One such promotional text, which will be analyzed below, is somewhat oddly titled "Safari So Good at Disney's Animal Kingdom"* and describes the attraction, Kilimanjaro Safaris, which takes riders on a simulated trip through Africa in which they reenact the central story line of the park. The promotional text begins by directly addressing the reader as if he (or she) is gearing up to go on safari: "Walkabout boots all laced up? Pith helmet on good and tight?," it asks rhetorically. "You bet your binoculars there’s adventure ahead!"

Throughout the text, similar explicit and implied references to "you" and "we" are used to evoke a psychological process in which readers will imaginatively place themselves in the action, which is of course what Disney attractions do in a more direct way. In place of more traditional story forms in which readers or movie audiences identify with a main character who is described as someone other than themselves, in Disney attractions and in this text analog an effort is made to turn the reader into one of the characters.

We see another essential ingredient in this passage in the promise that is made that  there is 'adventure" ahead -- this being the most overused word in the Disney promotional lexicon. But the speaker behind that promise takes on the role of a benevolent and protective guide who is checking to ensure that the reader as fictional safari-goer will remain safe during the "adventure." The speaker implies   that the reader is responsible, as well, since the speaker is only checking to ensure that necessary actions have been carried out.

With the reference to binoculars in that same passage, another element is added, as it is suggested that the adventure will include the experience of watching something or someone at a distance that doesn't necessarily know it is being watched.

We thus have, in this brief opening, an effort to include many of the ingredients of story-based simulations -- immersion in the story and vivid images intended to make the experience seem authentic; simulated danger and adventure combined with a promise of safety; and a positive depiction of the audience and of those presenting the story. We also have a number of power relations -- those who offer the adventure are protective but in control; those who participate in the adventure will have the power to intrude in on others at a distance. Much of this is expressed as part of the fiction of the safari conveyed by the text, as a way of imaginatively placing the reader in the ride and the fiction of the ride. It is about the reader as fictional safari-goer who is experiencing what it would be like to be a rider as fictional safari-goer.

As the subsequent passages unfold, the story proceeds to depict the reader/rider/safari-goer as a peaceful, well-intentioned, visitor going into a world of nature that is exotic, innocent, mysterious and beautiful. It describes the animals that are encountered as living out in the open, where they have to find food and sometimes prey on other animals to survive. But the text also depicts the animals  as finding sheltered places in nature and as being organized into families with loving parents that protect and provide for their young. Thus, among the sights we encounter, we see "families search through the trees for a tender leaf or berry," and we see a scene in which "One female is on the prowl searching out dinner for her cubs. The dominant male with his long mane lets out a warning growl." Nature and the realm of animals is thus portrayed as a sheltered world that, in a primitive way, embodies spiritual values.

These depictions of families play an essential role in the narrative, seeking to evoke sympathy and empathy in readers, along with parenting and protective urges toward the helpless and loveable animal children and their families. Thus the text gives us not only a speaker who acts protectively toward the readers as safari-goers but animal parents who act protectively toward their children, all of which is part of an effort to evoke in readers protective urges toward the animals that they are also intruding in on. When another kind of predator -- corrupt humanity, in the form of poachers -- invades, these protective urges come into play and the reader/rider/safari-goer becomes the hero who protects the animals the way the animal parents protect their children.

The story thus has a number of characters that play a role in the way the plot will draw out our emotional responses. An effort is made to get us to imaginatively place ourselves in the position of benevolent, protective, riders; to view the speaker (and guides) as partners, protectors and, to some degree, authorities; to see the poachers as enemies and evildoers; and see the animal parents as protectors and all the animals as potential victims.

As alluded to earlier, the text also does what Disney attractions and other story-based simulations do -- it makes claims about the authenticity of what is portrayed and tries to make the descriptions as authentic as possible, to make the ride seem like a lifelike re-creation of nature. And the text tries to create a narrative simulation of danger, discomfort, and the unexpected, while it repeatedly reassures us that everything is safe, comfortable and planned out ahead of time. It is a wonderful simulation and much of it is real, the text tells us, but not so real that it presents a danger to the reader or animals. It offers this reassurance both "within" the fiction of a safari, and also by going outside the fiction and describing the attraction as a safari simulation with safety features built in.

