Disneyland As A Rhetorical Construct

Disneyland, the world’s first family-oriented theme park and an American cultural icon, has attracted an almost inexhaustible attention to its unrivalled success both commercially and culturally. Although it is primarily a business targeted at making profits, researchers have endowed it with great cultural signification. This paper, by case-studying the first Disneyland built in the1950s, attempts to analyze how an entertainment business managed to acquire the status as a cultural symbol from the perspective of rhetoric, hoping to provide a business model of great rhetorical capacity for interested parties. Unlike other studies about the park, this paper maintains that Disneyland should be viewed as a statement about American traditional values, and this statement itself was constructed and promoted as a response to the American social contradictions in the1950s. In other words, the tremendous success of Disneyland could be largely attributed to its adaptation to the specific rhetorical situation in the1950s.Rhetoric, as the art and practice of persuasion through symbolic means, was brought into full play in Walt’s construction and promotion of Disneyland. Both the internal design and external promotion of the park were imbued with a rhetorical touch with the employment of various rhetorical strategies, such as the appeal to ethos, pathos and logos, the subtle manipulation of "facts", identification with the audience, self-effacement and the like. Even Walt’s skillful use of and response to the social contradiction of American1950s could be simply seen as an effective means to his prevailing end of attracting audience to the park. Rhetoric, as an indispensable element in Walt’s construction of the statement about American traditional values, deserves close study and sufficient attention. And Disneyland’s rhetorical orientation offers us lessons to learn and a most potent recipe for success in turning a business of entertainment into a cultural establishment.