Sanctuaryland? : Disneyland Called ‘a Modern Pilgrimage Site’ for the Religious

Is Disneyland simply a fun place to take the kids or out-of-town visitors?

Or, in the words of two Boston researchers, is it “a modern pilgrimage site,” a sanctuary from the world that evokes a sense of paradise and purity?

Never mind that most people believe they go to Disneyland just to speed down the Matterhorn or splash down a mountain. Two Boston University doctoral candidates presented a paper Sunday on the religious significance of the famous amusement park and the spiritual pleasures to be found in Fantasyland, Tomorrowland and Frontierland.

Christopher and Debra Parr see hidden meaning to the amusement park, from its corps of animated characters right down to the signs in its parking lot.

The Parrs, who have been to Disneyland more than half a dozen times, admit they will be introducing unaccustomed whimsy into the annual meeting of religion scholars, who are gathering in Anaheim for the joint session of the American Academy of Religion and the Society of Biblical Literature.

“We think the presentation will be fun,” said Debra Parr, who teaches American literature. Her husband teaches in Boston University’s religion department.

The Parrs concede that Disneyland has barely any religious symbols at all.

But drawing on theories in religious studies, Christopher Parr sees the sacred as well as the silly, the mythic as well as the mirthful in the amusement park.

It begins with the huge parking lot that has tall signs painted with cartoon characters--presumably to help you remember where your car is parked. Or do the signs say, in the Parrs’ words, that “Goofy, Pooh Bear and Dumbo are the seraphim who will watch over your wheels while you’re within the shrine?”

Moreover, the Parrs said, “the park itself is secluded, walled off from the ‘profane,’ an island of harmony, order, peace.”

From Main Street U.S.A. to Fantasyland, they said, the park subtly assures people that this is America the Beautiful with a shiny future: “The distinctly religious message . . . is that the future will bring happiness, as in the song ‘When You Wish Upon a Star.’ ”

Every religion has its representations of sin and evil. Disneyland does too, but they are not very threatening, the Parrs said.

“Evil does not so much raise an ugly head as a ludicrous one,” the researchers said. “Everything is first and foremost comic-book bright, with harm, destruction and injury glossed over with stardust.”

Take the debauchery portrayed in the Pirates of the Caribbean ride, where drunken pirates comically chase and buy women. “Before the amoral confusions of the scene can alarm you, the boat lunges forward to the dock where you must now disembark,” they said.

Disneyland incorporates a “universal” aspect common to major religions--the knowledge that many others share the same myths of good over evil and the same heroes, said the Parrs.

According to some theorists, effective religion creates a sense of dependency on a higher, more intelligent power. So does Disneyland, the couple said.

Disney’s creators, or “imagineers,” as they are called, “play with our sense of scale, movement and time to surprise and entertain us,” but you are often “made aware of your utter dependence on Disney’s ingenuity,” the researchers said.

And how aware are the amusement park visitors of all this deep religious meaning?

Agnostic Glyn Jeffrey of New Zealand, a college professor, saw none of it. “In two days here, I found no attempt to create a moral message or impose a set of mores on people,” he said.

Churchgoers, however, said the spirit inside Disneyland was akin to a friendly church atmosphere. “You see all the cultures here mixing together. God’s family on a holiday together,” said Bert O’Connell of West Lafayette, Ind.

Cindy Myers, a member of an Orange County evangelical church, however, saw the dark side of the park. She saw a lot of “overtures of the occult” in the magical fantasies and in the Palm Reader booth and Crystal Shop on Main Street.

The fact that people come for laughs and excitement does not dampen their enthusiasm for seeing religious comparisons, the Parrs said. Celebration is central to religion, especially popular religious festivals, they said.

Indeed, the Boston University pair are not the first observers to see a spiritual dimension to the worlds created by Disney.

From 1937 to the mid-1960s, Disney films were “a cathedral of popular culture whose saints were mice and ducks, virgin princesses and lurking sprites, little boys made of wood and little girls lost in wonderland,” Time magazine movie critic Richard Corliss wrote last year. “Virtually every child attended this secular church . . . offering primal nightmares and blessed release.”

The Parrs said they borrow the phrase “religious reveling” in their paper from French author Jean Baudrillard, who critiqued American culture. In the end, Baudrillard called Disneyland’s pleasures “banal.”

Not so the Parrs, who see a spiritual reward for the $23.50 admission price.

The couple went straight to the park after arriving in Orange County on Friday afternoon, eager to check out the triumph of Good over Evil in Captain Eo and StarTours, two attractions they hadn’t seen before.

As for Baudrillard’s criticism, Christopher Parr said: “We suspect he just didn’t choose the right rides.”