32 MUSEUM ANTHROPOLOGY VOLUME 17 NUMBER 3

Wonder and Worth: Disney Museums inWorld Showcase

Corinne A. Kratz and Ivan Karp

Museum professionals frequently definethemselves and their institutions inopposition to popular forms of enter-

tainment.1 In recent decades, they often comparemuseums to Disneyland and Walt Disney World, acontrast which encodes oppositions between whatthey see as serious culture and popular culture,educational motives and economic motives, andthe authentic versus the facsimile. Such opposi-tions, articulated in terms of stark contrasts, maskthe ambivalence many museum curators feel abouttheme parks and world fairs. As institutions, mu-seums also embody the often contradictory goalsand impulses that can be found in theme parks. Atthe same time as museums express opposition toDisney theme parks, they have increasinglyadopted styles and techniques of display associ-ated with them. Museums have begun to combineentertainment with education, in part becausethey see themselves in greater competition withother display institutions.2

No matter where they are located, displaysabout culture and history impart information andpresent a set of perspectives and values. They thusbecome a means through which viewers can relatetheir viewpoints and experiences to others. In theprocess displays become resources for self-produc-tion, though the selves produced may simultane-ously be national citizens, international travelers,and consumers, variously located through class,ethnicity, and region.

These processes of self production are related towhat Stephen Greenblatt (1991) has described as"resonance," the ways in which displays connect tothe structures of feeling and experience found inthe everyday world outside the display setting."Resonance" is opposed to "wonder," a mode ofrelating to the object that focuses on its seeminglyintrinsic characteristics, as opposed to its relationsto the world outside the display setting. In distin-guishing between resonance and wonder Green-blatt argues that viewers have multiple relationsto objects and this suggests that there can bedifferent approaches to display. While resonancerelates the object to multiple contexts, wonderfocuses attention on the qualities of the object

itself. Obviously both are important; these are twoposes of attention rather than opposed phenom-ena. Greenblatt follows Baxandall (1972) by point-ing out that during the Renaissance this sense ofwonder changed: from an appreciation of the ma-terial qualities, such as rarity and value, that canbe associated with an object of material culture,wonder came to focus instead on the skill displayedin creating an effect. If wonder can encode historyand change, as Greenblatt asserts, then it pos-sesses resonant aspects. "Rare" and 'Valuable" arejudgments which depend on values external to thedisplay setting, values that are historically deter-mined and culturally constructed—even when thistends to focus the viewers' attention on the objectof display rather than on a more didactic message.In most display settings resonance and wonder areconnected and can reinforce or conflict with oneanother. In this paper we explore the combinationsof resonance and wonder evoked in the museumsinserted into Walt Disney World's Epcot Centerand how they relate to questions of self production.

Unlike museums, the overall Disney perspec-tive harbors no worries about purity.3 From thestart, Walt Disney envisioned his theme parks as"something of a fair, an exhibition, a playground,a community center, a museum of living facts, anda showplace of beauty and magic" (quoted inRykwert 1992). At one and the same time ignoringand using conventions which define boundariesamong display settings, Walt Disney Worldshrewdly appeals to and draws from a wide rangeof markets. The deliberate blurring of boundariesbetween reproduction and fake, fiction and fact,fantasy and history is central to Disney World'sexperience and appeal. As such, it is an ontologicalmelange that Umberto Eco calls hyperreality(1986; cf. Fjellman 1992:255-57). But Disney dis-plays are more complex than even Eco suggests.Display types and settings are not fused into asingle amalgam; they are related to one anotherthrough the act of "quotation." Susan Stewart(1984) argues that quotation necessarily privilegesthe "original" context, but in Walt Disney World wethink this privilege is more apparent than real:Disney "quotes" from the original context, or object

WONDER AND WORTH 33

in the case of the museums, mixing historical pe-riods in the "countries" at random in a systematicattempt to manufacture a form of cultural author-ity. As a result the "quote" is subordinated to theoverall effect created by the synthetic reproduc-tion. The complexities of "quoting" are no moreapparent in Epcot Center than in its five museurns, some displaying objects on loan from placessuch as the Smithsonians National Museum ofNatural History and the Fowler Museum at theUniversity of California, Los Angeles. What aresuch objects and museums doing in this world offabricated simulacra, in the midst of DisneyWorld?

