Disney’s Pinocchio (1940) and the Disneyland dark ride, Pinocchio’s Daring Journey are heirs to a long tradition within Western art, that makes use of popular culture as a device in the regulation of youth behaviour and morality. Disney’s Pinocchio (1940) is taken directly from Carlo Collodi’s fairytale of the same name released in 1883. Collodi’s story refers back to Medieval antecedents, specifically the Land of Cockaigne. Medieval tales of the Land of Cockaigne were pan-European, representing a shared motif of a ‘topsy turvy’ land of plenty and excess. This motif of a land of opposites was used as a tool that presented ethical consequences to those opting to challenge or live outside of conventional social orders. In later Medieval Cockaigne paintings, poems and stories, those who ignored the excesses of the Land of Cockaigne were described as “...prodigal children...” who in “...abandoning all pretense to honor, virtue, honesty and civility, not to mention wisdom and knowledge...these uncouth louts should go to that land where, upon their arrival, they will undoubtedly be esteemed and respected” (Pleij 43-44). These stories were used to regulate behaviour and to emphasize appropriate conduct. The didactic nature of the Cockaigne motif renders Collodi’s allusion to it all the more striking. In the original Pinocchio story, the Land of Toys features all manner of entertainments and temptations. This same motif follows through in the Disney movie. In each case, there is a basic lesson about learning to reject temptations in order to opt for conventional social mores. The specific nature of these moral conventions have at their core Christian principles of self-restriction and moral uplift. The manner in which these principles are represented evolve with contemporary social and cultural ideals. That is evident even within the Cockaigne motifs, from the early to later Medieval periods where the didactic lesson shifted from an emphasis on food (relative to times of greater famine) to social lessons for youth (characteristic of the development of a bourgeois class of youth for whom there was access to plenty). The context of all of the representations are contingent upon the anxieties of their respective age. This mercurial aspect of Cockaigne motifs and the didacticism inherent within them, is clear from the Medieval context to the Collodi and certainly to the Disney. My argument is that these motifs perform a basic function that is subject to contemporary social and cultural ideals. The invocation of a ‘topsy-turvy’ land as moral lesson remains the same, while the nature of the application of the motif changes. This can be seen in the differences between Collodi’s Land of Toys, Pleasure Island in Pinnochio (1940) and the Pinocchio’s Daring Journey ride at Disneyland where the latter exemplifies postwar American culture and a context of child development that differs from antecedents as recent as the film from which the ride is derived.

In Carlo Collodi’s story, boys who choose the ‘Land of Toys’ over the ‘real’ world are transformed into donkey’s and forced to work within the system they had previously rejected, in the form of speechless, lumpen/animal labourers. In Disney’s film version of the Pinocchio story, boys who travel to ‘Pleasure Island’ are offered temptation by way of excesses of food, drink and an overture to practice violence (presumably against each other but demonstrably against property). In Collodi’s text, as within the Disney, there are allusions to class and the boys depicted in the Pleasure Island sequence seem to represent working class Irish American youth. The Disney version of Pinocchio also follows the Collodi in including the transformation of boy to donkey and the forced sublimation of an otherwise unwilling worker, to a lumpen status, as brute worker within the ‘salt mines’. Collodi wrote his Pinocchio story between 1881 and 1883. He had tried his hand at writing, as both a journalist and as an author of fiction for many years without much resulting from this work. Around the 1860s and the Second Italian War of Independence Collodi had volunteered on the Pro-Garibaldi side of the Risorgimento and according to Jack Zipes biographical notes Collodi was “...more successful at politics and became known as an activist in liberal circles” (Zipes 176). Placing Collodi within a liberal tradition in the nineteenth century is I think important as it places Pinocchio within a specific educational context. The fact that Collodi names the land of Cockaigne (Cuccagna in the Italian) further positions this text within a lineage of morally didactic texts. In the late medieval period Pleij suggests that Cockaigne poems and stories made a case suggesting that:


“Within the model of progressive uplift, the child that successfully internalized the authority of (the middle-class, Protestant version of) American culture was less likely to require the largesse of state authority and was more likely to become an independent contributor to the state, rather than its dependant” (Sammond 90). This model of ‘progressive uplift’ certainly reflects Cunningham’s points with regard to the Western European shift towards public education and the aforementioned impetus to embed the children of the poor within a model that fixed them as ‘workers’ versus as those requiring state ‘charity’. The 20th century American context would as Sammond indicates, utilize popular culture as an additional tool towards the “...social and cultural construction of the generic child as a worker in the production of itself as an an adult, drawing its raw materials from popular culture” (Sammond 109). The Pinocchio story and in particular Pinocchio’s foray into Pleasure Island follows a long trajectory positing spaces of excess as reminders of the need for moderation and denial. The late Medieval Cockaigne stories, Collodi’s images of the permanent transformation of non-conforming children into animals and Disney’s particular admixture of these with contemporary expectations of civil/social regulation met in a film that promoted visions of “...middle-class virtues of deferred gratification, self- denial, thrift, and perseverance naturalized as the experience of the most average American alive...” (Sammond 78). Given this longstanding tendency to use a Cockaigne-esque space as a model for self-restraint it is interesting to note Hal Rammel’s critique of Disney’s portrayal of Pleasure Island. Rammell says that “The most terrifying an ultimately repressive depiction of this theme [that of the land of cockayne as a children’s paradise] appears in Walt Disney’s Pinocchio (1940), in which the ‘happy land of carefree boys,...a land of pudding and layer cakes’ on Pleasure Island becomes a place of no return where little boys are turned into donkeys and sent off to salt mines. ‘Give a bad boy enough rope and he’ll soon make a jackass of himself,’ laughs the Coachman who collects them. Thus, a children’s utopia falls victim to the same subversion that often befell the Land of Cockaigne when its liberatory comedy was used to present the authoritarian message, You shouldn’t have enough because you’ll take too much” (Rammell 113). Rammell’s comments fail to consider the shift in how Cockaigne was conceptualized, from pleasure place to space of moral didacticism and this complicates his argument with regard to Disney.

Pinocchio’s Daring Journey is a dark ride found in Fantasyland in Disneyland. In a space otherwise premised upon fairytales and heavily oriented towards cisgendered females, the Pinocchio ride is skewed towards a male spectatorial gaze - both Disney and Collodi turn their variants of the land of Cocaigne into exclusively male enclaves. In the essay “Discipline and Pleasure: The Pedagogical Work of Disneyland” Susan L. Aronstein and Laurie A. Finke write of Fantasyland and contrast it with the rest of the park: “The spaces are smaller, attractions are closer together, lines tighter and less visually compelling. The rides themselves echo - both literally and metaphorically - this passivity...they rely on looking” (Aronstein and Finke 616). This reliance upon passivity and the gaze that Aronstein and Finke remark upon is central to Disney’s design of the park. According to Steven Watts, the “...the park did not tell a story in traditional cinematic fashion but instead made the visitor an active participant in a kind of three- dimensional movie. The creative team tried to blur the line between fantasy and reality by completely immersing visitors in a totally controlled environment” (Watts 390). Given this immersion, the question then becomes: what in fact is the participant ‘immersed’ in? In the case of Disneyland and by extension its rides, the park has historically sought to emulate and promote values characteristic of the cultural framework espoused by the American establishment in the period following the second world war. Watt’s says that:

“Perhaps the most subtle seduction of Walt’s grand theme park came from its evocation of national values. In myriad ways that visitors encountered consistently but perceived only half consciously, the park offered a remarkable distillation and reaffirmation of postwar American culture. The hordes of middle-class families who streamed into Anaheim in the decade after 1955 found themselves completely submerged in a fantasized but nearly pitch-perfect representation of their deepest commitments and beliefs” (Watts 392). These beliefs represented a distinct change from those espoused prior to the war. Writing of the prewar period, Nicholas Sammond says that:

