if there's one thing you should've learned from this video, it's that EPCOT was planned as a company town, and company towns are way older than Disney's attempt at one. More broadly, planned cities are ancient.
Meanwhile in an alternate universe: Today on Defunctland, we will discuss the history of Walt Disney's EPCOT, from it's inception, it's opening, the political problems, and the infamous 1974 riots that led to it's collapse, as well as explore the ruins of this controversial autocratic city.
"Uncle Walt is Watching You." That is seriously where my mind is going with the whole WEDCOM system. Maybe I'm just too cynical or paranoid, but a private city with a centralized surveillance system that also runs all the communications, where some of the citizens are already going to be incentivized to inform on each other, and where everything is perfect all day, every day? Sounds pretty Orwellian to me.
@@akabaneolivia9550 “Kind of” is. Had Disney gone through with it, his legacy would have been “America’s Uncle with a few control issues that slowly deteriorated into a micromanaging lunatic” instead of the mixed bag he is today.
It's seems that Walt's vision of EPCOT was less like a real city and more like a performance of a possible city. He wanted real people to act out what a city of the future could be, as if you were making a sci-fi movie with a entire city as the main cast.
Honestly I agree. And it makes sense that it would be like that, he wasn't a city planner. He was an entertainer. While he may have been good at just designing the basic layout of a small town, who knows, he couldn't have actually controlled it after the way he wanted. He was trying to play director with people's real lives and assumed he'd be able to because he bought into his own personal mythos. It's really interesting.
As a florida resident, I blame the heat The heat here is an anomaly. It does more than make you sweat gallons; it messes with you, it gets to you man. In certain areas I wouldn't doubt its the reason the "florida man/woman" was being created
My now-ex lived there for 2 years with the military, can confirm he went irreparably sideways on that tour. We didn't last long after the FL stint ended.
Imagine living as a commercial for tourists. It's like living in Monsanto's House of the Future. Walt can come in at any time to tear out your appliances. Oh, Westinghouse dropped their sponsorship? There goes your washer machine. Here's a tiny Kenmore. Don't like it? Too bad. They bid less. No you can't buy your own. People would also be able to invade your privacy to whatever extent deemed acceptable by Walt to see how you're living. Open House every day. 🏠 😂
Despite how dystopian epcot would have been, Walt's thoughts on pedestrian-centric urban planning and gamified remote learning are surprisingly prescient for a mid-century mogul.
I think he had ADHD Incredibly smart and passionate about his special interests / hyperfixations but no patience or attention for things he found boring or unimportant On the positive side, a creative and original thinker. On the negative side, mood swings and rejection sensitive dysphoria (couldn't be told "no"). Gamification is one of the best strategies for managing ADHD without medication. Disney probably realized that in his own life and knew it would have been a good way to teach him growing up
I have ADHD, and it's interesting me to see signs of potential ADHDers from the past Especially since DNA research has found evidence of ADHD early in the human genome We're a variant of humanity that has been around for a long time
i've thought a lot about a movie like this ever since i first watched this video, and the only way i can imagine it ending would be with a terrible city wide riot
Since Epcot is just Disney's version of Rapture, I'd like to see it after the society collapsed and theres just 10 foot tall Mickey animatronics roaming the overgrown swampy grounds.
@@eddierichard1104 What's clever about it is its mundanity...for how high-minded the concept originally was, only for it to become something so plain...it's like watching a skyscraper being overtaken by creeping vines and crumbling. It's a degree of reduction of such scale that it elicits such a diverse range of emotions that the only thing left to do is nervously laugh at the absurdity of it all...a monument reduced to soft humor, so common in its implementation, that one might call it a cliché.
It also shows how absorbed he was with Epcot. He saw it everywhere and likely near the end of his life consumed his every waking moment, hell it wouldn't surprise me if he frequently dreamed of Epcot too. In his desperate desire to create the city of tomorrow he was reduced to a man who lived in tomorrow... until he no longer existed in the present
Mr. Ozzie and Mofy Probably because it’s a week old comment on an 8 month old video. Not many people are gonna be roaming the comments section to see it I think. But hey, wild OSP sighting, nice!
