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Living a theme

A. Fuat Fırat & Ebru Ulusoy

To cite this article: A. Fuat Fırat & Ebru Ulusoy (2011) Living a theme, Consumption Markets &
Culture, 14:2, 193-202, DOI: 10.1080/10253866.2011.562020
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Consumption Markets & Culture
Vol. 14, No. 2, June 2011, 193–202

Living a theme
A. Fuat Fırat* and Ebru Ulusoy

College of Business Administration, University of Texas–Pan American, Edinburg, TX, USA

Consumption,
10.1080/10253866.2011.562020
GCMC_A_562020.sgm
1025-3866
Taylor
2011
20Article
14
A.
firatf@utpa.edu
00000June
FuatFirat
&
andFrancis
(print)/1477-223X
Francis
2011
Markets and Culture
(online)

Based on previous studies and theses developed on the subject by scholars from
different disciplines, the authors investigate (1) if thematization is a phenomenon
of our time or if it has been around for a long time, and (2) laypersons’ thoughts
and feelings about thematization compared to the academic perspective. To
understand the phenomenon, this article explores the construction and features of
themed environments, such as Las Vegas, theme parks, and themed restaurants, as
well as cities originally constructed for people to live in that can now be perceived
to be themed, as in the case of San Antonio, Texas. The authors present findings
from interviews conducted with visitors at the EPCOT theme park in Walt Disney
World. The investigations show that intellectuals and scholars have a greater
interest in maintaining a distinction between the thematic and the everyday than
the ordinary public.
Keywords: thematization; themed spaces; EPCOT; San Antonio; reality; fantasy;
Disney World; authenticity

Introduction
The popularity and numbers of themed environments, whether they be theme parks or
themed areas of cities, are on the rise. The purpose of this paper is to study this
phenomenon of thematization, a phenomenon that has attracted quite some attention.
In this paper, we investigate if thematization is a phenomenon of our time or if it has
been around for a long long time.
Consider Las Vegas, possibly the best-known themed space, the second most
visited tourism destination in the world (www.forbstraveler.com/2008), and the proto-
type postmodern space (Baudrillard 1989; Venturi, Brown, and Izenour 1988). Many
hotels in Las Vegas now support a theme, such as ancient Egypt at the Luxor Hotel,
the city and culture of Venice at the Venetian Hotel, ancient Rome at the Caesar’s
Palace Hotel, and natural wonders of the world at the Mirage Hotel, among others. To
reinforce the themes at each hotel, a spectacle is often created. At the Treasure Island
Hotel, people can witness a pirate ship battling a ship from the British Armada. At the
Mirage Hotel, a volcano erupts every 20 minutes after sundown. At the Bellagio
Hotel, which thematizes the rich Italian Renaissance lifestyle, an impressive dancing
waters show accompanies Italian opera arias or Frank Sinatra tunes. Large crowds of
people of all ages gather around these spectacles. It is not just children who are there.
As a matter of fact, the very large majority of visitors are adults, and all appear to have
a great time.

*Corresponding author. Email: firatf@utpa.edu

ISSN 1025-3866 print/ISSN 1477-223X online

© 2011 Taylor & Francis
DOI: 10.1080/10253866.2011.562020
http://www.informaworld.com
194 A.F. Fırat and E. Ulusoy

The current heart of the city of Las Vegas is built around The Strip, which has a
particular meaning. The Strip is one long and straight street, on both sides of which
are the themed and a few non-themed hotels. Rather than having been built on the
basis of plazas and avenues and streets that connect these plazas, as is the model of
the modern city, Las Vegas is built along this one long line. The Strip just keeps on
going, extending into the desert as new hotels mushroom. It doesn’t start anywhere or
end anywhere in particular. All along this strip are the hotels that offer immersion into
different kinds of themes. At one point, if you are visiting the Luxor Hotel, you can
be in ancient Egypt. At another point, if you are visiting the Forum at Caesar’s Palace,
you could be immersed in the ancient Roman Empire. And this goes on – you can feel
like you are on a street in Paris at the Paris Hotel, in Venice at the Venetian, and so on.
Inside the hotels, the themes continue in an integrated manner. Inside the Venetian
Hotel, you can be on the San Marcos Square where people often become totally
engrossed and immersed in the moment, listening to a troupe of opera singers and
hearing an aria from Puccini’s Turandot, for example. In the Paris Hotel, you can be
strolling down streets of Paris and taking breaks at Parisian boulangeries and cafés.
The New York New York Hotel similarly offers immersion into experiences of the
city of New York. With this, Las Vegas promises something of the future (Fırat 2001)
and something that has always been (Belk 2000).