“...essential Americanness joined naturalized markers of middle-class American culture with principles of industrial efficiency to suggest that the impact of industrialization and modernization (that is, mass culture) could be regulated by providing the child with a material environment and popular media infused with the values and behaviors needed for it to efficiently reproduce that culture in its development” (Sammond 115). By the 1950s America was in the midst of a baby boom, this was a period marked by economic growth and rapid expansion from urban centres outwards into suburbs. Early twentieth century conventions with regard to child rearing had shifted as well. This was the heyday of Dr. Spock and his influential child rearing manual Baby and Child Care, a work that took a Freudian approach to child development, moving away from modes of regulation, towards a more permissive and emotionally affective approach to child care. The context of ‘family’ itself was changing in concert with the rest of the nation and this would have a significant impact upon child development practices. In her essay “Disneyland 1955” Karal Ann Marley says that “While Disney’s interest in family activities anticipated the concept by a decade or more, the actual smarmy word togetherness was coined by McCall’s...and became the rallying cry of a moral crusade endorsed by anxious editors, clergymen and advertisers. Togetherness legitimized the new, postwar, suburban family...” (Marling 176). The differences between early twentieth century child development theories and idealized postwar child rearing practices were significant. Prewar conventions with regard to child rearing were led by progressive reformers advocating on behalf of an idealized child whose overall development would lend itself to social and industrial efficacy and efficiency. According to Florian Waldow:

“...proponents of the social efficiency movement, strove to reform the existing school system in the direction of increased efficiency and rationality. They held that schools should primarily provide an efficient preparation for adult life. The social efficiency movement was significantly influenced by contemporary theories of how to organize industrial production in an efficient way, and not least by the concept of ‘‘scientific management’’ developed by Frederick Winslow Taylor...” (Waldow 51). The popularity of this model declined significantly with the advent of Freudian models of child development and contiguous shifts in the economic models within the postwar American state. Taylorism lost much of its allure with the development of a corporate culture that resulted in the expansion of a bureaucratic system and the resulting need for office workers. In the postwar period this model of ‘industrial efficiency’ was no longer requisite to the project of the state. In fact, according to Steven Watts, the child development theories of Spock so popular in the postwar era, clearly posited a directional shift away from previous models idealizing a Taylorist slant. Watts says of Dr. Spock’s model that “Its ideal of a personable, popular, fully socialized, and interpersonally skilled child converged with the rapid development of a bureaucratic, corporate social order in postwar America and its demands for ‘team players’” (Watts 340). This was the new model, for a new America - industrial efficiency and social regulation had given way to an ideal of a well rounded future office worker. The expansion of the American economy in this period created a requisite need for a new workforce, outside of a factory model that had met the criteria of the prewar economy. Disney’s evolving personal myth did not efface the middle-class uplift story that had been so popular in the early days of the company. Instead it too evolved to adopt a ‘softer’ more positivist tone. The way that the public understood Disney would have changed as well, from a model of middle-class hard work and uplift in the prewar period, to the benevolent ‘Uncle Walt’ of the postwar/Disneyland era. This too would be a marker of the project of social formation emblematic of Disney. Watts says that “Walt Disney himself, evincing decided opinions about modern families and the proper way to bring up children, pointed the way. In many of his general statements about education in this period, he underscored the necessity of hands-on experience, positive reinforcement, and fun” (Watts 340). The prewar characteristics of an ‘ideal’ working subject in a Taylorist model exemplified modes of restriction and behaviour modification to fit in line with an efficient, assembly-line worker. The 1950s model working subject exemplified characteristics of affability, group cohesion and certainly, leadership. Disney’s public image was syncretizing with this developing system in tandem with the rest of America. The pedagogical principles underlying Disney’s approach to Disneyland and by extension the rides within it, necessarily exemplified the postwar American ideal. In fact, I would argue that Disney’s historic positionality vis-a-vis the prewar idealized American subject would have made him an even greater exemplar of a new system. That Disney publicly embraced new pedagogical techniques and vocally supported developing trends that supported a different approach to prewar child rearing standards would be able to leverage more credence given that “...his progressive ideas were made more palatable by the comforting, traditional moral guidelines in which he placed them...” (Watts 359).

