December 3, 2005
Performativity of Nature
This book illuminates the performative aspects of nature, thereby, making it intriguing. Instead of solely focusing on the representation of culture through the commercialization of space, this book explores nature's place in popular culture. In other words, it explores how nature is represented, how one experiences nature at Sea World, and how nature is mapped onto the place of Sea World and its visitors/performers. I also found this book interesting, because embedded in its thesis or objective, remains the exploration of how a space/place is experienced, only this book moves nature to the forefront. This book is also helpful when looking at Casey's article dealing with the space/place relation and self.
It is important to note, however, Sea World's or the park's architectural history and the cultural implications of this. The theme park's predecessors include the circus, carnival, industrial expositions and world's fairs. Coney Island and other urban resorts mentioned in the text are noted as being "inexpensive, widely popular gathering places for European immigrants, working people, and youth, providing a shared experience of the freedoms of the industrial city and offering connections to the new meanings of culture of consumption (20). Therefore, it would seem as if this were a "space of neutralization" or "come-one-come all" type of atmosphere, a guarantee of an all-encompassing cultural experience. It is noted, however, that this is not quite the case. This public place to "learn and play" in fact "carefully connected leisure to the basic lessons of white superiority and American imperialism" (20). The question then becomes, well, who is privileged to have leisure time or to separate the actions of "learning" and "playing". I find that now these parks take on an economic form of segregation, which is racially connected. The current rates of Sea World and other parks are extremely high, so, who can really afford them or to take the time away from work to take a trip there? Who can afford this "oceanarium's" discourse of education? This is not to suggest that others outside of the cultural mainstream do not visit theme parks or are all "economically disadvantaged", but raises the issue of who the parks genuinely cater to. Finally, I assert that the only place where others, despite economic, cultural, racial, etc. differences seem to connect or encompass individuals of various backgrounds in urban settings, is the space of public transportation. For New York that means... You guessed it-the subway!
Posted by Michelle Brown at 4:21 AM
November 30, 2005
Sea World: BKG's bullet points
Posted by BKG at 12:02 PM
November 29, 2005
Sea World the Game!
You too can try to understand intimately the workings of Sea World with this computer game. I know you want to put this on your Christmas list! Design and run Sea World. Go for it.
http://pc.ign.com/objects/726/726505.html
Posted by Lisa Reinke at 12:43 AM
November 28, 2005
ABC Easy As 12Spend
Posted by Siobhan Robinson at 10:25 AM
November 27, 2005
The Bilbao Effect
Looking at the larger relation between Sea World and San Diego, I was fascinated by Susan Davis’ quick mention that “San Diego has developed tourism by inventing resorts, attractions, and cultural images for visitors” (p. 41). Sea World is just another addition to a fabricated city that has been shaped, reshaped and formatted to become a tourist attraction. The city has tried to widen the class, race, age and origin of its visitors by offering “natural” sites that should be of interest to many. Because it is a fabricated site, Sea World stands in sharp contrast with “the reality [San Diego’s] residents experience, a daily reality of polluted air, homeless people living in canyons, beaches closed due to sewage contamination, bitter fights over open space and planning issues, toxic hot spots in the harbor, and far-flung suburbs linked by clogged freeways” (p. 48).
Davis’ demonstration immediately reminded me of what is now called the “Bilbao effect”, after the North-Eastern Spanish city of Bilbao, which has been trying to swap its rags of a sad, ugly and industrial city not worth any mention in guidebooks, into a top-destination for signature contemporary art. The magic word that helped the transition is known as Guggenheim Museum, and the starchitect of this jewel is no other than Frank Gehry. Just as San Diego sold its soul to Sea World in order to become a destination to start with, Bilbao is redefining itself in a similar Faustian way: Sea World is a for-profit theme park that claims to be environment-friendly, school-oriented, and open to all layers of the population, while the Guggenheim, Bilbao’s strange bedfellow, pretends to share art with the masses even in the far-flung corners of Basque land, while open a museum in which the gift shop looks bigger than the gallery, a museum which has not only branded its famous name, curvy architecture and provocative exhibits, but which has also re-branded the city of Bilbao as “Guggenheim territory”: “The marketing, televisual, and celebrity strategies that defined Sea World as a national commodity also helped promote it as a place for San Diego residents… Set in the midst of this playground, Sea World heralded the city’s modern future,” writes Davis (60).
It is interesting to note how in both cases, a highly commercial corporation in the guise of a non-profit enterprise in order to become even more profitable by expanding its brand name and slowly overtaking the city itself. Old San Diego doesn’t become new San Diego, but melts into Sea World, while Bilbao will soon redesign all street signs in order to direct visitors come from all over to one singe destination: the G-Temple.
The subtle perversity of the overtake lies in the blurring of the lines between for- and non-profit, in the creation of institutions that act as fronts: a scientific research center, an educational endeavor and a program of infotainment for Sea World; the display of art, musical performances within the museum, the philanthropic message of the Guggenheim family for Bilbao.
In both cases, there is also a clear objective of reaching out to the masses, of teaching to the largest numbers: Thanks to Sea World, exotic nature become at hand’s reach, sea life is visible, understandable, beautiful. Thanks to the Guggenheim, modern art is accessible, easy to admire (thank God for the cafeteria, the couches and the sunny patio), kids-friendly and for all tastes (exhibiting motorbikes and Armani suits is more attractive than Rothko and Newman).
A number of distressed cities are begging the Guggenheim foundation to open a museum in their premises (but only designed by a signature architect, of course). Is this the beginning of a pattern in contemporary tourism? It will be interesting to follow the fate of Bilbao and find case-studies of cities-turned-corporate-tourism that have failed. Here is one: Euro-Disney, a Disney theme park in the Paris-suburb of Marne-la-Vallée, opened in 1992 with the hope of putting this unknown town on the map. Since then, profits have plummeted, visitors come only once and Mickey Mouse is weeping.
Posted by Brigitte Sion at 10:34 PM
Been there, done that, don't care
I remember Sea World…well sort of. I visited the theme park when I was 16.
If it weren’t for the displays and attractions that have nothing do with marine life, I would have been bored out of my mind. “Sea World’s customers should feel simultaneously entertained and relaxed and unhurried” (77) which I did, with the help of Coco Loco Arcade and Games and a double scoop of vanilla ice-cream topped off with gooey strawberries on a waffle cone. I took advantage of the rides, which weren’t too exciting, and the only show I remember is the Shamu night show (forgot the name), which featured extravagant lighting and waterworks. I remember this show not because of Shamu, but because I was sitting in the first couple of rows and I got wet.
Shamu was the reason I wanted to go to Sea World. The idea of a friendly killer whale fascinated me. Like Davis states, Sea World is joined to the zoo and circus tradition of spectacularizing animals, animals which in this case are visible and touchable (97). These animals are usually invisible to the human eye, and this lack of interaction is why Sea World is so alluring. Not only can one see them , but these sea animals are able to acknowledge your presence by waving at you, blowing you kisses, and giving high-fives.
The minute I stepped into the park, though, my interest in Shamu disappeared. Maybe because I felt that I had already seen him, that I had already experienced him. Sea World was Shamu. He was everywhere, from advertisements on the walls to plastic lemonade cups--but this was six years ago.
The problem with Susan Davis’ research on Sea World is her initial and continued dislike for the park. She knew nothing of whales and dolphins, so she had to “learn” to be interested in them (9). It seems that a lot of the research was forced to prove her claims of a Sea World that was an incoherent space interested mainly in making profit instead of making sense. Sea World might be be boring, greedy, and confusing, but apparently many people don’t think so or don’t care--I don't care.
Posted by Alma Guzman at 9:52 PM
The sham known as Shamu
In Spectacular Nature: Corporate Culture and the Sea World Experience, Susan G. Davis undertakes the analysis of a corporately structured display and experience of nature.
The ethical issues surrounding animals and performance are highly contradictory and complex. In analyzing animal performances as they appear in Sea World, it is difficult to avoid thinking of them in relation to their historical predecessors of circuses, zoos, world’s fairs, and amusement parks along with their freak shows. In this context, the ethics surrounding the idea of wild animals being held captive, “tamed” and taught to perform on command for corporate profit, appear highly problematic. On the other hand, the narrative put forth by Anheuser-Busch, corporate owners and producers of the marine park, remains extremely seductive. There is something very powerful about the idea of a closeness, connection and potential communication between species, however constructed and illusory it may be. Despite the park’s pseudo-scientific approach to marine life, the superficiality of its performances, and the feel-good delusion of caring produced, there is something very appealing about the sheer beauty and physicality of the orcas that make Sea World hard to resist even in light of moral dilemmas. What Sea World offers is a rare opportunity of an up-close but safe encounter with the animals.
This Saturday, I took my son to see the Prospect Park Zoo. Although, managed by the Wildlife Conservation Society with an ostensibly more refined scientific pedigree than Anheuser-Busch, the tiny zoo utilizes much of the same narrative techniques to display nature as the large corporation. Informational panels proclaim: “Flamingos barely notice the tracking device used to track” their movement patterns and “We encourage our baboons to be themselves” referring to the fact that they are messy eaters. The Prospect Park Zoo also boasts of a modest – compared to Sea World – animal show. Three times a day, animal trainers feed the sea lions but only after the animals “perform”. Trainers use sign language to make the sea lions bark, wave, dive, perform flipper-stands after which the animals are rewarded with the fish that, were they free, they would be able to hunt on their own. Here too, the sea lions are humanized. There is clear if one-sided communication: the sea lions are given commands, which they promptly obey. Through performed tricks like waving or giving their trainers “five” the sea lions seem to make contact, they are “in communion” with humans. Contact or interspecies closeness is achieved through training and consequent subordination of one species by the other.
Posted by Dominika Bennacer at 6:09 PM
Killer Whale Kisses: Oceanography, Pornography, Ethnography
In Spectacular Nature: Corporate Culture and the Sea World Experience, Susan Davis’s hybrid methodology employs participant observation, textual analysis of performance and architecture as text, with reports of interview data and her synthesis of the corporate mind-set and goals based on this data.
