Sign, Space, and Story:
Roller Coasters and the Evolution of a Thrill
Dana Anderson
How high can we go, how fast can we go, what are we going to do to the
people, well...I think the only limit we’re going to see is what the people will
get on.
Ron Toomer, President of Arrow Dynamics,
America’s Greatest Roller Coaster Thrills in 3-0
Amusement parks have enjoyed a respectable and deserved share of
cultural critique over the past 15 years. James Cameron and Ronald
Bordessa, among numerous others, have illustrated how these seemingly
unremarkable, even banal public gathering spaces comprise “a shorthand
epitome of the culture, a prime cultural manifestation of the America of
today” (102). Margaret J. King has in turn elevated these parks beyond
epitome to aesthetic and mythic greatness, proclaiming them “an especially American art form, a new American muse” (56-57). If, following
King, we are indeed to regard these cultural constructions as more art
than artifact, more muse than mere amusement, then only one park structure is worthy in its physical stature and symbolic inspiration to be called
Olympus: the roller coaster.
In both its history and its contemporary incarnations, no artifact
more completely represents the culture of American amusement than the
roller coaster. Although, as J. Meredith Neil posits, it may be the “least
recognized of all the symbols most widely recognized by Americans,” its
serpentine trail is nonetheless the master metonym of the multi-billion
dollar industrialization of leisure thrill, “the most popular amusement
park ride in existence” (108). As the recognized sign of amusement, the
roller coaster enjoys both American and worldwide cultural coinage as
well. Impressive exemplars of the new generation of tubular steel
“mega-coasters” operate or are currently under construction in France,
Spain, Egypt, Kuwait, China, Japan, Australia, Brazil, and Chile
(“International” 14). And in a recent display of solidarity, amusement
organizations everywhere (except for Disney) banded together in celebration of 1996 as the International Year of the Roller Coaster. At elaboZ
2 . Journal of Popular Culture
rately staged commemorative events, parks unveiled more than 50 new
coasters, a technological homage of cutting-edge giants whose gymnastic contortions and eye-watering accelerations make their eroding
wooden predecessors look like slides in a McDonald’s Play land.
Consider, for example, Superman: The Escape, Six Flags Magic
Mountain of Valencia, California’s contribution to Coaster Year. It currently ranks as the tallest, fastest thrill ride ever built, rocketing patrons
from 0 to 100 miles per hour in seven seconds, hurtling them up a near
vertical 415-foot tower, then suspending them for a full 6.5 seconds of
weightlessness-the coveted “negative G’s,” in the lexicon of the afficionado (Bennett 187).
Yet the ride’s superlative status is as ephemeral as it is impressive,
for turning to ever more nefarious extremes in transporting and terrifying
firmly harnessed, hysteric human cargo is the norm, even the rule in contemporary coaster fabrication. A cursory analysis of coaster nomenclature over the years evidences this intensity lust which, in the past decade,
has supplanted what Neil once perceived as “relaxed fun in their forms’’
( 1 12). The benign cosmological allusions-The Comet, The Blue
Streak-have sputtered out, and the “cute” animal analogies-Wildcat,
Jackrabbit-have turned tail before a much more malevolent spawn of
mechanized leviathans: The Beast, Iron Dragon, Anaconda, The Viper,
Raptor. No one would pay, let alone wait in today’s labyrinthine lines, to
ride the Zippin Pippin (a reported favorite of Elvis). The lines for
Superman, however, still stretch around the park. Natural selection has
privileged these more advanced predators. The coaster has evolved.
Ron Toomer, whose Arrow Dynamics has concocted over 80 of the
world‘s most revered and feared coasters, defines in the above epigraph
the raison d’etre of modem coasters in words as descriptive as they are
prescient. No longer will coasters be bound or measured by the limits of
height and speed that characterize their dilapidated progenitors, whose
broad, archaic tracks and roller-skate trains make them appear, at best,
extremely distant relatives. The coaster, while still the reigning sign of
amusement, now defines itself as a subject in flux: it is a nexus to experiences of space and time, history and future. It is a function of human
courage, whose virtual envelope is the virtually insatiable collective
craving for bigger, faster, “weirder” (Conniff 82).
The evolution of the roller coaster necessitates a reexamination of its
corresponding evolution as a cultural sign, particularly in light of postmodem facets which have catalysed its now-more-than-ever supremacy
as the apotheosis of commodified thrillseeking. First, this article will
provide a brief review of the history of the coaster in order to elucidate
its ascendance and contemporary prominence as a sign of amusement.
Sign, Space, and Story
3
Second, it will investigate how these recognized amusement signs
reflexively define and are in turn defined by their respective park spaces,
an aspect of the modem coaster which helps account for its proliferation
throughout the amusement industry. And finally, it will examine one of
the most striking trends in coaster construction: the marked thematization of contemporary coasters, their mining and appropriation of historical and cinematic sources in contextualizing their thrill experience. This
trend, more than technological advancement, has etched a benchmark on
the expanding midway of amusement history, distinguishing the simple
coasters of the past from the sites of intertextuality and play they have
become.