Perspectives
This phenomenon of people visiting, enjoying, and appreciating themed environ-
ments, recognized by many astute observers of contemporary culture, has resulted in
a respectable body of literature. Examples include studies of this phenomenon by
sociologists and scholars in other fields. Several theses have been advanced. Two
themes that are common to many of these theses are that (1) thematization is driven
by corporations and (2) contemporary consumers are accomplices in the theming of
the world. Beyond these themes, different students of the phenomenon propose
different perspectives as described below.
Davis (1999) sees theme parks as models of reality where issues that need solu-
tions are identified. Furthermore, Davis argues that theme parks provide corporations
with opportunities to have philanthropic answers to the world’s problems. Gottdiener
(2001), on the other hand, argues that many old themes are recycled in present-day
theme parks, which provide people with comfort and a chance to actualize themselves
as consumers. Sorkin and colleagues (Sorkin 1992) see theme parks as the privatiza-
tion of public space. Places such as malls – that are lately also much thematized as in
the example of the Mall of America (Csaba 2000) – as well as actual theme parks,
such as Disneyland and Universal Studios, although perceived as public space by
those who frequent them are, in fact, privately owned, managed, and policed. They are
regulated, which provides a sense of security and order (Crawford 1992), and they
constitute pleasurable substitutes for the democratic realm (Soja 1992).
Ritzer (2004) also sees theme parks as centrally created and controlled. These are
spaces where, as a result of the control by the management, spaces, things, and people
lose any personality, and visitors become generic followers of scripts. Beardsworth
and Bryman (1999) introduce the concept of “quasification” to emphasize that both
those who engineer and those who purchase themed spaces are active and knowing
accomplices. People, finding the modern world tedious and mundane, are ready to
become involved in these quasified experiences that they find engaging and thrilling.
 Consumption Markets & Culture 195

Fjellman (1992) articulates the close links between thematization and consump-
tion. Surrealism, simulation, and commodity aesthetics combine and collude to
reinforce a culture of consumption. Hannigan (1998) extends a similar perspective,
arguing that theming allows a convergence of “consumer activity systems: shopping,
dining, entertainment and education and culture” (89), which, then, promotes
consumption by blending entertainment into the whole system (Ritzer 1999). This
phenomenon of themed entertainment and consumption has become global, exempli-
fied in the Asia-Pacific Rim as well as in Las Vegas.
Finally, Baudrillard (1996) presents a postmodern perspective, where themed
spaces are seen as timeless – that is, without a past, present, or future. Themed places
don’t simply simulate reality, they constitute the real as the theme park – reality
becomes the theme park. In all of these studies, there is a common assumption that
thematization is a distinct phenomenon, one that is relatively recent, purposeful, and
directed. Our intention in this study was to investigate the phenomenon to discover
whether this assumption can be sustained.
A definition of a themed environment based on these observations, but indepen-
dent of a prejudgmental distinction between where people live everyday lives and
where they go to experience imaginative difference and fun, is likely to provide
deeper insights into the phenomenon and its effects on humanity. With this consid-
eration, we define themed environments as spaces that are patterned to symbolize
experiences and/or senses from a special or a specific past, present, or future place
or event as currently imagined. Thematization, then, is the patterning of space,
activity, or event to symbolize experiences and/or senses from a special or a specific
past, present, or future place, activity, or event as currently imagined (Fırat and
Ulusoy 2009).

