Imagineering Theory: The Frontierland Problem

BREAKING NEWS: Moana is fantastic. Go see it.

We Disneyland fans often enjoy discussing the Tomorrowland Problem—i.e., how do you go about portraying “the future” in an age when technology progresses as quickly as it does in this day and age? What you don't hear about much is the Frontierland Problem, which I will identify in a moment. To the best of my knowledge, this phrase doesn't even exist as a widely recognized term for a phenomenon that most guests may not think about, or want to.

The Frontierland Problem, in brief, is this: How do you depict a superficially exciting but very ugly phase in American history in a theme park setting, without either whitewashing the nasty parts or bumming out your guests? It's a problem that might not have arisen had Disneyland been built in any decade other than the 1950s, when white American machismo (of a clean-cut variety that seems paradoxical to modern eyes) was perhaps the dominant value in American pop culture. Nowhere was this better exemplified than in the Western genre of film and television, which had its absolute heyday in the Fifties. In any other decade, Walt Disney—or at least his advisors—might have deemed the Frontierland concept not nearly marketable enough for mainstream audiences, and chosen a different theme for this largest of the themed lands, or at least diminished the “American history” presence in favor of nature or modern-day America* or something else related.

Might have. It is by no means certain. But it is well worth looking at all the small ways in which the sights to see in Frontierland have been tweaked over the years, as the guest base has grown more diverse and less forgiving of the whitewashed, white-centric Old West narrative. The Indian attack was removed from the backstory of the Burning Cabin and the Indian War Canoes were retooled into the Davy Crockett Explorer Canoes,** leaving only allied tribes among Frontierland's Native population. The Golden Horseshoe's long-running show, featuring mild burlesque elements, came to an end. Gunplay was progressively downplayed. It's safe to say that mainstream America no longer considers Westward Expansion a period of unalloyed heroism on the part of white settlers and the U.S. Cavalry.

And that leaves both Management and Imagineering in a bit of a fix. What do you do when the entire theme of an important land has gone out of fashion? For the time being, the answer seems to be “Put it off for another day.” Tomorrowland is suffering from a lack of solid direction, but Frontierland is suffering from neglect, to the extent that large chunks of its real estate were deemed expendable in order to make way for Star Wars. The closest thing to a new permanent attraction it has received in over twenty years is the out-of-place Pirates' Lair overlay of Tom Sawyer Island. Granted, adding attractions to a land whose atmosphere relies on a sense of wide openness is automatically tricky business, but it's no wonder Frontierland's overall popularity has been declining when it never has anything new to say, when its former messages have become unpalatable but it has nothing meaningful to replace them with.

So what can they do? Well, in some respects the experiments are already being performed.

Big Thunder Mountain Railroad Solution: It was never made very obvious on the ride itself, but the backstory of Big Thunder Mountain used to be that the mine encroached on sacred Indian land and the Native spirits retaliated by possessing the mine trains (making them go out of control) and finally triggering an earthquake to collapse the tunnels. Not only was this offensive, but the cliché of “Indian burial ground” as a source of supernatural mischief is pretty well tired out by now. In any case, a renovation of the ride a couple years ago removed the earthquake element and the climax now centers on a dynamite accident.

This is functionally the same line of thinking that had the Burning Cabin changed from the aftermath of a hostile Indian attack to a scene of various accidents on the part of the settlers (before someone realized there was no reason it had to be on fire at all). The goal is to stop depicting Indians—by any measure the victims of Westward Expansion—as a threat. This goal has been achieved throughout Frontierland, but at the expense of a full palette of representation for Native peoples, and also at the expense of historical honesty. So it's not by any means a complete solution.

The Princess and the Frog Solution: Coming not from the realm of theme parks but from Feature Animation, this solution involves acknowledging the ugly facets of history without dwelling on them. The Princess and the Frog is primarily a story about a girl overcoming a magical curse and achieving her lifelong dream, but because it takes place in the American South in the 1920s and the girl in question is black, it would have been irresponsible to completely gloss over the issue of racism. And the film does not simply gloss it over. It's there. If you're the least bit aware, you cannot fail to realize that Tiana is being discriminated against because of her race (and sex), and that the social inequality which Dr. Facilier rages against falls along racial lines. It's just not the focus of the film, because that would be a gigantic bring-down.