Museums are presumed to be the home of the"real," temples of art, and repositories of knowl-edge and value. Museums control audience behav-

ior for specific purposes in carefully defined set-tings. Theme parks and amusement parks simu-late unfettered experience in fabricated (but tillhighly controlled) settings. Disney World seems todefy these standard definitions. Its theme ridesunderscore control and often impart information,while its museums appear to be oases of freedom.Clifford Geertz defines a blurred genre as one formmasquerading as another, so artfully composed asto obscure the "original." Disney World containsmany blurred genres—history masquerading aspageant and vice versa (Wallace 1985), art as popu-lar culture (Marling 1991), and theme parks thatcontain museums. Epcot's 'World Showcase" is thehome of the theme-park museums. Why they areplaced there and not elsewhere is the first questionin exploring how Disney museums figure in

1. China Gate at Epcot Center. "A recreation of the Temple of Heaven in Beijing is just one of the elements at the China

Showcase in Epcot Center. Visitors can view a 360-degree CircleVision® film 'Wonders of China'and see locations neverbefore filmed by western cameras. Authentic shops and restaurants also bring the unique culture of the People's Republic of

China to the Walt Disney World Resort" (Copyright 1991. The Walt Disney Company)

34 MUSEUM ANTHROPOLOGY VOLUME 17 NUMBER 3

EWORLD SHOWCASE

FCITUREWQRLD

2. Future World and World Showcase.

visitors' experience and self-production at DisneyWorld.

Countries and museums in Disney's worldWalt Disney World is composed of three theme

parks, each built at a different time The MagicKingdom opened first, reproducing much ofDisneyland in California. It was followed by EpcotCenter and finally by Disney-MGM Studios. WaltDisney World is an unfinished project, and manyother attractions have been and will be built on itsforty-three square miles (Birnbaum 1992:173).The Magic Kingdom and Epcot Center bear a closerrelationship to one another than either does toDisney-MGM Studios, which may have been builtas a means of competing with the Universal Stu-dios attraction in Orlando (Fjellman 1992:144).The Magic Kingdom is a fantasy playground whileEpcot Center is a Utopian community ("Experi-mental Prototype Community of Tomorrow"), yetboth have displays which predict the future at thesame time as they interrogate the past. Both depictcultural diversity and national differences. TheMagic Kingdom does so in the service of a fantasyexperience and draws heavily on caricature andplay, while the educational goals of Epcot Centerrequire the assertion of authenticity and accuracyin its displays. Both are ideological and educa-

tional, as are all exhibits. But the ideology is manifested in different ways, and there may even b<different ideologies displayed in both theme parksFjellman (1992:237) aptly describes the contrasbetween the cultural geography of The Magi<Kingdom and Epcot Center as a temporal contrastbetween the more colonial world of the 1950s anc1

the corporate world of the 1970s, between "th«world of empire at Adventureland [in The Magi(Kingdom] and that of international commerce alWorld Showcase [in Epcot Center]."

Epcot Center is divided into two sectionsFuture World and World Showcase (Fig. 2). FutureWorld contains a series of pavilions; in each pavil-ion Disney Imagineers, or designers, work with scorporate sponsor to present the future as thejwould both like to imagine it. The corporate spon-sor of each pavilion is clearly indicated, and, in-deed, forms a subtle part of the Future World'sUtopian vision. Rides and displays in Future Worldoften present a triumphal history of the world iriwhich the past culminates in some future techno-logical utopia. They present models of domesticand public life and celebrate business achievementand corporate responsibility.

Much of the critical literature on Epcot Centerhas examined Future World as a corporate utopia.The primary concerns have been to examine howAmerican history is constructed (Wallace 1985),how modernity and postmodern identity are de-fined (Bukatman 1991), and how corporate valuesand appeals to consumption organize the Disneyexperience (Fjellman 1992 and Wilson 1993). Withthe main exception of Fjellman (1992:231-50),World Showcase has elicited little attention. Fjell-man also considers how representations of culturaldifference in World Showcase contrast with repre-sentations elsewhere in Disney World (1992:chapter 12). How cultural diversity has been con-structed in Disney displays has not received asmuch attention as that devoted to American iden-tity or to gender relations (Willis 1993).

Yet the global aspirations of Walt Disney Worldand Epcot Center are a fundamental aspect of therepresentations constructed there, and WorldShowcase is the primary site where world widecultural diversity is considered. The relationshipbetween displays in Future World and WorldShowcase thus needs further consideration. WorldShowcase is a set of representations whose overallmeaning depends on Future World in a way thatis not true in reverse. World Showcase presentseach country on display as a "past" that can bevisited through a tourist experience. Set in rela-tion to Future World, the World Showcase is arartful conglomeration of multiple "pasts" out oi

WONDER AND WORTH 35

which a united 'Tuture" has emerged. The "past" ispackaged in a manner that allows it to be experi-enced in the short compass of a tourist trip ormuseum visit.4

We turn now to the accessible "past" of WorldShowcase. Eleven countries are represented thereby pavilions, arranged around a lagoon. Withinthat array there are five displays that we willconsider here as the museums of Disney World.They are found in Mexico, Norway, China, Japan,and Morocco. All five are called exhibits in theEpcot brochure and explicitly called "museum,""gallery," or "exhibit" in the guidebooks available(Birnbaum 1992; Mobil 1991).

