When Disneyland opened in 1955, Catherine L. Newell explains “Fess Parker, Disney’s Davy Crockett, and America’s ‘King of the Wild Frontier,’ was scheduled to make an appearance at the ‘fort’”¹ in Frontierland. This is because Disney sought a television or movie tie-in for each land in Disneyland, and “the series, the five-part serial Davy Crockett had been filmed to tie in with Frontierland.”² It’s no surprise then, that the star of that series, which would later be combined into standalone films, would make an appearance to mark the occasion and make that tie-in explicit. However, in the year following the opening of the park, Frontierland would see the addition of numerous attractions—rides and scenes—that, while still engaging with the type of western frontier iconography present in the Davy Crockett series, were not directly contained within the Davy Crockett series itself. Specifically, I mean to point to the addition of the Burning Settler’s Cabin—and to some degree the nearby attractions such as the Unfriendly Indian Village, Friendly Indians, and the Indian War Canoes ride that took guests to those scenes. The maps of Disneyland from 1955 to 1958 demonstrate the addition of these attractions the year following it’s opening. Two years later, in 1958, Disney will then release the feature length live action film The Light in the Forest, which will function as a tie-in to the newly added attraction. It seems the tie-ins were especially important to ensure a sort of coherent message emanating from the attractions. This is because “Disneyland’s rides depend upon the riders’ passive (re)consumption of Disney narratives … these attractions … draw upon iconic images and songs from Disney films, trusting that the rider has the cultural literacy to fill in both the rest of the narrative and its accompanying ideological messages.”³ However, this speaks most powerfully to the so-called dark rides in Fantasyland, in large part because the attractions considered here, in Frontierland, do not have the same narrative coherence as those other rides and draw on a number of disparate sources rather than a single textual reference. Nicholas Sammond explains the problem of controlling the narrative with such a disparate assortment of attractions when he writes that “regulating the narrative proved challenging, with the traditional oater battle between cowboys and Indians modulated by an Indian village in which Native American performers presented arts, culture, and dance to curious visitors.”⁴ And so, with this struggle with narrative coherence also comes a difficulty in establishing an ideological message.

With this regulatory difficulty in mind this paper will look to the way the concepts of 'civilization' and 'savagery' get worked out, especially in relation to concerns over masculinity and heteronormativity, across a set of western objects. To this end, this paper will turn to John Ford’s 1956 western The Searchers to consider the dramatic and memorable presence of a burning settler’s cabin, and consider the way in which this image gets mobilized in the overall narrative for said ideological message. To be clear, The Searchers is functioning here to point to the possible meanings that can be generated in the context of the western film generally, especially in the time period wherein Disneyland first opens, and is chosen solely for its popularity and the iconic complementarity of the burning cabin.⁵ Following this, a reading of the subsequent 1958 Disney western The Light in the Forest will be offered, once again specifically around the presence of a burning settler’s cabin to consider the way it gets mobilized for the larger narrative and ideological message of the film. Following this, we will turn to the burning cabin in Disneyland itself to consider the way it functions in much the same way as the cabin in The Light in the Forest, but that with the presence of additional attractions in Frontierland, the ideological coherence that can be demonstrated in the films does not get achieved in the park. 

The Searchers: Actions Make the Man

The Searchers concerns the story of Ethan Edwards, played by John Wayne, a past Confederate Civil War soldier who, a number of years after the war, returns from Mexico to visit his brother Aaron and his family at their homestead on the American frontier. Shortly after arriving, Ethan and some other men in the area leave to help retrieve a nearby settler’s cattle that was lost in a recent raid. While they are gone, a tribe of Comanches descend upon the Edwards’ homestead, setting it on fire, killing Aaron and his son, raping and killing his wife Martha, and kidnapping his two daughters Debbie and Lucy. The rest of the film is primarily centred around the search for these girls who have been taken, with Ethan leading the search party, somewhat reluctantly accompanied by his brother’s adopted son, the one eighth Cherokee Martin Pawley. Over the course of the film, and a roughly five-year search, the audience is witness to the ruthless hatred of Ethan, who seems driven more by a desire for vengeance than of rescuing his niece. It will be with the scene of Aaron’s burning cabin, resembling Frontierland’s Burning Settler’s Cabin, that functions as a direct and dramatic image of the inciting conflict of the film.