But who in fact is her subject? When engaged in participant observation, I believe it is the audience. Her attendance at these spectacles allows her to analyze superficially as texts. Her attempt to make a textual analysis into a discursive analysis leads her to delve into the history of similar spectacles in the West and the history of the transcendentalist ideal of nature. However, I do not see convincing evidence that actual audience members experience the park in these terms –although they might.
As she is also an audience member, her own experience of the park is, in fact, a legitimate embodied one, but is this sample of one generalizeable data? Is she similar to the people who enjoy the spectacles that, as she states in the introduction, does not?
Furthermore, she does not evince an intimate knowledge of the challenges of producing these spectacles from experience, which might give her a more sympathetic perspective –rather she relies on second or third-hand interview data about “St. Lous,” to which she takes a critical stance.
The ethnographer’s ideal is to on some level identify and understand his/her informants from their own perspective. The subtexts of her analysis --that Sea World is a vulgarized display, drawing on the spectacular tradition of the circus side show and the zoo, in spite of its attempts to link itself to the edifying value of science and education and Western Romantic tradition of the appreciation of transcendental nature –almost makes it seem that she did not do a very good job of identifying with her subjects. It seems like she is snidely sharing an inside joke with a cynical academic audience who has the good taste to not enjoy the mass culture Sea World. However, Davis’s critique of corporate culture (perhaps unintentionally), does, in fact, share the native’s point of view. She, like the planners she interviews, are both only interested in data (although theirs is quantitative and hers is qualitative) to further their own projects, and both find the performances banal and commercialized manipulations of non-intellectual, middle-class, white consumers.
Davis explains,
“[t]o help unpack the Shamu show’s structural and ideological complexity, my analysis triangulates between performance, institutional context, and a larger cultural context. Like the performance itself, my descriptions and arguments make reference to what is said and enacted in the stadium, as well as to things done and ideas argues in the wider park and the larger world, including the world of the mass media. The Shamu shows not only take place in the institutional context of the theme park, of course, they are part of broader social and cultural discourses about many things, including animals, nature, and science.” (198)
In discursively locating what is, at times, an otherwise superficial textual analysis, Davis highlights the similarity between this Sea World shows and other commercialized mass culture genres, such as televisions shows, other theme parks, the giant electronic screens of sporting events –but not all genres. She apparently also shares many of the same taboos with the producers of Sea World.
In “Zoology, Pornography, Ethnography,” Catherine Russell brings up may of the same themes that Susan Davis does in Spectacular Nature. Davis tells us that “without ever calling up a precise history, the theme park offers its customers an implicit identification with the colonial ‘discoverers’” (98). Like Davis, Russell links the zoo to Colonial era displays of collection that express masternarratives of the domination of exotic peoples and lands. “The zoo emerged in colonial culture in tandem with ethnographic practices and even overlapped them” (Russell 123). However Russell takes this line of inquiry much farther. “As a technology, the panopticonic gaze at animals and people is founded, as Haraway suggest, on a discourse of sexuality.” (ibid 125).
“To see, after all, is not to know or possess the Other, but both pornography and ethnography embody a utopian desire to transcend and eliminate this contradiction. Both imply a mastery of vision that passes for possession and knowledge, apparently triumphing over the repression of sexuality and racial difference by bringing them into the regime of the visible. If we add zoology as the third term to this paring of ethnography and pornography, the desire for pleasure and knowledge is mapped onto a desire for control and mastery. The cage and the hunt render the limits of the gaze very literal; the killing of wild animals further introduces an element of death into the apparatus of vision that links these different cultural practices.” ( ibid 125)
Pornography, Shamu spectatorship, and ethnography are symbolic discourses of domination enacted primarily through the visual consumption of Other bodies. Russell recognizes the erotics of the National Georgraphics mode: “Pornography and ethnography converge most explicitly in the image of the bare-breasted woman that appears in so many ethnographic films. The body of the woman becomes the sire of ‘primitive sexuality,’ a sign of the uncivilized ideal and object of desire within a discourse of colonial mastery” (124). Davis sees the link between Sea World and National Geographics, does not put the appeal of bare-breasted women together with the appeal of Shamu and the dolphins.
That would be bestiality! Well think about it. There is a lot of frolicking, kissing, and licking going on between humans and humanized animals. Consider how the early manifestation of Sea world featured beautiful Sea Maidens in the exotic paradise, then their replacement and the anti-sexuality, hyper-vigilance –as Davis explains, “‘[f]amily entertainment’ means avoiding sexual references… In particular, sexual displays of the female body are out” (163). There is something disturbing to the audience about the animals wearing parts of costumes, like sunglasses (maybe because it emphasizes that the rest of them are not clothed?). The discussion from the trainer’s perspective reveals that in order to satisfy the spectators, the animals must seem human-like, seem like they enjoy performing, and yet must be seen to be safely and predictably under control.
There is something very peep-showy about this display. Long ago, in his article about animal insults, anthropologist Edmund Leach pointed out that that is more interesting, disturbing, and titillating when we insult each other with the names of animals with which we have an intimate, anthropomorphic relationship. For example, it is more insulting to say some one is a “bitch,” than a “kangaroo.” These reactions, he argues, are indicative of a taboo being breached. I would argue that the sexual taboos that Shamu and “his” pals brush up against may partly explain the popularity of the show.
The sea mammal shows (and the mammals themselves, who, let’s face it, are phalluses bursting out of pools of water), are, in fact, rife with unavoidable sexual metaphors, that the analysis, which contextualizes the genre in every other kind of discourse, from Romantic poetry to sport stadiums, does not approach. Davis reproduces viewpoint of the capitalist class that runs Sea World that she seems to criticize as crass (but with whom she likely shares a more similar class background than the mass audience they both despise) in more ways than one –first of all, in her condescending attitude towards the audience, second in her “eye of God” position of dominance as an untouchable data-harvesting researcher, and third, in reproducing not just their reported ideologies and motives, but their taboos in her reading of the Sea World project.
Posted by Pilar Rau at 5:15 PM
Reading Central Park movie tour in reference with Sea World
I personally find Davis’ approach to analyzing the Sea World useful to my project on Central Park Movie Tour.
In Spectacular Nature, Davis indicates that the ideology behind the site, to some extent, determines how the providers of recreations and organizers of the tourist sites construct the attractions. The traditional European concept of nature Davis mentions in chapter one has great influence on how the site is presented and who are the targeted visitors of such site. In other words, the inclusion, or in most cases the exclusion, of certain socio-economic groups is done at the very moment of introducing certain ideology into a site/a recreational activity.
Central Park is a site which has been advertised by numerous cultural events (such as Shakespeare in Park, and outdoor concerts), movies, and popular TV series (such as Sex and the City) over time; therefore, the organizer of the Central Park Movie Tour does not have to invest so much time and money in advertising and romanticizing the Park. Compared with the effort made in “theming” the Sea World, it is a tourist production of a much smaller scale. The accumulation of cultural events, the film productions, and TV series ascribe a preamble to Central Park Movie Tour.
Taking up the cultural, social, and even the commercial legacy of the very site facilitates the profit-generating process. The provider of this movie tour, by “quoting” the scenes in popular movies, abstracts the cultural legacy of the Park. I will not contend that the walking tour constructed on the basis of popular movies is an expression of western ideology and tradition. However, I do think that this tour takes up the glamour of Hollywood, an icon of popular culture, to give participants a taste of Americaness. And at the same time, give the organizer of the tour a basic guideline to follow or an idea to play around.
Davis in chapter three, “Producing the Sea World Experience,” indicates that not only ideological elements embedded in culture but also the infrastructural design of the site determines the success of for-profit tourist attraction. A series of studies on abstract figures give the organizer of Sea world ideas to improve upon the existing facilities, control of flow, and intervals between different shows. The efficacy of generating profit is the main concern of a fro-profit site. Thus, how to keep visitors in the Sea World for a longer time span and how to seduce them to purchase, to consume, in a subtle fashion that does not make the visitors aware that they are the cash cows in this context, I believe, is crucial to the success of such site.
The on-location movie tour, as I mentioned previously, is of a much smaller scale compared with Sea World. And the tour provider cannot—also need not--alter the infrastructure of Central Park accordingly. Therefore, there is no study on the infrastructure or on the visitor flow taking place when constructing such tour. My impression is that the itinerary is decided in regard to the average physical endurance of adults. The provider of the Movie Tour map the itinerary lasting two hours, which is endurable length to adults of average physical strength.
Referring back to the reading, Davis reminds us that each tourist site/activity has its own specificity that needs to be analyzed respectively. I have to admit that in the process of research I tend to focus on phenomenon that universally exist in different tourist productions. Maybe it will be more helpful for me to look at the specificity of the Movie Tour which distinguishes it from other on-location tours organized by the same company.
Posted by Stella Yu-Wen Wang at 2:55 PM
theatricality everywhere?
Sea World as the theme park, which utilizes the well-controlled natural impression as the main attraction, while the Lower East Side Tenement Museum considers history as their main value somehow share some similarities in the way they present themselves even though that they are trying to sell very different products. However, due to the difference in what they are selling, the techniques are different in some points.
According to Davis, “Sea World management’s overall goal is to lengthen the customers’ stay and expand their spending in the park (77).” It is not hard to tell that according to our experience in the tour of the Lower East Side Tenement Museum, the extension of the time is certainly the last thing they want to do when they put the profit issue into consideration. The difference between the lengths of staying is pre-determinate by the scale of the sites. Sea world expects the tourists to emerge into the environment and take the advantage of the lengthened staying hours from the tourists, which help them in spending more money for daily consumptions (eat, drink, etc.) and souvenir. The Sea World uses time to exchange their profit. On the other hand, the Lower East Side Tenement Museum presented the immigrants’ life in the 18th century, which reflects the insufficiency of space and inconvenience in utilities. It is the essential character of the Lower East Side Museum to be small and crowded in order to give the tourists the sense of the life in the past. Due to the reason above, the Museum, unlike the Sea World, needs fast turnover to gain their income from admission.
However, regardless the difference in scale, both of the sites presented themselves with theatricality. The Sea World educated the employees to develop the “aggressive guest relations”(91), which means to let the tourist to emerge into the theatrical environment created by the collaboration of the administration of the Sea World and the staff who face the tourists’ everyday. The Lower East Side Tenement Museum also brought the concept of theatre into the narration as an effective way of conducting the educational function of the Museum. The existence of Victoria and the role-playing of the tourists are also creating a kind of aggressive guest relation, which ask the audience to sink into the environment and actively participate the play on the stage.