The study
To investigate the phenomenon of thematization and whether it is specific to places
and periods or omnipresent across places and periods, we visited, observed, and inter-
viewed at two, what are considered to be, themed spaces. One, the EPCOT theme
park, is a contained theme park within the Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida. We
conducted observations and interviews in the park’s World Showcase section, which
features simulations of several countries of the world, to find out how people felt
about themed environments to explore laypeople’s views on thematization. Second, to
make further observations, we went to San Antonio, a city in Texas, with a touristic
Riverwalk constituting its center, which is, today, seen as thematic.
EPCOT (the acronym for Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow)
initially was Walt Disney’s utopian vision of “Tomorrowland.” It was to be
constructed as a city, a community built on the basis of a philosophy of people living
with facilities of living spaces, transportation means, commercial infrastructure,
cultural amenities, and the like, that the latest technologies provided, but planned to
create peaceful, organized and well managed, unburdened lives. The idea, which has
been documented on film with Walt Disney explaining the vision (Tomorrowland
1959/2004), did not materialize. Today, instead, there is a theme park where futuristic
possibilities are explored in pavilions built by some of the major corporations. It is a
space where people can have experiences of different cultures, foods, and products,
and observe cultural acts from different countries, as well as enjoy a fireworks display
every night after dark.
196 A.F. Fırat and E. Ulusoy

Some insights
We interviewed 10 visitors at the EPCOT theme park about their experiences and
about what EPCOT meant to them. Some excerpts from the interviews provide initial
insights:

Interviewee 1
(Male, 30s): We went to Innovation [section of Disney World where potential new
technologies and visions of how they would restructure life are show-
cased] this morning, before the World Showcase. We’ll probably go and
see the Living Seas and The Land also, because, we’re not really ecolo-
gists, but we do appreciate the oceans and I think it’s time for us to wake
up and speak for taking better care of our planet. I think Disney does a
good job of representing that too. Disney; a lot of people may think of
Disney World I think, things for kids you know, like Magic Kingdom,
stuff like that, but I tell my friends, you know, there is so much here for
adults to do, so much to see, different things to experience. Like we’ve
just seen Japanese drummer performance, that was spectacular, gives
you a little taste of other cultures, we like that.

Certainly, evident in the expressions above, some visitors to EPCOT find a connection
between the themed space and the world outside, rather than a strict demarcation. For
them, the themes explore the world and possibly present solutions to some of the prob-
lems, a perception that Walt Disney and corporations contributing to the “attractions”
do, indeed, want to promote (Mannheim 2002). Also, the themes at EPCOT
(re)present various aspects of different cultures, which in some cases constitute their
only experience of these cultures. One reason why consumers do not make a strict
demarcation between the themed space and the world outside may be that they trust
in the power of corporations such as Disney to create reliable and desirable represen-
tations, as is evident in the statements above.

Interviewee 2
(Female, 30s): This’d be my third time.
Interviewer: Third time! So what made you come here for three times?
Interviewee 2: I like visiting the countries and I like Future World, just sharing with my
family.

Interviewee 3
(Male, 40s): I always enjoy EPCOT.
Interviewer: Oh, you’ve been here before?
Interviewee 3: Yes.
Interviewer: So what makes you keep coming back?
Interviewee 3: I have a five year old kid, so, I wanted him here before he’s too old to
not enjoy it and he’s stuck in school. But I also like coming to EPCOT
‘cause it’s different countries and the beer and food, you know.

