From the World’s Fair to Disneyland: Pavilions as Temples

This paper explores the visual culture of recreated temple structures in the entertainment settings of international exhibitions and Disneyland. It examines the material and conceptual construction of temple mythology in world’s fairs and amusement parks through the reproduction – or rather, simulation – of Egyptian, Mayan, Aztec, Cambodian and Hindu structures. Disneyland in southern California has been interpreted as the hybrid descendent of the world’s fairs and colonial expositions, the result of continuities and ruptures within the exhibitionary and entertainment traditions of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Some of the architecture in the Adventureland section of the park can be likened to the pavilions of the colonies in French and British expositions, especially those from the late nineteenth century through to 1939. The creators of the Temple of the Forbidden Eye in Disneyland’s Indiana Jones Adventure ride from 1995 have claimed they were directly inspired by images of temples published in National Geographic magazines of the 1930s. A skim through these attributed sources of information turns up period photographs from world’s fair temple-pavilions. The paper posits that the Disney temple accordingly exists as a simulacrum: a copy for which there is no original. The author nonetheless traces its overlooked formal and conceptual precedents in American, French and British reproductions of Aztec and Mayan temples and palaces, ancient Egyptian temples, and the Cambodian Angkor Wat temple compound. In the colonial villages of expositions, the pavilions of Mexico, Egypt and Indochina were rendered as regional temples with archaeological displays inside them. In response, this paper addresses the question: what is a pavilion when it takes the form of a temple? Opened in 1955, Disneyland in southern California has been interpreted as the hybrid descendent of world’s fairs. It is the result of continuities and ruptures within the exhibitionary and entertainment traditions of colonial expositions and amusement parks in the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries (Weinstein, 1992; Celik and Kinney, 1990; Urry, 2002). In the Disneyland setting, Frontierland, Adventureland and Tomorrowland radiate from the Sleeping Beauty Castle nucleus. It is similar to the segmentation of the early colonial expositions, where sections devoted to technology and progress contrasted with the pavilions of the empire’s colonies in the anthropological sections. Some scholars make the connections between specific expositions and the layout of Disney parks explicit. For Elting Morison, writing on the social, political, and intellectual history of the United States, a Disney theme park is an ‘arresting mutation in [a] long sequence.thought of by its creators as a continuing or permanent world’s fair’ (p.73). Scholar of world’s fairs Tony Bennett (2004) points out the function of past international exhibitions as places to see and be seen, allowing visitors to internalise the linear trajectory between savagery and civilisation. But Disney takes this line and gives it another dimension in the name of fantasy. Disneyland architecture in Adventureland echoes the pavilion building at expositions but imbues it with a plot. With an emphasis on narration and fantasy, Disneyland invites visitors to step into stories, so that the guests are made to feel as though they are in a cinematic experience, taking part as ‘actors in a film that will only be made in their minds’ (Thomas, 1995, p.16). In studies linking world’s fairs to Disneyland (Steiner, 1998; Francaviglia, 1999), scholars seldom give an extended analysis of one park’s features or specific examples. Taking a different approach, this paper will examine a particular ride at Disneyland, called the Indiana Jones Adventure: Temple of the Forbidden Eye, built in 1995 and situated within the Adventureland zone. The ride’s site is that of a simulated archaeological dig in the fictional area of Lost Delta, India. The year is 1935, and Indy has arranged for tourists (i.e., visitors to Disneyland) to enter the temple and partake of three gifts offered by the god Mara: a drink from the fountain of youth, glittering gold, or eternal knowledge. However, visitors must not look into the eyes of the ‘double-crossing deity lest they take a detour to doom,’ as the ride’s 1930s-styled news reel cautions along with ride safety information prior to embarkation on Jeep transport vehicles. But of course the visitors do, and an animatronic Indiana Jones must come to their aid to rescue them from fiery pits, snakes, and finally a gigantic rolling boulder. The queue for the ride is a marvel and entices visitors to inch along patiently as they wait hours just to experience the three minutes and twenty seconds of the ride’s duration. The line area includes extraordinary and interactive details of artefact and architecture. But taking one ride in miniature proves to be too big a task to study, particularly one with such strong connections to a movie franchise. Taking this into account, it is hoped the reader will understand the decision here to forgo any mention of the films, and to focus instead on the constructed temple facade that serves as the