It is very interesting to find out that even when the subjects are so different from each other, the Sea World and the Lower East Side Museum still share some similarities in presenting themselves.
Posted by Yo-Chi Li at 1:10 PM
Help Shamu . . . Buy this T-shirt!
Inherently, there does not have to be salient differences between for profit and non profit tourist productions, but there often are. Because for profit productions are trying to appeal to a larger audience, they draw from popular and mass culture to create a homogenous and inoffensively entertaining product. Because non profits do not have the profit imperative, they are able to engage in projects that might not be commercially profitable. Often these projects do not have mass appeal and can go more in-depth and engage contentious issues.
Therefore, the profit imperative can change the kind of experience is created. The for profit production of Sea World is about maintaining the status quo; Sea World wants to give its predominantly white, middle class, nuclear families a good time and make them feel like they are helping nature through “being there” and spending money. The Sea World experience reinforces the visitors’ preexisting world-view and also bolsters Sea World role as “nature helper.”
Key differences between for-profit productions, such as Sea World and non-profit ones like Colonial Williamsburg and Lower East Side Tenement are the balance between education and entertainment, the role of corporations and the role of the audience (i.e. what is the audience asked to do, specifically how much agency is given to audience members).
Indeed, Don Ludwig, VP for entertainment at Sea World talked about the importance of keeping the “performed spectacles” separate from the educational aspects, because without that separation Ludwig feels, “I think we could turn ourselves into a nonprofit institution pretty quick.” (165) The educational component of Sea World bolsters Anheuser-Busch’s image as a caring company, but is not an end in itself. Sea World provides enough education to make people feel like they have helped protect nature. In contrast, at Colonial Williamsburg and Lower East Side Tenement Museum, their primary focus is education; entertainment is used only as a means to more successfully enrich the educational experience.
As a for-profit institution, Sea World also differs in its imperative to support the corporation it is owned by, its parent company Anheuser-Busch. Therefore, Sea World ceases to be a local production based in San Diego, but rather a national production that is satisfying the needs of an off-site corporate entity: “Sea World gives the most thorough service to its parent company. The park integrates advertising, public relations, and political argument for Anheuser-Busch” (29). Indeed, Sea World serves as “direct product promotion” for Anheuser-Busch products. In contrast, Lower East Side Tenement Museum is a local museum who has no corporate power to appease or get approval from. Granted, the Tenement Museum still has market concerns to deal with and is part of a larger consortium of “Museums of Conscience,” however, it is guided by its educational mission rather than to maximize profit.
In terms of audience experience and agency, at the for-profit tourist experience at Sea World, the audience experience is carefully orchestrated so that people will spend money, will walk away with a feeling that they helped nature, and have positive associations with Sea World and Anheuser-Busch: “[T]hey [Customers] . . . hope to feel agency, that is, that however indirectly, a visit to the theme park is an act of caring” (39). Indeed, consumerism and caring are linked in the Sea World experience: “American business has worked hard to define consumption as a form of concern, political action, and participation” (39). However, Sea World does not ask much of the audience; Sea World does not, in fact, want the audience to think, because then they might see how the rationale of Sea World breaks down. Indeed, as Davis articulates: “the theme park specializes in experiential homogeneity” (24). Therefore, Sea World “creates a closed circle of participatory spectatorship in which ‘being there’ is the main form of doing.” There is no space for dissonance at Sea World: “Dissonance, controversy, and ‘negatives’ must be avoided” (159).
It is true that all tourist production have agendas, or goals that they would like the experience to provide, whether it be more tourists to spend money or to start dialogue about the conditions of new immigrants in New York City. However, because Sea World has a profit motive and is dealing with live animals, they have a special need to carefully orchestrate the experience and squash alternative readings. Sea World needs to successfully convince visitors that their visiting, and Sea World as an institution, helps nature. Moreover, viewers need to feel that their buying is helping nature. Sea World is a for-profit institution masquerading as a non-profit.
In contrast, at the Tenement Museum the experience is not as heavily mediated and there is more room for dissent. The emphasis is not on buying things. There is more room for individual experience and for thought. As Sevcenko articulated in “Activating the past for civic action,” the Tenement Museum wants visitors to be actively involved making connections between the past and the present. The Tenement Museum allows more room for experiential agency.
The animal performances are a strange web of power relations between the corporation, the public and the animals themselves. On one hand, the animals are completely controlled and at the mercy of Sea World and Anheuser-Busch. Trainers monitor and record every aspect of the animals’ lives from birth to death. On the other hand, Sea World must deal with both the pressures of public relations – how the public views what they are doing with the animals – and also the unpredictability of the animals themselves. In terms of the public views of the use of animals, Sea World has changed the shows over time in order to make the public not feel like the animals were being mistreated. For example, the “theming” of shows – i.e. Shamu used to wear huge sunglasses in his show and there used to be sets and storylines, was then scratched for a more factual approach because Sea World was concerned that “theming was old-fashioned and demeaning” (176). Therefore, all props, costuming and storylines were taken away. In addition, moments of whales disobeying their animal trainers were scripted into the show so that the audience would feel that the whales maintained agency and were not simply being ordered to do.
The unpredictability of dealing with live animal performers needs to be accounted for. The animal performances are live but at the same time heavily controlled: “The theme park’s accomplishment has been to keep its performances live and ‘interactive’ while controlling their meanings as much as possible.” (157) Building moments of disobedience into the show allowed spontaneous moments of disobedience to be more easily integrated into the live show: “One of the best solutions to the continual uncertainty of working with animal performers has been to work it into the shows.” (190) Also, the order of tricks needed to be shuffled around so the animals would not get board and refuse to perform. In addition, the introduction of the Jumbotron, the huge screens playing during the show, allow for filler so that “the whale performance is smoother and more predictable” (194).
The shows follows the Aristotelian outline: “patterned expectations for introduction, buildup, interlude, and then climax” (187) The notion of “twice behaved behavior” is helping in looking at how the animal show draw on cultural association and previously performed behavior in order to creates performance that are “simple, light, safe, and familiar in their references . . . entertainment must strive no dissonant or troubling notes.” (195) These performances avoid controversy with their “universal appeal” and “universal language,” succeeding in “putting smiles on people’s faces” (161). This “universality” is not really universal; however, it functions as universal for a specific audience because these are “twice-behaved behaviors,” carry a certain cultural resonance.
Davis started for project by conducting background research and presenting smaller papers at conferences to float ideas and get feedback. She interviewed people at Sea World and Anheuser-Busch, and attended Sea Word many times. In analyzing the Shamu show, she constructed the script and kept note of how the show changed over time. Writing the script of the show allowed Davis to see how the show works; she could look at all the different elements that go into creating the overall effect – i.e. how much time was the Jumbotron on, how were Shamu’s tricks timed throughout the show, how the emotions of the fear and reassurance were played with. She could look at the specific to understand the overall functioning.
Posted by Sarah Zoogman at 12:57 PM
Shamu Doobee doo!
In Spectacular Nature Susan Davis presents an exhaustingly researched examination of Anheuser-Busch’s Sea World theme park that is weighted more towards an in depth scholarly understanding than a hard-line, politically motivated critique of corporate greed and manipulation of the masses. Such a critique is clearly present, but always tempered by an objectively distanced awareness rather than highlighted by inflammatory rhetoric. Through her research, Davis presents a vision of Sea World as a highly self-reflexive money making machine constantly being refined as it walks the line between satisfying customer expectations and consistently meeting its bottom line, profit.
Davis’ investigations reveal a number of striking similarities between Sea World and non-profit organizations such as the Colonial Williamsburg, though it’s safe to say that the differences outweigh the similarities, and I for one find the differences more interesting and illuminating. As far as similarities are concerned, I find it fascinating that both types of institution frequently employ an emphasis on education as a means of deflecting criticism and lending legitimacy to their cause. Colonial Williamsburg draws on educational emphasis as a means of countering critics that argue that CW is closer to a theme park than a museum. Further, it also uses education as evidence of its altruism, its goal to work towards a better future through a more profound understanding of the past, and a means of continually drawing school groups to attend. Similarly, Sea World draws upon education to draw school groups, and to spin a narrative emphasizing the preservation and understanding of the natural world. Tied closely to educating its guests, Sea World also foregrounds scientific research to help justify keeping animals in captivity and to promote a pro-environmental self-image as opposed to a strictly commercial orientation.
If the similarities between the two groups above are interesting, I find the differences even more so, perhaps the most interesting of all being the orientation of each organization’s research. Both Colonial Williamsburg and the Lower East Side Tenement Museum remain linked to the evidence and analysis of the past. While new evidence continually crops up and finds expression in the displays, there is a great adherence to “the facts.” Such is not the case with Sea World, whose research orientation is decidedly on the present, specifically on the “consumer present.” Rather than attempting to create realistic environments or presentations of animals based upon scientific research, Sea World maintains a rigorous analysis of customer responses and desires, and tailors its presentations to these. In fact, the vast majority of animal presentations and habitats are anything but naturalistic. Instead, habitats find expression in highly mediated and performative simulations that are influenced by popular culture and film as much as they are by any evidence from the natural world. Interestingly enough, here we see another overlap between Sea World and more historically-based organizations, as places like CW must walk a line between visitor expectation and historical fact, however skewed it might be. Just as this tension led to lower penguin populations for fear of visitor’s making negative comparisons between themselves and the animals, it’s also reflected in overly whitewashed representations of master slave relations, due to similar concerns.
Just as the displays at CW present a concrete and knowable representation of the past (and conveniently one which most often coincides with our preconceptions about it) so do Sea World’s animal performances present a similar view of nature. While the less critical visitor might view them as delightful entertainment and a chance to commune with “wild” nature, further reflection reveals these performances as perpetuating the medieval concept of the “great chain of being” and man’s natural superiority to and dominance over the natural world. Moreover, they perpetuate a colonial narrative, the animals replacing the “primitive peoples” on display at world’s fairs and similar events up through the 19th century. However, another aspect of these performances closely tied to the discourse of domination is one of the wild and chaotic. Just as tourists confronting Massai tribesman report a sense of danger at encounter these “wild” men, so do audiences at Sea World. Though it happens only rarely, there have indeed been violent interactions between animals and trainers, and whether or not they are conscious of it, the possibility of witnessing this, or some similar breakdown of human control, is another visitor draw.