The History of a Commodity, the Rise of a Sign
In her architectural analysis of the roller coaster as sign, J. Meredith
Neil asserts that
the roller coaster has long held in the American mind an unambiguous emblematic status.... [It] symbolizes the amusement park. Whether or not the particular
coaster is, in fact, a primary attraction or even visually impressive, its presence
immediately communicatesin a way that no other single image can. (108)
This obvious contemporary prominence as the definable sign of the
amusement park and of amusement in general, however, has been a long
time in the making, its origins tracing to mid- to late 18th-century commodification of public leisure. More specifically, the roller coaster owes
its privileged status to an earlier, much less thrilling vehicle of leisure:
the trolley car. As both Griffin and Mangels note, the proliferation of
attractions such as coasters and assorted carnival rides materialized from
the commercial exchange between trolley companies and the power syndicates which provided their electricity. The syndicates, which charged a
flat fee for power use, profited immensely by the public’s infrequent
weekend use of trolleys. Traction companies subsequently realized that
encouraging weekend family excursions was their best chance at maximizing their power usage. Investors descended upon gardens, parks, and
other typical bucolic leisure locales and enlivened them with enough
shows and rides to pique the interest of the most sedentary families. As
Griffin summarizes, “the appeal of picnicking in a shady grove after
working in a dingy factory all week, plus the novelty of music and the
thrill of rides, made the Sunday trolley excursion almos; irresistible.”
Thus, the conflation of park space with commodities of spectacle and
sensation effectively created and fulfilled a leisure need in the American
working public, packed the weekend fare boxes with nickels, and initi-
4 . Journal of Popular Culture
ated “the development of amusement parks as an American institution”
(2)
New York’s Coney Island is America’s most legendary trolley stop
amusement park (accessible today by subway), for it is here that the
roller coaster was introduced to the American park-going public. The
ancestors of this first coaster were children’s ice slides of 15th-century
Russia, later reproduced with wooden slopes and wheeled carriages by
Catherine the Great and known throughout Europe as “Russian mountains” (Colt 72). Despite failed attempts by various entrepreneurs to
market the sensation in Paris gardens and world exhibitions, New York
proved a welcome home to the first profitable “Russian mountain”Lamarcus Thompson’s 1884 Gravity Pleasure Switchback Railway. Like
the trolley to Coney Island, it also cost a nickel.’ Other parks soon followed with their own reproductions of this popular thrill; as the highest,
fastest, and most elaborate rides in the parks, these coasters surfaced as
the most immediately identifiable, recognizable signs of the relaxation
and adventure of weekend leisure. As a result, the walkways, ponds, and
gardens that once marked dedicated leisure space gave way before the
wooden skeletons of an ersatz landscape that patrons had to pay to enjoy.
One interesting illustration of the roller coaster’s ascendance as
amusement sign is Denver, Colorado’s Elitch Gardens, a renowned
botanical garden which eventually expanded to incorporate a nationallyknown theater and various thrill rides-among them, the Wildcat (1936)
(Fig. 1). A golden anniversary souvenir booklet of 1941 raves for 30
pages of the park’s more refined pleasures: the gardens’ unparalleled
beauty, the theater’s successful productions of such works as Kiss Me,
Kate and Death Takes a Holiday. Although the celebratory text makes no
mention of the park’s amusement rides, these rides are clearly the focus
of the majority of the program’s photographs. There are three separate
photographs of the WiZdcat alone, boasting captions such as “Flocking to
the Wildcat’’ and “One of the smoothest coasters in the U.S.” In reverse
analogy to the photograph presented here, it is the coaster, not the gardens, which promoters foreground in depicting Elitch Gardens as a sight
of leisure and enjoyment. The private gardens Mrs. Elitch opened to the
public years before in promotion of communal gathering are indeed
majestic. But in 1941 they are different: still beautiful and immaculate,
yet noticeably, completely empty. Perhaps park visitors were asked to
congregate elsewhere while photographers took these shots. Then again,
maybe they were in line for the WiZdcat.
Capital and Capitols: Land of the Fee, Home of The Beast
As decades of amusement parks since Elitch Gardens evidence, the
coaster is the most prominent and publicly acknowledged sign of amuse-
Sign, Space, and Story . 5
ment. Yet, as Neil argues in her brief consideration of the coaster’s symbolic value,
Architectural historians and critics have never given the roller coaster serious
attention as the primary symbol that announces to the public (even those cautious souls who would never consider riding a coaster) that they hare approaching an amusement park with its fun and thrills. (108)
Her examination of this symbolic function-one which I have complemented in the previous section through a brief historical consideration
of the coaster’s ascendance as sign-highlights one fundamental aspect
of the coaster’s signification: it “announces,” or signposts a space dedicated exclusively to leisure, thrill, and general amusement, in all its commodified forms. However, this somewhat narrow focus neglects an additional, crucial signifying function of the roller coaster: more than simply
announcing amusement space, coasters also define and represent that
surrounding space, from the specific context of the park itself to the
broader context of the amusement industry in general and its relationships of competition.
