Death of Story

Feature story: Pirates of the Caribbean, Country Bears, and Haunted Mansion as proof of the move from Disney’s “death of the story” (from Roland Barthes “the author is dead”) when Disneyland was founded, to “the story is dead” now that all recycling and tweaking of existing copyright material has been exhausted. In theme park rides, there is by definition no character development, no plot to speak of, and a narrative arc that simply takes you from oh my to gee whiz, or scary/scarier/scariest.