Like Gable and Handler, Davis draws heavily on field analysis and interviews with the backstage personnel, though she presents little or no data from “frontline” employees aside from trainers, and similarly little first-hand information from park visitors. However, on the plus side, her field research spans a longer period of time, and she draws more heavily on Sea World’s representation in the press and other popular media. Furthermore, she does a beautiful job of detailing Sea World’s longstanding symbiosis with San Diego, and the way that it was first implemented as a part of a great tourist network, which it continues to feed. I find this relationship the most disturbing of all, a feeling nicely encapsulated by two passages from Davis’ conclusion. She quotes Whitaker writing, “most people will get a lot more education out of the bio-world experience than they ever did out of nature in the raw. The very fact that they are paying for it will make them pay attention to what they are getting” (236). Then she finishes her book referring to Sea World as a “machine that profits by selling people’s dreams back to them” (244). Both of these passages present problems that run far deeper than any theme park, straight to the root of capitalist society.
I am first frightened (perhaps naively?) by the degree of capitalistic motivation and planning that went in to San Diego, let alone Sea World. I expect this in a theme park, but not so much on the streets. This makes me wonder the extent to which any city is planned in such a manner, the degree to which the germ of the theme park is spreading throughout the American landscape. I would like to read or discuss some topics in urban planning that might better address this issue. Second, I am saddened by what appears to be an inextricable link between money and the value of an experience, or money and happiness. If we are culturally unable to realize our dreams without buying them, where does this lead? How and when did this begin? I realize that these are big questions, but following the mission statement of the LESTM, I think they’re important to discuss and analyze, for they effect us all, whether we’re watching Shamu, or just walking down a sunny San Diego street.
Posted by Tyler Sinclair at 12:24 PM
Whose is the promised dream?
When I was in Goa on the west coast of India, one of my highlights was a ride out to sea on a fancy yacht to watch the wild dolphins. The dolphins were adorable almost expecting us and almost performing for us. Tourists paid for this experience – this intimate leisurely luxury ride for a few hours to experience the wild – perfect settings with the wide open horizon, salt air, gourmet finger foods with drinks served by friendly staff in clean white uniforms, clean white towels, wild dolphins with pale pink noses……Susan Davis’s book reminded me of this experience and provoked several thoughts. While Sea World exhibits fish in captivity, my experience was one of ‘truly’ wild and free dolphins going about their ‘natural’ lives.
- Was my experience in Goa more ‘natural’ than an ‘unnatural’ one that one would experience in Sea World? It seems they both fall under the same rubric and imaginative limitations. “Nature is often deployed as part of a definition of the world, as a way to convince ourselves and others of the rightness and inevitability of the world as known” (31). Davis’s iteration that “nature” is not natural but social and cultural, that it is “a cultural construction” resonates in my reflection.
- There is always justification and good reason behind these projects. At Sea World the benevolence of captivity and display are emphasized, protecting these fish in captivity from the “big, cold, polluted, vicious ocean out there!” (106). In Goa benevolence is leaving the dolphins in their natural habitat in the big wide ocean called home ‘undisturbed’.
- The Goa sea world experience is operated and owned by a Dutch expatriate who also runs a travel agency, Sea World is owned by a corporation – both are in it operating within what is imaginatively possible under different circumstances and budgets. Both are in it for the business of making more money. Both use new-agey /jazzy type of sound tracks to enhance the experience – ‘Enya’ the Irish new-agey singer was the music selection for the expedition in Goa!
- “Penguins biological needs are well understood and controllable” (101) as are those of the other animals at Sea World. How much control could the tour operator in Goa exercise over the ‘wild’ dolphins? sometimes the dolphins didn’t show up we were informed once in the boat. So the notion of ‘power’ and control, how would that play out here? “Nature rhetoric belongs to the powerful”(32) and rich, and no matter you may not see the dolphins that the ad for the expedition attractively announces, it is about dealing with wild nature and mysterious habits of animals – what is guaranteed is an access to nature and “producers of mass culture have a lot of knowledge about how nature appeals” (10) It is another form of exercising power over controlled and what I would like to call ‘populist’ tastes and perceptions.
- Is this just steps further within the same mind frame as that of noble Europeans that wished to study and introduce the primitive man of Africa and the far east to the curious and ‘civilized’? It seems like a stretch of the imagination but Davis’s observation of present day tourism reproducing older imperial and colonial relationships between first and third worlds (11) really struck me and articulated something that I am truly beginning to recognize. “Nature is invoked to justify family structures, social orderings, and racial and imperial hierarchies”(31) The notion of exoticization, gazing, and exercising control keep getting perpetuated and taught.
This was a very interesting read and through Davis’ ethnographic work on Sea World, a deeper wider human condition has been conceded once again, that is extremely useful for me in any research I should undertake. For my own project for this class, it reaffirms and redefines the way I understand festival, that it is a cultural display organized around definitional, selective and controlled issues. That a practice of those that once victimized us as the colonized is still being perpetrated with the same benevolent and noble attitude exoticizing our own past that belongs to another world and another time. It reminds me that this celebration of ‘culture’ at ‘Hornbill Festival’ also hails the inevitable culture of consumption or that the culture of consumption heralds this newly found festival – ‘charitably’ giving locals the agency of practicing their threatened ‘culture’. And in a cultural construction such as this festival, what and whose is the promised dream?
Posted by Senti Toy at 9:56 AM
Designing experience at Seaworld
Susan Davis’ study of Seaworld first and foremost locates the representation of nature as an important field of analysis, infused with power relations and constructivist narratives that need to be deconstructed on the par with race and gender representations. She uses Raymond Williams’ claim that “ideas of nature naturalize and help obscure relations of power” (10) to frame her study. Indeed, Davis places the construction of nature at Seaworld within a larger historical context, showing that the representation of nature has never been natural, but always cultural. Seaworld becomes a case study of how an idea about marine life and its concrete realization can make thorny political and environmental issues opaque, and present ideological versions of what the future should look like, while making profits from visitors’ consumption of a supposedly educational experiences.
Much of her work is focused on looking at how the Seaworld’s producers use the theme park’s inner workings (design, programming, landscaping, performance, etc.) to induce particular feelings in their audience: to generate a sense of closeness with the animals, of having communicated with and cared for them; surprise at the shows, admiration for the research conducted by the park, awe at the feeling of having learned something or engaged in a progressive type of tourism, excitement at having been cast as adventurous explorers, and guiltless participation in creating some kind of better world by the mere act of “being there.” However, as she successfully shows, the park is carefully constructed and organized to control the emotional realm of its visitors so as to generate capital and keep them shopping for food, souvenirs and more watery thrills and chills. The corporate nature of the park, much like in the case of Colonial Williamsburg discussed by Handler and Gable, keeps “good vibes” or “aggressive guest relations” above critical interpretation of nature and history. Also, the for-profit nature of the park keeps it at a safe distance from the city’s social and environmental concerns, creating exclusion despite advertised policies of equal access. On the other hand, the fact that the corporation needs to keep its audience satisfied to generate money makes it forcibly adaptable to current issues such as concerns over animal rights, for example. Could it be that being a corporate venture, rather than a public institution such as a state museum, allows Seaworld to be made accountable (even if in a whitewashed and limited manner) that would not exist otherwise?
Davis’s study, although meticulously researched during eight years of fieldwork and endless visits and shows, seems surprisingly unpopulated. She interviews “insiders”, employees, managers and performers to get a sense of how the production is construed and to what ends, but seems unable to take us beyond her own reactions and thoughts to understand how the park actually works, how it is used and interpreted by those millions of people who flock its pathways and stadiums to experience the site. Perhaps the only instance where we can get close to visitors is when she follows the schoolchildren around, but again, she seems to focus very much on particular individuals’ responses, rather than on something that could be approximated to a social process. She often alludes to the limits of the illusion, to the fact that the theme park ultimately has no control over what visitors actually take away from their experience, despite its countless efforts to shape a particular vision (115). However, she does not explore how audiences recreate the site by the act of visiting it, how they become agents in their own interpretation of what is being fed to them. Much like the memorials we looked at last week, it seems that beauty might be in the eye of the beholder, rather than in the instruments used by the painter.
Posted by Sandra Rozental at 8:51 AM
Big Brother – Controlling The Vertical, Horizontal, Psychological, & Experiential Since 1984, Still Going Strong and Kicking It Old-School (Tastes Great AND Less Filling!)
After taking Introduction to Psychology as an undergraduate, and hanging a picture of my brain on the wall obtained from an MRI experiment I volunteered for in order to obtain extra great, I spent a great deal of time experiencing a later-in-life version of Lacan’s “mirror stage.” Every time I would reach for a drink of Diet Coke, or stick my hand into a crinkly bag of Doritos, I would think to myself, “Am I choosing to eat/drink this? Or is it just my mind telling me my body needs sustenance? Is there any difference? Why this particularly type of food? Why do I take a drink for as long as I do – is it a choice based on taste, or is it a physiological reaction based on how parched and dehydrated I am?” Needless to say, this was quite disquieting (not to mention insanely annoying). I eventually got beyond it in the way that I’ve got beyond every other big question (Is there a God? Is there an afterlife? Does this table actually exist?) – by giving myself an answer I could live with, even if I knew that it wouldn’t hold up to even my own scrutiny. I decided that I did have free will from my own physiological mechanisms, and that tiny bits of my brain didn’t predetermine very little move I made (and, for those interested, my “Well, I can go to sleep now” answers for the other questions were yes, yes, and it doesn’t really matter as long as my glass of water doesn’t fall through it).