For example, the text says: "There are wild animals here, the kind you find in Africa. Zebras, lions giraffes and the rest are all living naturally in the broad grasslands and lush green forests, separated into compatible species. You won’t see any fences."

The references to wild animals, living naturally, without fences, are claims to authenticity and authentic appearances. The reference to the fact that the animals are "separated into compatible species" makes clear they are contained, and the lions won't eat the zebras.

What the psychologist Robert Stoller said about daydreams, sexual fantasies and fiction is true here, as it is also true of many story-based simulations -- they manipulate symbols of danger, while ensuring the danger never becomes genuine, so we can enjoy the experience of overcoming danger and enjoying victory.

Just as the text and ride lets readers and riders experience danger while remaining safe, so it also lets them indulge in sexual and aggressive urges, while either denying they are doing so or letting them claim these actions are on the side of right. The text and ride thus use disguise to let readers and riders experience fake dangers that are really safe and they use psychological disguises to let readers and riders experience real desires that pretend to be something other than what they are.

Among the desires that are satisfied in this way, the text and ride provide an opportunity for readers and riders to satisfy aggressive and sexual desires by intruding in on others and turning others into a kind of spectacle, since throughout the text there are descriptions of the way riders will see animals bathing, engaging in family life, and so on. In other words, it invites us to voyeuristically invade "private" situations, since the animals are symbolic stand-ins for people. And, like the forms of fiction described by Stoller, the ride invites us to express aggressive urges in overcoming the poachers. As we will see, the text, at least, also contains a disguised depiction of sex in which the reader/rider as phallic male plows into Mother Nature.

All of these expressions of sex and aggression are surrounded by justifications and disguises that allow readers and riders to maintain their perception of themselves and society as being on the side of right. The text and ride tells them that their   invasion of nature is justified by their good intentions, just as it implies that the predatory behavior of animals is justified by the fact that they are providing food for their children. At the same time, it tells them evil intentions are found in the poachers who the ever-so-saintly reader and rider get to defeat and overcome.

More specifically, the unfolding of the plot draws the reader and rider into the following sequence. First, they invade and push their way into nature, where they see nature's loving tenderness toward her children and her willingness to use violence to protect her children, as well as her qualities of beauty and magnificence. Having seen nature's worthiness, they then ritually banish evil intentions in the form of the poachers.

As noted, the promotional text (and perhaps the ride) also includes disguised depictions of sex that depict legitimate and illegitimate ways a man can couple with a woman. In this domain of meaning, the reader/rider is a man piercing into a loving, tender, Mother Nature who is focused on caring for children. Thus, the reader is told he will travel on a safari vehicle with "hard rubber tires to take the rocky trails, and a tank-like disposition to plow through the underbrush." This makes the reader a rider in more than one sense, of course.

Interestingly, both the reader and rider as male lover, and the poachers, are depicted as outsiders and intruders who go into this world of loving animal parents. But one does so responsibly; the other as a form of exploitation. In overcoming the poachers, the reader/rider as lover acts out one of the disguised sexual themes of the text and probably the ride, which is that woman, by being a tender caretaker for children, evokes loving urges in the man that causes him to banish the aggressive, exploitive, desires provoked by the male role in sex. Interestingly, in the text, the banishing of the poachers takes place amid a disguised sexual climax, as readers are taken "past a field of geysers spurting 20 feet into the air, around large waterfalls, across a 100-foot pool and through some of the lushest vegetation yet..." In the act of orgasm with the loved and loving partner, evil intentions aroused by sex are banished from the male lover's mind.

To make all this possible, the ride creates a lifelike stage set, just as the text uses lifelike descriptions. As the text makes clear, what looks like unplanned nature is controlled and organized, with hidden barriers to ensure the lions don't eat the zebras. As another promotional text reveals, plants and trees were also found around the world to create the right effect. And what seems like a bumpy trail has been carefully crafted to seem unkempt, drawing as much from nature as society: "The Imagineering safari design team matched concrete with the surrounding soil, then rolled tires through it, and tossed stones, dirt and twigs into it to create an appropriately bumpy experience duplicating a remote African road," the text says.

