Research Seminar: ‘Spatial Transmedia, Fan Play and Politics in The Contemporary Theme Park’

This paper examines theme park fandom, demonstrating how relationships between fandoms and media companies offer opportunities for play and engagement, as well as criticism and political expression

Location: LT G.12, Clothworkers Building North

Theme park visitors have historically been perceived as naïve, controlled and duped into excessive consumption, especially within media and cultural studies work. However, the concept of theme park fandom is now widely accepted (see Koren-Kuik 2014; Baker 2018; Kiriakou 2017; Waters 2016; Waysdorf and Reijnders 2018; Godwin 2020; Mittermeier 2021; Williams 2020). Indeed, ‘theme parks are now designed as much as evocative spaces onto which fans may project their own fantasies as rides which take them through a directed path’ (Jenkins in Lukas 2013, p. 246). Building on these ideas this paper argues that theme park fandom offers one space where the often-fraught relationships between media industries and the participatory fan cultures that surround them are negotiated.

First, it considers the notion of ‘spatial transmedia’ which accounts for ‘moments of narrative extension and world-building that take place within specified rooted locations. […], it is only by physically being there that one can experience the extended narrative or world’ (Williams 2020:12). However, such forms of fannish transmedia engagement are only available to those who can afford to pay, effectively prohibiting many fans from engaging and playing in these spaces. Fans with lower socio-economic status are discounted from such experiences, demonstrating the ‘logic of capitalist exchange’ (Sandvoss 2005, 116) that co-opts and commercializes fan practices to sell products and experiences back to them.

Second, the paper examines another form of exclusion via discussions concerning the culturally inappropriate elements of some of Disney’s rides. These include Jungle Cruise (Wood 2020) or the Splash Mountain attraction which had been critiqued ‘as a racially sanitized commercial venture ready for popular consumption’ (Sperb 2005, 935). Although both rides have been redesigned by Disney, more reactionary fans have criticized the Company for ruining ‘classic’ attractions and perpetuating a politically liberal agenda. The paper thus questions who gets to experience spatial transmedia since many fans may never feel truly immersed due to the racist, colonial imagery and architecture of the parks (Pettersen Lantz 2020; Leon-Boys and Chávez 2021; Mittermeier 2021), or the intrusion of divisive partisan politics via Donald Trump’s inclusion in the Magic Kingdom’s Hall of Presidents. As the paper will thus argue, ‘theme parks are not apolitical sites’ and ‘discussions over the practices and behaviors that are enacted within them cannot be divorced from broader socio-political viewpoints and structures’ (Williams 2020, 140). Far from being overtly celebratory and utopian, the case of theme park fandom demonstrates how participatory cultures can be key sites for evaluation, criticism and even disavowal of beloved media texts, objects, or places.

Rebecca Williams is Associate Professor in Media Audiences and Participatory Cultures at the University of South Wales. Her books include Theme Park Fandom (2020, University of Amsterdam Press), Post-object Fandom: Television, Identity and Self-Narrative (2015, Bloomsbury), Everybody Hurts: Transitions, Endings, and Resurrections in Fandom (2018) and Fan Studies: Method, Research, Ethics (2021, with Paul Booth) with University of Iowa Press. She has published widely on fan studies, media tourism and place, space and transmedia, and theme parks. Her most recent book, a co-edited collection on Tim Burton’s Nightmare Before Christmas was published by Blooomsbury in February 2025.