Regardless of locale, themes, or any number of popular gimmicks,
contemporary amusement parks are most readily identified and defined
Figure 1. Elitch’s premier coaster and immaculate, empty gardens.
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Journal of Popular Culture
by their rides. The thematic content of the nation’s many amusement
parks varies, from the Six Flags Warner Brothers cartoon icons of Bugs
Bunny and Daffy Duck, to the southern family relaxation of Knott’s
Berry Farm, to the Europe-and-the-old-world-in-a-day geographical
melange of Busch Gardens. But even more than these overarching narratives, amusement parks have come to be structured and most easily identified by the most spectacular-and consequently, the most hyperbolized-thrill rides they contain. The obvious exception here, of course,
is the Disney complex, which, as Michael Sorkin notes, centers every
relationship of space and commodity around the “hairless, sexless, and
harmless” mouse (223). But for the vast majority of competing parks
which lack such a culturally foundational icon-and even for the Warner
Brothers parks, whose animata are nearly as omnipresent as the Disney
entourage-the key to recognizability is the distinction of a superlative
ride: most often, as historically, a roller coaster. Again, the coaster’s
sheer size and height make it the obvious candidate for a park symbol to
emphasize in advertising. But what cinches the coaster as the official
park spokesride is its mesmerizing ability to draw a profitable crowd. As
Richard Conniff notes,
Parks depend heavily on marketing and repeat business, particularly among the
18- to 24-year-old set. Exit polls show that what brings ’em back are thrill rides,
and no thrill ride is more marketable than a new roller coaster. (86)
Thus, not only does a coaster serve through simple physical stature as
the identifiable emblem, the totemic standard of amusement space; it
also defines the park’s patronage by serving as the representation of
commodified adrenaline among those thrillseekers who in large measure
determine the park’s popularity. In a 1980 interview, Ira West, then vice
president of one of the amusement industry’s leading consulting firms,
corroborates this:
Right now, the trend is for big thrilling coaster rides. That seems to attract attendance more than any other single item. Because it affects that segment of the
population with the major source of disposable income, the teenager. (MacKay
69)
In the two decades since his remarks this trend has yet to subside. By
focusing on the prominence of their most pronounced thrill rides-particularly new roller coasters-amusement parks construct for themselves
an ensign that simultaneously demarcates the park as a superior leisure
space and targets the audience of angst whose spare time and summer
Sign, Space, and Story
7
mall job dollars buy the park’s longevity. Among those whose patronage
matters most, the coaster is the defining sign of the successful park.
The coaster’s Achilles heel, however, is that no other single ride
compares in terms of cost, a fact which also influences how coasters
define park space. Cedar Point of Sandusky, Ohio, has illustrated this
time and again with its arsenal of 12 coasters, most recently with Mantis
(1996). The product of the legendary Swiss design company Bollinger
and Mabillard, Mantis is a stand-up coaster (no seated riders here)-the
world’s tallest, fastest, and steepest at the time of its completion-whose
upside-down loops, figure eight, and near-60 miles per hour mimic the
flight of this insect predator. Total ride time: 2 minutes, 40 seconds.
Total cost: $12 million, roughly $75,000 per second. To date, it is the
largest and most expensive project in the park’s 127-year history. Such
enormous expenditures, characteristic of the industry at large, have had
two effects in defining their respective amusement parks. First, they
have unanimously ratified the coaster as the sign of the park as a whole,
the icon to tout in attracting patrons. This trend is apparent not only in
advertisements which underscore the thrill potential of the coasters
themselves (Fig. 2), but also in the manner in which parks now frequently define themselves in such advertisements. Rather than emphasizing the variety of attractions available in the park, such as shows,
zoos, and restaurants, they pronounce themselves simply, boldly, as the
exclusive residences of their new multi-million machinations: “King’s
Island-Home of The Beast,” “Cedar Point-Home of Magnum 200
XL,” “Kennywood-Home of The Steel Phantom.” Thus, the coaster,
more than a sign of amusement space, becomes in the hands of park
advertisers a metonym for the entire park experience.
Second, the sizable requisite investments of thrill rides such as these
mega-coasters has pushed park owners to evoke a correspondingly
increased cash outlay from park visitors. As Conniff summarizes
Paramount Great Adventure president Ray Williams, “the quick payback
is essential to provide capital for next year’s thrill ride” (88). The most
well-known tactic for acquiring this payback-aside from extra salty
fries, or lighter balls at the milk-bottle toss-is the one-price ticket, the
antithesis of the open midway and the individual-price attractions of the
trolley park era. Disney introduced the one-price admission in 1955, now
an industry standard. In addition to ensuring that a customer spends an
appropriate minimum to even enter the park, this admission system
essentially divides park from not park, erecting a perimeter to delineate
where exactly a patron may freely roam without having to pass through
turnstiles, branded with a UV stamp to guarantee safe re-entry into the
amusement domain. Such an invisible frontier, while having the added
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Journal of Popular Culture
benefit of discouraging visitors from navigating their way out of the park
to get their own food at lunchtime, has overtly political implications. It
declares the park a self-contained entity, endowing it with autonomy. It
encloses it in an economy of thrill commodity consumption, its consumers temporary citizens of a fantastic adrenalized principality. Having
advanced coasters such as Mantis within these borders most successfully
convinces patrons that the park is well worth the average $25-$45 they
spend to enter the perimeter; in addition, they effectively recruit those
Fig. 2. Marketing the mega-coaster: Magnum 200 XL at Cedar Point, “coaster
capitol of the world.”
