Disney, 9
Although Anderson’s research is extensive, it is not academic in nature.
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The scholarly work
conducted to this point describes the discursive regime and cultural significance of Disney’s
involvement with the Fair, but does not consider the in-depth contexts of the history of these exhibits.
Thus, given that there is no detailed scholarly account of Disney’s corporate exhibits at the 1964-65
World’s Fair, this paper attempts to fill this gap. The following two sections offer accounts of the
production and installation of the General Electric Carousel of Progress and Ford’s Magic Skyway. In
the Conclusion, I consider what this detailed analysis might add to scholarly understandings of the
historical and cultural significance of Disney’s corporate exhibits at the 1964 Fair. With regard to
contemporary questions and concerns of new technology and culture, this historical account serves to
demonstrate the very real processes through which new techniques and their narratives are brought into
a variety of discursive articulations (both old and new) that people utilize to make meaning of their
world and to negotiate how they understand the roles/purposes/uses of new technologies in society.
Figure 1. Fair Poster, and “Father,” dog, and electric oven from Carousel show.
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Unlike the critical approach that Weiner, Wallace, Bierman, and Smith take, Anderson is explicitly celebratory,
which is a caveat taken into consideration in this paper where his research was utilized. The importance of Anderson’s work
lies in the difficulty of finding useful primary resources from this time period. I emailed Anderson to ask if typed-transcripts
were available from his interviews. But he only typed-up the quotes and information that he used in the journal. However,
perhaps not surprisingly, I found several web sites with excellent primary materials such as transcripts of the Carousel and
Magic Skyway scripts from the Fair, as well as first-person recollections of visitors to both exhibits, and scanned photographs
and illustrations from Fair pamphlets. Thus these sites also supplied excellent primary resources.
Convention