Walt Disney and the creation of emotional environments: interpreting Walt Disney's oeuvre from the Disney studios to Disneyland, CalArts, and the Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow (EPCOT)

Abstract

Walt Disney is arguably the most influential figure in the twentieth-century affair with animation. Although he is known for his innovations in personality animation and the full-length animation film, he is no less famous as the creator of the first theme park, Disneyland. Less well-known are his forays into the creation of educational institutions and urban landscapes. This paper argues that the notion of ‘emotional environments’, culled from contemporary research in the growing field of the history of emotions, might prove the most effective tool for interpreting the overall character of Disney's work or oeuvre. The paper argues that thanks to the influence on him of the Hollywood studio environment that had come into operation in California in the 1920s, Disney's animation experiments were intimately linked with his increasing efforts to fashion an emotional environment that would transfer the emotions associated with animation and motion pictures to three-dimensional realities, providing both children and adults with important confirmations of psychological reassurance associated with such critical states of self-fulfillment as happiness. To support this reading, the paper introduces the relevance of an influential body of organization and firm analysis that has developed the related concepts of experience economy, immersive environment, and art firm.