While there is a complex and problematic representation of Native Americans in The Searchers, it is through the topic of miscegenation that the real work of the film gets done. Michael Hilger classifies The Searchers as a western depicting Native Americans as “savages”, specifically of the kidnapping type.⁶ This is due primarily to the brutality and vicious actions of the Comanche tribe, especially their leader Scar, as they leave a trail of razed settlements, dead men, and abused women in their wake. It is also, according to Hilger, because of how Ethan’s hatred is visible even as he is presented as the hero of the film: “The hero, Ethan Edwards, knows the culture and language of the Comanche well, and hates the tribe so intensely that…his hatred overreaches the motivation…he is clearly the hero, who is literally looked up to in low-angle shots throughout the film, and his attitude is that to know the Comanches is to hate them.”⁷ This, however, is simply an overly reductive reading of the representational and ideological work being done in the film. Certainly, Ethan’s character is seething with racial hatred towards Native Americans, but it is presented as a great ambivalence: “Ethan hates Indians for their savagery and takes their scalps for killing his relatives; he despises Martin Pawley’s Cherokee blood and makes him his heir; he wants to kill his niece for becoming a squaw and he embraces her and takes her safely home. Ethan is a monster and he is John Wayne.”⁸ This set of contradictions, aside from the final one that appears to function complimentarily, run through the character and effectively challenge and complicate a simplistic identification of Ethan with an unrelenting racism towards Native Americans. Indeed, while Ethan may, for all intents and purposes, appear to be the hero of the film, there are a number of central components of the film that call this into question, many of which revolve around his past. For instance, Ethan is a veteran who fought for the Confederates in the Civil War, early in the film it is revealed that he has a reasonable sum of gold coins of questionable origin, and is treated with suspicion, if not downright condemnation, by a figure of the law, Samuel Clayton. This is to say, from the outset, Ethan is not presented as an ideal or honorable man, but rather from the start he is presented as questionable, even dangerous. The low-angle shots Hilger points to, likewise, take a reductionary view of film form, suggesting that the low-angle necessarily gives him heroic power. Yet, it is also with a low-angle shot that the villain of the film, Scar, is first made visible to the audience, positioning him as terrifying, not heroic. Simply, low-angles are also fraught with ambivalence. Most importantly, however, is that at the end of the film it is Martin Pawley who kills Scar, whereas Ethan dishonorably scalps him afterward. Put another way, Martin Pawley heroically vanquishes the villain, whereas Ethan mutilates his corpse.

As a result of this conflict in Ethan’s character, Armando José Prats claims he is caught in a struggle of Double Otherness, a doubling that sees him embody both ‘whiteness’ and ‘Indianness,’ that “his Indianness lay heretofore hidden under the mask of Indian hating, it emerges [after scalping Scar] into its visible and palpable form. At the end of the ‘search,’ Ethan has discovered that he is savage to the core.”⁹ There are two things of great importance to recognize at this point, the first being that it is with the burning cabin near the beginning of the film that this process begins, that the burning cabin punctuates the beginning of a descent of Ethan’s character that eventually finds him complicating a racially motivated definition of ‘civilization’ and ‘savagery.’ Secondly, and by extension, what this doubling accomplishes is negotiate what gets included in the ‘civilized’ west, what becomes validated and qualified as properly American. Donald Hoffman explains that “exclusion from America, at least the vision of America presented in the Hollywood Western, has been the traditional fate of Native Americans,” a fate that, in his view, resists any successful reintegration.¹⁰ The Searchers may, in some ways, be attempting a reintegration, but following Hoffman’s suggestion, it is ultimately unsuccessful. However, there is an interesting manner in which it is attempting to do this, and that is through the fear and disgust over miscegenation, a spectre that haunts and motivates the film. Peter Lehman clearly points to how this functions through the film when he writes that “at the most explicit level Ethan’s mania is fueled by the knowledge that after being kidnapped, Debbie would have been subjected to sex with Indians.”¹¹ This miscegenation taints Debbie, marking her as ‘savage,’ and so Ethan’s mania is directed toward killing her, as evidenced in the film when Debbie arrives at their camp to warn them that Scar is planning to attack, and Ethan makes to shoot her.