We can thus see in the attraction, the basic and overlapping elements that are typically found in media and representation. These can be divided up into a number of categories, although the distinctions are artificial:  the physical and sensory embodiment, including the simulation; the avowed story; the disguised stories; the psychological processes of audiences and participants; the value claims that are made and the disguised action that are engaged in. All involve various forms of illusion and disguise, which visitors and readers may or may not be aware of or have varying degrees of awareness of:

In the first category, we find the physical and sensory embodiment, including simulations. Many of these simulations, such as the bumpy road or the various illusions of physical danger, announce their presence (as a writer about natural simulations once put it). Others, such as the hidden forms of containment, conceal things.

In the second category, we find the meanings organized into stories, with plot, character, setting and theme. This can't really be easily divided off from the first category since it is embodied in it. But it includes the elements of the fiction that we bring to life via imagination and the suspension of disbelief -- the journey into Africa, adventure, villains, the chase, and so on.

In the third category are all the disguised and disavowed stories and depictions put in there by the creators and perceived by us, mostly outside of awareness. Here we find all the depictions of myth (we are heroes traveling through an Edenic, mystic realm of nature); sex, family dynamics, society, and so on. Also, here and in the second category, we find utopian images of a better world (images of unfallen nature; realistic images of people as protectors of nature living in harmony with it).

In the fourth category, are all the psychological processes that readers and riders experience -- acts of identification, empathy and the suspension of disbelief that help place them in the story; and the mostly disguised satisfaction of desires and defenses against fears, (denying aggressive urges by projecting them onto poachers who are defeated; denying aggression in parents by depicting animal predators as seeking prey only to feed their young; a disguised depiction of sex in which the reader/riders go into a female "jungle"; enjoying voyeurism, aggression, and victory, and a grandiose sense of oneself as a hero; enjoying parenting urges and seeming to be on the side of right). Here, one might also add another defense offered by the park -- the idea that all this has some connection to education and environmentalism and to doing good in the world. 

In the fifth category are all the value claims drawn from binary pairs we have of positive and negative -- the animal families are good; we are good; the poachers are bad. In the sixth category, we have various actions engaged in by the text and ride -- the effort to get us to want to visit the park, to believe its narrative and act more benevolently toward nature. Putting these last two categories together, we can see that, among other things, the park tries to exert power over us in an effort to get us to see the park, its message, ourselves and nature as good.

We can thus see that the text and attraction are, like most or all representations, an effort to fulfill the desires of riders and readers, and give them various psychological defenses, while protecting them from consequences. The disguise of the simulation makes the experience seem dangerous when it isn't, and the disguise of the disavowed stories and psychological processes makes the experience seem safe when the person fears, outside of awareness, that it is dangerous.

We can think of the connection between these two forms of illusion this way: inside our minds, largely outside of awareness, are warded-off images of the significant others of childhood, and of ourselves and our relations to them. These images are organized into a central narrative of how we can stay safe and win love, and how certain actions and intentions will provoke retaliation. As a result of the functioning of our minds, we automatically suspend disbelief in our unconscious perception of all this and mistake it for something real. We also project it onto actual situations in life where we act it out, while disguising its true content because of fears of retaliation if we know or express the truth. Authors then create fictional stories and story-based simulations that are disguised to seem lifelike so we will suspend disbelief there as well. These stories are designed to let us project this central narrative and act it out, in a way that lets us experience safety, victory and hope. By suspending disbelief with entertainment-based fictions, we are able to act out and symbolically master the issues created by the original and pernicious form of suspension of disbelief that dominates our personalities.

Thus, in a story like this, we get to invade, peep, aggress, experience the excitement of danger, have sex, act as parents, and enjoy victory over others while we stay safe, play the heroes and maintain our own saintly identities, which is what happens when people get to design (or choose) their own invented worlds. Along the way, and very essentially, we are offered lessons in sublimation and self-control in which our warded off desires are contained and put in the service of good.