The United States pavilion is placed at the cen-ter of World Showcase as The American Adventure,the only pavilion not called by its country name.The rest are United States neighbors, tradingpartners, and allies: Mexico, Canada, United King-dom, France, Germany, Italy, Norway, Japan,China, and Morocco. Each country is housed andlandscaped in a style appropriate to a specificperiod and region, standing for the country as awhole. Countries are represented at vastly differ-ent periods, jumbling the visitors'sense of historyand foreign relations from the start. Each countryfeatures various "attractions," including films,rides, and museums, distributed as shown in Fig.3.

The only features common to all pavilions ofWorld Showcase are restaurants and shops; this isoverwhelmingly a world of commerce. The com-mercial nature of World Showcase is not ignoredby its visitors. As one young visitor remarked to awoman we took to be his mother, 'These aren'tcountries, they're just dumb shopping." In the caseof Germany, Italy, and the United Kingdom, he'sright; there are no attractions in these pavilionsexcept shops and restaurants. France, however,joins Canada and China in offering films withspectacular views of nature and lyrical repre-sentations of cultural heritage. Mexico and Nor-way have rides. The American Adventure has aunique presentation combining film, theater, andDisney Audio-Animatronix, an extremely expen-sive technological wonder that runs nine minuteslonger than any other World Showcase attraction.Museums alone supplement shops in Japan andMorocco, while China, Norway, and Mexico addmuseum displays to their other attractions.

Corporate sponsorship in World Showcase, un-like Future World, is not obvious.5 Only The Ameri-can Adventure openly acknowledges corporatesponsors, namely American Express and CocaCola.8 Sponsoring entities are also listed in theEpcot Center Guidebook Brochure for Norway andChina: Norshow and China Pavilion Exhibit Cor-

poration. These entities appear to represent differ-ent mixtures of corporate and government involve-ment, clearly sufficient to warrant naming them.

In other countries, sponsoring and consultingbodies seem to be involved on a smaller scale,identified in portions of each pavilion. Japan's mu-seum is sponsored by Mitsukoshi DepartmentStore. France's Tourist Bureau was involved in thefilm "Impressions de France" (Fjellman 1992:246).Canada's film has a CBC logo marking its coopera-tion, though Fjellman indicated that no Canadiangovernment agencies or corporations helped planthe pavilion (Ibid.:246).7 The Moroccan NationalTourist Office maintains an office and slide showin the pavilion, though we do not yet know whosponsored and planned their museum. Of the coun-tries which offer attractions and/or exhibitions,then, Mexico alone has no mark of sponsorship.

The countries without museums are all Westernand industrial—France, Germany, the UnitedKingdom, Italy, and Canada. These include thecountries where museums began, and which stillpride themselves on having museums of interna-tional renown. Their encyclopedic museums wereoften associated with imperial conquest and con-tain the world within their doors, with halls de-voted to single countries, regions, or"civilizations." The "national museums" in WorldShowcase deal with one country at a time, and

EPCOT CENTER; WORLD SHOWCASE PAVILION1

MexicoAttraction: rideExhibit: museumRestaurantsSbopi

Norway (Norshow)Attraction: rideExhibits: museum, travel info.RestaurantsShop

China (China Pavilion Exhibit Corp.)Attraction: 360 filmExhibit: museumRestaurantsShop

GermanyRestaurant!Sbopi

ItalyRestaurantShops

JapanExhibit: museumRestaurant*Shops

MoroccoExhibits: museum, travel info.

RestaurantShop,

FranAttraction: filmRestaurant*Shops

United KingdomRestaurantsShop,

CanadaAanclion: 360 filmRestaurantShop.

The American Adventure (American Express and Coca-Cola)Attraction*: (magic) theater showaExhibit quiltsRestaurantShops

1 The Guidebook identifies sponsor* for onlyhere in parentheses after the country name.

•one of Ihe cranny duptayi. ibexm

3. Epcot Center: World Showcase Pavilions.

36 MUSEUM ANTHROPOLOGY VOLUME 17 NUMBER 3

4. Mexican Pavilion. "Epcot Center's WorldFest spotlight shifts to Mexico forthemonih of May featuring someof Mexico's most famous folk groups." (Copyright 1985 The Walt Disney Company)

those countries are the most foreign-seeming toAmericans: Japan, China, Mexico, Morocco, andNorway. Many visitors could easily have visitedmuseums in each of these countries, especiallyMexico, whose National Museum is internation-ally famous.