Sign, Space, and Story . 9
individuals most likely to find their expenditure validated by such coasters, ensuring the return attendance parks depend on. A simple formula
emerges: the bigger the coaster within the amusement territory, the
bigger the crowd which pushes to immigrate.
But the master stroke in this competition of amusement parwstates,
this race to be home to the next record-shattering ride, is to be declared
“roller coaster capitol of the world.” This title currently graces the entryway of Cedar Point, a park overflowing with pride in describing how its
“amazing collection of 12 scream machines dominates the park’s skyline
to form the largest roller coaster arsenal anywhere on earth” (“Cedar
Point”).* Given the extent to which amusement parks have utilized the
coaster as a sign in establishing a political space-as a means to assert
their individuality and thrill power, as well as to gain claim to the most
potent amusement entitlement in existence (at least, within the feudal
reign of the “Magic Kingdom”)-it is not surprising that “the coaster
revival sometimes seems like a coaster war” (Conniff 86). Coaster creation and promotion now bears less resemblance to advertising and disturbingly much more to nuclear proliferation, as Ray Williams’ rhetoric
conveys: “There’s no telling where they’ll stop. But someone will do
something bigger and better and, to be honest, so will we” (88).
Williams’ wary suspicion of the unnamed conglomerate “they” of competing amusement superpowers, coupled with his anxious readiness to
formulate and deploy the next mother-of-all coasters, never to be outdipped, out-sped, or out-corkscrewed, is tantamount to a Kruschevian
We will bury you. Inscribed within our global topography of ideological
walls and curtains, of nuclear-capable regimes whose distances apart are
calculated as trajectories, a somewhat less menacing, yet equally tenacious escalation of power metastasizes-a battle of gravitational and
market forces-as the peaks and speeds of these less-than-secret
weapons increase, and as the teens and families who flock to them pay
and applaud.
In concluding her analysis, Neil declares the roller coaster “the best
symbol of the relaxation, fun and adventure we seek at the amusement
park” (1 15). However, the signifying power of the modern coaster
clearly transcends this function of marking dedicated amusement spaces
that Neil emphasizes. Coasters have become the quintessential sign of
competition for leisure dollars, the sign which for many thrillseekers justifies the very existence of today’s multiple-square-mile amusement territories. Is it ironic that the paranoia and intensity of a nearly cataclysmic
cold war characterize the propagation of these benign, safe, and admittedly entertaining devices? Or is it somewhat more ironic that the
“Russian mountains” LaMarcus Thompson originally imported to Coney
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Journal of Popular Culture
Island have achieved such staggering mimetic heights of hype and
expense in the U.S. that they are now known in Russia as “American
mountains” (Conniff 85)?
Stories of the Hyperreal: Space Mountain and the Postmodem Paradigm
With an arsenal of twenty-story plummets, spiraling descents,
Immelmans, bat wings, camelbacks, and other assorted stomach-dislocating salvos, technology has freed contemporary coasters to shatter the
conceptual limits of the coasters of ten, even of five year ago. Six Flags
Magic Mountain’s Batman: The Ride, for example, offers an acrobatic
array typical of the modem coaster: 50 miles per hour peak acceleration,
a 10-story drop, two vertical outside loops, two corkscrews, and a nearzero-gravity roll, all in three minutes. States the narrator of a 3-D video
experience of the ride on his way up the first hill, “the sensation is like a
plane about to crash,” a sensation possible nowhere else in the amusement park (America’sGreatest).
Yet as popular and devious as technology has allowed coasters to
become, a more interesting trend driving the coaster’s current success
traces not to mechanical engineering, but again to Walt Disney, the
undisputed father of the modern-day amusement park. Disney contributed a myriad of innovations in entertaining park patrons which have
since quietly become industry standards-among them, the one-price
ticket and its resultant “amusement perimeter” delineating public space
from commodified leisure space. But as Sorkin, Fjellman, King, and
others argue, and as the incomprehensible density of souvenir Mickey
hats and effigies circulating the globe attests, Disney’s true genius was
“the genius of themeing” (King 58), the creation of a master narrative
unifying the park’s acres of diverse spectacle beneath the umbrella of a
common idea, binding them into a coherent body of commodities. Six
Flags over Texas proved in 1961 that this structure could be successfully
duplicated, a structure profitably reproduced throughout the nation as
many times as there are parks. But Disney’s real visionary flourish was
to embellish what would otherwise be standard carnival rides-ferris
wheels, bumper cars, and, yes, roller coasters-with themes of their
own, smaller interior narratives which bolstered the park’s larger
schema. His premier roller coaster, Space Mountain, combined old-fashioned Coney Island thrill with just such a narrative-a narrative of a near
distant future-in a contextualized and immersive experience which
engendered, if such a thing is not inherently self-contradictory, a postmodern paradigm of contemporary coaster construction.
