Sea World Experience Research Articles

ZOOTYCOON?:CAPITALISM, NATURE, AND THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS

This paper is a cultural studies analysis of the Microsoft computer video game, ZooTycoon™. Through a critical reading using the circuit of culture, questions of the gamer's subject position, the role of wildlife and implicit and explicit messages about contemporary attitudes toward the environment are explored. Drawing on Susan Davis' book, Spectacular Nature: Corporate Culture and the Sea World Experience (1997), this paper unpacks the virtual theme parks created in Zoo Tycoon™ for their (dis)continuities with Davis's findings. The virtual animals are found to serve as both labor and products in this game that teaches capitalist business strategy and managerial skills. This popular culture text is an example of a product that harnesses the environmental impulse and redirects that impulse back into commodity capitalism.

Spectacular Nature: Corporate Culture and the Sea World Experience

Spectacular Nature: Corporate Culture and the Sea World Experience

Spectacular Nature: Corporate Culture and the Sea World Experience

Spectacular Nature: Corporate Culture and the Sea World Experience. SUSAN G. DAVIS. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997. xii. 313 pp. illustrations, notes, index.

Reviews: Cultural Geography, Spatial Formations, Spectacular Nature: Corporate Culture and the Sea World Experience, Cities for Citizens: Planning and the Rise of Civil Society in a Global Age

Reviews: Cultural Geography, Spatial Formations, Spectacular Nature: Corporate Culture and the Sea World Experience, Cities for Citizens: Planning and the Rise of Civil Society in a Global Age

Review: SPECTACULAR NATURE: Corporate Culture and the sea World Experience, by Susan G. Davis

Review: <i>SPECTACULAR NATURE: Corporate Culture and the sea World Experience</i>, by Susan G. Davis

"I Have Seen the Future, and His Name Is Shamu": Moby Dick in San Diego

Susan G. Davis. Spectacular Nature: Corporate Culture and the Sea World Experience. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997. xii. 313 pp.

Nature Lovers

Other| May 01 1999 Nature Lovers Mike Davis, Ecology of Fear: Los Angeles and the Imagination of Disaster. New York: Metropolitan Books, 1998. $38.50 (Hardcover). Upton Sinclair, Oil! Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 1997, originally published 1927. $14.95 (paper). Susan G. Davis, Spectacular Nature: Corporate Culture and the Sea World Experience. Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 1997. $18.95 (paper). Eve Oishi Eve Oishi Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Radical History Review (1999) 1999 (74): 197–206. https://doi.org/10.1215/01636545-1999-74-197 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Eve Oishi; Nature Lovers. Radical History Review 1 May 1999; 1999 (74): 197–206. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/01636545-1999-74-197 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search Books & JournalsAll JournalsRadical History Review Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. Copyright © 1999 by MARHO: The Radical Historians' Organization, Inc.1999 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Spectacular Nature: Corporate Culture and the Sea World Experience. Susan G. Davis

Previous articleNext article No AccessBook ReviewsSpectacular Nature: Corporate Culture and the Sea World Experience. Susan G. DavisMark V. Barrow, Jr.Mark V. Barrow, Jr. Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Isis Volume 90, Number 1Mar., 1999 Publication of the History of Science Society Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/384301 Views: 3Total views on this site Copyright 1999 History of Science Society, Inc.PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

From nature's nation to Shamu on a stick

THE CROWD GASPS IN ORCHESTRATED AMAZEMENT. THE MASSIVE MAMMAL leaps out of the water-filled tank to expose its breadth. Throughout the performance, Shamu demonstrates the cetacean's immense power, but also something more. Suddenly, the orca bursts from the water again, yet this time not upward but outward-out of the water and on to land. The flukes of the whale seem to grasp the edge of the stage, holding Shamu, back arched and tail pointing to the sky, outside of the tank and within the audience. Something is revealed: Shamu lay prone like the extended hand of the marine world, inviting us land-lubbers to know more of the area composing 90 percent of Earth's surface environment. Susan G. Davis writes, As the tidal zone is a margin between life on land and in the sea, whales and their kin, as mammals, occupy similar liminal space between humans and the living ocean (9). Davis's Spectacular Nature: Corporate Culture and the Sea World Experience mixes cultural theory, material cultural analysis, and cultural anthropology to analyze Sea World's effort to create a spectacular story about nature in general and oceans in particular (9). This is a story of connections with nature, some contrived, some genuine, but each inveterate. The analysis is based in theories of Raymond Williams, particularly his declaration that humans are hopelessly intertwined with their environment. There can be no distinguishing what is natural and human, he writes, we have mixed our labour with the earth, our forces with its forces, too

Spectacular Nature: Corporate Culture and the Sea World Experience:Spectacular Nature: Corporate Culture and the Sea World Experience.