Going to museums has been described as a"ritual of citizenship" (Duncan 1991; Duncan andWallach 1980) in which museum goers experienceand may even identify with a national past andpresent glory. The history of museums has oftenbeen bound up with the "formation of national andcultural identities" (Coombes 1988; cf. Bennett1988), and the displays of Walt Disney World,including the museums, are no exceptions.However, do they tell us more about the countriesthey represent or about ideas held by DisneyWorld's middle-class, largely American visitors?Th Official Guide tell: us: 'Disney conceptions

about participating countries [are created] in re-markably realistic, consistently entertainingstyles. You won't find the real Germany hererather the country s essence . an artful pasticheof all the elements that give that nation's country-side and towns their distinctive flavor" (Birnbaum1992:141).

An announcement for the daily light showIllumiNations, sums up the attitude: "The coun-tries themselves become performers." They artcalled countries, not nations, despite the name oithe light show. This carries through in narrationswithin countries; the sole exception is the UnitedStates, systematically characterized as "nation." IImight seem the European countries with onljshops and restaurants resisted further Disney redesign to create an "essence" of their nationacharacter and style, one that might differ frontheir own self-definition.

WONDER AND WORTH 37

Raymond Williams (1976) argues that "country"is a more positive term than "nation," one thatsuggests emotional ties and identification of indi-vidual with collective. "Nation" refers more to apolity than a people, a political organization thatcommands allegiance. In World Showcase only theUnited States lacks displays that typify its inhabi-tants. The American Adventure refers to sharedhistory and environment, and asserts that peopleof different origins compose the polity, but individ-ual and collectivity are not one. National characteris not prominent, nor is the conventional "meltingpot" image used to define American character.America is distinguished from the other "coun-tries" by its national standing, as a country ofdifferent people who accommodate one another.The word "adventure" also implies a kind of spon-taneity which is in sharp contrast to a more ra-tional definition of a nation-state—another way inwhich Americans, and especially Disney, seek todifferentiate "us" from "them."

Just as the United States is distinguished as anation among countries, the location of museumsin World Showcase also distinguishes two classesof countries included around the lagoon. The mostforeign-seeming countries (from an American per-spective) are the ones with museums. Each mu-seum uses conventions that evoke differentmuseum genres, quoting museums of culture his-tory, art, and ethnography. What kinds of experi-ence, then, are represented and predicated forvisitors? How do the displays relate to their pavil-ions and to non-Disney museums?

The Mexico pavilion is shaped like a Mayantemple; its museum vestibule leads to a marketplaza, shops, restaurant, and a ride. "Reign ofGlory: A Celebration of Mexico's Pre-ColumbianArts" was on display when we visited. It includeda bright mural painting reconstructing Palenquelife and cases showing artifacts against scrims thatchanged from a plain background to reveal small-scale dioramas. Colima pottery, for example, wasshown against a stone wall that revealed a dio-rama of a woman grinding corn. A plaque listedexhibition lenders—the Denver Art Museum, theSouthwest Museum, and other prestigious institu-tions—though they were not identified with par-ticular pieces.

In contrast to the boutique lighting, elaboratescrim technology, and dramatic setting of the Mexi-can museum, the Norway museum next doorseemed dim, somewhat dated, and hidden away. Apolar exploration exhibit was tucked inside thereplica of a medieval Norwegian stavekirke, but nosigns indicated that something was inside. Thishistory exhibit relied heavily on dioramas: a near

life-size one of explorer Roald Amundsen with apacked dog sled, and miniature models of a boatdesigned to sail to the North Pole. Another caseshowed objects, with skis, paddles, and heavyclothing used in early Norwegian polar explora-tion.

The Norway exhibit highlights an irony of theDisney museums. Imagineers and technicians, thevery masters of "Disney realism" who created awalking, talking, pipe-smoking Ben Franklin inThe American Adventure, here devoted themselvesto recreating the lifeless mannequins of early dio-ramas, an antecedent of Audio-Animatronix. Inthe museums they rely on the use of actual objectsand refer to real events. They present the real writsmall rather than the realistic simulations thatdefine the hyperreal's claim to a privileged por-trayal of reality.

The Chinese museum was a well-lit, centralpart of the pavilion, and also a lobby for the pavil-ion's movie theater. This museum showed greatcare and attention—it had a prominent introduc-tion, intricate carpeting, and an elaborateplexiglass dragon with display cases set into itssides. As in Mexico, pieces were on loan, but thehome of each piece was identified in this case—they came from the Palace Museum in Beijing andthe Avery Brundage collection in San Francisco.The predominant signature was that of the artmuseum. Pieces were identified as treasures; la-bels named materials, period, and discussed ico-nography and symbolism. Glistening gold leaf,intricate cloisonne, and ornate clockwork madevalue and skill obvious to visitors. This museumwas well-attended whenever we went there.

