SCMS: Society of Cinema and Media Studies 2024

Description

Delivering paper ‘Spatial Transmedia, Celebrity, and ‘Ani-embodiment’: Tim Burton’s Nightmare Before Christmas in Disney Theme Parks’ on a panel on ‘Journey into Conglomeration: Transmedia Trials and Tribulations in Disney’s Theme Parks’.

Abstract

This paper examines the annual overlay of the Haunted Mansion attractions at the California and Tokyo Disneylands when the Mansions are transformed, with characters, scenes, and music from Tim Burton’s Nightmare Before Christmas film replacing the ride’s regular iconography and experience. It argues that the Haunted Mansion Holiday (in California; renamed Haunted Mansion Holiday Nightmare in Tokyo) extends the ‘spatial transmedia’ (Williams 2020) of the Nightmare universe since ‘Theme parks are a key site for transmediality and convergence culture, allowing visitors to inhabit the hyperdiegesis of narrative worlds and offering opportunities for synergy between films and rides’ (Williams 2020: 103).

Haunted Mansion Holiday continues the Nightmare story. Narratively set after the events of the film, its central conceit is that the character Jack Skellington has discovered the house and wants to celebrate the festive season with the 999 ghosts who live there. The ride thus allows guests to physically enter the film’s otherwise imaginary worlds of Halloween Town and Christmas Town and the Haunted Mansion. However, it simultaneously speaks to the Gothic iconography and characters, horror tropes and dark sensibility of both intellectual properties (IPs), and the ‘ricketiness’ of the Mansion which lacks a coherent and stable story. As the paper argues, it is the Mansion’s ‘history of narrative gaps and elisions’ and ‘the circular nature of its fans and transmedia extensions and adaptations feeding back into its stories, that make it so well-suited for [adaptation and update]’ (Williams 2022). This allows an IP like NBC to be welcomed, in contrast to moments of resistance when existing IPs are introduced into the parks (Williams 2020: 247-248).

Furthermore, the paper argues that the film’s initially ambivalent position as a Disney ‘text’, largely due to concerns over the ‘dark tone and potential negative reception of the film’ (Burger 2017: 110), enables Nightmare’s position in the Disney Parks to be both significant and ephemeral due to its links to seasonality and limited temporality (September-December). It thus avoids ‘challenging and violating Disneyland’s core family values, which exclude horror and violence ‘(Lam 2010: 639), allowing NBC’s recognition and popularity to be harnessed without threatening Disney’s corporate identity (Rahn 2011) which ultimately prioritises familiarity and brand reassurance

Period	14 Mar 2024 → 17 Mar 2024
Event type	Conference
Location	United States, MassachusettsShow on map
Degree of Recognition	International