Ryan Franks: "This Amusement Park isn't Big Enough for the Both of Us: The Coexistence of Tomorrowland and Future World at Disney"

This Amusement Park isn’t Big Enough for the Both of Us: The Coexistence of Tomorrowland and Future World at Disney

By

Ryan Franks

            While I have only recently discussed genre distinctions academically, my first encounter with them was a few years ago when my family and I visited Disney World. Despite their vehement insistence that “it was a vacation” and that I was “missing the point,” I spent much of my time mulling over the apparent coexistence of Tomorrowland (at the Magic Kingdom Park) and Future World (at EPCOT) and why both were necessary.

                        

Images of Tomorrowland (left) and Future World (right) are provided by Disney.

Though thematically similar, Tomorrowland has a complex retro-futuristic aesthetic while Future World maintains a less overwhelming yet still impressive visual portraying the sort of advancements the future will bring. These places also incite different feelings in their visitors (How else could a seemingly futuristic setting wind up in The Magic Kingdom?). Similarly, while strange life-forms and fantastic creatures could be identical in nature, Science Fiction (SF) and fantasy are distinct genres because they use those entities to discuss different concepts and cause readers to feel differently. 

Before separating SF and fantasy, one must understand why genre exists. Simply put, genres exist because, as David Hartwell stated in “The Golden Age of Science Fiction is Twelve”, "chronic readers usually center their interests in one limited area" and genre allows audiences to find the sort of work they are interested in. Thus, books are labeled as SF or fantasy not because of a particular definition but because they are likely to be enjoyed by an SF or fantasy audience. Consequently, a list of definitions provided by Charlie Anders shows SF authors like Damon Knight and Norman Spinrad claiming that “science fiction is what we point to when we say it” and that “science fiction is anything published as science fiction” respectively. However, these trends are subjective as Hartwell’s attempt to point at Superman and call it "real SF" has been contradicted by a poll on Comic Book Resources revealing many readers who disagree (and it’s the readers who matter). This poll also shows that some works can be read as both SF and fantasy despite the different mindsets each entails, a concept further proven by Ian Irvine’s discussion of Science Fantasies which shows that books like A Shadow on the Glass can blend fantastic and scientific qualities together.

Since the definitions of SF and Fantasy are subjective, I find the general difference between SF and Fantasy, like Future World and Tomorrowland, to be the way in which they allow the reader to cope with objective purposelessness. In Scott Bakker’s “Why Fantasy Now?,” the “crisis of meaning” is recognized as a problem emergent in a society in which moral significance justified using an unexplainable world has been replaced by rational thought but may be escaped through fantasy. Thus, when James Gunn proposes in “Towards a Definition of Science Fiction” that “fantasy creates its own world and its own laws” while SF “accepts the real world and its laws,” he demonstrates that fantasy offers escape from the crisis of meaning by re-imagining the world as an intrinsically moral place while SF confronts it.

In the fantasy novel Neverwhere, Richard, a weak clueless man in a strange world, kills the a beast that had just murdered one of the most legendary fighters in the world before hearing the Lyke Wake Dirge, a song expressing that good people shall be rewarded, in his head. In contrast, the SF novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep ends with the protagonist stating that “sometimes it’s better to do something wrong than right” while Mercer, a religious figure and archetype, “couldn’t reverse time and bring things back to life again” and could only “move along with life, going where it goes, to death.” Thus, the fantasy novel offers escape from reason by creating a universe where things happen because they morally should and the SF novel forces the reader to confront reason by emphasizing the amorality of the universe and the insurmountable limits people have within it.

With this in mind, the coexistence Tomorrowland and Future World can be explained more concretely. Tomorrowland, a place where Buzz Lightyear triumphs over Zurg and Stitch can find his rightful place with Lilo, is, like The Magic Kingdom, a fantasyland and uses SF elements to create a wondrous world. In contrast, Future World, like EPCOT, celebrates an extension of the given world while weaving in practical problems like global warming or pollution to create an SF setting. Consequently, both have a place at Disney World.