If this shift in social and cultural principles with regard to child development were in fact borne out in Disney products then this would necessarily be reflected in differences between the presentation of the moral lesson rooted in the Pleasure Island sequence within the Pinocchio’s Daring Journey ride versus its predecessor, the 1940 film release. As I have tried to demonstrate it seems clear that fairytales and morality plays have demonstrably evolved to meet changing tastes and cultural mores. Holding to this argument it should prove to be the case that the presentation of a moral lesson via the sequence of the dark ride that encompasses the Pleasure Island sequence would in some respects differ from the film. If the lessons of social efficiency popular in child rearing models prior to the second world war were reflected in the Pinocchio film we might ask ourselves how this was presented. In the film, Pinocchio meets Lampwick on the carriage carrying boys towards the dock, in order to meet a ship that will take them to Pleasure Island. Pinocchio attempts a conversation with Lampwick but the latter speaks over the former and provides a gloss of what the boys will encounter at Pleasure Island: “No school, no cops, loaf around, plenty to eat, plenty to drink and it’s all free! Boy, thats the place! I can hardly wait”. Once the boys arrive at Pleasure Island a carny-esque voice over says: “Pickles and ice cream. Get yer pickles and ice cream. Right here boys right here...eat all you can...be a glutton...it’s all free!” This is followed by a stereotypical ‘Brooklyn tough’ accented voice advertising ‘the Rough house’ where boys can “...come in and pick a fight...” Lampwick and Pinocchio enter this place and the scene cuts to ‘Tobacco Row’ where a row of giant wooden ‘Indians’ dole out cigars to the children. The next scene advertises ‘The Model House’ and a host of children demolish property and run amuck.The children seem largely akin to Lampwick, with a decidedly immigrant, working class edge. A notable example to the contrary would be the young donkey Alexander, who sports a sailor suit and is representative of a minority of donkeys who retain the ability to speak. I would like to suggest that this differentiation between Lampwick et al and Alexander and the five or six other donkeys who can still speak connects to the project of social and moral uplift exemplified by popular studies in child development at the time. First, in the characteristics of the emigre, working class/working poor children, their laziness and delight in getting ‘something for nothing’. Secondly, in the figure of Alexander and the representation of middle-class anxieties around the ‘corruption’ of children through proximal relations with marginalized communities who are context to live outside of social order. These children also become donkeys, it just takes them a little longer. As Sammond states, “The message of the movie was clear: indulgence in the pleasures of the working class, of vaudeville, or of pool halls and amusement parks, led to a life of as a beast of burden, Ultimately, one was either a manager or managed, and the choices one made determined the outcome” (Sammond 78). The various features of the Pleasure Island sequence of the film exemplify a moral lesson rooted not only in a Protestant ethic of hard work and self denial, but are also characteristic of the anxieties at the base of early twentieth century studies of child development in America; especially as relating to fears around immigration and assimilation and corresponding fears about the impact that newcomers might have upon middle-class American children. On the other hand, the dark ride Pinocchio’s Daring Journey has a slightly nuanced take on the presentation of the Cockaigne motif. The Pleasure Island sequence of the ride begins roughly forty seconds in, immediately following the brief Stromboli sequence. As the wooden doors to Pleasure Island swing open Pinocchio can still be heard cheerily singing “Hi diddle dee dee, an actor’s life for me”. The ride version of Pleasure Island begins with giant candy canes surrounded by gingerbread donkeys. The participants veer left suddenly, towards a carousel of children riding donkeys. Buildings are made or covered with food. Honest John and his sidekick Gideon are seen playing a familiar carnival game - the high striker. As the participant moves through the ride they are presented with a juggling clown and a clown faced, giant, jack in the box. From above hands wave gray cigars and a voice says “Tobacco row, come on in”. There is a brief glimpse and call out for the ‘Rough house’. Suddenly, the ride car moves towards wooden saloon doors that open up to a scene of the almost fully donkey Lampwick with his back turned as Pinocchio covers his mouth and points at him. To Pinocchio’s right is a ticket counter, behind which we see the Coachman who says “Go ahead and make a jackass out of yourself”. The car leaves this scene and passes a wooden fence with the word ‘Pleasure’ painted on the slats. A voice calls out “I want to go home”. There is the sound of a whip and a voice calls out “Mama”. Suddenly a pile of boxes appear and the donkey Alexander appears