After taking Introduction to Psychology as an undergraduate, and hanging a picture of my brain on the wall obtained from an MRI experiment I volunteered for in order to obtain extra great, I spent a great deal of time experiencing a later-in-life version of Lacan’s “mirror stage.” Every time I would reach for a drink of Diet Coke, or stick my hand into a crinkly bag of Doritos, I would think to myself, “Am I choosing to eat/drink this? Or is it just my mind telling me my body needs sustenance? Is there any difference? Why this particularly type of food? Why do I take a drink for as long as I do – is it a choice based on taste, or is it a physiological reaction based on how parched and dehydrated I am?” Needless to say, this was quite disquieting (not to mention insanely annoying). I eventually got beyond it in the way that I’ve got beyond every other big question (Is there a God? Is there an afterlife? Does this table actually exist?) – by giving myself an answer I could live with, even if I knew that it wouldn’t hold up to even my own scrutiny. I decided that I did have free will from my own physiological mechanisms, and that tiny bits of my brain didn’t predetermine very little move I made (and, for those interested, my “Well, I can go to sleep now” answers for the other questions were yes, yes, and it doesn’t really matter as long as my glass of water doesn’t fall through it).
After reading Susan Davis’ Spectacular Nature, I was reminded of this question, albeit cast in a more human light – when in a mediated environment such as Sea World (or, to draw comparisons with other issues in this course, the Lower East Side Tenement Museum, Colonial Williamsburg, Walt Disney World, or Old Bethpage Village Restoration), how much of what we do is our choice, and how much of it is a pre-selected choice determined years, maybe even decades, ago by corporate and/or museum planners, like a computer program that accounts for any possible option (with, of course, the occasional glitch in even the most potent of algorithms and the most thought-out of themed environmental immersions). As human begins, it is natural for us to want to believe in utter and complete free will; indeed, many religions bend over backwards to fit this into their theological belief system. It is off-putting, then, to consider that when we enter into some environments – and we would like to believe we enter into these environments consciously and “of our own free will” – we give up a certain amount of free will, with everything that we experience mediated, and indeed always pre-mediated and planned in advance, by careful sculpting and creation from outside forces, generally a corporate conglomerate of some sort and/or its creative agents, or perhaps by a well-meaning museum staff of educators, academics, and governmental officials.
Look kids, it's President Sexton!
This issue raises several interesting questions for me (and I hope that the rest of the class will find them interesting as well). First of all, what does it mean to find yourself in an environment where, not only do you have no control, but you are placed in a situation where you are led to believe that you have total control, while in reality a plan and design made long ago have actual control over your actions? Where your choice of where to sit down, how quickly to move through an exhibit or building or ride, and of when and where to eat were thought of and planned out months, weeks, even decades ago in advance? Is there anything inherently immoral about such an overtly false sense of freedom (on an extreme level, it reminds me of the computerized world of The Matrix)? Does the creation of it by a corporate entity that wants only profit (Disney) differentiate it from an organization that is profit-oriented but also has a mission statement of education/conservation (Sea World), and from a not-for-profit organization designed to educate and/or change the visitor and the world in a positive manner (LETM)? Why do we surrender control to these places? What draws us to them – what, for example, makes Disney World such a popular institution? Does this sort of environment make historical recreations more popular than museums with glass-case exhibits – based upon the idea of experiencing history by literally surrendering our will to it?
I could, of course, go on and on with the questions that such environmental immersion raises, since clearly this is of major interest to me, as it is the focus of my paper and of my spring MA project. However, I feel like these questions get me started on a strong path to understanding, and I would love to discuss some of them in class so that I can leech off of the many fine minds surrounding me.
At this point, I would like to pause and note that I am indebted to Sarah, since her post inspired the central metaphor of this post. Thanks, Sarah!)
Finally, on an entirely different note, I wanted to talk for a tiny bit about the animal performers at Sea World, in relation to Schechner/Turner’s classic performance/theatre studies notions of ritual, liminality, and communitas. For me, the sense of communitas has always been a central aspect of really good theatre – the feeling of unity with the audience and, just as importantly, with the performers, based on having shared a moving experience that has somehow changed all of us. This happens extremely rarely, I’ll admit (I have only had one theatrical experience, and I had to travel to Paris to see it), but, for me, it is the central goal of working as a theatre artist, what I always try to attain when I write, direct, or even stage manage. What I wonder, though, is whether or not such a sensation is even at all attainable with an animal performer. Can an audience achieve communitas (and with that phrasing I suddenly realize for the first time just how much my sense of communitas is easily equated with orgasm) when it’s impossible to share certain human sensations with the performers?
Obviously, this query raises a series of other questions about the nature of animal intelligence and performance capabilities, and the nature of audience/performer interaction as well as communitas in general, but I feel like I’ve already listed enough loaded questions for one week’s posting. Now I’m off to go enjoy a nice Shamu ice cream pop, because they just taste so good . . . or maybe because “they” want me to eat it? *Bum, Bum, BUM!*
Posted by Andrew Friedenthal at 2:08 AM
November 26, 2005
Davis' methodology
I have to firstly admit that I had felt rather frustrated about the fact that only two weeks before the final research assignment I had to read two hundred and fifty pages on Sea World. However, Davis’ “Spectacular Nature” not only proved to be an extremely useful model for how to study a tourist site, but it also helped me to acquire a better and deeper understanding of my own research project, the Statue Park. I discovered that there are several similar questions related to the (re) presentation and/or performance of nature and history. Although I am primarily preoccupied by the Statue Park these days, I will try to focus on Davis’ analysis of the Sea World in this short paper.
I also have to admit that as I was reading the book, I found Davis’ methodology more interesting than the actual site of her analysis. Therefore, before turning to Sea World, I would like to point out some of her analytical methods, which I found very helpful. In my own research, I have been struggling with the question: how much should I rely on my observations? How can I draw any conclusion or generalization without any factual evidence? For Davies, an observation functions as a springboard: first she points out her observation, then she theorizes it in a social/scientific context, and finally she attempts to support her hypothesis by an employer’s statement. For example, she observes that “the largely white audience enters through one set of turnstiles and pays more to get in”, while “the mainly nonwhite, subsidized education audience enters through a special gate set off to the side”, which “seemed almost like a backdoor” (133). This is the starting point of her investigation on how Sea World’s education relates to race. She continues to observe how children of minorities have a different experiences in the Sea World when she joins their field trip conducted by the park. Finally, in an interview, the Educational Director justifies her original observation: “the people who use our [field trip and outreach] programs” are “in fact the people we are tying to target, … primarily the minority schools.” (132) Seeing how Davis theorizes her observations helps me to prepare the interview questions for the Statue Park’s managing director in Budapest.
I was also fascinated by her generous, open but at the same time critical attitude: as an analyst of the tourist site, she does not question or judge the indispensable corporate structure of the site. However, thinking within this given configuration, she highlights several weaknesses of the corporate operation, fields, in which Sea World needs to (and can) be improved. For instance, Davis points out that “Shamu TV” is “clearly promotional” (139), but this is not the reason why she criticizes this educational medium; her criticism lies in the fact that “with a few exceptions, complexity, local connections, and controversy are missing” (151) from the educational material. She also indicates some of the omitted topics, such as “the fascinating gaps in human knowledge about the live histories of whales and dolphins, the vast variety of and uncertainty about their social patterns, and even about their species identities” (149).
Davis emphasizes that the Sea World is not only a profit-oriented tourist site, but also a research center for marine mammals. As a tourist production, it pretends to be an omnipotent site, concealing all those questions that the research center seeks to answer. However, this dual mission may become very uncomfortable eventually, especially when the interest of the research center and the interest of the tourist site conflict with each other. While the Sea World, as a research center “will be a major provider of content and curricular materials” for the Project Triton, a multiyear project to “strengthen science education” (143), at the same time, in the show “very careful limits are placed on science” (221).
The question of authenticity is also very interesting in relation to the Sea World. The corporate endeavors to recreate the animals’ original, ‘natural’ living circumstances, but will this make the site more authentic? Can we or should we talk about authenticity at all, when the profile of a theme park is to display and perform animals of the oceans for human audience?
Why do I constantly feel that Sea World, through most of its efforts, attempts to present itself as something else than what it is in reality? What are the functions of a theme park and where do its limitations lie? After reading Spectacular Nature, these are some of the questions I am struggling with in my research of the Statue Park.
Posted by Aniko Szucs at 10:29 PM
Shamu Cam, Song Podcast, and 800 number
1-800-23SHAMU (1-800-237-4268)
TDD users call
1-800-TD-SHAMU (1-800-837-4268)
These toll-free information lines are answered by the SeaWorld Education Department seven days a week from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Pacific Time.
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Posted by Pilar Rau at 10:20 PM
Wishing they were Mediated Alligators
Florida, 1990. I am eight years old. Visiting my grandparents, my parents decide to entertain my sister and I, who are bored of flea markets, by taking us to the Everglades to look at alligators.
My memory is blurry. We went in one of those hover-boats, the guide said maybe we’ll see an alligator today, but we didn’t. I fed bread to a snapping turtle. I remember feeling surprised that something with such a flashy, romantic, elegant name - the Everglades - would be a swamp. I had already been to Disneyworld and Seaworld, you see, and was spoiled, expecting another theme park. And the nature-parks I was used to had different sorts of names - Shubenacadie, or Kejimikujik. Or they at least had the word ‘park’ in them.
Afterwards, feeling guilty that we had not seen an alligator, my father took us somewhere where we could - I guess it was an alligator farm, where he gave the guy some money and there were some alligators in low rectangular pens. I remember feeling upset: partly sorry for what appeared to be the alligators’ ugly state of captivity, and partly shocked by the blatant indifference of the guy in the stained shirt who took the money, hardly moving on his stool by the entrance, and by the men in back who boredly, and silently, displayed some of the animals, picking up small alligators and wrapping snakes around their shirtless bodies, as people passed through in a disorganized fashion. It was a low budget, no frills arrangement, and to spoiled eight year old me, it seemed sleazy and dangerous, like maybe they were going to wrestle the alligators. Anyway, we just looked at the alligators and left, because I don't think my dad wanted us to see alligator wrestling. I didn't mind, I didn't want to watch anyone do anything bad, not that was real. It just seemed too real.
It seems I had already come to expect a certain level of mediation in my encounters with nature. To have it stripped down to “pay money - see alligators” was a shock to me. I don’t even think the pens had labels, and the men working there didn’t, to my memory, speak. What was I expecting, if not to “look at alligators”? Or, to put it another way, how had I become accustomed to receiving this kind of information or display?