Frontierland, thus far, has not attempted this sort of compromise, with historical nastiness alluded to in an honest way but not given center stage. But theoretically it could.

Spoof Solution: By all means, depict traditional Old West conflicts, but play everything for laughs. Indians attack settlers, but they only ever tie them up and dump garbage on their heads. Bandits and bank robbers are clumsy idiots, and so are bankers and sheriffs and cavalrymen. Guns jam, or else the bullets miss their targets and ricochet in amusing ways.

We get hints of this with some of the live entertainment in Frontierland, such as the Laughingstock Co., but the land as a whole has not gone the spoof route. And honestly, it probably shouldn't. But I have an idea of my own...

The Disneyland Dilettante Solution: One of my earliest posts on this blog discussed the Tomorrowland Problem and proposed a solution using the premise of a fantastic, nebulously defined future setting rather than a purportedly realistic near-future. I think a similar approach might help revitalize Frontierland for the current generation of guests.

This version of Frontierland is neither naively whitewashed like the Frontierland of the Fifties and Sixties, nor a gruesomely realistic historical recreation that has no business in a place like Disneyland, nor yet a tepid deferment of the questions raised by the very concept of an Old West setting in a theme park. Instead, I envision Frontierland as a hypothetical town where people got it right. In this little pocket of the frontier, the settlers act in good faith, the Indians are hospitable but cautious, the wealthy are moderate in the management of their wealth, and the demands of frontier living bring out the best in people more often than the worst.

However, Frontierland is not ignorant of the horrible things happening elsewhere in the West. They have telegraphs and newspapers and cameras, and newcomers to town bring stories of broken treaties, desperate criminals, and destruction of natural beauty in the name of profit and “progress.” This is where the Princess and the Frog approach comes in—the negatives are acknowledged because the people here are trying to avoid them.

Is it extremely idealistic in itself? Of course. That's sort of the point. As a culture, we have tried taking the view that everything is fine as long as everyone does what they're supposed to (what I see as the Baby Boomer zeitgeist), and we have tried taking the view that everything is terrible and there's nothing anyone can do about it (Generation X). Why not try taking the view that things are bad—sometimes really bad, sometimes a lot of things—but there is a better way available to us if we choose to take it (Millennial)?

And like my Tomorrowland idea, this path for Frontierland allows most of the existing attractions to stay pretty much as they are. This is something that would emerge in the ground-level details and the narration of attractions such as the Mark Twain and Disneyland Railroad. For the same reason, it still leaves room for growth, plussing, and playing around with different forms of content. If they ever revive the marvelous phenomenon that was Legends of Frontierland, that would be a perfect platform for presenting and developing this premise.

There is at least one potential difficulty, and it's not a trivial one: The actual Westward Expansion was obviously nothing like this. By presenting it as if it were, even in a limited area, it raises all kinds of questions. Are we in an alternate timeline? Are we to understand that this town was eventually swamped by the brutality and exploitation that held sway elsewhere in the West? Can we be more optimistic and suppose that over time, the townsfolk willingly drifted away to other communities and planted the seeds that eventually became various progressive movements in later decades? There needn't be a “right” answer—I'm a big fan of letting theme park environments inspire guests to imagine their own stories—but these are not comfortable questions, and merely thinking about them might prove distracting.

So the Frontierland Problem remains, in no small part because it is so very political in nature. Most everyone agrees upon what's wrong with Tomorrowland. Even when it does come up, not everyone agrees that there even is a problem with Frontierland, much less what the solution should be. But we owe it to ourselves to think about it.

* As it was, Circarama, later CircleVision 360, addressed this topic.

** And moved to Bear/Critter Country.