Theme Park (Reaktion Books - Objekt)

274 Pages·2008·6.08 MB·English

by  Scott A. Lukas

Theme Park Scott A. Lukas
Objekt series

Theme Park
Objekt
Titles in the Objektseries explore a range of types – buildings, products,
artefacts – that have captured the imagination of modernist designers,
makers and theorists. The objects selected for the series are by no means
all modern inventions, but they have in common the fact that they
acquired a particular significance in the last 100 years.
In the same series
Factory
Gillian Darley
Aircraft
David Pascoe
Dam
Trevor Turpin
Motorcycle
Steven E. Alford & Suzanne Ferriss
Bridge
Peter Bishop
School
Catherine Burke & Ian Grosvenor
Theme Park
Scott A. Lukas
REAKTION BOOKS
Published by Reaktion Books Ltd
33 Great Sutton Street
London EC1V 0DX, UK
www.reaktionbooks.co.uk
First published 2008
Copyright ©Scott A. Lukas 2008
All rights reserved
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or
transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publishers.
Printed and bound in China
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Lukas, Scott A., 1968-
Theme park. –(Objekt)
1. Amusement parks 2. Amusement parks –Design and construction
I. Title
712.5
ISBN-13: 978 1 86189 394 9
Contents
Preface 7
1 Theme Park as Oasis 21
2 Theme Park as Land 65
3 Theme Park as Machine 97
4 Theme Park as Show 134
5 Theme Park as Brand 172
6 Theme Park as Text 212
References 246
Select Bibliography 260
Acknowledgements 262
Photo Acknowledgements 263
Index 265
Giant Ferris wheel, Yokohama Bay, Japan.
Preface
When you are inside a theme park, while you are watching one of
its shows or spinning aboard one of its rides, you are thinking
about the theme park, not about your humdrum life, relationship
problems or issues with the boss at work. The whole idea of going
to the theme park is that you can escape the problems of your
everyday life and instead play in a virtual reality in which those
problems are washed away and replaced with a world of immer-
sion, joy, ecstasy and excitement. Since the proto-theme parks of
Coney Island in the early 1900s people have been drawn to spaces
that challenge everyday life, that overturn it and replace it, if only
for a day. Today’s theme park – whether a Disney or Universal
theme park or a lifestyle- or boutique-themed space in Las Vegas
– looks nothing like these early forms, yet it maintains something
of the spirit of amusement parks like Coney Island, especially as it
still provides people with an important outlet and diversion in an
increasingly uprooted world.
Whether we love them or hate them, theme parks are increas-
ingly ubiquitous throughout the world. Theme parks have wrongly
been seen by many as superficial forms of culture – as places
where people go to do things that don’t matter much in the grand
scheme of things and thus which amount to inconsequential
spaces. In fact theme parks represent extraordinary spatial and
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social forms, they offer some of the most basic needs, reflect deep
and powerful emotions and cognitive modes, and present some of
the most telling and controversial representations of the world.
Unlike cinema and theatre, in which audience members passively
watch the action on the screen or stage, and unlike the narratives
of television and books, which are static, the theme park uses the
immersion of the individual inside an unfolding and evolving
drama as the basis of its unique form. The theme park, as it
expands beyond its proper site – as an enclosed space that contains
thrill rides, shows, restaurants and food, and other attractions that
are all tied to thematic landscapes that reflect our most popular
fantasies – becomes a fully-fledged social and architectural form
that continues to impact more and more people throughout the
world, even if they do not realize it.
This book grows from my interest in understanding the contem -
porary theme park and the ways in which it emerged as a
persuasive architectural and entertainment form. Since an early age
I have been fascinated by theme parks. I visited them with friends
and family as a child, and later in life I worked as an employee
trainer at a major theme park. My interest in this form is both
personal and academic. One of my prevailing concerns with the
theme park is the difficulty of defining it. As much as it would seem
that such a popular form of entertainment should be definable, I
shall attempt to illustrate that the theme park often eludes our
attempts to understand it. When you are walking in a theme park
or quasi-theme park, you may hear claims that it is or is not a theme
park, and may commonly hear journalists and critics referring to
a space – however un-theme park it actually is – as a theme park.
Though the word ‘theme park’ is used freely in everyday conver-
sations, we may be referring to an amusement park, a high-tech
museum or a shopping centre, and this attests to the way in which
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