Susan Davis’ extensive study of SeaWorld can answer this to an extent - like the visitors to Seaworld, I implicitly expected to feel safe - closer than possible in nature but not too close; I expected to move or be moved through space with minimal awareness of its engineered-ness, I expected to feel no anxiety about the animals’ state, or how it might reflect back on my own. I expected staff to tell me things, enthusiastically, and catering to my child’s ego. I expected some kind of performance - I might have even expected the animals to perform. In short, I expected a level of structuring to the experience that I did not receive, and the reason I was so shocked was, at least in part, because I had not recognized my previous, formative experiences as structured. Visitors to Seaworld are certainly doing more than “looking at marine life”, and for similar reasons, I did not expect “looking at alligators” to actually be just “looking at alligators”. A stage without any of the trappings of a stage - which may very well also have been the backstage.
The structuring of experience can be very heavily controlled, or very lightly controlled. The trick with a place like Seaworld, which seeks to entertain and give people a “good time”, is to give a very heavily structured experience which feels less controlled than it is. For example, while we may be aware that the platform in front of the penguin exhibit is moving, and we may even deduce that this is in order to prevent traffic problems, one would probably not guess that it moved faster during busier times and slower during less busy times. Even if one had seen pictures of penguins in Antarctica, one would probably not automatically assume that the penguins one is looking at were given more room to prevent the VISITORS from feeling overcrowded. Or the careful placement of plastic picnic chairs so as to provide “spontaneous space” separate from the attractions or consumption stations. Seaworld creates an immersive environment which may, at times, give the illusion that one is choosing what one chooses to do, think or feel - when, creepily enough, the stimulus that creates these actions and reactions are carefully statistically calculated to produce maximal results. Is the extent to which experience is structured carefully hidden by the producers, or is it unconsciously suppressed by receivers? Probably both.
It strikes me that many people probably don’t want to see alligators in the swamp, or whales off the coast of Nova Scotia. Sea World provides the wholesomeness of the animal kingdom, with the convenience of walking distance, restrooms, places to sit, eat and drink, and thick plexiglass. Furthermore, this “mall with fish” provides an “experience” of wholesomeness that you would not get without mediation: Davis uncovers the soundtracks, (often corresponding to the animal’s hollywood stereotype) accompanying the exhibits; the funny and kooky animal performances, often anthropomorphizing the animals; and the ‘lite’ enlightenment and environmentalist rhetoric which give the visitor the impression that “SeaWorld Cares, and so do you!”
While it would be incorrect for me to say that there are no similarities between a nonprofit like the LESTM and Sea World, I can’t quite give up hope yet. It is true, as Scott points out, that both do depend on revenue, both create immersive environments, and both give the visitor the impression that they care - and that the visitor cares because they go. It is on this last point that I can’t accept that Sea World and the LESTM are on the same plane. A corporation like Sea World (Anheuser-Busch) doesn’t have to care - Davis makes clear in this book that caring, or the appearance of caring, is only useful insofar as it can be used to make a profit. Therefore, it can’t ‘care’ enough to undermine its corporate roots and make any real statement about global pollution. The LESTM, while it may also depend on revenue, and while it may also want to keep its visitors entertained and happy and may adjust/compromise their “mission” in order to do so, they are not subservient to a corporation and may, in fact, pose difficult questions. The kind of social history in practice at the LESTM and Colonial Williamsburg, while it may not always work, is interactive and provides a space for improvisation. Social history has no place at Sea World; Sea World is not by any stretch of the imagination a “museum of conscience”. Or maybe I’m an idealist.
Posted by Sarah Klein at 9:32 PM
leisure, play, and killer whales
Susan Davis' case study launched us into the industry of amusement. Elements of play, performance, and profit may have been implicitly part of the museum and memorial experiences we’ve been looking at; at Sea World, these aspects of tourism are central, unmasked and explicitly staged. Amusement and theme parks are meant to be entertaining; and these spaces “win” (to use concept Davis introduces in her conclusion) when the revenue generated from entertainment is continuously channeled into back into the park. The danger? According to Davis, themed spaces produce social worlds according to the logic of consumer capitalism.
Unlike social history at Colonial Williamsburg or the International Coalition of Museums of Conscience, there is very little space for addressing social or political concerns at a site like Sea World, despite the park’s claim that it is trying to educate the public. I think Davis’ concern is valid. Theme park visitation seems like a different kind of tourism altogether: different reasons for building, particular visitor intentions and desires, and, in the case of Sea World, a potentially harmful reification of concepts like nature and science.
“Spectacular Nature” also brought to mind some of the issues we grappled with early on in the course. Visitors to Sea World are fueled by a particular desire to experience “natural” or authentic sea creatures; Davis’ discussion on the construction of the “natural” in European and American fantasy helped to contextualize this contemporary impulse. Sea World succeeds or fails based on how well is can incorporate and reproduce popular ideas of what “Nature” means. The notion of leisure also returns with a vengeance: the theme park space is often presented as an a-political zone of mass leisure that one (“anyone,” they say; “a particular social class,” says Davis) can escape into, a world of play and sensual stimulation that somehow alleviates the strains of contemporary everyday living. Recreational playing (instead of Anheuser-Busch’s other past-time, recreational drinking) is a form of escape.
Yet play is performed. Families perform “familyness,” Sea World workers keep up the appearance of safe and happy fun, and the animals themselves become pawns in a larger corporate performance of nature. Whales and dolphins appear in a coliseum-like space: rows of ascending bleachers gaze downward into the watery pit of spectacle. Discipline and power are exhibited for the public, not necessarily animal performance (can an animal perform? Or is it used for performance? Performance calls to mind a more intentional construction of playfulness). Spectacle merges with the carnivalesque: the theme park is, as Davis notes, a kind of Carnival – a bounded space where the wild is consumed, the senses are indulged, and one confronts danger in a more tame (and, thereby, more fun) form. Yet besides symbolizing this “wild nature,” a killer whale can come to represent something else entirely: an animal god or spiritual being not of the “natural” world. Who knew that Sea World could become a “quasi-religious” space of transcendence. The Native American narrative weaved into the Shamu performance by the voice of James Earl Jones was certainly not something I recall from my own family trips to Sea World in the 1980’s. “Nature” and “tradition” are constructed in a single performance space.
Regarding methodology, I appreciated Davis’ transparency with regards to how she conducted fieldwork and her ability to draw connections to broader issues about public space in the US, while still taking into account the shifting and changing nature of her site. She spent a great deal of time on those actors producing and maintaining the Sea World culture – which was integral to her project of examining the workings of corporate culture; I thought more time could have been dedicated to focusing on the attitudes and intentions of those attending the park – the paying public. My parents used to love to take my sister and I to Sea World every summer when we visited my uncle in San Diego (right after our stop over at Disneyland in LA). It was fun, tiring, over-determined, and spectacularly magical. Seductive and enticing. Beliefs and daily concerns were so easily suspended. Now, I can never imagine returning with an uncritical eye (and that’s probably a good thing). Nonetheless, the privatization of life and public space under the terms established by corporations is all the more scary considering how quickly theme parks become integral to the economies of cities.
Posted by Brynn Noelle Saito at 7:20 PM
spectacular nature indeed
So, what's different between the non-profit museum and the for-profit theme park? Apparently, not as much as I would have thought...
As Susan Davis shows us in Spectacular Nature, Sea World (not just a park - another world) is, in the words of one of her students, "like a mall with fish." (2) Built around the display of marine life, the corporately owned park (not park, world - my mistake) importantly combines entertainment with the all important retail sales (which comprise 50% of their profit). Borrowing heavily from the Disneyland revolution in theme parkery, Sea World is an "integrated landscape of meanings unified around consumption." (3) Consumption is key - consumption gives pleasure and consuming nature at Sea World is good family fun.
Despite Sea World's appeal to family entertainment, as Scott pointed out in his post, their visitor demographics are strikingly similar to that of most cultural museums - white, upper middle class, middle aged. Davis on page 37: "consuming Sea World's nature spectacle is in part about social class."
But Sea World also styles itself as an urban public resource - promoting the virtues of conservation, rehabilitation, research and education. This is in part due to the rise in environmental activism from around the 1980s, and the recovery of image Sea World has had to make due to bad press (another response being to form a non-profit adjunt to the company). However, education products just like media products are related to the park's star animals, making education yet another marketing strategy. There is a conflation: "Entertainment, recreation, public relations, marketing, social mobility, and environmental concern run together to become essentially the same thing: the theme park." (39)
The scary corporate side to this is of course the power of the appearance of acting in the public good to obfuscate what part the corporate owners actually play. "Jennifer Price argues that shopping for nature commodities is a safe way to express environmental concern within the familiar satisfactions of consumerism, even hile this activity is structured to dampen awareness of the environmentally exploitative aspects to mass consumption itself." (11-12) For example, the relentless promotion of recycling by a corporate owner who is one of the biggest producers of bottles and cans, takes an environmentalist message and turns it into political strategy to diffuse discussion or supress legislation that might reduce the production of waste.
But is it all bad? As Davis points out, whether Sea World is producing a very specific pop-culture, mass-produced version of nature or something more wild and free, people are consuming it. There is power in the image to shape people's understanding of the environment and something interesting to be had from looking at patterns of consumption.
I found chapter 3 really interesting - the one in which Davis looks at how space, movement and perceptions are controlled - "organised" is the word she used I think. It is a good methodological model - by looking at this, she can begin to see what is actually happening. It relates to Handler and Gable's chapter on the Patriot Tour at Colonial Williamsburg - what the producer WANTS us to see and how they structure this can perhaps lead to deeper insights on what is being left out, what is being made, etc - more than direct questions may be able to. This idea of how the tourist site structures experience - through limiting possibilities, through physically structuring space, movement and perception is fascinating. I want to talk about this in class! These observations lead Davis to see Sea World as a "complex spatial machine for extracting profits from its customers," (7) and to place the guiding mantra of 'Intensify Spending!' within the park's operations: "Event scheduling, architecture and landscaping help move customers through concessions at speeds and intervals that have been carefully studied and determined to enhance sales." (24) The speed regulate-able people mover in front of the penguin diorama is...I am stuck for a word...just great.