Japan's museum was modeled on a contempo-rary art gallery, and sponsored by Mitsukoshi de-partment store. It was showing "Echoes ThroughTime: Japanese Women and the Arts," an exhibiton the reinterpretation of Japanese traditionalarts, featuring six artists living in California. TheBijutsu-kan Gallery (literally the "Art MuseumGallery"), as the museum is called, is located inJapan's back left corner, opposite the departmentstore's exit. From the outside, the kimono displayin the gallery could be interpreted as another shopwindow. Many visitors left the store without con-tinuing into the museum. Some who entered spenttime looking around, but more left after a quicklook. Future plans for the gallery involve con-structinga permanent display about Japanese cul-ture history (Fjellman 1992:243). The Japanesepavilion itself was constructed with the intentionof imparting the specific forms of wonder mani-fested in Japanese aesthetics. Fjellman quotes theEpcot Center commemorative volume's assertion

MUSEUM ANTHROPOLOGY VOLUME 17 NUMBER 3

5. Scandanavian skyline at EpcotCenter. [Norwegian museum ishoused inside the church.]"Norway is the 11th internationalcourtyard to join the circle ofnations in World Showcase atWalt Disney World Epcot Center.Skyline features include the towersof the Stave Church (center) andAkershus Castle (right)."(Copyright 1988 The Walt DisneyCompany)

that the Japanese pavilion will demonstrate"grace, refinement, serenity, formality, taste, pro-portion, decorum, delicacy," and associates thisvision with the "exotic harmony Americans havevaguely come to understand as the flip side ofJapan, Inc." (1992:242). But this is not a newunderstanding. It is as old as the first images ofJapan produced in the West, and strikingly like theintentions of the recent permanent installation ofJapanese arts at the Metropolitan Museum of Art,which stresses the wonder of traditional Japaneseaesthetic values. Of course, once wonder is definedin terms of conventional images about a culture, itdraws on resonance.

The final museum, in Morocco, was the mostethnographic, with more attention to contextualinterpretation and local terms. The centerpiecewas a diorama of a Fassi wedding with the bride,her dowry, and a long label on Moroccan weddingcustoms. Two small rooms displayed metal work,jewelry, and musical instruments. Vitrine displayhighlighted craftsmanship and artistry, but labelsalso told us about types of music and the ethnicgroups of Morocco.

Each of the five Disney museums emphasizescertain genres of museum experience—art mu-seum, contemporary gallery, ethnographic or his-tory museum—but the genres blur here just asthey do in non-Disney museums. By virtue of theirsetting in World Showcase, Disney museums havean affinity to national museums, representingtheir countries. Yet compared to national muse-

ums, these are very small, jewel-like installationswith just one to three small rooms. Louis Marin'eobservation on Disneyland is relevant here as well"Where something is incredible [i.e., part of a worldof fiction, history, or fantasy], the full-scale modeprevails, and where it is credible [as in contemporary technology, or in this case museums], th«reduction serves to make it attractive to the imagination" (quoted in Eco 1986:47).

Exhibiting devices and the use of miniaturization evoke personal mastery and individual imagination. Susan Stewart suggests that the miniaturehas to do with the invention of the personal, thaiit can be seen "as a metaphor for the interior spaceand time of the bourgeois subject," while the gigan-tic relates to the invention of the collective, "ametaphor for the abstract authority of state anccollective, public life' (1984:xii). If she is right, themuseums of Disney World reverse the usual relation between visitor and national museum, inverting museum "rituals of citizenship." The role ofnational museum is displaced to Disney Worlditself, the countries and their little museums par!of its collection. The museums are thus particulaikinds of showcases within the World ShowcaseThe ritual of citizenship associated with this kindof museum is aimed at a multinational anctransnational middle class, the future inhabitant!of Future World. Many observers have noted thaiFuture World is a development of the late nineteenth- and early-twentieth century enthusiasnfor world's fairs, but they have not drawn thi

WONDER AND WORTH 39

connection between the way displays of technologyand displays of culture that were characteristic ofworld's fairs have been reproduced in Epcot Cen-ter. Tony Bennett (1988) observes that nineteenth-century world fairs were part of "an exhibitionarycomplex" in which class-divided European andAmerican societies came to imagine themselves asall white and middle class. Visitors to Epcot Centercome to imagine themselves as transnational pos-sessors of the fruits of late capitalist technologyshorn of allegiances to the "essences" of Old Worldand precapitalist cultures portrayed in WorldShowcase.

A second reversal can also be seen in Disneymuseums. Museums outside of the Disney empireare public places organized by extensive canons ofbehavior; their audiences have been disciplinedover time (Levine 1988:177-84). While museumconventions carry over, Disney museums embodya very different effect and contrast; they are siteswithout the instructions and lines elsewhere ubiq-uitous in Walt Disney World. In a place that hasperfected crowd control and the management ofhuman traffic, Disney museums are neither regu-larly staffed nor wired with speakers that directvisitors. This freedom allowed to visitors in themuseums stands in stark contrast to other Disneydisplays. A strong narrative sense organizes Dis-ney World, with cinematic control of gaze and story(King 1981; Bukatman 1991; Fjellman 1992:257-64). In the Disney museums these narratives arenot so much broken as bent; they seem to flowaround the museums, or in some cases rightthrough them without affecting them.