RCA teamed up with Disney in creating Tomorrowland’s 1975 centerpiece, the 180-foot high, 30()-foot diameter, spired and pristine white
Sign, Space, and Story
11
conical summit of Space Mountain. Inside, riders walk through an elaborate pictographic and audio introduction to the history and ambitions of
space travel, culminating in a coaster presentation of
a high speed trip through space. Inside...support scaffolding holds two tracks on
which small ‘rocket ships’ with riders are jerked around and plummeted in deep
space darkness. Shooting stars and meteors are simulated with flashing lights,
mirrored globes, and projections onto the ceiling. The cars are lined with glowin-the-dark chartreuse dashes, which flash about overhead as screams waft
down to those in the queue. (Fjellman 358-59)
Upon terminating the ride, voyagers are transported on a motorized
wakway through additional pictograghic representations of a futuristic
utopia, of robots collectively tilling an agrarian moonscape. While
Disney’s vision of the future has proven anachronistic, his unprecedented incorporation of complex sets, props, and sensory stimulation
established a touchstone for the nation’s coasters which succeeded it-a
difficult act to follow indeed. Situating the exhilaration of an otherwise
typical coaster within this narrative framework imbued it with atemporality: one was not merely riding a coaster, however entertaining; one
was transcending linear progression for an arcane glimpse of the world
sure to come, of the future that already was. This conflation of thrill and
theme made Space Mountain Disney’s most celebrated amusement
adventure, not to mention Florida’s third tallest mountain.
But the world to come is but one of many subjects open to incorporation in contextualizing amusement experience. In assessing the general
thematic content of amusement parks, King noted in 1981 that thematized parks or attractions like Space Mountain do more than
look toward worlds of the future; they also reach back into our collective unconscious. Although the parks are often thought of as incidental curiosities in the
vast panorama of popular culture, this type of highly symbolic public setting
serves as a living museum of popular myths about the essence of historical and
regional experience. (59)
King’s description is accurate, albeit understated, for the coasters of the
’90s have moved well beyond simply expressing the “living museums”
of our histories and mythologies: they have ransacked them, appropriating historical signs and co-opting images of the most popular living
museum-cinema-in creating thematized coaster attractions that make
a melodramatic molehill of Disney’s towering technodome. The contemporary coaster not only delivers the endorphin-churning acrobatics of
12 . Journal of Popular Culture
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Sign, Space, and Story . 13
pretzeled track configurations, but also packages them in a pastiche of
historic, futuristic, and cinematic simulacra-a complete experience of
spatial and temporal play. A brief consideration of two representative
thematized coasters will illustrate this trend, as well as posit some enigmatic questions concerning the reality of the experiences they offer.
Top Gun, the flick of characteristic ’80s individualism pitting rebellious F-14 pilot Tom Cruise (“Maverick”) against the constrictive norms
of the military complex, inspired same-name roller coasters in
Paramount’s Great America (California) and King’s Island (Ohio) parks
in 1993. While products of different designers, both rides are inverted
coasters offering a fury of loops and rolls within a detailed recreation of
the film’s context. Paramount even enlisted the help of the film’s production designer, John DeCuir, in order to “provid[e] guests with a total
experience from the moment they get in line through the exit of the ride”
(“Top Gun”). To board this “jet coaster,” riders (or “pilots”) wait in line
in a mock aircraft carrier flight tower, a panoramic view of the flight
deck hanging as backdrop (Fig. 3). Upon reaching their aircraft at the
loading platform, they are strapped into padded harnesses by ride operators in full flight jumpsuits, complete with military insignia and “Top
Gun” caps. Although a real F-14 is well beyond the reach of most parkgoers, the coaster’s near-mach gyrations and staged atmosphere together
suggest that this is as real a flight as they could ever experience.
This detailed reproduction of the film’s setting enhances what is
already an impressive ride, but Top Gun’s detailed props pale in comparison to the historical saturation of Montu-the p i k e de rhsistance of the
newly-renovated Little Egypt section of Busch Gardens, Tampa (Fig. 4).
One of the many coasters that opened in celebration of International
Coaster Year, Montu coils throughout the park’s seven Egyptian acres,
surrounded by pyramids, palm fronds, and sandy dunes. The metal
sprawl of the coaster itself, by far the most out-of-place artifact in this
oasis, is partially effaced by its namesake: a half hawk, half man sun
god, purportedly once worshipped at Thebes, whose towering multicolor
likeness stands at the coaster’s entrance adjacent a small pyramid.
