This paper offers a critique of the theoretical insight on representation and signification in the making of culture which is contained within Stephen Fjellman's work on commodification Vinyl Leaves: Walt Disney World and America - a book which strangely is not yet frequently cited in the literature of cultural tourism or heritage tourism research. The first part of this study of the appropriation of history/heritage/culture is an analysis of how Fjellman in general seeks to expose atWalt Disney World (Florida), not only the technical and kinematic brilliance of the Disney companies, but also the entrepreneurial violence they engage in as they colonise much of human life and human and natural history in America through the clever positioning and reinforcement of their preferred commodity forms. In the second part of the critique, particular attention is turned to what Fjellman sees as the clever and creative techno-corporate ways in which the Disney companies capture narratives in history/heritage/culture and decontextualise or reduce them via preferred forms of 'distory' which cleverly match their own national and transnational corporativist interests. An attempt is thereby made to draw out, label, and interpret (for tourism researchers), ten major theses on signification in culture by which Fjellman delineates the power of distory (i.e. of the Disney style of repackaged history) to subjugate or to otherwise repackage received history in such corporativist representations of heritage tourism.
No takes yet. Share an insight, caveat, or question.
Keıth Hollınshead (1998) studied this question.