One additional aspect should be noted before providing the text. To tell this story, the text and attraction weave together various ideas and and their opposites, which are the meaning-kernels of the story. Some are referred to in the text explicitly, others are implied. These meaning-kernels include the following:

safety vs. danger
competence vs. incompetence
voyeurism vs. respect for privacy
adventure vs. mundane life
authenticity vs. obvious fakery
spectacle of large numbers vs. mundane life
spectacle of scale vs. mundane life
exotic locale vs. mundane life
life overflowing vs. barrenness, death
journey vs. mundane life
comfort vs. discomfort
convenience vs. inconvenience
overcoming obstacles vs. being stuck
power vs. powerlessness
excitement vs. mundane life
assistance vs. exploitation
being "on top" of information vs. being lost
unkempt aging vs. modern, well-tended
shelter vs. exposure
primitive vs. modern
seeing things up close vs. at a distance
beauty vs. ugliness
pastoral scene vs. turbulent scene
refreshment vs. unquenched thirst
life vs. death
aggression vs. peacefulness
struggle for survival vs. being taken care of
families vs. singleness
childlike behavior vs. adult behavior
feeding vs. unsatisfied hunger
small size vs. large size
gracefulness vs. gracefulness
lost world vs. civilization
heroism vs. cowardice
evil vs. good
anticipation vs. mundane life
mystery vs. mundane life
innocence and purity vs. corruption
invading to sightsee and appreciate vs. invading to steal
offering protection vs. harming
power vs. powerlessness
childlikeness vs. adult behavior
victory vs. defeat

The text and attraction take these elements and weaves them together into various contrasts and combinations, such as the following:

*Innocent, unfallen nature overflowing with life versus human criminality;
* Nature as shelter versus nature out in the open and exposed;
* Animals on the prowl for food to nurture their children versus human criminals preying on animals out of avarice;
* The reader/rider going into nature to appreciate its beauty and not hurting it,         versus the evil human poachers.
* A lost tribe of people who were part of nature versus civilization that intrudes in on it:
* The readers and riders as outsiders, spectators and visitors versus readers and riders as caretakers and protectors.
* Good civilization, in the readers and riders, versus bad in the poachers.**

It is out of all this that the text gives us its basic form -- good invaders there to appreciate nature, safely and responsibly journey into the wild where they experience the magnificence and mystery of nature, and see hints of its unsheltered, brutal, aspects which are contained by its love, and where, out of their own love for nature, they rout brutal invaders who have none of that love to reduce and constrain their aggression.

In any case, here is the Disney promotional text on the left side. The interpretation, describing the way the elements referred to above can be found in the text, are on the right. As the reader will see, the promotional text is really a paltry thing, one of many minor verbal efforts at self-aggrandizement on the part of Disney. To those who may fear that this mountain of analysis is attached to a mouse of a promotional text, I would say that all such mice have mountains of information in them, including Disney mice.

As for the the status of the sexual imagery, it has been put into the text, probably without conscious awareness, by one or more publicity writers who are perceiving and perhaps expanding on the disguised sexual imagery of the attraction itself. Some readers will undoubtedly believe that the sexual interpretations overreach, like the theories of the uncomprehending psychoanalyst who sees phallic symbols in everything long and not too thin. To those readers who are open to a Freudian interpretation, I would say look at the totality of ideas and images, rather than at any one interpretation. To assist in that, many of the references with potential disguised sexual content are put in italics by this writer.

Ultimately, what is being examined here is the process of simulation-work, through which the writer(s) and ride creators have taken what is in their own personalities and in their surroundings and used it to fabricate a world and a landscape that embodies the hidden landscape of their minds. They put all this in to the text and ride, mostly outside of awareness, to communicate it to us as readers. We perceive it, also mostly outside of awareness. Through interpretation, we can unravel it and discover what is on their, and our own, minds.

Continue to part 2