Apparent in the statements of the above two interviewees is the prominence of

family experience in visits to EPCOT, along with the almost absence of a distinc-
tion made between the “countries” at EPCOT and actual countries. Notice that
interviewees tend to say, with ease, “countries” rather than “representations,”
“pavilions,” “simulations” of countries. It may be argued that this is a contextual
consequence of language use, yet it struck us odd that people never seemed to use
the qualifiers as they discussed their visits to the “countries” at EPCOT’s World
Showcase section.
 Consumption Markets & Culture 197

Interviewee 4
(Female, 50s): Three times is true. And maybe about ten or fifteen years ago
we were here a couple times.
Interviewer: So, what makes you come here three times?
Interviewee 4: Well ‘cause it’s Disney World. It’s Disney World’s … part of
Disney World, it has a lot of stuff to see, you know, a lot of
stuff to do. They keep changing, so that is, it’s different for me
this time than it was fifteen years ago.
… Every day I have been [here] I’ve been thrilled, excited, and
everybody’s so happy here. This is a happy place, I mean
everybody is just so happy to be here, they are so courteous,
they are so nice.

Interviewee 5
(Female, daughter, 30s): We love EPCOT. EPCOT’s really nice. You can see all over
the world. There is lots of things for everyone, everything.

Interviewee 6
(Female, mother, 60s): I like Morocco and belly dancing. I like Paris, France.… It’s
very good, I thought it’s very good.

Interviewee 5: It’s very French. And there, all the people working there are
actually French and it should be, actual nationality that they
should be, which is really good.
Interviewee 6: They seem to capture the essence of Paris.

When specifically questioned about what they like about EPCOT, visitors mention the
variety of experience, the joyfulness of the atmosphere, and again, the particularities
of the countries, even, as in the next excerpt, their “authenticity.”

Interviewee 3
(Male, 40s): It’s a broader representation yeah, you get a little bit of the flavor, I mean
you get a taste of food, the people are authentic, the gifts and stuff are
authentic. So you get a, you actually get a real taste of the world.

Interviewee 4
(Female, 50s): I kind of like that Norway, but this Italy is pretty good too, with the
shows, I just watched two shows.

And, the EPCOT experience may be more desirable than the actual one:

Interviewee 7
(Female, 40s): I like the United Kingdom.

Interviewer: The United Kingdom? So, did it make [sic] any desire for you to go and
see the United Kingdom?
Interviewee 7: So, no, not really, I don’t want to go to United Kingdom.

As is evident from the above excerpts, people do not seem discomforted by thema-
tization, and they do not appear to question the “reality” of the places. Instead, they
seem to find a degree of authenticity and enjoy the experience. That none of the
interviewees expressed dissatisfaction or cynicism that this was all “not real” was
surprising to us. It led us to wonder, however, if we should be surprised.
We came to the conclusion that we should not be surprised. After all, we have been
living in themed environments for, possibly, most of human history (Gottdiener
198 A.F. Fırat and E. Ulusoy

2001). To explore this idea further, we went to San Antonio, Texas. This is a city that
has become a tourist destination due to the historic site of The Alamo, but also because
of the city’s heart that is built around the San Antonio Riverwalk. The project for this
idea of creating a city center where people would meet, eat, and do commerce was
started in 1929. In the late 1930s, the building of the embankments around the river
began. At some point, Disney architects were also asked to advise building plans. By
the mid-1940s, people were enjoying this part of town which has now become a major
center of tourism, but it is also where San Antonians come to have lunch or dinner at
restaurants, take walks and enjoy the open air, as well as to work.
There are many other parts of San Antonio that can be considered to be themed
areas. There is, for example, the Market Square, the Mexico Quarter if you like. Here
one is immersed in a marketplace similar to those found in Mexico. Stores are
attended mostly by Spanish-speaking people of Mexican origins and they sell products
from Mexico. It has covered, inside areas as well as an outside marketplace. People
can taste Mexican food prepared in the Mexican style at the open market, or they can
enjoy what is now known as Tex-Mex food at a landmark restaurant of San Antonio,
right at the market, complete with its Mexican bakery and mariachi bands. Although
the theme is Mexico and Mexican culture, thematization, as expressed by the director
of the team that built the Luxor Hotel in Las Vegas, is not a matter of copying or
“reproduction.” This director said, talking about the technology used in building the
Luxor Hotel, “Ancient Egypt is only a poor facsimile of what this technology can
create” (The Making of Luxor 1994). Contemporary thematization, that is, has a
component of audacious presentation of what is possible, it is not simply a reproduc-
tion of what is or was.
In a similar vein, contemporary themed spaces refer to themselves, not simply to
what exist(ed)s. The Riverwalk, now seen as a themed environment, the theme being
the “River Oasis,” is yet again thematized at the Riverwalk Mall, which is built right
on the Riverwalk. The San Antonio River has been artificially extended into the River-
walk Mall and built to “simulate” the Riverwalk. One can experience now, in this mall
that is themed after the Riverwalk, what a Riverwalk experience could really be like.
We observed that many parts of San Antonio in and around the Riverwalk were
not created as themed spaces, but as places for people to live their everyday lives,
as the Riverwalk itself was. La Villita, for example, is an old, small, residential
area of San Antonio just on the Riverwalk. Like the residential parts of many other
cities in the USA have done, La Villita also experienced boom times and difficult
days. Today, it is presented as a themed area with art galleries, festivals, restau-
rants, and the like. As intellectual observers of contemporary trends, we realized
that the distinctions we like to make between “real” and “themed” spaces may be
illusory.