As for the animal performances: I have to confess, I have never been to a park like this and it is a little hard to imagine. The pictures of Shamu's stadium are jaw dropping, and the description of Stephanie from the audience's big screen performance, equally so. Why go? I am imagining an overly hot, cramped stadium of people, the rising smell of chlorine filling my nostrils - it's like the mandatory school swimming carnivals all over again. Which lead me to think about what kind of performance this is:
menagerie
circus
carnival
figure skating
elite athletics
scored improvisation
animation
cartoons
politics
The blatent humanising of animals in bikinis and strange Esther Williams-like all-female underwater extravanganzas from the 1960s are long gone. Davis traces a move from the mid 1970s to a more museum-like or scientific show - one not so humiliating for the animals. (68) But the performing orcas are the park's commodities, the stadium shows are a radical decontextualisation, and while the overt symbols of control are gone, Shamu(s) are still jumping through hoops. There is something about the cult of celebrity in these performances - Shamu is the star, like John Wayne is in an old Western; who cares what the movie is about? We just came to see him go through his paces. In a way, the Sea World performances are like the golden studio years of Hollywood - the show is just a vehicle, it's about the star, and if this Shamu has died prematurely from the constrictions of living in captivity, there is always another waiting in the wings...
Posted by Justine Shih Pearson at 6:40 PM
NonNature
In thinking about the differences between a not for profit tourist production like Colonial Williamsburg as compared to a for profit tourist production like Sea World, I started to think if there was a difference in the factors that controlled the form of the production as well as the factors that control the way in which the production company is organized. The differences between such institutions lay in their social role yet the "not for" and the "for" profit distinction is highly questionable when looking at the economic considerations in both institutions.
As a private institution, Sea World is allowed to function with purely economic concerns in mind. People are critical of such practices only so much as they are harmful to natural beings like the animals. In an institution like Colonial Williamsburg, the expectations of the audience are that the display and presentation is made by certain inalienable principles other than money making. This demand on the part of the audience based on the notion of the type of institution being presented to them, places pressure on the institution to construct an image wholly independent from money making. It is not so much that different principles are taking place, but that different lengths to mask such principles are being made.
Davis does a fantastic job of demonstrating how economic concerns dominate every decision made at Sea World, and unashamedly so. Handler and Gable’s account of Colonial Williamsburg show how there are theoretical concerns that dominate representation and organizational functioning that although not primarily economic, often relate to economic concerns. For instance, image construction is the ultimate concern at Colonial Williamsburg evident in the entire spectrum of the production. From corporate management, through planning and design, to education and training of the staff who control the presentation, effort is made in order to construct the image that there is nothing controlling display, that there is no construction actually taking place that is not natural or historically truthful. The implication is that some things can be discovered and presented in a natural and correct state and when it is done in this way, then it falls outside the confines of economic concern. Such concerns are not free from economic consideration. At Colonial Williamsburg for instance they are merely using their cache as a cultural, natural, historical institution to draw a crowd and the importance of maintaining this image is so they can maintain a market share in a space non-competitive with locations like Disney World and Sea World. They are invested, then, in maintaining an image that protects their asset which in turn protects their economics.
Sea World, although presenting facets of nature, can make no claims to existing naturally and therefore possesses no asset to exploit under the guise of truth or history. So it must invent. The entire organization of Sea World is an invention of man, a feat of engineering, whose inventiveness is aimed at a product of nature. The content of Sea World happens to be derived from the natural universe, yet there is nothing of nature in Sea World. Nature is absent and through this absence Sea World is fit to function like a factory producing a consumable product. Susceptible to criticism for the blatant appropriation of that which is not theirs to take, Davis shows how Anheuser Busch goes to great lengths to create surface like distractions away from its core crime. They use politically correct gesturing to postulate responses to genuine concerns about exploitation of nature and the environment. They’ve jumped on bandwagons of popular interest to position themselves as do-gooders. Modern fixation on education through diverse forms of experience, for instance, gave Sea World the opportunity to package themselves as an educational institution. A look only slightly below the surface shows the educational material to be devoid of any true education yet full of Sea World references that develop a citizen army of consumers with Sea World chips impregnated in their brains without their knowledge. It is almost frightening to think what it is like for those who grew up in Sea World locations to be so inundated with Shamu references that they’d have no choice but to feel Sea World was a necessary and pleasurable part of the social fabric of their home town.
Davis shows how Sea World sells constantly and does so by developing their audience according to the most profitable characteristics. They use multimedia communications, and multi-sensorial events to manipulate a consumer base according to characteristics that benefit the corporation most. For example, Sea World fostered a different image of the killer whale at different times. They started by characterizing the killer whale, softening its natural animal instincts, building a cartoon into the actual whale image. Yet when this image backfired because people felt softer emotions towards the whale and therefore saw Sea World as the bad guy when accidents happened, they began to mold the audience towards seeing the killer whale as a scary and dominating creature of nature. It is a frightening power of construct.
Davis approaches such questions like the shaping of human perception regarding animals, by discussing ideas and questions with those involved in the tourist production, observing the production, and evaluating the forces that dominate the format of the production. After working for sometime on my outline this week, the challenge in arranging so many diverse forms of information is evident and I take for granted less the organized analytics and clear comprehension of a book like “Spectacular Nature.” From Davis as well as from Handler and Gable, I have started to arrange my information in terms of themes or threads of reoccurrence. In a way these threads of repetition have helped me better formulate the questions I want to ask. It feels like working backwards, but with the questions and themes, I can then rearrange the different data pieces to build out the argument (interviews, archive material, news articles). This process is helping me clear the preconceived idea I had going into the topic and is helping me derive ideas based on real evidence. I have to add that I really love my topic and I’m really grateful to this course because no other class could’ve equipped me to understand the forces at work in Sepharad ’92. Looking at the events from a purely historical context as I had done in the past completely misses the complex cocktail of politics and production at work in building consumable heritages.
Posted by Erin Madorsky at 6:38 PM
Video Games and Theme Parks
Video game designers have borrowed upon the experience and discoveries of theme park designers, particularly in the realms of theme and movement within space. The design of virtual space can and should be used to guide the players towards the build-up of action. Of primary concern to some game designs, is how to move the player through virtual space. The focus of the players can be guided by light, placement of objects, and structure of the space itself. This, of course, is also the concern of theme park designers. Additionally, space and architecture can be used for communicating genre and thus setting expectations. An alley with a particular film noir atmosphere sets up a particular expectation that is different from a Polynesian hut. Sea World, San Diego, has been carefully constructed to produce particular feelings and expectations. Essentially, the same principals that go into designing the fake coral reefs or movement out of a stadium, can be applied to the fish protagonist in the video game Finding Nemo.
Susan Davis tells us that most of the views within Sea World are focused inward. Since space is not actually limitless in virtual worlds, the player must be directed away from the specific boundaries of the universe created. Like video game worlds, theme parks also create a specifically bounded area in which the consumers cannot pass. Within video games, an architectural archetype is something that draws the eye of the player and awakens their interest. It could be a castle, an island, a volcano, or another distinct element in the spatial construction of the game. Players tend to navigate towards these, just as the Sky Tower pulls people into the center of Sea World.
Gaming experience is something that is carefully crafted. Designers can affect the atmosphere of a game with textures, color, or lighting. Theme parks seek to create a landscape that people find “appealingly different, one that neither alarms nor bores” (82-3). While this is not the specific concern of video game designers, familiarity in design is important. Players need something to anchor to—something to base their interpretations of the space and the actions of the game on. An item that cannot be recognized as a space ship is just a weird and meaningless element. However, if the item looks even vaguely like a space ship that the player has seen before, then the design is able to communicate the desired meaning. Similar shortcuts are observable in many places, particularly theme parks. In Sea World, Orlando, the increasing whiteness of landscape heralds the approach of the Penguin Encounter, so as to subliminally prepare visitors for the upcoming attraction. (Ask Lisa about her AWESOME time at the Penguin Encounter! It’s her favorite story to tell.)
Contrast is another way to add impact and variation in the space. Of course, video games play out on screens that do not change size. To create a dramatic effect, often a small dark room is followed by a large lighted room, such as the entrance to oen of the government buildings in Final Fantasy XI. This same effect is often created in real life. For instance, in churches, people often have to enter a small hall before proceeding into the main hall. This progression adds impact on the entrance to the monumental interior of the church. Similar spatial patterns are repeated in Disney parks, such as the small entrance to Ariel’s Kingdom in Tokyo Disneyland, or the narrowing upward path into Epcot’s The Land. In my experience, sea world has a tendency to bring out dolphins before the Orcas. Likewise, the otters always show themselves before the sea lions.
Ironically, there is now a series of video games, such as SIM Theme Park and Rollercoaster Tycoon (1, 2, 3, Gold), which allow the player to create and manage their own theme park. These games draw most closely on what has been learned in the management of theme parks, because the very game’s design is based on these findings. Now it is up to the player to create an experience. While these games are young children friendly, they are not easy by any degree. It almost requires out of game research to figure out just how to make your theme park thrive. Maybe reading Davis’ book will help the enterprising young player
(I hope to edit this later... but just in case I miss the deadline...)
Posted by Lisa Reinke at 5:57 PM
It’s the Real Thing
I found one of the saddest moments in Susan Davis’s book in the conclusion, when she described a new program begun in November 1995: “Sea World inaugurated a ‘wade with the dolphins’ experience in which, for an extra $120, customers receive ninety minutes of instruction and then slip into a wet suit for twenty minutes of communion. ‘It borders on a religious experience’ said one dolphin-hugger.” (p. 234) In addition to echoing for me various 1990s predilections including those for communing with “nature” and experiencing moments of personal meaning or growth in natural or new-age settings, this anecdote also illustrated one of the many ways that socio-economic hierarchies play out at Sea World. In this example, those with enough extra money to spend can have the added “real” experience of interacting with the dolphins and touching them in their tanks. Although it does not seem to be pitched this way, these “special” visitors also enter the “world” of the theme park in a more active way: they mimic the performers/trainers by donning the same uniform outfits and receiving instruction from the trainers and then enter the dolphin water space for the “communion” experience. On some level, these visitors cease to become spectators and become participants in Sea World. I wonder though about the socio-economic profile of the consumers who are attracted to this opportunity; given the explosion of adventure tourism it seems that there are many other places where one could more “authentically” or expansively encounter “real” nature, whether it is oceanographic or otherwise. Hence part of why I found this anecdote sad was that Sea World cannot compete with some of the other offerings on the market, and the example only highlighted the artificial and limited “nature” of the theme park.
