Disney Parks and the Construction of American Identity : Tourism, Performance, Anxiety - Jennifer A. Kokai

Disney Parks and the Construction of American Identity

Tourism, Performance, Anxiety

By: Jennifer A. Kokai, Tom Robson

Hardcover | 15 September 2024

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Writing in a time of heightened political anxiety-and when accusations of nationalism, authoritarianism, and proto-fascism have increasingly divided Americans into factions- the authors use their influential performance studies-based 'tourist as actor' framework to unpack the ways that Disney parks and their guests co-create performance of implicit Americanness in the 21st century. This book argues that the roles that guests choose to perform-- accepting, declining, negotiating, or overwriting scripts offered to them by the Disney theme park experience-- ultimately reveals much about the nature of the contemporary United States. Focusing primarily on Walt Disney World in Florida, and using case studies on music, geography and ecology, sports, families, and politics, these chapters illuminate the always complicated and often contradictory presentations and performances of America within Disney parks in the deeply contested twenty-first century.

Industry Reviews

"Jennifer A. Kokai and Tom Robson's Disney Parks and the Construction of American Identity: Tourism, Performance, Anxiety is a must-read for anyone interested in the serious study of Disney's theme parks. Astutely weaving together moments of lived personal experience with a range of academic approaches and concepts, the book offers a timely and essential analysis of the ongoing political, social and cultural tensions being played out within the spaces of Walt Disney World."

--Rebecca Williams, University of South Wales

"Jennifer Kokai and Tom Robson once again provide seminal work on Disney theme parks, providing an in-depth study on what they mean to its audiences, and to US society at large. It is without a doubt the book on the parks we need right now, and will provide fertile ground for scholarship for decades to come."

--Sabrina Mittermeier, University of Kassel, author of "A Cultural History of the Disneyland Theme Parks"

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