Reviewers of the park triumph the verisimilitude of its extensive fabrication, a condensed temporal tour de force of the whole of Egyptian history:
entrance into Egypt will equate to a step backward in time as authenticallydressed ancient characters mimicking cultural customs, a wall partition
engraved with hieroglyphics and mystical music greet inquisitive guests within
the village atmosphere. Jumping back into the 20th century, a walking excursion through a replica of King Tutankhamen’s tomb as it appeared while being
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Journal of Popular Culture
excavated by archaeologist Howard Carter in the early 1920’s delves into the
beliefs and traditions associated with Egyptian royalty. (“Egypt”)
Montu weaves in, out, and through this complex exhibition, its first loop
actually surfacing from within one of the mock excavation trenches of
the Carter dig reproduction. In toto, Montu and its multifarious attendant
Fig. 4. Archaeology meets adrenaline: re-awakening Egypt with negative G’s.
Sign, Space, and Story . 15
replicated relics more than verify David Harvey’s observation that “it is
now possible to experience the world’s geography vicariously, as a simulacrum” (Harvey 300). Need it even be mentioned, the coaster was the
tallest and longest of its kind at the time of its construction.
Comparing Top Gun and Montu-two historically disparate, yet
highly thematized and technically similar rides-begs a closer look at
the relationship of these thematized “simulations” to the reality they
appear to reproduce. Michael Sorkin suggests that such simulations
depend on the existence of some real, external referent, a referent which
“is ever elsewhere; the ‘authenticity’ of the substitution always depends
on the knowledge, however faded, of some absent genuine” (216). This
thesis is accurate in assessing the previously discussed simulation of
Space Mountain, a simulation of an “absent referent” of life and travel in
space. As long as this future external referent is plausible, the simulation,
while admittedly not real, holds tentative claim to reality in that it enacts
what is possible, even likely. It feels “authentic.” However, in the mere
20 years since its inception we have eclipsed the ride’s myopic look forward. We have experienced a reality which renders that suggested by the
simulation outdated and farcical. Thus, the authenticity, or “realness” of
Space Mountain indeed depends upon reference to an external reality, a
claim supported by Disney’s recently completed renovation of
Tomorrowland and the Lost in Space-esque future it once presaged.
But Sorkin’s assertion of such authenticity as the product of a dialectic between simulation and external reality seems inadequate in examining coasters so enmeshed in pastiche as Top Gun and, to a much greater
extent, Montu; these rides appear less concerned with approximating
reality than with presenting an enhanced approximation that, more than
merely simulating or duplicating the real, surpasses it. In Simulations,
Jean Baudrillard discusses postmodernity as the dissolution of referential
reason-the “liquidation of all referentials” and the ascendance of the
simulacrum (6). In place of reality, an external realm of real elements
and experiences simulations endeavor to reproduce, we have “hyperreality,” a world in which “illusion is no longer possible because the real is
no longer possible” (8). In hyperreality, simulacra are no longer merely
images, copies, or simulations of anything real; in their utter disconnection from any identifiable external real, they are the real: “the simulacra...in turn become reality” (Harvey 300). These coasters, rather than
providing “illusion,” or simulation of some reality of external reference,
operate as producers of hyperreality. Fusing interpretations of reality
with the immediacy of physical exhilaration, they forge an “authentic”
experience which supplants whatever external referents they may appear
to simulate-a thematized, ephemeral, yet thrilling simulacrum.
16 . Journal of Popular Culture
Top Gun, for instance, melds cinematic depiction of F-14 prowess
(already a simulacrum) with the sensory experience of a multi-million
dollar inverted coaster. While F-14’s do exist, the reality of F-14 flight is
moot to the majority of theme park visitors who, more than likely, will
never experience one’s cockpit: external reference is irrelevant in defining the reality of their experience. Top Gun is not simulation, but contextualized creation. Those who brave the ride have not reproduced F-14
flight, but have produced a theater-like experience which has no referent
in external reality. As paramount claims, “this coaster is fashioned to
parallel the popular motion picture” (“Top Gun”). Following Frederic
Jameson’s definition of simulacrum, this experience is “the identical
copy for which no original has ever existed” (66). Like the images of
Tom Cruise himself deftly out-maneuvering bloodthirsty and ideologically malevolent Soviet MIG’s, it is not real. It is hyperreal.
Similarly, the Egyptian context of Montu is not really Egypt, either.