In Epcot Center, the renowned technology andfinancial investments of the Disney empire areconsistently combined with explicit educationalintent and claims to meticulous research. In addi-tion to what we call the rhetorics of value thatframe Disney World generally—phrased in termsof careful scholarship, enormous monetary andtemporal investment, incredible technology, andexceptional social management—World Showcasealso taps the authority of key cultural institutionsby incorporating classic museum settings andtechniques. Disney museums typify a certain pe-riod, using display techniques that evoke a timewhen museums enjoyed great cultural authorityrelatively unchallenged. As with the Countries atEpcot Center, the "essence" of the museum is pre-sented, but the essence is always set in the past,along with most of the rest of World Showcase.Here a museum aura is appropriated into Disney'sown blend of cultural authority. Museum genres inthe World Showcase may blur, combining tech-niques associated with art museums and ethno-

graphic museums. Yet the museums of WorldShowcase carefully screen out the use of displaytechniques and exhibitionary styles which muse-ums outside Disney have begun borrowing fromtheme parks—and not least of all from Disneyitself.

These are not just stage set museums. The ob-jects are real; they come from real museums out-side Disney World. This authenticity was, in fact,important to staff working on the exhibit in Mex-ico. When discussing objects to borrow from theNational Museum of Natural History, the Disneyperson handling the loan "expressed concern thatso many of the pieces selected were reproduc-tions—they wanted originals" (NMNH note onDisney Loan, 31 Oct. 1989). Again, the irony isstriking: Disney masters of reproduction in searchof authentic objects to enshrine within their largerconstructed country.

This is precisely the mixture Eco describes assymptomatic of hyperreality. He examines re-cre-ated period rooms and houses studded with"authentic pieces which would make Sotheby's ec-static . . . but what prevails is the connective tissue,totally reconstructed with arrogant imagination"(1986:27). This mingling obfuscates the differencebetween real and facsimile, making reproductionsseem more authentic, the overall effect hyperreal.In World Showcase such mixture abounds, but onan expanded scale; hyperreality is writ large aswell as small. The blending of artifice and authen-tic takes place less within the museum setting, butin the country displays as a whole. Islands of"authenticity," "real" museums are juxtaposed toreconstructed, scaled down buildings. Or are theysimulated museum settings that use "real" objectsand "authentic" museum techniques? Regardlessof their status as "real," they are reminders of andsigns of museums;8 they evoke a sense of recogni-tion much as the miniature Eiffel Tower does whenpeople approach the France pavilion. An intermit-tent but persistent breaching of the line betweenreality and artifice is layered throughout the expe-rience of Walt Disney World (cf. Fjellman1992:255-57); in World Showcase, "classic" muse-ums play an important part in this continual fram-ing and reframing.

We can see, then, how museum settings featurein the ontological bricolage of World Showcase, andhow they buttress the authority of Disney repre-sentations. Nonetheless, they are not highlightedas main attractions. They appear on no postcards.The Official Guidebook (Birnbaum 1992) com-pletely overlooks Norway's museum, and mentionsMexico's only in passing. Disney World is full ofminute details given remarkable attention, more

40 MUSEUM ANTHROPOLOGY VOLUME 17 NUMBER 3

than any guidebook or postcard rack could show.But this might lead us to consider again, in adifferent sense, why there are museums in DisneyWorld.

Resonances and wondersThe recognition experience evoked by the Dis-

ney museums creates contrasts and relations withother displays inside World Showcase, in EpcotCenter, and in Walt Disney World. It also bringsDisney World into a closer connection with insti-tutions and contexts of display external to theDisney environment. Earlier we discussed some ofthese relations from the top down. We argued thatin order to understand the paradox of an authen-ticity grounded in a display setting thriving onsimulation, we had to examine museums as anaspect of a larger set of representations whichconnects displays in Walt Disney World. The mu-seum experience in World Showcase both incorpo-rates and contradicts the ways in which museumsare experienced in the wider world. World Show-case draws on the authority of museums in orderto legitimize the nostalgic tourist experience thatmakes its pavilions the "past" of Future World.Museums in World Showcase are oases of freedomand release from the controls and surveillanceexerted over behavior in the rest of Disney World.

