Main Street, U.S.A: it is the heart of small-town America. One of the most famous of these streets, 28 miles south of Figueroa Street in downtown Los Angeles, is the Main Street of Disneyland. In the heart of Anaheim, nestled between the I-5 and the 57 freeway is a picturesque vision of small-town America: city hall and the fire station are on the left, Main Street Cinema and the bank sit to the right, and small shops line the singular entrance into the theme park. Main Street Cone Shop, an ice cream parlor and confectionary, fills the air with the sickly- sweet scents of vanilla, cotton candy, and cinnamon. Vendors stand by their red and white striped carts selling popcorn, churros and refreshing beverages like lemonade and Coca-Cola. Main Street is the heart and soul of Disneyland; it is a nostalgic, isolated beacon of Americana in the midst of a growing urban city.
Disneyland, with its quaint Main Street and lands of adventure and promise, functions on the premise of the suspension of disbelief. It is a place of princesses, princes, fairies, adventure, magic, and fantasy. The only place where the element of fantasy is nonexistent is the bathrooms. Upon stepping into the ladies room, the realities of the world-bodily functions, screaming children and unhappy parents-returns. A line forms in the middle of the bathroom stalls; a little girl beside me dances with anxiety while a woman snaps at her child in Spanish: “Mira lo que hiciste!” (Look what you did!). Another woman changes her baby’s diaper on a changing table; the child squirms and cries, its tiny fist flailing in the air with frustration. A Hispanic woman in a pale blue janitor’s uniform pushes a yellow cart packed with cleaning supplies and wipes the water spilling over the counters and on to the floor. She catches my eye and I look away, guilty, remembering a trip to Disneyland where my grandmother, a Mexican immigrant, felt the same guilt I did. As my grandmother walked out of the bathroom that day, she gave the janitor a small smile, and with a brief pat on the woman’s arm, she exited the bathroom to the bright, cheerful streets of the Magic Kingdom.
Walt Disney’s vision of Disneyland serves as a tribute to small-town America. It is a glorification of the nuclear family, isolated from the dangers of the big city, as discussed in Eric Avila’s Popular Culture in the Age of White Flight: Fear and Fantasy in Suburban Los Angeles. Disneyland sprawls over 160 acres of former orange groves in the suburbs of Los Angeles, 28 miles from downtown. Its grand opening on July 17th, 1955 was a national sensation. Despite several setbacks on opening day-115 degree heat, counterfeit tickets, and melting asphalt-the park thrives to this day: it has accommodated over 515 million guests since its grand opening. Despite the 54 years that have passed since its opening, Disneyland still reflects the decade of the 1950’s, and its representation of American values reflects the white middle-class family. Each respective “land” within the park illustrates classic American ideals, even in their names: Frontierland, Adventureland, Fantasyland, Tomorrowland, New Orleans Square, Critter Country, Toontown, and Main Street. Frontierland in particular recreates the wild frontier of the 1800’s with attractions such as Mark Twain Riverboat, Tom Sawyer’s Island, and Big Thunder Mountain, affectionately known as “the wildest ride in the west”. While these representations of Americana appear to be quaint and entertaining, they represent the darker side of small-town American nostalgia as well: xenophobia, racism, and class exclusion. Representations of life outside a white middle-class are seldom visible at all. In fact, most attractions at Disneyland reduce representations of ethnic minorities to mere stereotypes: Latin American girls with hats full of bananas and tropical fruit sway their hips, African children in loincloths wield spears as a hyena laughs beside them on It’s a Small World; and Jose the parrot shouts “Hola Amigos! It’s time to start the cho” in a thick Spanish accent in the dark, tropical Tiki Room. These ethnic stereotypes subtly enforce the ideas of American superiority and xenophobia. These images inside Disneyland are a reminder of a different era, as well as a different city. In Anaheim, where white, middle class suburbia exists only in the past, Disneyland remains an isolated emblem of white American ideals.
As a native of Orange County, California, I am no stranger to Disneyland. I grew up in Santa Ana, a mere 7.6 miles south of Anaheim. Despite the proximity of my family to the Happiest Place on Earth, our trips to Disneyland were infrequent; it was an expensive luxury that my family could not afford. My parents, who wed while still in college, lived with my grandparents in order to save money. The living arrangements were less than ideal, with 8 people squeezing in a modest two bedroom, one bathroom house. My two aunts and their children lived across the street and came over every day, making the house seem even smaller. Occasionally, however, my family managed to take a trip to Disneyland. Needless to say, it was a big family event. In the typical style of a Hispanic family, we went as an entire group: my aunts, uncles, and cousins piled into three cars to transport all 14 of us from 1044 West Pine Street down the 5 freeway, to Anaheim at 8 am. We stayed all day, to get our money’s worth. We packed a red cooler of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, chips and juice boxes to avoid the high cost of food inside the park; the kids munched on the sandwiches in the back of my aunt’s red Dodge minivan, blissfully unaware of the reality that while other families could afford to eat inside the park, we could not. Disneyland was a treat that came once a year, a luxurious family event, enjoyable despite the frustrations of taking 7 children to an amusement park.
