Disney’s EPCOT and African Culture: A Look Into Corporate America’s Point-Of-View

Kirby Harris

November 2 2019

Content Warning: This article contains depictions and discussion of racism and racist imagery

As the school year draws to a close each spring, crowd levels steadily increase at the 30,000 acres of land that make up Walt Disney World. Together, the four theme parks, two water parks, a shopping district, and thirty-four resorts bring in over 50 million visitors each calendar year. These numbers make Walt Disney World the singular most popular vacation spot in the world. These attractions have reached millions of people in their 48 years of operation. “The most magical place on earth” prides itself on bringing smiles to the whole family's face. While Disney Parks are centered in the nostalgia of their oldest attractions, they have continued to evolve over the years. Disney made its mark in entertainment by creating the modern theme park, intended to let the whole family feel the magic. With the original Disneyland Park opening in 1955, the feeling of childhood while riding “Peter Pan’s Flight” or hugging Mickey Mouse have now spanned generations. It has also spread across the globe, with twelve parks across five nations.

EPCOT is one of the four theme parks on Disney’s Florida property. Upon conception by Walt Disney, EPCOT was never intended to be a theme park. EPCOT was first envisioned by Disney as a living city. The park’s strange name is an acronym of the name that Walt Disney originally gave this future city, “The Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow”. While a prototype of the city can be seen in Disney’s Magic Kingdom, the life-sized version never came close to being built. After Walt’s death in 1966, the concept of the futuristic city was recycled into a second theme park on Disney’s Florida property. Keeping little other than the name, imagineers (the engineers who work to create Disney’s theme parks) built EPCOT as a theme park with a focus on education and culture. EPCOT’s opening day attractions all had educational themes, teaching guests about history, energy, technology, and more. Although many of them have been remembered as cult classics, there were a number of problems with these “edu-tractions”. A few of these problems could be attributed to kids being against learning on their summer vacations, but most of the issues came from how dated these rides became after only a short period of time.

Over time, the “edu-tractions” that EPCOT opened with have continually been replaced with more crowd-pleasing attractions. These new rides come featuring familiar faces like Nemo and Queen Elsa and are much less likely to become dated so quickly. EPCOT has been subject to so much change since its opening that someone who hasn’t visited since opening day would recognize almost none of its current attractions. However, in its 37 years, what has remained the same at EPCOT is the separation of its two “lands”. The first, Future World, has featured “pavilions” dedicated to body, imagination, land, and sea. The second is the World Showcase.

EPCOT’s World Showcase is not what most people imagine when they picture a Disney Theme Park. With no thrill rides and long walks in the Orlando sun, many people think twice before making the trek. What often encourages guests to travel around the World Showcase is its food and drink festivals, featuring popular “drink around the world” challenges. Despite EPCOT’s original aim to be based on “education and culture”, food and drink have come to define the park. EPCOT has spent the last 35-plus years in a state of identity limbo between a theme park, a food fair, and an interactive world culture exhibit. Through this exhibit, visitors from around the globe have been able to experience every corner of the world— or at least that was the intention.

In reality, the exhibit is more of a showcase of America’s closest friends at the time of construction. Later, Disney added a couple of nations who were willing to pay their way in. The World Showcase opened in 1982 with nine pavilions including three North American countries, two Asian countries, and four European countries. This means that entire sections of the world were missing from the so-called “world” showcase. Morocco and Norway were added in 1984 and 1988 after each of these countries lobbied for the pavilions to be built.

However, when it comes to the world outside of Europe, what is supposed to highlight world unity through a singular song instead focuses on differences. Outside of Europe, the representation is much more ‘magic’ than reality. The attraction takes an orientalist point of view, where the most unfamiliar lands are exotic and starkly different from what is considered “normal” in the west. Middle Eastern children sit on flying carpets and charm snakes.

The African children in “small world” ride on the backs of wild animals. Unlike their European and Asian counterparts, these children sing in English instead of a native African language. African culture is again lost to the perpetuation of the colonial idea that the whole African continent lives in a "neverland".

This isn't only true of "small world". On the Jungle Cruise, which is set to take place in the Amazon and in Africa, native tribes throw spears at us and are portrayed as savage, dangerous, uncivilized, and threatening, another colonial trope. Many other older Disney attractions follow this same theme of ignorance.

It is unlikely that these attractions will change anytime soon. When “classic” rides do change, Disney tends to face a lot of criticism from those who frequent their theme parks. It's even more heated when the change stems from social issues. Last year, the Pirates of The Caribbean attraction replaced the scene where women are for sale at an auction. It caused an uproar against “politically correct culture” among Disney's fans. Many consider these changes to be a direct attack on their childhoods. People want to see the same Disney that they loved as children, especially when it comes to fan favourites.

EPCOT as a whole has never been a fan favourite, only small groups complain when original EPCOT attractions get shut down. To cater to the masses, EPCOT’s makeover is going to continue. The newest plans for the park-wide updates include a Marvel superhero pavilion, a space-themed restaurant, and new attractions that will be added to the World Showcase. A Ratatouille themed attraction is coming to the France pavilion, and a Mary Poppins one in England. What this update doesn’t include is what EPCOT has never had - a better representation of African cultures with a differentiation between them.

The official blog of Walt Disney World Resort said of the changes that EPCOT’s World Showcase is going to “continue to be a celebration of culture, cuisine, architecture, and traditions”. In my experiences with the park, that celebration is limited to Global North cultures and traditions. To turn the World Showcase into a worldwide one, there needs to be an effort to include cultures of the entire world. Since EPCOT's opening, those included have been cultures that are in good standing with American politics. A quantifiable diversification would see the addition of nations that aren't taught about in American history books.

There are currently no plans to include any more countries – African or otherwise. EPCOT’s empty space is beginning to fill up with thrilling attractions based on Disney’s most popular films. As the World Showcase becomes more and more commercialized, the cultural and educational premise is starting to slip away. Norway’s attraction became Frozen-themed in 2016. With England’s Mary Poppins and France’s Ratatouille to follow, EPCOT is unlikely to move towards adding more country pavilions anytime soon. With so many Disney Parks projects currently taking place, it will likely be a long time before Disney builds a new country pavilion. This future sees the World Showcase used as a husk for pushing Disney's intellectual properties, so the gap of real African culture in EPCOT may never get filled. However, it is essential to keep reminding ourselves (and the company) of the way Disney treats so many cultures and reinforces unjust representations of global power.

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