The museums are an essential aspect of Epcotand its World Showcase precisely because EpcotCenter claims to be more than entertainment. Itproclaims itself to be a serious place, a site oftechnological cooperation and experimentationand a place of scientific education. These are notthe activities central to World Showcase, however.World Showcase is designed to be visited aftervisiting Future World.9 It is, as we have argued,following Louis Marin and others, the nostalgicpast of the future. World Showcase is in this sensethe Future World's museum of culture and history;it contains the past that the transnational familyof the future will have transcended.

Museums are not among the most popular at-tractions, even in World Showcase. As noncommer-cial activities, it would be surprising to find thatthey were designed to take up a significant portionof visitors' time. While we were in the Moroccanmuseum, we were struck by the number of visitorswho peeked in and immediately left. The museumsoperate in a manner not dissimilar to high culturein the wider world, as sites for the sophisticatedfew, providing a sense that society values its past.They are not media of popular entertainment,either at Disney World or in the world at large,blockbuster exhibits not withstanding.

This may be why the museums in World Show-case are so conservative in terms of their exhibitvalues. They are that part of the future that hasbeen preserved in order to show that the futurevalues its past. What values, then, do the objectspreserved in World Showcase illustrate? In thecase of Mexico, the exhibit emphasizes the artisticachievements of Pre-Columbian civilization andthe highlights of colonial Mexican architecture andcraft. For Norway we are given a world of braveryand determined spirit in the face of a harsh envi-ronment. China shows us imperial splendor. Japanasserts continuity with the exquisite sense of de-sign manifested in the period before contact withthe West. Morocco presents an intricate world ofcraft and custom.

All of these values and experiences arestrangely missing in the futures portrayed in Fu-ture World or even in Futureland in The MagicKingdom. We are not promised skilled and indi-vidualized craftsmanship nor spectacular andelaborate architecture. The world of the futureprovides comfort and leisure, and arts in whichform follows function. In this sense Disney's storiesof humanity's universal future are modern ratherthan postmodernist, especially in the aestheticsadvocated. The postmodern is manifested in theWorld Showcase, where the past is encapsulatedin the future through "quoting" cultural "es-sences," just as Disney's rather old-fashionedmuseums (which signify retention of values) areencapsulated and "quoted" in the World Showcaseitself.

This is surely not the literary form of post-modernism which is hostile to metanarrative anduniversal values. Rather it is the architecturalpostmodernism of Phillip Johnson, which appro-priates ("quotes") the past in the service of thefuture. Ifet even architectural postmodernism hasits subversive side. Future World and World Show-case are at the same time pleasurable and in-tensely commercial. Do the noncommercial havensdotted through World Showcase like raisins in ricepudding provide the possibility of experiences thatresist homogeneity and commodification? After all,that is surely one great purpose of museums.10

Experiences of resonance and wonder as evokedin Disney museums may provide means to counternarratives presented elsewhere in Walt DisneyWorld, resources through which visitors can imag-ine, multiply, and savor many possible selves.Again, the museums must be seen in relation toother displays in Epcot Center, for experiences ofresonance and wonder are not confined to muse-ums in Disney World, and resonance and wonderare not inherently noncommercial.

WONDER AND WORTH 41

Stephen Greenblatt (1991) describes resonanceand wonder as historical phenomena, changing inrelationship to changing structures of everydaylife and feeling. He sees a movement from one kindof resonance and wonder to another. We think thatthere are multiple resonances and multiple sensesof wonder in the museum experience. The reso-nance that Disney intends is a resonance towardsand desire for a particular future. But surely thefact that World Showcase is the future's pastmeans that the past, which is also the audience'spast as well as part of its present, may seem more"real" than the now rather dated science fictionfutures presented in Future World. This createsthe possibility that what Disney presents as thepast may be more valued by the audience than thefuture, or at least more resonant for them.

There are also at least two senses of wonderpresented here. The first is a wonder associatedwith the achievements of other cultures and othertimes, wonder associated with the presence ofauthentic objects. This is surely one sense of won-der that the Disney museums seek to impart. Yetthe wonder found in the encapsulated museumsbecomes just one particular kind of wonder, andnot the acme of wonder at that. Aesthetic wonderat particular objects is subordinated to the won-ders of science and scale, encompassed within themarvel of complexity, technology, and managementthat constitutes Disney World. Surely the DisneyImagineers intended the audience to experiencethese two senses of wonder simultaneously but notequally: they had in mind a hierarchy in which thewonder associated with an object is somehow lesssignificant than wonder at the effort and resourcesinvested in production of the whole. Yet as museumprofessionals know, audiences are difficult to con-trol. Some portion of them may experience thewonder as nonhierarchical or even reverse thehierarchy. Until some research on the aesthetics ofresponse is conducted at Walt Disney World, specu-lations about response can be only that, specula-tion—and the Disney literature is full of confidentspeculation.