As I advanced into junior high school, my family became more affluent. We moved out of my grandparent’s house to a condo on the other side of Santa Ana. As we entered the upper-middle class, my parents surprised my younger brother and me with annual passes to Disneyland. Gone were the days of Disneyland as an annual all-day event; it was now a leisure activity. Several of my friends at the private, Christian academy I attended also had annual passes, and Disneyland became a place where we could hang out on Friday nights, when the park was empty and the lines no more than 15 minutes long. The Magic Kingdom became our adolescent hang out spot, where our parents didn’t have to worry about us and we could gossip about which couples were holding hands and kissing on the Haunted Mansion, all while eating popcorn and watching the fireworks that lit up the sky promptly at 9:30 p.m.
As the affluence that funded a leisurely experience of Disneyland subsided, my family moved inland to the city of Riverside, 41.1 miles east of Anaheim. We moved into one of the new Richmond American tract homes and became part of the California housing boom. Since the new mortgage laid claim to my parent’s finances, luxuries such as the Disneyland annual pass became a thing of the past. The annual trip to Disneyland returned, as did any attempt to save money and cut expenses. Consequently, I found myself purchasing tickets to Disneyland for my mother, grandmother, two uncles and myself on a ticket scalping website. They were $20 cheaper than the regular price, and the seedy scalping website required us to pick up our tickets at the Days Inn Hotel on Ball Road, around the corner from Disneyland. As we turned on Ball Road in my uncle’s black Honda Civic, we called Peter, the contact provided by the website. The ticket pick-up resembled a drug run; Peter was as furtive and mysterious as a member of a major cartel. “Pull up to the Days Inn and wait for me at the front,” he barked over the phone. “I’m on the second floor. Wait for me in the lobby. If anyone asks, tell them you’re here for Peter.” Five minutes later Peter came into the cramped, dimly lit lobby and handed my uncle an envelope with our tickets. “Are you sure that’s not cocaine?” my mother joked. As we sat in the parking lot of the Days Inn, we laughed at the complications of taking a 70-year-old woman to Disneyland.
Our experience with Peter at the Days Inn on Ball Road is a far cry from the middle-class white-America represented on Main Street and inside the park; it reflects the changing demographics of the city of Anaheim since the park’s opening in 1955. Anaheim, once hailed as a beacon of Orange County’s suburban growth by the Stanford Research Institute, is now known as “Anacrime” to local residents. According to the City of Anaheim and the Chamber of Commerce, the former agricultural town of 30,000 is now an urban center that is home to over 343,000 residents, in addition to 20 million visiting tourists annually. The Anaheim Union School district reports show that the city’s schools are now 62% Hispanic and 52% of students in the district receive federal assistance for free lunch. These new socioeconomic and racial demographics envelope Disneyland in an urban center composed of ethnic minorities and poverty-stricken youth. This shift in demographics is evident in the city’s top ten private employers: according to the Anaheim Chamber of Commerce, Walt Disney Resort is the top employer, followed by Kaiser, AT&T, and Northgate Gonzalez supermarkets, one of the largest Mexican supermarket chains in the country.[1] The three Northgate Market locations in Anaheim, where customers speak Spanish and shop for traditional Mexican dishes such as menudo, Jarritos soda drinks, and pan dulce, are a far cry from the cone shop and vendor stands on Main Street inside Disneyland; shoppers at Northgate are more likely to work at Disneyland as maids or janitors than to enjoy the thrills of Space Mountain, Indiana Jones, or Pirates of the Caribbean.
The worlds of Disneyland-Tomorrowland, Fantasyland, Adventureland, Frontierland, Main Street, Critter Country, and Toontown-are a space of nostalgia in the midst of an ethnic urban center. The rural, agricultural suburb of Anaheim now faces issues of crime and gang violence. A recent article from the Orange County Register shows Anaheim with the second highest crime rate in the county behind Santa Ana; the city also suffers from gang violence. Until recent gang injunctions, gangs such as the Boys from the Hood ravaged neighborhoods and engaged in over 200 crimes, including, murder, rape, and petty theft.[2] In the midst of this city is the Happiest Place on Earth, a tourist attraction for millions. This hardly seems like the environment sought out by Walt Disney and the Stanford Research Institute as the ideal location for a family theme park.
Despite the changes taking place in Anaheim, Disneyland largely overshadows the city and its problems. Driving through the streets of Anaheim on any given night, you forget the run-down houses or the small, gang infested corners of the city. All that is visible is the Disneyland resort: the magenta glow of Sleeping Beauty’s Castle, the Disneyland Hotel, the shimmering lights of the Ferris Wheel and the Soaring Over California rollercoaster of Disney’s California Adventure loom over the city, creating its skyline. The towering lights of Disneyland Resort dominate the landscape; they outshine the modest homes, the Days Inn, the Northgate Markets and Ponderosa Park, home to the Boys from the Hood gang. The serene, ethereal glow of the resort captures the imagination. As fireworks blaze in the night sky-gold, emerald, sapphire, and amethyst sparks all exploding in the air-the iconic castle becomes the center of the city. Shooting stars burst into the air from behind the castle, sparkling, dancing their way down from the clouds, and the city subsides to make room for the Magic Kingdom.
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