So what happens when a member of that critical group decides to present these things for further observation? Marling observes: “ There’s so much bashing of materialism at the university, the phrase consumer culture’ gets tossed around as though it’s the next best thing to original sin.” “ Pop culture” is not historically a thing to be respected or studied by the “ educated.” While everybody opened up their student mailboxes to The New Yorker or The Nation, I opened up mine to Entertainment Weekly.
Television? “ If I’m away from the television for more than five minutes I get nervous.” “ Nothing human,” she declares, “ Offends me.” Her statements would have been a great reassurance to me as a pop culture-minded, aesthetically-driven first-year at a liberal, political college. As for Disney conspiracy theorists? Insane. In the many interviews I read about this exhibition, she stands up for her area of expertise, “ pop culture,” with intelligence and wit, even with such pointed questions about Disney’s possibly “ untoward imaginative life rooted in childhood” and union labor disputes at the Disney studio in 1941. I feel a kinship between myself and Karal Ann Marling, the curator of the exhibition. Of course, if I had lived in Minnesota at the age of 11, I would not be wishing to go back in time, because 1) I might have seen it and 2) I would not have spent many of my formative years taking car trips down to Disneyland. What I wouldn’t do to go back in time and walk through the Walker’s galleries, set up to suggest the hub-and-spoke configuration of Disneyland. If only I had lived in Minnesota then, I thought. While digging through press archives a couple months ago, I discovered something extraordinary: a file for the Walker’s 1997 presentation of The Architecture of Reassurance: Designing Disney’s Theme Parks.
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