Whistling Birds, Banjo Bears, and Grunting Reindeer: Sonic and Musical Animal Encounters in Disney Theme Park Attractions
Start Date
10-5-2024 12:00 AM
Description
Disney brands themselves as a socially responsible company actively engaged in environmentally sustainable practices presenting a positive environmental legacy for young people and future generations. This environmental action and the aesthetics of sustainability are audibly present in the music and sound design of their animated features. For instance, Marion Darlington, a female whistlers trained at professional whistler Agnes Woodward’s The California Institute for Artistic Whistling, provided bird sounds for many of Disney’s early animated features, including Cinderella, Bambi, and Snow White, but went uncredited for her nonhuman animal musical performances (Eley 2014). These sound design and musical choices notably carry over into Disney’s audio animatronic theme park film adaptation attractions and Animal Kingdom’s wildlife exhibits that present the actual world equivalent of their animated animals. While some nonhuman animals receive musical treatment, singing, dancing, speaking, and performed by human voice actors (e.g., the audio-animatronic bears who sing and perform as a part of the Country Bear Jamboree) while others only communicate in species-specific forms of acoustic communication (e.g., Kristoff’s reindeer companion Sven in Frozen as featured in Epcot’s Frozen Ever After attraction). In this presentation, I examine a range of instances where human performers participate in the sonic representation of anthropomorphized and non-anthropomorphized nonhuman characters to illustrate how music and sonic design choices in Disney theme park attractions highlight the importance of media narratives in shaping environmental attitudes and how environmental issues are represented, including the sensory and sonic environments of actual animals experienced in Disney’s Animal Kingdom theme park.
Recommended Citation
Galloway, Kate, "Whistling Birds, Banjo Bears, and Grunting Reindeer: Sonic and Musical Animal Encounters in Disney Theme Park Attractions" (2024). Theme Park Music and Sound. 1.
https://stars.library.ucf.edu/tpms/2024/asynchronous/1
Whistling Birds, Banjo Bears, and Grunting Reindeer: Sonic and Musical Animal Encounters in Disney Theme Park Attractions
Disney brands themselves as a socially responsible company actively engaged in environmentally sustainable practices presenting a positive environmental legacy for young people and future generations. This environmental action and the aesthetics of sustainability are audibly present in the music and sound design of their animated features. For instance, Marion Darlington, a female whistlers trained at professional whistler Agnes Woodward’s The California Institute for Artistic Whistling, provided bird sounds for many of Disney’s early animated features, including Cinderella, Bambi, and Snow White, but went uncredited for her nonhuman animal musical performances (Eley 2014). These sound design and musical choices notably carry over into Disney’s audio animatronic theme park film adaptation attractions and Animal Kingdom’s wildlife exhibits that present the actual world equivalent of their animated animals. While some nonhuman animals receive musical treatment, singing, dancing, speaking, and performed by human voice actors (e.g., the audio-animatronic bears who sing and perform as a part of the Country Bear Jamboree) while others only communicate in species-specific forms of acoustic communication (e.g., Kristoff’s reindeer companion Sven in Frozen as featured in Epcot’s Frozen Ever After attraction). In this presentation, I examine a range of instances where human performers participate in the sonic representation of anthropomorphized and non-anthropomorphized nonhuman characters to illustrate how music and sonic design choices in Disney theme park attractions highlight the importance of media narratives in shaping environmental attitudes and how environmental issues are represented, including the sensory and sonic environments of actual animals experienced in Disney’s Animal Kingdom theme park.