The inequities of socio-economic status as played out in Sea World are also a significant factor in the theme park’s identity as a destination for education field trips undertaken by schools. In an interview with Davis “Education Director Joy Wolf argued that although ‘we are here for everybody,’ ‘the people who use our [field trip and outreach] programs,’ are ‘in fact the people we are trying to target,… primarily the minority schools.” (p. 132) This message is underscored by other examples given in the chapter that profiles Sea World as an education destination, in which other teachers express awareness about the costs of visiting the park, as well as undertaking other field trips. Sea World is not unaware of the ways in which it can serve to provide “enrichment” to public school populations (p.133), a function that cultural institutions such as museums often serve, while at the same time grooming young audiences to become visitors. In addition, by visiting schools, Sea World creates an additional market for its services off-site.
While students are being presented a Sea World that supposedly offers education rather than entertainment, in reality they are being offered the opportunity, via their school, to experience a leisure destination that may be beyond their financial means to access. The distinction is not lost on the students “as when an eleven-year-old African American boy shouted, when I asked for his reaction to the park, “It’s all a rip off!” and went on to explain very accurately to me and his friends the relationship between the park’s cheap souvenirs, inflated prices, and expansive landscape.” (p. 124)
In both cases the theme park is trying to be different things to different people based on their socio-economic status. In both cases, in different ways, the experiences being offered are meant to emphasize Sea World’s attempt to present itself as not merely an entertainment destination but as a place to encounter oceanic life. At first I thought that this distinction was an example of simple crass commercialism that marked “Sea World” as a for-profit institution but, in truth, museums and other non-profit organizations offer similar special “insider” events for higher ticket prices: these events are simply marketed to “donors” rather than to “consumers” and offer such additional perks as social capital and tax write-offs. So what is the difference between a for-profit and a non-profit? Perhaps it is only the illusion (and official legal sanction) of “doing good.” Certainly it is easier to feel “charitable” when supporting a “cultural institution” that is designated as “non-profit.” I am struck by how often the concept of “insider” or “special” or “authentic” experiences are parlayed into higher ticket prices and donations: special events with artists, behind-the-scenes tours, etc. On a different note, I was struck by how the building names have changed over time and in some cases the more commercial names have (“Hawaiian Punch”) have been changed to more ambience-setting names that are less obviously commercial in nature.
In terms of the presentation of “true science” I thought of the Museum of Natural History as a counter-example, and especially of the “new” Hayden Planetarium exhibitions, in which academic scientists appear as “talking heads” in explanatory audio and visual material. Would the use of more officially “scientific” informants have made a difference in how David perceived the content of the Sea World exhibits? Also, it seems to me that Sea World developed during the early heyday of TV in which such programs as “Jacques Cousteau” and “Animal Kingdom” were popular. Did Sea World, like these shows, appear more “exotic” and/or “authentic” when it first opened? And how does it compete now, in a world where television and the internet have far broader reaches and so much more information and visual material is available?
The distinctions in the way leisure time is spent across the socio-economic spectrum of consumers in the United States was also on my mind this week as I listened to the news reports about “Black Friday” for which anchors interviewed those waiting on line for early store openings and noted that a number of shoppers will simply purchase their gifts on-line. I wonder how socio-economic distinctions break down around Thanksgiving vacation plans and shopping for Christmas gifts; I have my suspicions about how these break down. It struck me while listening that Black Friday is in itself a type of tourist production, playing on human nature as well.
I appreciate Davis’ intense attention to detail but could not help being struck by how she fits into the very structure that she critiques, both by becoming a paying customer in order to observe the working of the theme park and because she is a resident of the town in which Sea World exists; at one point she describes her own child’s school visit with Sea World. I wonder if she could have somehow construed a different role for herself at some point, perhaps working with the education staff to prepare a school visit. In terms of thinking about the animals and how to understand them as performers, I would have appreciated (similarly to Davis in her analysis of the Sea World shows) some more scientific knowledge about the animals and what best academic wisdom suggests about the ways in which they understand their theme park experiences. Do the animals “act out”? How do they understand their relationships with their trainers? I was disappointed that Davis did not learn more about the animals who are the purported raison d’etre for the park. It is not necessary to know such information in order to play with metaphors or theories for describing the animal behavior being manipulated and exhibited. But it might help in feeling more “authentic” about making such comments and considering what the hazards of this experience are for the creatures whose very existence provides the excuse for the creation of the theme park in the first place. Would I have learned more, however thin the information might be, if I had visited Sea World myself?
Posted by Leah Strigler at 4:47 PM
Immigrants and Whales: Come Touch Their Worlds! Tickets on sale now…
On first consideration, one may assume that Sea World and the Lower East Side Tenement Museum (LES) are very different. After all, one is officially a non-profit museum, while the other is a for-profit business. One seems to offer an educational historical building, while the other a fun-filled “theme park.” One visits one site for education, and the other for enjoyment. However, in practical terms, these two operations have much in common, with their so-called differences perhaps really different only in terms of lexical semantics.
LES and Sea World are both entities that wish to continue to exist and flourish. Sea World exists to make profits, and LES makes profits to exist. Thus, financial income, in the end, is equally important to both, and this means the need to attract lots of visitors. They do so by providing experiential entertainment, which means being first and foremost a tourist attraction that anticipates and serves up the type of experience visitors want. The entire tourist production, including image, content, and structure, are all built around the central need of being a place that people want to go to for a good, fun experience. The similarities between the two in how this is achieved are quite extensive.
First of all, both sites have been developed with an acute awareness of cultural identity shared with their cities. Sea World and San Diego developed with a joint cultural image of climate, health, and environmental celebration and experience. LES is intimately tied to New York’s immigrant history and self-awareness of cosmopolitan diversity. Through shared identity, both have sought and obtained financial support by identifying as a sort of public space and publicly invested cultural icon. The museum receives tax exempt and historic landmark status. Sea World has a history of benefiting from public leases and development of public infrastructure.
In order to achieve goodwill and legitimacy as a public investment, both have sought an educational image and strongly reach out to public schools. Both sites encourage fieldtrips and have even ensconced themselves into local public curriculum. Both employ curators, academic and research staff, and situate their publicly stated goals within the realm of academic inquiry and public education. Both occasionally sponsor programs with academic or socially aware agendas.
To return to the idea of tourist production, both sites focus on entertainment with an emphasis on immersive contact with another world that is to be experienced and contemplated. Sea World offers the natural out-of-bounds underwater world and LES offers a travel through time to our ancestors’ immigrant arrival in the U.S. These worlds are offered as three-dimensional experiences through time where visitors get to see and touch, relating to the magical environments in a personal, self-reflexive manner.
In order to offer the individualized experience while maximizing the number of visitors per day, both sites have structured their productions in a manner that carefully organizes movement, time, and concession opportunities. Scheduled performances are carefully scheduled to ensure most efficient visitor flow through attractions as well as factoring in dead-time for visitors to view and purchase items in the gift shops. The experience is rounded out with opportunities for individual engagement with the environment. This can be seen with Sea World’s carefully designed landscaped walkways leading, for example, to a viewing of turtles on a little island or LES’s bookstore which contains nooks and crannies of books, various historical items on display, and an alcove where one can watch a film about current immigrants.
Interestingly, both sites cater to a mainly white, upper-middle class visitor population. It appears that both productions offer a product that is culturally identified by this ethnic and economic demographical group as an activity that furthers one’s identity as a caring, sensitive, educated, socially mobile person. Sea World’s celebration of nature has its roots in the 19th Century notion of Enlightened Man. The status of museum as realm for cultural celebration and betterment follows the same course. The experience at both sites thus becomes a self-affirming social experience, where one engages in the activity and is rewarded with an image--and self-reflection--of what one hopes to see. In a recent interview, a former “Victoria” at LES informed me that she used to tailor her performance to the identity of the audience. If the audience was mostly Jewish, she would “play up” Victoria’s Jewish identity and laden her dialogue with specific vocabulary as well as express her character’s personal opinions of the ethnic experience of the neighborhood. If the audience was of mainly Italian descent, “Victoria” would downplay her Jewish identity and speak to her audience’s specific ethnic background, talking about the various Italian activities in the neighborhood. Sea World also constructs its performances with consideration of their customers’ emotions and self-image. While it is natural for a penguin colony to physically crowded, the engineers were acutely aware of the viewer’s needs regarding public perception of how much space penguins “should” have, and thus provided an unnaturally spacious environment for the number of penguins, knowing that viewing a “crowded” penguin presentation would make the viewer feel personally crowded, as well as perhaps a “bad” consumer for supporting a zoological exhibit that isn’t offering a natural habitat. In fact, most of the aesthetic traits of the park’s animal habitats are for the viewers’ comfort, not the animal. Formed rocks line the dolphin’s pool to reassure humans, not dolphins.
Finally, both sites offer the opportunity for intimate experience with performed magical worlds where participation and interaction are key ingredients. Sea World managers proudly claim, “We’re touchable.” (p. 103) LES educators claim that the success of the Confino Aparatment tour lies in the fact that it is an immersive “hands-on” environment. Whether next to the Dolphin petting pool or in Victoria’s kitchen, one is able to bridge the gap between the quotidian world and the proffered touristic magical world, and make sublime contact. In such a manner, visitors are ostensibly allowed to make the far-away world temporarily their own. Such conceptual experience thus leads to personal discovery and enjoyment.
This experiential learning is tied to the emotional experience for the visitor. Productions are created with the specific intent to evoke certain emotions. Sea World attempts to induce awe, wonder, and even trepidation. LES, through an environmental theater approach, attempts to induce emotional empathy with the historical immigrant experience with the hope of engendering dialogue regarding current immigration.
More closely examined, the binary comparison between for-profit and non-profit corporations appears to be less and less relevant, particularly as the government contracts out services to not-profit and for-profit agencies. Many prisons, city water systems, and social services are now run by businesses for profit. Kaiser-Permanente and Health Net compete in the same health care market. As museums and other non-profit entities enter the same consumer market as theme parks, it is understandable that their products will merge, focusing on the desire of consumers, which more and more appears to be the tourist model of experiential entertainment.
Posted by Scott Wallin at 2:30 PM