So it is a fear and hatred of miscegenation that drives Ethan in the search, to kill Debbie, and it isn’t until, following Prats’s argument, that he becomes double, that his “savagery” is made explicit, that he can put the goal of murder behind him and save Debbie. This leads to the final scene of the film, where all of the ‘doubles’ appear together: Ethan, Debbie—doubled due to being raised in a Comanche community—and Martin—doubled due to his being one-eighth Cherokee, appearing as a result of miscegenation itself. The film ends with Ethan leaving the frontier, too much of an outsider to remain in ‘civilization.’ This is played out very deliberately, wherein the beginning of the film is invoked through a framing from inside a house, framing the outside world with the frame of a door, of ‘civilization.’ The scene has Ethan deliver the rescued Debbie to a family that has agreed to take her in, and so after he approaches the porch to hand her over, they take her inside, disappearing in the house, followed by Martin and his white female love interest. Ethan stays outside, turning to walk away, the door shutting him out of this space, a reversal of his admittance at the beginning. Importantly, this scene not only enacts the ramifications of Ethan’s becoming too ‘savage,’ but it also does so with the image, once more, of a settler’s cabin (or homestead, more properly). Which is to say, it is the homestead which once more functions as a narrative punctuation, emphasizing the ideological message that defines the ‘civilized’ and ‘savage’ categories. Prats points to one of the more striking features of this scene that does well to emphasize this ideological message: neither the couple taking in Debbie, nor Martin and his love interest ever look at Ethan, he “has become almost invisible, virtually absent, to the community of the ‘fine good place to be,’ almost as if he is now the object of their censure.”¹² This functions this way because The Searchers presents the category of ‘savage’ not under the rubric of race per se, but rather, under the rubric of actions, wherein the actions of Ethan result in him being placed under it. And so, by the end, Ethan is made ‘savage’ and not given access to civilization, whereas Martin, whose part Cherokee heritage is made abundantly clear, and Debbie, who has passed through a Native American culture, are allowed to enter into that space; regardless of their proximity to Native Americans they do not get marked ‘savage.’

Barring the Frontiersman: Effeminate Civilization

Beyond the categories of ‘civilized’ and ‘savage,’ however, the work this film is doing begins pushing more directly into concerns of libertarian individualism and governance. Arthur Redding highlights what seems to be at stake in these frontier myths when he writes “the two great achievements of the frontier, the construction of a libertarian American individual and the production of centralized Federal power, are directly opposed to one another. The western individual fears and distrusts federal authority; in turn the national government, for the sake of social harmony, seeks to limit unregulated individualism.”¹³ As with many western protagonists before him, Ethan embodies this unregulated individualism, and indeed it is this character that is typically required to bring about civilization in the first place. Arthur explains further that “one must be somewhat savage in order to secure and defend civilization. Wayne is the successor to a long lineage of this figure… the frontiersman is both savage and civilized; he exists at the cusp of settlement.”¹⁴ The unavoidable effect of marking Ethan as ‘savage’ while also refusing him entry into civilization by the end is the feminization of civilization, of that which is settled America. This occurs by way of how federalism is typically presented as effeminate, especially as it is contrasted with the masculine libertarianism of the frontiersman, and how this myth generally informs the American imagination itself: “the American political and social imagination is still underwritten by the mythicized frontier…The struggle between federalism and libertarianism virtually defines [American] national elections,” and so in these election contests, if one wishes to demonstrate their libertarianism “he dresses up like a cowboy, as did Ronald Reagan, who twice ran successfully on an anti-federalist platform,” whereas “in the west, ‘tax-and-spend’ liberals are demonized as east-coast Washington insiders and ignorant bureaucrats, as tax-collectors, and, ultimately, as effeminate.”¹⁵ The way this myth gets re-presented in the American electoral system is a particularly effective correlate with which to demonstrate the effect Ethan has on the characterization of ‘civilization’ as such. Ethan embodies the libertarian, anarchic, frontiersman that settles the west, which we can see reflected in the anti-federalist platforms presented through cowboy costume. And so, by rejecting this character at the end of the film, to limit the unregulated individualism he embodies, federal authority becomes privileged in the image of ‘civilization’ at the end of the film, along with all of the effeminacy that implies.

