ABSTRACT
The domestication of fantasy in visual consumption is inseparable from centralized structures of economic power. Just as the earlier power of the state illuminated public space – the streets – by artificial lamplight, so the economic power of CBS, Sony, and the Disney Company illuminates private space at home by electronic images. While Walt Disney won fame as a founder of Hollywood's animation industry, his real genius was to transform an old form of collective entertainment – the amusement park – into a landscape of power. All his life Disney wanted to create his own amusement park. 'The idea of Disneyland is a simple one. It will be a place for people to find happiness and knowledge', Disney said. That Disneyland significantly departed from the dominant fantasy landscape of the time was dramatized when Disney failed to arouse enthusiasm in a convention of amusement park owners that previewed plans for the park in 1953.
