
education, that it is a “symbolic presentation of
difficult and dangerous psychosocial contradictions”.
But the goal of Disney is not to educate kids, it is to
make money. Scaring children to then make them
happier is a good way to sell more cinema tickets and
merchandising.
36

37. Politically correct?
One of the most intriguing characteristic of the
Disney “magic” is to be perceived as politically
correct.
 Why is a rather dull white princess recovering her
prerogative because of her sex appeal politically
correct?
 Why is alcoholism in the Pirates of Caribbean
politically correct?
37

38. 4. The roles of heterotopia
38

39. Two types of heterotopia:
 Heterotopia of illusion: their role is to create a
space of illusion that exposes every real space, all
the sites inside of which human life is partitioned,
as still more illusory.
 Heterotopia of compensation: their role is to create
a space that is “other”, another real space - as
perfect, meticulous, and well-arranged as ours is
messy, ill-constructed, and jumbled.
39

40. Disney World is a heterotopia of
both illusion and compensation.
40
Compensation
Mickey house and the
perfect American way
of life.
Illusion
In the world of
EPCOT, all cultures
are illusory compared
to the logic of
commerce.

41. French philosopher Jean Baudrillard:
"Disneyland is presented as imaginary in order to
make us believe that the rest is real, when in fact
all of Los Angeles and the America surrounding it
are no longer real, but of the order of the hyper-
real and of simulation.”
41

42. 5. Heterochronies
42

43. Two types of heterochronies:
 Museums and libraries have become heterotopias
in which time never stops building up and topping
its own summit.
 Carnivals and festivals are linked, on the
contrary, to time in its most
flowing, transitory, precarious aspect. These
heterotopias are not oriented toward the
eternal, they are rather absolutely temporal.
43

44. 44
Often at Disney World, rides about the future are
actually about the past future: the future as it
was imagined few decades ago (e.g. Space
Mountain, Spaceship Earth). This paradox is
tolerated by the otherwise perfectionism of the
Disney imagineers because it achieves one
goal: providing reasonable credibility to the
statement that corporate technology is good for
humanity.
Real future technologies are too controversial,
old ones are better suited.

45. 6. Heterotopia: opened and
closed spaces
45

46. Heterotopias always presuppose a system of
opening and closing that both isolates them and
makes them penetrable.
Umberto Eco:
“When entering Disneyland, consumers form into
lines to gain access to each attraction. Then they
are ordered by people with special uniforms to
follow the rules, such as where to stand or where
to sit. If the consumer follows each rule
correctly, they can enjoy "the real thing" and see
things that are not available to them outside of
Disneyland's doors.”
46

47.  Visual magnets force the visitors‟ behaviours and
still give the illusion of freedom.
 Everyone is happy in Disney World, but there is an
entrance fee.
47

48. Conclusion & interrogations
48

49. “The ship is the heterotopia par excellence. In
civilizations without boats, dreams dry
up, espionage takes the place of adventure, and
the police take the place of pirates.” [Michel
Foucault]
But what about the Disney Cruise Line?
49

50. Michel Foucault advocates a world with many
heterotopias, many “other places” of juxtaposition and
transgression, escapes from authoritarianism. But do
they not instead reinforce the coherence of society?
Walt Disney World is a legitimate heterotopia, reflecting
some of the ideals of our time. However, it should not
be the only one. The real danger is the disneyfication
of all places.
“Are we heading for the „all-in-heterotopia‟ where the
museum is becoming a theme park, and the theme
park a museum, the mall encapsulating both theme
park and cultural centre?” [Hilda Heynen, KULeuven]
50

51. Interrogations
 Are there any differences between the tales of Disney
World and History? Are they not both illusory?
 What is the connection between space, history,
knowledge, and power?
 How much of this cultural construct is conscious in
the head of Disney imagineers? Is it important to
know?
 Are utopias and heterotopias „good‟? Or only some of
them?
 Is a society without utopias and heterotopias
possible?
 Is Disney World „real‟? Is it hyperrealist? And is it
different from the rest of the world?
51

52. Thank you!
Christophe Bruchansky
@bruchansky
www.bruchansky.name
52
Q&As