As its fans claim, it is Egypt and then some. Its panoply of desert landscapes, stucco hieroglyphics (decorating even the trash cans), and
“authentic shopping bazaars” are not as much history as they are historical present tense, a context invoked by park designers as a vehicle for a
more satisfying, sensorily stimulating, temporally-situated kick. The
park’s artifacts everywhere bespeak and consciously acknowledge their
status as simulacra: the “Bedouin tents” and “adorned marketplaces,” for
instance, offer “an abundance of authentic and replica handicrafts,” as if
the difference mattered (“Egypt”). Is difference even possible within this
commingling of abundant “authentic” and equally plentiful, indistinguishable (but for price) replica? Elsewhere surrounding the coaster in
Tampa’s Egypt, those too short or too scared to ride can
discover the historical and cultural influences [Egypt’s] ancient customs contributed to civilization through a hands-on sand dig experience allowing junior
archaeologists to unearth replica artifacts thousands of years old...symbolizing a
way of life for their ancient ancestors. (“Egypt”)
And if you don’t have the fortune of uncovering your own replica artifact, you can probably purchase one-also thousands of years old-at
the authentic bazaar by the coaster’s exit ramp, bury it, and unearth it
later. In culmination of the delicious irony of these side attractions, of
Egyptian cultural treasures with Taiwanese fabrication tags, of bedraggled Bedouins popping Polaroids of amazed vacation archaeologists,
stands Montu’s impressive thrill technology, the epicenter of this authentichew-and-improved cultural montage. The impetus of the coaster is
clearly not to augment the realism of a historical simulation, but, as one
Sign, Space, and Story
I7
park reviewer notes, to make it more palatable-to make it all real:
“Egypt’s seven-acre expanse will re-awaken the intriguing ancient civilization...with the world’s largest inverted roller coaster injecting unrivaled excitement into the area” (“Egypt”). History is not real enough. Its
“intriguing” centuries of culture sleep until awakened by entrepreneurs
who, with the hands of tomb-plunderers, pry open the sarcophagus and
set its contents corkscrewing. Busch Gardens’ Montu cannot be labeled a
simulation at all, a careful reenactment or resurrection of some authentic
external referent long since past. Montu is the progeny of the hyperreal,
a simulacrum born of archaeology and America’s thirst for beer, a site of
temporal and spatial play offering patrons “their own kind of exodus
from Egypt...an enlightening comprehension of its archival past and a
memorable day of exhilarating adventure” (“Egypt”). It makes no pretense to objective reality, for, in the shadow of its 13-story drop, its
3,983 feet and 60-miles-per-hour, its 104-foot vertical loop (the world’s
largest), the cold, silent artifacts of “real” history are beneath it. Leave
the mummies to decompose in their sterilized glass museum cases-the
pharaohs never did this!
Much like the technological innovations which annually subject
riders to ever more intense stimulation in taunting physics, the themes
surrounding contemporary roller coasters are increasingly fantastic and
fantastically portrayed. While some such as Paramount’s Carrowinds
The Hurler (1994)-themed after the Wayne’s World movies-lack the
creativity of a Top Gun, Batman, or Montu, others promise to redefine
the standards of contextualized, hyperreal roller coaster thrills. The
Outer Limits: Flight of Fear, for instance, based on the popular TV
series and erected in Paramount’s King’s Island and King’s Dominion as
part of Coaster Year, comprises a ’90s revision of Space Mountain’s
optimistic astronomical utopianism. Riders wend their way, not through
an RCA-funded narrative diorama of NASA history, but through a secret
hangar of the even more secret Bureau of Paranormal Activity. Along
with interstellar image screens and specimen jars, it harbors that final
evidence of a long-suspected coverup: an actual UFO, which terrestrial
thrillseekers maneuver through a barrage of contortions called the
“spaghetti bowl,” including a 0-55 mile-per-hour acceleration in 3.9 seconds.
Rockets, Caped Crusaders, F- 14’s, Egyptian deity and trench loops,
UFO’s and government conspiracy: some critics are perhaps understandably nervous concerning the appropriation of our histories and our
futures in marketing the coaster commodity, this long-standing sign of
amusement. Cameron and Bordessa, for example, decry how
18 . Journal of PopurCrt Culture
theme park entrepreneurs have sought to exploit the willingness of patrons to
remove themselves temporarily from “normal life” and to let creative impulses
engulf them .... The psychology of advertisement and the creation of environment [theme] are designed to inveigle the park patrons into an illicit contract,
since they neither know of its terms nor would necessarily approve of them if
they did. (101)
But the contract into which park visitors (and the many coaster devotees)
enter upon forfeiting their sizable admission fares is neither clandestine,
exploitative, nor forced. This temporary removal from “normal life” is
precisely what visitors expect in an amusement park, and their contract
for receiving it has but two conditions: a predetermined fee and a willful
suspension of reality. Riders know they are not “Maverick,” blowing
away rival superpowers with air-to-air missiles and Tom Cruise panache.
They know they are not speeding sun gods on the banks of the Nile.
They know they are not piloting the mysterious alien craft hidden
beneath miles of red tape at Roswell’s Area 54-at least, not the actual
one. And this knowledge is the paradoxical appeal of the successfully
thematized coaster-its combination of safe terror with the spectacle of a
correspondingly rousing (hi)story. It simulates nothing but its own transcription of reality into backdrops and G-forces, into narrativized experience more authentic than any reality outside of its own interpretation. It
stands in testimony to Umberto Eco’s declaration that “the American
imagination demands the real thing and, to attain it, must fabricate the
absolute fake” (qtd. in Fjellman 300). More than a sign of amusement, or
a marker and structurer of dedicated and competing amusement spaces,
the contemporary coaster signifies play in its myriad senses. It is a sign
of the consanguinity of “authentic” and “fake,” that boundaries are in
continual flux, and that history, space, and time are permeable. The roller
coaster is the simulacric calling card of hyperreality.
