“Windows to the Past”: Disney’s America, the Culture Wars, and the Question of Edutainment

Abstract

While much has been written on Disney’s America, the theme park the Walt Disney Company wanted to build in Virginia in 1993, the relation of the surrounding controversy to the ongoing Culture Wars in the US has only marginally been touched upon. This article therefore delves deeper into this crucial connection, as well as using these events as a case study to discuss the importance of edutainment, and the role that theme parks play for this similarly often-discussed issue.