Encountering themed spaces

As we have stated earlier, our observations and interviews indicated that people who
visited the EPCOT theme park did not seem to be keen on making a distinction
between theme parks and the world “outside.” Consider the following excerpts from
other interviews at the EPCOT Center for further elaboration of this phenomenon:

Interviewer: Do you find any difference between the way things are represented in
this park and what’s out there in the actual world?
 Consumption Markets & Culture 199

Interviewee 6
(Female, mother, 60s): No, not really. Everything’s pretty good. I think that they’re
pretty good. They do seem very realistic. Makes you think
you’ve been there. No, very good.

Interviewer: Which part did you like most here?

Interviewee 9
(Female, 50s): Here?
Interviewer: In EPCOT Center.
Interviewee 9: In EPCOT Center? Here, the Mexico.
Interviewer: Have you been to real Mexico?
Interviewee 9: Yes, I have.
Interviewer: So, if you compare them, what would you say?
Interviewee 9: It’s nice, it’s beautiful, it’s just the same.
Interviewer: It’s the same?
Interviewee 9: Same, yes.

For any discussion of distinction between the “actual” world and this “themed space,”
EPCOT, we had to prompt the interviewees. Otherwise, the issue never seemed to
come up. Even after prompting, however, the reluctance to make a distinction seemed
apparent, as is evident in the following interview excerpts:
Interviewer: What difference do you see between here and the world outside?
Interviewee 3
(Male, 40s): The world outside? What do you mean?
Interviewer: The major difference, you see, is that this is seen as fantasy, the outside
world, you don’t think it’s fantasy?
Interviewee 3: That’s an interesting question. Now, reality is what you make of it. I
mean, this is, to everyone here this is reality you know, these countries
… [Turning to a friend who just brought him a glass of beer] Thank
you! See? It’s nice.

Interviewer: Do you see much difference between EPCOT Center and the rest of the
world?
Interviewee 7
(Female, 40s): Oh, the rest of the world? Not particularly. No, no. Not really, not
really.
Interviewer: Because they think of this place as a thematized park, you know, a
theme park.

Interviewee 8
(Male, 50s): Yeah.
Interviewee 7: But it gives a lot of interesting points about the rest of the world. People
who haven’t been to the rest of the world, they would certainly find
interesting places, interesting things about the rest of the world, like the
culture, the food. Great, great.
Interviewer: It’s interesting. It is just like the rest of the world, isn’t it?
Interviewee 8: I would say so. Yeah.
Interviewee 7: It is. You go to each place and it’s just like it is there, I guess. I have
never been there, but what I have seen on TV and read in books, every-
thing looks like it is.

Interviewee 10
(Female, 20s): The China, the … Yeah, it’s just typical Chinese way. So, they put like
buildings from different places together make it like it’s just a minia-
ture of different you know, small China.
Interviewer: So you liked it there?
Interviewee 10: Yeah, I liked it.
200 A.F. Fırat and E. Ulusoy

Interviewer: There is no misrepresentation you think?