Looking at The Searchers in this way, at the way the burning cabin punctuates the beginning of a decline in Ethan’s character that eventually marks him ‘savage,’ and how a new homestead at the end punctuates the end of this process that leaves him unfit for inclusion in ‘civilization’, we can see how due to the complex interrelations of the libertarian and federalist impulse within the American frontier myth the film ultimately marks civilization as effeminate, and either reliant on or in danger to a more masculine individualism or even ‘savagery.’ Certainly, the cabin is aflame near the start of the film because of the ‘savage’ Comanches, and the community is only finally restored at the end due to Ethan’s actions. Mary Lea Bandy explains:

Ethan’s fury unleashed…is also the kind of passion and determination, no matter how excessive it may become, that was sometimes required in eliminating a threat from a savage land and in clearing a way for the arrival of civilization. In conquering a wilderness and building a nation, the power of ideals is inherently limited, even fragile, given the resistance of reality. And brutal violence is often required in removing obstacles to progress, or so the Western myth often tells us.¹⁶

In this Bandy describes the necessity of violence in the eradication of ‘savagery,’ to make way for ‘civilization,’ and likewise the fragility of ‘civilization’ in the face of this ‘savagery.’ What it fails to note, yet The Searchers highlights quite well, is how the very violence that is perceived as necessary to do this work has no place in the ‘civilization’ it secures. Additionally, this is neither an abstract nor disembodied violence, instead it is a violence the defines Ethan, a violence identified with ‘savagery’ itself, which thereby marks him and rejects him.

Disney: Masculinizing Civilization

J. G. O’Boyle explains that the “suspicion of authority, [is] an integral part of the American cultural matrix. The history and legend surrounding the very founding of [America] (by rebels, prisoners, slaves, dissenters, and dissidents) urge [Americans] to be so.”¹⁷ The early Disney western then takes up this history as myth and tells stories that emphasize this aspect of the American cultural matrix by celebrating “fair play, the supremacy of the individual over government, belonging, community, connection with nature, self-redemption, self-sacrifice, and the belief that ordinary people could do extraordinary things.”¹⁸ However, in order to do all of these things, they could not replicate the same ideological messages as we have seen in a film like The Searchers. Particularly, rather than reject the strong individual and mark him ‘savage,’ we should see in the Disney films a different conception of these terms altogether. This is the case with The Light in the Forest, which will ultimately imbue ‘civilization’ with the libertarian masculinity The Searchers complicates and rejects, in the process establishing ‘civilization’ and ‘savagery’ along racial lines. So while Hilger claims the The Light in the Forest demonstrates “that there are good and bad people in both cultures,” both Native Americans and white settlers, this paper will seek to show this occurs in a manner distinct from The Searchers.¹⁹ Indeed, the difference becomes particularly interesting between the films as there is some narrative similarity. Where The Searchers is a story that is centred around a white child being kidnapped by a Native American tribe, while The Light in the Forest starts once a child who has been raised in a Native American tribe after being kidnapped is returned to his white family. The Disney film, then, follows the challenges resulting from the reintegration into white society of a boy raised as a Native American, hostile to those very people. Jeffery Dennis explains that the movie was “produced at the start of a more subtle but equally aggressive program of American intrusion into the social, economic, and political structures of the Third World” and that it “promotes heteronormative white/Western ‘civilization.’”²⁰ A significant aspect of this promotion is evident in the way that even the bad people in the Western culture are still granted access and shown as acceptable by the end, a complete reversal of what occurs in The Searchers.