"Walt and his team noticed a large undeveloped swamp area on Florida's turnpike near I-4, which at the time was under construction, and still is today."
Ah, the Floridian equivalent of the Seattle Mercer Mess, which was under construction while my mom was in high school, and is /still/ a Big Mood today.
There's something tragic about Walt's drive to construct EPCOT in the waning hours of his life. His desperation to secure his legacy at the very cost of it comes across like a man hopelessly searching for immortality.
Everyone feels the end coming as they age. All people learn they want to leave a legacy. For most this means being kinder and perhaps more giving and involved in church and charities...allowing for a nice turnout at the funeral. For those with rapidly acquired wealth so heavily in the public eye, internal pressure can build, and has in many, to do something spectacular with that wealth to create lasting change. But that kind of wealth comes with the belief that anything can be bought...even freedom.
@@IGuessThisIsHello that epcot was originally meant to be a futuristic neighborhood for example, or that epcot was the plan BEFORE Disney World, or that Epcot is a circle with the fireworks in the middle instead of like magic Kingdom which has a bottleneck where people have to crowd around to see the one spot the fireworks are I order to address a magical day ending with such trampling that can aggrevate many especially parents w young children so being able to see them from all around the Epcot park almost equally is an improvement on purpose. Tons of stuff. The subterranean transit thing but I always point out it is impossible here because you hit limestone and water within 9 feet in Florida which is also why we dont have basements. Tons of things really.
That's really telling. There are some really nauseating hagiographies of Walt Disney out there. The Disney corporation is responsible for some of them, and it's not hard to see why Disney prefers to whitewash their history. Thankfully, there are videos like these (and books like _Walt and the Promise of Progress City_) that help to set the record straight.
@@MediumDSpeaks I've often thought Epcot is perhaps the best place in the world for fireworks, especially for whomever plans the show. The audience is equidistant with stellar viewing lines, you can sync audio nearly to the millisecond as there are speakers everywhere around the ring, you have fences and water to keep the audience at a particular distance, the island allows for hiding the mechanics, water surrounds the launch area for safety, etc. etc.
Living at EPCOT sounds a bit like having to deal with Windows Update. "New appliances are ready to be installed. Would you like to restart your house now or tonight?". Then sometimes you won't get the warning and the appliances get installed anyway, right in the middle of cooking a meal.
Hahaha 😂, amazing!! Or even an explanation of why the EPCOT ride was so torturous. I grew up in Florida and never experienced the whole ride without stopping (or getting stuck in it for a few hours) until I was probably 25. It did make for a decent nap, rain shelter though.
wow. when i went to disney world, our family hung out in epcot the ENTIRE time. we loved the cultural theming combined with the futuristic look... and the radial design. we loved it. i always had this feeling in the back of my head that it was somehow *different* from the rest of disney world for some reason. there was just... something about it. never in my FUCKING LIFE would i have EVER GUESSED THIS.
I watched the Epcot movie when I got the Disney app for my girls a few years back! Same time this video was produced and I was amazed! So hoping one day I can visit it.. would rather see Epcot than Disney World :)
@@kmchatzkendra all power to you, but epcot *is* a part of disney world 😭its just kind of one of the sectors now in the same way magic kingdom and animal kingdom are
I’m waiting for the day (because it’s certainly only a few years away) that Walt Disney’s dream of the world of tomorrow can be fully realized in near-lifelike Virtual Reality. It might be a nice place to live in as one of its 20,000 inhabitants.
I dunno if this is a strange thing to admit, but I'm currently watching this with my hands clasped together on my desk like this is some kind of secret presentation
Cause the secret of Epcot is this. If you have the creativity, the will and the dream. IT can become real. So long as people have that. Epcot the city of tomorrow has a chance of becoming reality. If you presented this to people like from Clownfish tv or say a few others right now like the guy from the quartering they would likely say something negative and chew out modern Disney. If you presented this to a artist, to a dreamer. To a child. They see a possible future.