Conclusion
To conclude this consideration of a thrill ride whose experience
cannot adequately translate into signs, metonyms, or paradigms, I will
point out some of this examination’s practical merits in enhancing our
reading of a culture obsessed with leisure and amusement. First, the
roller coaster and its changes throughout its 100+ years of American history illustrate the flexibility of signs, their organic relationship to the
shifting milieu of popular culture. As a sign of amusement, the roller
coaster has acquired, retained, and augmented its signifying power over
time; as this analysis has argued, it has adapted in the face of the ironies,
paradoxes, and anxieties of postmodernism. Behind all its newly
Sign, Space, and Story . 19
acquired thematics, technologies, and influences in defining the structure
of amusement spaces and the tenor of the competition between them, it
remains “the quintessential ride...the purest symbol of the amusement
park” (Hildebrandt 94).
Second, as a sign-of amusement, commodification, and play-the
roller coaster is also a text, a dynamic matrix which is both “an expression of, and an active contribution to, American culture” (Cameron and
Bordessa 102).As John Fiske asserts in Reading the Popular,
Popular texts are inadequate in themselves-they are never self-sufficient structures of meanings...they are provokers of meanings and pleasure, they are completed only when taken up by people and inserted into their everyday culture.
(6)
More than a simple midway attraction or high-tech theme park centerpiece, the roller coaster is a site of meaning-making, a “provoker” of
meaning in the innumerable contexts in which we locate and interpret it.
Some markedly intertextual examples of theme park coaster promotion
convey the extent to which we have “taken up” and “inserted” this text
into our every day culture, opening it to interaction and intersection with
diverse cultural phenomena. Riders at the opening of Six Flags Great
Adventure’s Great American Scream Machine were awarded a “red
badge of courage” for their valor. At the opening of Cedar Point’s
Magnum 200 XL,then the world’s tallest and fastest coaster (have such
superlatives worn thin yet?) promoters distributed a scale drawing of the
space shuttle Discovery superimposed on the coaster’s slightly taller
205-foot swooping hill to illustrate which ride really delivered excitement, which machine stood at the technological apex. And the crew of
Space Mountain’s initial mission was actually a team of NASA astronauts, including Alan Shepherd; after their journey, veteran flier James
Irwin described the experience as “rougher than Saturn V” (Conniff 86).
And finally, as Fiske suggests, in our interpretation of their intertextuality and cultural intersection, popular texts such as the roller coaster
can provoke pleasure. The coaster’s omnipresence attests to its pleasurable interpretation: found in special reports on both The Learning
Channel and MTV, on pinball machines and in computerized simulations of entire theme parks; in Ohio Players’ songs (“Love Roller
Coaster”) about ’70s romance, and in the ’90s Red Hot Chili Peppers’
remake; on quaint animated coffee mugs reassuring “Life may have its
ups and downs, but everything will come around.” People even view the
coaster as a site of self-definition, proudly donning embossed T-shirts
which declare “I Survived the Iron Dragon.” They purchase the bleary
20
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Journal of Popular Culture
photographs of themselves from the cameras mounted at the first drop of
the more popular coasters, preserving that liminal moment of fear and
anticipation becoming jouissunce. Others such as the American Coaster
Enthusiasts define entire communities around them. These strange variants of the Benjaminian flhneur (shall we call them pussugers?) tour the
country by bus for weeks in search of authentic experience, hitting every
man-made peak on the map. And still others devote themselves to disseminating their passionate appreciation for coasters among thousands
they may never meet; operating extensive internet sites-many of which
provided statistics and pictures for this analysis-they publish their own
interpretations of the pleasure of this text, as well as provide hyper-intertextual links to other sources of discussion. In these lines of its history,
its cultural signification, its pleasurable interconnections, the roller
coaster is not solely a text; it is a map as well, tracing through the interstices the cultural production and interpretation of an unparalleled
amusement phenomenon. This map of the roller coaster’s evolution is a
map of the evolution of the postmodern thrill.
The author thanks professors Ed Cutler and Gary Hatch at the Brigham Young
University department of English for their insightful assistance with several versions of this article.
Notes
‘Bennett elaborates on the “immediate success” of this initial American
coaster, noting that “people would stand in a line-up for up to three hours to ride
it.” At five cents a ride, Thomson’s Gravity Pleasure Switchback railway
yielded the park an astounding average daily gross of $600 (1,200 riders per
day) (15-16).
*In addition to this ennobling entitlement, Cedar Point’s website also celebrates its new nickname-“America’s Rollercoast’*-an epithet won through
their explicit recognition of the coaster’s signifying influence upon park space
as a whole: “no other ride more defines Cedar Point...than the classic scream
machine” (“Peaks and Valleys”).
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Sign, Space, and Story . 21
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(17
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22 . Journal of Popular Culture
Dana Anderson is a Ph.D. candidate in Rhetoric and Composition at The
Pennsylvania State University.