True Son is the name of the white boy who is returned to his family at the start of The Light in the Forest, brought home on account of a peace treaty made with a nearby group of Native Americans. The deal would see a stop to fighting, the returning of captives from both groups, and certain lands being protected for the Native Americans, barring settlers from taking them. To aid the brokerage of this deal, Del Hardy, played by Fess Parker, is somewhat like the Ethan Edwards character from The Searchers, having intimate knowledge of the Native American tribes and is seen as somebody who can work with them. However, unlike Ethan, this knowing is never shown to pass into a space of hatred, or into acting in a way that would classify him as a “savage.” Indeed, even though Del is presented in this less ‘civilized’ manner, he frequently acts as a role model for True Son, instructing him in the ways of Western society: Del never has his whiteness called into question. Likewise, the majority of the white characters treat the return of True Son with joy, even though the boy resists and shows hostility towards them. Indeed, after a number of encounters with True Son where he shows disdain in this way, his mother shows interest in learning the Native language he prefers to use, in an effort to meet him halfway as they attempt to reintegrate him into Western culture. He even finds a love interest in a girl named Shenandoe, who has been adopted after her family, including young children, were killed by a Native American tribe, an action True Son refuses to accept, claiming that it is only the white people who kill women and children. To return to Hilger, however, there is the appearance of bad white characters, notably Harry Butler, the man who adopted Shenandoe, who refuses to accept True Son back into society. The constant aggression from Harry, a man who admits to enacting violence against Native American women and children, and is shown to be abusive towards Shenandoe, serves as one of the central reasons True Son eventually runs away from the settlers and returns to the tribe he was raised with: the whites are cruel while his tribe is good.

Dennis claims “the thought of leaving Shenandoe at the mercy of the villainous Harry Butler compels True Son to return to the civilized, heterosexual world.”²¹ However, it isn’t just that he leaves his peaceful tribe because he couldn’t stand the thought of leaving the girl he loves with the cruel white man. Instead, due to the murder of a member of his tribe by the white settlers, they decide to massacre a number of settlers unlawfully claiming Native land protected by the treaty—this is where the burning cabin in the film appears—and it is largely due to the aftermath of this event that True Son returns to the white settlement. This massacre occurs against the wishes of the leader of the tribe, instead being led by the brother of the man who was killed; a scenario that reflects the justification given to Scar in The Searchers. Following the ‘savagery’ attributed to Scar in that film, the massacres in The Light in the Forest are shown to be equally violent, wherein they kill and scalp women and children, leading True Son to become disillusioned and to betray his tribe by alerting additional white settlers of an ambush awaiting them. This is a very significant moment in the film, and it, like The Searchers is punctuated by the presence of a burning cabin, in this case one that has already been burnt to the ground. Indeed, up until this point in the film True Son has considered the Native American tribe he grew up with the ‘good’ people, while consistently treating the settlers with suspicion, distrust, or hatred. The cabin, therefore, functions to punctuate the point in the narrative where True Son stops seeing these two groups in this way, and begins seeing the possibility for the Native Americans to be ‘savage,’ due to the violence they have enacted on women and children.

Additionally, outside of the actions of the Native Americans, we may point to what the settler’s cabin itself represents to consider how ‘civilization’ and ‘savagery’ are further presented in this sequence. Bruce Buchan explains “by the time that ‘civilization’ entered the English language in the late 18^th century, the term (and cognates such as civility and civil society) denoted a range of personal, social, and political qualities that Europeans increasingly associated with notions of their own historical development from ancient ‘savagery’ and ‘barbarism’ to an ever more refined condition of ‘civilization.’”²² And while Buchan turns to the interaction between British colonists and the Indigenous populations of Australia to see how this effected the political treatment of the latter by the former, it also emphasizes an important feature of the Western colonial perspective in general, and one we can consider in relation to the frontier. Indeed, it is in his turn to John Locke where we can broaden this scope and point to a central feature of this interaction with Indigenous peoples more generally. Namely, “Locke’s image of the state of nature was constructed from a range of colonial sources on Indigenous peoples, depicting a condition without settled private property and legislative authority.”²³ In this, we can clearly see how settled property itself embodies ‘civilization,’ which is understood directly in contrast to ‘savagery.’ Therefore, the image of the burning cabin in The Light in the Forest necessarily marks the Native American tribe as ‘savage,’ not only through the violence of their actions, but also due to the way those actions lead to the destruction of an image of ‘civilization’ itself. Importantly, Harry, who admits earlier in the film to having raided Native American communities and killing their women and children, does not get marked ‘savage’ in this same way. The reason here is twofold, for while his whiteness prevents him from being marked in such a way, it is also that the Native Americans who are the targets of his violence are not identified with ‘civilization’ like a white/Western settlement is.

