Neighborhoods of Make-Believe: Place, Play, and Possibility in Disneyland, Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, and The Magic City

摘要

All imaginative play, all make-believe, is a process of transformation. Playing alters the world which the player inhabits; it creates a new space that overlays, interpenetrates, or replaces the “real” world. Make-believe can change the signification of the physical or geographical space, it can act as time-travel, it can alter the appearance and actions of others drawn into the playspace, it can rewrite virtually all the laws of science and nature. Perhaps most fundamentally, play transforms the player. Imaginative play empowers the player, allows her to shape and mold her surroundings, to create stories where none existed, or to overwrite or erase existing stories; it allows her to invent and inhabit alternative identities.udThis project examines three places and spaces of play to consider the kinds of possibilities for transgression and transformation they engender. It begins with analysis of Disneyland, focusing on the park’s origins and early reception, arguing that the park was always intended as a space for adults and children equally, and that the design of the park makes it a kind of toy or stage manipulable by visitors. Next, it analyzes Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood by looking in depth at several key episodes of the program, examining the ways in which they represent alternatives or challenges to heteronormative culture, specifically concerning queer male identities. It also examines a sample of viewer mail sent to the program over a 35-year span as a means of thinking about divergent reception and potential effects of the program. Finally, it considers the children’s writing of E. Nesbit, and the ways in which Nesbit creates a world in which play, especially theatrical play, is possible and important for both adults and children. ududThis project concludes by suggesting that positioning play as a materially-situated activity as well as a method of exploration or inquiry, opens up new ways to consider and challenge a variety of binary constructs, particularly that of the child and the adult.ud