in a box with bars across it. Another voice calls out “I don’t want to be a donkey. Please, please...” Jiminy Cricket calls out to Pinocchio and the Coachman looms above the ride car holding open the bars of a box, as if ready to imprison the rider. Suddenly the ride moves out of Pleasure Island and that portion of the ride ends. The Pleasure Island sequence of the Pinocchio (1940) movie runs to approximately five minutes, the dark ride summing up the entire film takes less time. It is notable that the Pleasure Island sequence takes up roughly half of the ride. However, the ride clearly cannot replicate the minutiae of any given film sequence. The question is, what does it replicate and does it do so faithfully? Aronstein and Finke describe dark ride attractions within Disneyland operating “...in many ways like medieval narrative art; most 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” (Aronstein and Finke 620). The ideological lesson of self- restraint is unquestionable. As evidenced by the ride through video, it is clear that the ride participant is offered one option and one point of view with regard to the results of indulging in excess (be that gluttony or gaming or violence or any combination of these). However, the ride does present a milder variant of the film sequence. Note that there are no scenes of children fighting, or of children committing vandalism. The only images of children are the ones of the children happily riding the carousel. The dark ride is quite literally candy-coated and unless one is coulrophobic, even the clowns that seem to replace the scenes of roughhousing, are pleasant allusions to childhood toys. The lessons of the ‘topsy-turvy’ land as being a place of ‘excess’ remain, but they are presented in a far more ‘laid back’ fashion. The threats still exist, as evidenced by the presence of the Coachman, but in our first sighting of him he is literally behind bars. That he later looms overhead, threatening to imprison us, is mediated by this first sight of him, relegated to a confined space. This version of the Pleasure Island sequence does seem to exemplify the manner in which Steven Watts described Disney’s postwar oeuvre, “...sending out gentle warnings and encouragements to guide their audience” (Watts 334). In an interesting critique of the Disney dark ride Matt Omasta outlines the operations of the ride and his understanding of the underlying political message in the following manner:

“The ride-through version of the movie has been even further simplified so as to be presented in just a few short minutes. On his ‘daring journey’, Pinocchio rarely exerts agency; the only real choice he makes is to visit Pleasure Island and partake in its spoils...The attraction tells us that we should listen to authority figures, but even if we don’t, we will somehow be saved” (Omasta 200). Omasta’s characterization of being ‘saved’ regardless of whether we imbibe the lesson of submission to an authoritarian function is a criticism that is (like Rammell’s) best addressed within a larger historical reading of the didactic function of some types of cultural artifact. That Disney may have been taking a particular political stand in view of the object lessons that Pinocchio encounters and that we may encounter as participants within the dark ride, are not in dispute. What is more contentious is the removal of Disney from a longstanding historical project that utilizes popular culture as a tool to provide morality lessons for children and youth, that speak to the desires of the state and social orders embedded within such a paradigm. Pinocchio’s Daring Journey and the animated film that inspired it, fit within a broader context of a ‘topsy turvy’ fantasy land utilized specifically in relation to providing a counter image to what one would expect within established social and state constructs. Whether the crisis that Pinocchio experiences in the Pleasure Island sequence and that the rider views in the dark ride, is viewed within a context of moral lesson versus an admonishment to live within the expectations of the state (as a worker/someone who follows ‘rules’) or as a combination of the two - a brief history of the Medieval Land of Cockaigne demonstrates that Disney’s projects are part of a much larger context of culture utilized for didactic purposes, especially with regard to youth. It seems clear that there is a political project inherent within Disney’s representations of the Pleasure Island sequences in both the film and the ride. However, the basis of the political subtext is not so much characteristic of any overt subjugation of a child as much as it reflective of how differing pedagogical approaches throughout the 20th century have exemplified social and moral characteristics that favour contemporary capitalist models. In the period prior to the second world war, Disney’s film Pinocchio (1940) is reflective of pedagogical models emphasizing scientific and industrial efficiency as a method to assist in assimilation and to promote Taylorism. Whereas, the mid-1950s derived dark ride, is an exemplar of a Freudian shift in child rearing models, emphasizing a kinder, gentler approach to lessons of moral didacticism.