Following True Son’s rejection of the tribe he grew up with, and his actions to alert settlers of an impending ambush, the leader of the massacres decides to kill True Son as punishment. He is eventually spared by the intervention of the tribe’s leader, who lets True Son go and orders him to return to his people. There seems to be in this moment a possible recovery of the Native American character, wherein they can still be marked ‘civilized,’ since the leader himself was against the raid. However, rather than depict this leader directly as ‘noble’ or resist marking him ‘savage,’ their final conversation sees him tell True Son that if they are ever to meet again, it will be as enemies. In this way, the events function to emphasize that there can be no crossing over, they are of a different kind. Finally, when True Son returns to the settlers, Harry is unwilling to accept his return, nor his budding relationship with Shenandoe. In order to overcome these problems, and fully integrate back into the Western culture, True Son fights Harry, beating him by following pointers offered by Del in the language of the tribe True Son was raised with. After Harry admits defeat, he announces True Son is white and accepts him into the community, it is then that True Son unites with Shenandoe while Del is also shown to secure his own love interest: everybody gets accepted, nobody gets rejected. The presence of these love interests is significant, as it also points to the very masculinization of ‘civilization’ that is occurring throughout the film. Indeed, Dennis points out that “the socialist and Third World challenges to the primacy of Western capitalism after World War II produced a ‘crisis of masculinity’ that defined capitalist and socialist political-economic systems in terms of sexual identity, as masculine/heterosexual and feminine/homosexual respectively.”²⁴ Dennis points to how the young male characters in Disney films, such as The Light in the Forest, respond to just this, by making them strongly masculine and giving them a heterosexual love interest. It is in this way we can understand how True Son is “overtly positioned as an object of white/Western capitalist desire, shirtless in almost every scene, his chest and shoulders embossed with a Technicolor glow,” and how he learns that “modern American adolescents must express heterosexual desire” because “the meaning of life…[is] heterosexual love.”²⁵ Interestingly, this association of True Son with masculine heterosexuality, with white/Western capitalist desire, along with his rejection of the Native Americans who get marked ‘savage,’ enhances the way ‘civilization’ gets characterized as white/Western, masculine, and heterosexual.

Both of the films previously considered have a reasonably coherent though distinct ideological message in they way they define ‘civilization’ and ‘savagery.’ In The Searchers, these categories are separated through actions, and since ‘civilization’ rejects the masculine frontiersman due to his ‘savage’ actions, ‘civilization’ is itself made to seem effeminate. In The Light in the Forest, these categories are separated mostly over race, and by including the masculine frontiersman into ‘civilization,’ refusing to banish members who enact violence against Native Americans, and having a masculine boy prove his whiteness through violence before he ‘gets the girl,’ the film ultimately aligns ‘civilization’ with white/Western masculine heterosexuality. Frontierland does not have such a coherent ideological message as these films. As we will see, such a coherent ideological message will not be something attained by Frontierland itself.

Frontierland: The Incoherent Message

Aronstein explains that “Frontierland, representing America’s manifest destiny, occupies the western quadrant.”²⁶ Then, as one would expect, Frontierland represents the American frontier, and with it the ideological basis of western expansionism. However, as earlier stated, the disparate elements that combine to create Frontierland cause a difficulty in regulating this message and generally establishing a coherent one. Richard Francaviglia describes Frontierland as “richly layered with meanings derived from both American folklore and literature. Disney’s representation of the West involved linking a vivid narrative about the region to a design that could sustain the story line.”²⁷ This describes the challenging situation nicely, wherein a variety of sources combine to offer a plethora of meanings, with an attempt to link them together in a coherent narrative. It is from the Rivers of America, from which one can see the Burning Settler’s Cabin, where we can see this attempt at coherence break down. The Indian War Canoes, just one of the rides that goes around Tom Sawyer Island on the Rivers of America, takes the rider on a journey through the frontier, and most importantly, for the purposes of this paper, past the Unfriendly Indians Village, the Friendly Indians, and the Burning Settler’s Cabin. The presence of those two ‘Indian’ attractions call to mind what has become typical of 1950s Westerns, where the representation has extended beyond the confines of just the ‘savage’ type, and now includes the ‘noble,’ or ‘friendly,’ variant.