If experiences of resonance and wonder are partof the way visitors define themselves through mu-seum displays, the multiple resonances and won-ders of Disney World offer different modes ofself-definition as well as various diversions.11 Notall are programmed or controlled, but many maybe new versions and variants of the middle-classwhite subjects that museums and other displayinstitutions have helped define since the mid-19008. In Epcot Center as a whole, national sub-jects are downplayed in favor of transnationalcooperation and consumption, though The Ameri-

can Adventure advances one form of nationalismas the exception to this.12

When museum professionals express antago-nism towards Disney theme parks, they may beworried about more than losing audience and mar-ket share to a less authentic display medium. Bothmuseums and Disney theme parks seek to definethe kinds of selves that visitors imagine and pro-duce through cultural displays. Disney themeparks also attempt to recast the very meansthrough which museums manufacture a culturalauthority by appropriating the form and aura ofthe museum. By multiplying modes and experi-ences of resonance and wonder and condensingthem into a single place, Disney World can seemto encapsulate and overpower museums outsidethe World as well, at once appropriating theirauthority while seeming to undermine it. Theworry is that Disney has achieved the ultimatetriumph of mechanical reproduction, in which themuseum effect appears subordinated to thegreater Disney effect. •

Notes

1. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the1992 annual meetings of the American Anthropologi-cal Association in San Francisco. Thanks to Ed Brunerfor organizing the session, Mary Louise Pratt for mar-velous comments, and others at the session for helpfuldiscussion. This is part of a larger project and waspreliminary to a longer paper on Disney museums(Kratz and Karp 1993). Thanks also to Mark Auslan-der, T. O. Beidelman, Micaela di Leonardo, Steve Feld,and Ellen Schattschneider for comments, and to CarolMirko, Marcia Bakry, Robert Leopold and EllenSchattschneider for help with various aspects of thework. We also appreciate support from the Office ofthe Assistant Secretary for Arts and Humanities atthe Smithsonian Institution.

2. Adopting techniques of display from commercial set-tings is not recent in American museums. Neil Harris(1990) describes how department stores and worldfairs were taken as models for museums during the1930s, when museums were also experiencing prob-lems with audience share and financing. It may bethat the modern history of museums will show atendency for them to draw on their competition inperiods of crisis.

3. But museums in World Showcase do worry about andassert authenticity, as we argue later in this paper.

4. In "The Fate of Tipoo's Tiger," we note how visitors tomuseums can turn the museum visit into a touristexperience by use of photography and costume (Karpand Kratz ms).

5. We have yet to find a detailed account of collaborationand sponsorship processes in any pavilions of WorldShowcase or Future World. Fjellman (1992) includesa concise sketch of the political economy of Walt Dis-ney World as it relates to Orlando and to the largergroup of Disney enterprises, but has little on internalaspects of political economy related to the productionof Walt Disney World representations.

42 MUSEUM ANTHROPOLOGY VOLUME 17 NUMBER 3

6. The spectacular technology of The American Adven-ture show comes with a colossal pricetag. Nelson notesthat it cost $11 million to develop, but his observationthat this is the only World Showcase pavilion withsponsorship is wrong (1986:142).

7. Fjellman also quotes Canadian Newspaper figures onthe investment required to sponsor a pavilion (thoughit is unclear if this is a small-scale, partial sponsorshipor the type that gets named, like Coca-Cola): start-upcosts are $10-$15 million, and annual maintenancefees are $1 million (Ibid.).

8. A point Mary Louise Pratt made in discussing ourpaper.

9. Because this traffic pattern is built into Epcot Centerand the most popular attractions are in Future World,lines build up there first. Guidebooks therefore advisepeople to go immediately to World Showcase and work"backwards" towards the Future.

10. But museums also make commodification possible, bysubtly contrasting the original or unique objects dis-played in their collections with the commodity-filledeveryday—imparting both a sense of the limitlessreproductive qualities of commodities as well as thesense that they share something with the original—why else do people crowd the museum shops?

11. Mary Louise Pratt's discussion of our paper noted theimportance of diversion in another self-producing ef-fect of Walt Disney World, namely that the change ofschedule, the place, and the variety of a vacation helpsreproduce a work force, as well as continuing to shapeit in the image of middle-class consumers.

12. This is, of course, a claim of exception. As a nation,rather than a country, America would appear to bebetter able to prepare its citizens for a transnationalexistence than countries whose citizens are capturedby an essence. This is not a new story, but yet anotherversion of the myth of American Exceptionalism.America is no longer the melting pot, but the space inwhich its inhabitants learn to be citizens of a diverseworld.

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Corinne Kratz is Assistant Professor at the Institute of AfricanStudies, Emory University, and Research Associate in Anthro-pology at the Smithsonian Institution. Ivan Karp is NationalEndowment for the Humanities Professor and Director of theGraduate Institute of Liberal Arts at Emory University.