@@Quetzalcoatl_Feathered_Serpent Not sure about that Quartering fella, but Clownfish prooved many times, that they are on the side of the of the artists. They hate the corporate bullshit, not the artist themselves.
This really was the vibe, god damn. Crazy how he kinda viewed his entire life's work as a silly little distraction and thought this weird dystopian company village would be the real thing that immortalized him.
This feels like a genuine classical tragedy. Hubris, fatal flaws, and sorrow in the end as the protagonist fails. You’re a storyteller among storytellers.
Epcot sound like the setting of an amazing dystopia game franchise. The law of Disney isn't aggressively enforced, but all the citizens know to stay in their line. You've lived there since birth and have never left. Your father moved to the secondary community three years ago, and you have very little contact with him. Theres a big reveal about the outside world being 1992, despite Epcot still having a 1960s Futurism vibe. Your objective is to get your family out, but the authorities are onto you and have locked down all the outermost regions of the city. You meet a journalist from the outside who has a reputation for going to dangerous parts of the world, and she wants an interveiw with whoever is in power in the city. Whammo, video game shenanigans ensue
half life 2 vibes also strangley enough. Imaging walking out into town square and beamed on a massive 60's tv screen. "TO ALL WHO COME TO THIS HAPPY PLACE... WELCOME..."
Smart man ... and dont forget, he was constantly negotiating with the rest of the "Kings" running their portion of the world. I am reminded of Gates, one of the 10 most powerful people in the world, being called before .. Congress .. sitting there smiling.
Been watching a lot of old defunctland lately after the disney channel theme documentary, and honestly this is one of your best. Your ability to paint a mental picture is insane, and the description of a man on his deathbed fruitlessly planning his legacy nearly brings me to tears every time i watch
Someday, we will hear about Roy... who carried on... balanced books... made things happen... in the real world. A hidden hero that doesn't get nearly the recognition he deserves. And he finished Disney World and died 2 months later after giving up his retirement to make it so. Crushing really.
This! And the fact he changed the name to Walt Disney World to make sure everyone knew who the man behind the dream was, selflessly dismissing the man behind the completion of the project. He literally gave up a part of his life for his brother's legacy. Big respect to Roy ❤
I was thinking that too. The video spent almost no time focused on Roy’s passing. It’s sad because behind every insane rich person surrounded by yes men, there are the people that keep them in check. The people who literally have to learn their psychology in order to keep them realistic while not making them mad. The people that basically have to babysit the “visionaries“ those people should get more appreciation because the visionaries could never exist without them. I’m not trying to be controversial, but think of someone like Elon musk. Constantly gets enthusiastic about ideas that could never work, lies about how science works, etc. there are many people who work with him that literally have to learn how to keep his tantrums at bay so that they can have him around while keeping the company functioning. Imagine if those people also had the same temper. They would just get fired. The only people who are allowed to get away with being so ridiculous are the people who are viewed as true visionaries even if that image is largely fake. We know so much about Elon Musk but we don’t know about the people who keep him at bay to keep things functioning
He had some genuinely good ideas: the radial design, the people movers, the renewable energy, and the underground road and parking. If he treated it like a normal but advanced neighborhood with privacy and freedom it could’ve worked.
I think he was just so afraid of losing control. It had to be the perfect city, and, if the people of the perfect city had the ability to control the city, they might make it not so perfect. Just an inability or unwillingness to consider the imperfections of life. Any city, in reality, wouldn’t be perfect, but, maybe, with complete control, he’d be able to convince himself it was.
Yes, there were a lot of great ideas in his plans. The biggest flaw was the vast scale of the project which of necessity would have to incorporate strong central control. If he hadn't been so grandiose in establishing his legacy, he might have succeeded in promoting portions of the design in different locales instead of failing because of attempting a totally unwieldy conglomeration of all of them all at once. I think it was his vanity (and all the sycophants he surrounded himself with) which couldn't be reigned in with any consideration of realism.
yeah it's more good in theory, modern musk with his tunnels is a good example where on a theoretical level it works but when you start to reach into modern safety regulations and especially fire laws, you're going to be in a world of hurt very fast.