Spectacular Nature: Corporate Culture and the Sea World Experience. Susan G. Davis. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997.314 pp.

Spectacular Nature: Corporate Culture and the Sea World Experience.

Spectacular Nature: Corporate Culture and the Sea World Experience.

Sea World: A New Breed of Amusement

Decades ago, the parameters of for historical research and writing were fairly well defined. Wars, white males, and the rise and fall of ancient civilizations all fell neatly within these boundaries, and thus were examined and reexamined. Several biographies of John Hanson and possibly too many analyses of the Civil War typified the published scholarship of this era. In the last twenty-five years, however, the profession of researching and writing history has experienced a revolutionary transformation, finally including many more grassroots topics of study, such as sex, emotion, and the lives of the poor. Even as these boundaries of acceptability broadened, clearly understood lines still continued to exist, only to be redrawn. With biographies and diplomacy largely passe, university presses refocused on the wave of social history. This transformation, however, was more of a palace coup than an egalitarian revolt. Rather than opening the discipline to all comers and potential areas of study, the masters of the craft just redefined the borders of serious and publishable history. Topics outside this updated definition, or those borrowing methodologies from other disciplines, were often deemed superfluous or quirky, usually receiving minimal acceptance and attention. There seemed to be almost an unwritten rule that a certain topic/book was not scholarly if the reading public would want to buy it at their local mall bookstore; regardless of the updated focus, serious history must still only be for other historians. Only very recently, as many presses now fight for economic survival, are these quirky, popular, and marginalized topics being published and finally gaining scholarly recognition. The pleasant surprise for many historians is that this genre of scholarship--often examining the more mundane aspects of mainstream commercial culture--actually addresses and answers some crucial questions about recent American society and life. One such study that typifies this new breed of scholarship is Susan G. Davis' Spectacular Nature: Corporate Culture and the Sea World Experience.

Review: Spectacular Nature: Corporate Culture and the Sea World Experience, by Susan G. Davis

Review: <i>Spectacular Nature: Corporate Culture and the Sea World Experience</i>, by Susan G. Davis

Spectacular Nature: Corporate Culture and the Sea World Experience. By Susan G. Davis. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997. xii + 313 pp. Illustrations, notes, index. Cloth $50.00, paper $18.95

Previous articleNext article No AccessBook ReviewsSpectacular Nature: Corporate Culture and the Sea World Experience. By Susan G. Davis. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997. xii + 313 pp. Illustrations, notes, index. Cloth $50.00, paper $18.95David GlassbergDavid Glassberg Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Volume 3, Number 4October 1998 Published for the American Society for Environmental History and the Forest History Society Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.2307/3985214 © 1998 American Society for Environmental History and Forest History SocietyPDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Spectacular Nature: Corporate Culture and the Sea World Experience

This is the story of Sea World, a theme park where the wonders of nature are performed, marketed, and sold. With its trademark star, Shamu the killer whale - as well as performing dolphins, pettable sting rays, and reproductions of pristine natural worlds - the park represents a careful coordination of shows, dioramas, rides, and concessions built around the theme of ocean life. Susan Davis analyzes the Sea World experience and the forces that produce it: the theme park industry; Southern California tourism; the privatization of urban space; and, the increasing integration of advertising, entertainment, and education. The result is an engaging exploration of the role played by images of nature and animals in contemporary commercial culture, and a precise account of how Sea World and its parent corporation, Anheuser-Busch, succeed. Davis argues that Sea World builds its vision of nature around customers' worries and concerns about the environment, family relations, and education. While Davis shows the many ways that Sea World monitors its audience and manipulates animals and landscapes to manufacture pleasure, she also explains the contradictions facing the enterprise in its campaign for a positive public identity. Shifting popular attitudes, animal rights activists, and environmental laws all pose practical and public relations challenges to the theme park. Davis confronts the park's vast operations with impressive insight and originality, revealing Sea World as both an industrial product and a phenomenon typical of contemporary American culture. Spectacular Nature opens an intriguing field of inquiry: the role of commercial entertainment in shaping public understandings of the environment and environmental problems.

Spectacular Nature: Corporate Culture and the Sea World Experience

Spectacular Nature: Corporate Culture and the Sea World Experience