Interviewee 10: Yeah, that’s pretty good. We have that kind of thing in China; like
miniature of everything, representing different countries in a huge
place, so you can just spend one day to get some idea about what the
other countries are about, I think that’s good.

Obviously, for the laypeople we interviewed as they were visiting the EPCOT
theme park, the distinction between the “fantasy” and the “real” is not very real. As
implied in the response by Interviewee 7 above, the “real” is not even necessarily the
point of reference regarding where human experience takes place. What she has seen
on TV and in books is just as valid a reference point. This recalls the incident where
a manager of the hotel that is right next to the airport at Iowa City witnessed a plane
crash and when she was being interviewed by a television reporter stated: “I saw the
plane go down. I ran inside to turn on the television to see that it really happened!”

Living a theme
As the observations above that may be replicated in many places around the world
indicate, laypeople often do not ponder the question of thematization or visit certain
spaces with an awareness, such as, “Now I am at a themed place!” Even when
confronted with the issue because of the questions raised by researchers, they tend to
reveal an uneasiness in making strict distinctions between themed spaces and “real”
spaces. Furthermore, we find a willingness to take cues for life experiences from
images as well as from the “real world,” rather than solely from the “actual world.”
Rejuvenated downtown areas in many US and other countries’ cities with culture,
cafés, and shopping themes, are examples for the omnipresence of themed environ-
ments. The famous Rodeo Drive – with the “Via Rodeo” sign on Wilshire Boulevard
– in Beverly Hills, California, displays its Rome (Via Veneto) theme with its colonial
buildings that house high-class brand shops. The discotheque named “Red Square” in
Tijuana, Mexico, just over the border from San Diego, California, displays its onion
domed architecture resembling the Red Square in Moscow, Russia. In İstanbul, ] dIo[t

Turkey, you can experience the Parisian street café scene on the basement floor of a
major shopping mall or on a street called the French Street in the downtown area; and
the list goes on.
We have had themed restaurants for decades. Many of these restaurants are from
a different era that has now become a theme. People don’t only eat at these restaurants
but encounter experiences from different times and styles. For example, they can
immerse themselves in rock music history in a Hard Rock Café, or listen to the sounds
of a jungle, surrounded by wild animals, in one of the Rain Forest Cafés. Stores have
themes, hotels have themes, even hospitals and retirement homes have themes (Lukas
2007).
In effect, all of our humanly constructed environments are themed spaces.
Consider New York City, built on the east coast of North America. It can easily be
observed as a themed environment if we do not insist on attachment to a distinction
once made when we were not as informed regarding the construction of our lives.
Indeed, built on the basis of our imaginations of how life could be lived on a land and
some islands where there was nothing but trees, the essence of how New York City
was produced is not different from what we consider theme parks to be today. We
have to ask: “Isn’t the fact that the Central Park, built on the imagination of what
 Consumption Markets & Culture 201

Manhattan Island was like before the city overtook it, along with the city surrounding
it, thematic?” Consider the City of Phoenix, built in the middle of the Sonoran Desert,
now with grassy lawns and water fountains; isn’t that a theme park in essence?
It seems that, as intellectuals and scholars, we are more dedicated than the ordi-
nary public to maintaining a distinction between the thematic and the everyday,
between the “real” and the “fantasy.” Yet it seems clear that the distinction is not in
the nature of the constructed environment, but in how we, ourselves, approach and
constitute the boundaries among spaces we inhabit. We have to ask why we are so
insistent in making the distinction. We think that this promises to be a fruitful issue
to investigate.
When we see things as constructed and thematic, we may feel a greater power to
reconstruct them as we can otherwise imagine. When we see things as real and “out
there,” we feel resigned to what we have inherited. As we articulate the illusory nature
of making distinctions between where we live every day and where we go to have fun,
we may find that maintaining the distinction and organizing our lives accordingly is
not only limiting our potentials to build more habitable worlds, but that it perpetuates
certain interests and a human condition that we can better do without.

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