American Icons: The Disney Parks
Studio 360 with Kurt Andersen
PRX
4.6 • 675 Ratings
🗓️ 30 November 2017
⏱️ 50 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Generations of Americans have grown up with Walt Disney shaping their imaginations. In 1955, Disney mixed up some fairy tales, a few historical facts, and a dream of the future to create an alternate universe. Not just a place for fun, but a scale model of a perfect world. “Everything that you could imagine is there,” says one young visitor. “It's like living in a fantasy book.” And not just for kids: one-third of Walt Disney World’s visitors are adults who go without children. Visiting the parks, according to actor Tom Hanks, is like a pilgrimage—the pursuit of happiness turned into a religion.
Futurist Cory Doctorow explains the genius of Disney World, while novelist Carl Hiaasen even hates the water there. Kurt tours Disneyland with a second-generation “imagineer” whose dead mother haunts the Haunted Mansion. We’ll meet a former Snow White and the man who married Prince Charming—Disney, he says, is “the gayest place on Earth. It’s where happy lives.”
(Originally aired October 18, 2013)
Special thanks to Julia Lowrie Henderson, Shannon Geis, Alex Gallafent, Nic Sammond, Steve Watts, Angela Bliss, Todd Heiden, Shannon Swanson, Katie Cooper, Nick White, Marie Fabian, Posey Gruener, Jason Margolis, Chris DeAngelis, Jenelle Pifer, Debi Ghose, Maneesh Agrawala, and Tony DeRose.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is Studio 360's American Icons. |
| 0:09.8 | I'm Kurt Anderson. |
| 0:14.0 | I'm standing on a main street in the middle of America at the dawn of the 20th century. |
| 0:20.6 | It's early morning. |
| 0:22.7 | There are shopkeepers in pinstripes and straw boaters. |
| 0:25.8 | They're smiling as they open up their shops. |
| 0:28.7 | Jewelbox storefronts sparkle in the sunshine. |
| 0:32.2 | This is Main Street, USA. |
| 0:34.2 | It's not just some ye old shopping mall. It's a dream version of an American small town. |
| 0:41.6 | It's perfect. Like an old movie come to life. And I'm the star. |
| 0:49.5 | Then I turn around. And up the street, I see a mob of real people. |
| 0:55.1 | People in jeans and t-shirts and mouse ears. |
| 0:58.7 | And at the stroke of 10... |
| 1:04.5 | Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, welcome to Disneyland. |
| 1:11.0 | Okay, here we go. |
| 1:16.7 | Hello there. |
| 1:17.7 | This is Devin Viola. |
| 1:19.1 | I've been with the park for seven years now. |
| 1:20.9 | She's a tour guy. |
| 1:22.0 | Disneyland lives on almost as a living storybook to Walt's life and his dreams. |
| 1:27.2 | Walt Disney tried to recreate his happiest childhood memories right here. |
| 1:31.5 | So this is Town Square on Main Street, USA. |
... |
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