To turn to Aronstein’s account of the paradigmatic Disneyland ride narrative, however, we run into some problems. Aronstein uses ‘Pinocchio’s Daring Journey’ as an illustrative example, but the general pattern can be outlined as follows: the rides “begin in a space of warning,” which serve to establish some sort of exposition, to invoke a goal or contextual idea of good and bad; following this it transitions into “the lowest point of the ride” that “unleashes the id,” which can account for any actions or scenarios that are representative of the bad that has been established in the beginning; after this section “the ride concludes with escape,” typically by returning to a good space that has been drained of what is bad, simultaneously suggesting a progression, or a lesson learned.²⁸ Spatially, the three scenes we’re considering, that are visible from the Indian War Canoes, are positioned at the end of the first third, and start of the second third of the ride. It closes off the exposition, offering an outline of good and bad, and establishes the lowest point, the id of the narrative. This results in the negative, the ‘bad’ in the narrative of the rides, as being that which is associated with the image of a settler’s cabin burning next to an unfriendly “Indian” village. Here we can suggest the ride, therefore, identifies the Unfriendly Indian Village as ‘savages,’ and the Friendly Indians as ‘noble,’ not only by virtue of their names, but also by virtue of their very position in the ‘arc’ of the ride. This is to say that we can see how the attractions themselves present ‘savagery’ as something defined through actions, specifically ‘Indian’ violence against white settlements appears as ‘savage’ in this representation. However, as we turn to the narrative tie-in for the scenes visible from the Rivers of America rides—The Light in the Forest is tied in by more than just the presence of a burning cabin, but rather has a premeditated narrative relation demonstrated in the ‘Explorer’s Map of Tom Sawyer Island in Frontierland’ produced for Disneyland in 1957, which refers to the Unfriendly Indian Village as Indian Territory with the subtext referring directly to a treaty prohibiting entry, the very situation that accounts for the burning cabin in The Light in the Forest—we are faced with a problematic encounter, as the ideological message it presents, as we have seen, has ‘civilization’ and ‘savagery’ separated out on racial lines rather than on actions.

This is emphasized by the script that would be recited on the Disneyland Railroad. Francaviglia explains that it “admonished passengers to ‘watch for Indians and wild animals along the riverbanks.’ It further noted that ‘some Indians are hostile, and across the river is proof…a settler’s cabin afire. The pioneer lies in his yard…victim of an Indian arrow.’”²⁹ Indeed, this script show how it is even presented as an exception when ‘Indians’ are hostile or violent to white settlers, since it is a reminder that some are, a claim the script even suggests requires proof. Certainly this makes sense, as the rest of Frontierland is filled with a variety of representations of Native Americans. Indeed, one such representation is the “‘authentic Indian Villages…where Indians of thirteen tribes perform ancient ritual dances,’” called out in the script, that Francaviglia suggests is reflective of the way “Americans also recognized, even endorsed, Indian tribal identity by the 1930s.”³⁰ All of this conspires to express a confused set of ideological messages, wherein the tie-in to the film would make the burning cabin representative of the essential ‘savagery’ of Native Americans and by association present ‘civilization’ as essentially white/Western and masculine, whereas the presence of alternative representations of Native Americans—as well as the way they are described in the script and how the cultural perspective on Native Americans in general is suggested to be functioning in America at the time—resists this particular essentialist account of ‘savagery’ and ‘civilization,’ instead going as far as to show a certain type of respect of Native American identity.

Conclusion

As a representation of the American Western Frontier, Frontierland necessarily engages with a wide array of cultural history and ideological work. In doing so, it struggles to maintain a coherent ideological message as it creates a narrative around these various sources. By looking at two contemporaneous western films, The Searchers and Disney’s own The Light in the Forest, we have sought to show how distinct coherent ideological messages are presented through this type of object, and how Disney can be regarded as presenting its own distinct ideological message in their film products. Further, by exploring the attractions in Frontierland and the relationship The Light in the Forest has to some of them, this paper has shown how the attractions differ between themselves in the ideological messages they present, as well as with the ideological message of the film, thereby resulting in an incoherent ideological message from Frontierland itself. Specifically, we have shown that this incoherence results in Frontierland presenting ‘civilization’ as white/Western, masculine, and heterosexual, at the same time that it presents it as more inclusive and not separated on racial lines. We have also shown that it presents ‘savagery’ as a marker of racial difference at the same time it gets characterized through ‘Indian’ violence against white settlements, which is to say through actions against ‘civilization.’ In this way we can see how Frontierland attempts to narrativize and present a coherent ideological message through its attractions but fails to do so.