@@libbybollinger5901He was a perfectionist. Apparently, he nitpicked every single frame of Snow White and had the animators redo drawings if they weren't perfect. This attention to detail is what makes Disneyland work and makes their films so beautiful. However, it just doesn't work when you have thousands of people not employed by you living in one area.
Yknow, the viability of EPCOT aside, it's kind of sad that the project literally died with walt. I suppose that most people knew that it was never really going to happen, but they wanted an old man to pass away in peace believing that it would happen, but that line, "Marvin, Walt's dead," just hit quite hard.
Thing is though.......alot of the core concepts of EPCOT could have worked out PERFECTLY fine. Dude was foaming at the mouth for something he called "revolutionary".........when alot of people overseas..... *_would just call them WALKABLE CITIES._* Its revolutionary _FOR AMERICA_ due to his idol Ford...........but most places overseas didnt have Ford's nonsense influencing every aspect of life that exists and still vibed with the usual city planning that was originally built around walking and biking. Walt hated the new city planning that apparently prioritized automobiles and seemed to not know what he was DIRECTLY asking for. Nowdays........everyone knows to just say "American city structure sucks ass. Walkable cities are better for everyone involved." But he didnt know that. He TOOK some concepts from a walkable city in switzerland.......but just didnt say, "Man. This walkable city is great! Why are we moving away from that in America." I give him MAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAD props for trying to brute force walkable cities back into America.... but its his own fault for why it failed. He was his own opposition to his project by ultimately being a "rich white man" about it. You know the type......rich, entitled, controlling, not used to people telling him no, invincible, powerful, no concern for others A.K.A: the residents wont have a say on the place they live in, doing this 60% for YOURSELF and NOT because you noticed that we as a society started losing something and rightfully so. He was more concerned with his legacy and control....that too many people ended up not beliving in him. He smoked like a chimney apparently and he failed to convince Roy on his dream. oh well. Im not bothered only because the idea of walkable cities didnt die. There is currently a small city in Arizona that is currently experimenting with the idea.......and theyre doing it THE GOOD AND HONEST WAY. Down to earth with none of the privacy invading and control issues. the idea isnt going anywhere. People just dont want corporations going fucking feral and doing it. Cause Disney is what we invision when a corporation goes fukin feral with a good idea.
@@Tentegenbro calm down Walt wanted do something more than just walkable cities. was it insane yeah but also that’s how Walt got to the top never saying no and pushing limits.
"It is worth noting that the unruly generation Walt was attempting to corral, was in fact, the baby boomers" My, how the times, and roles, have changed.
What are you talking about? Boomers are still unruly and hard to corral, it's just that nowadays they use money and political power instead of knives and molotov cocktails
That entire generation protested the Vietnam war by raiding/burning buildings on their college campuses and now tell Millennials to sit down and shut up and conform. They became the very thing they sought to destroy. *Mainstream adults.*
Every time I caught myself thinking "You know, that doesn't sound so bad," I then remembered that a lot of EPCOT's function hinged on corporations being benevolent overlords and I'd almost immediately think of both mining towns (good on you for mentioning company cities!) and cyberpunk wageslave cities.
Corporations weren't even willing to stick around in the EPCOT we did get and that one was purely marketing, imagine trying to get companies to try to stick around for this, a city where they have to pay for every appliance and employ everyone.
Yeah Company cities with terrible idea. Walt Disney and Epcot remind me of Elon musk and Mars. I love the idea people settling on Mars but having private corporations and controlled of anything sounds like a truly be terrible idea.
@@aurorawaxwing5866 when it comes down to the eventual exploration of space, there are two spectrums that people fall under there are The Optimist and the realist. Optimist hope for something more along the lines of Star Trek, while realist view it from aliens perspective that will reach the Stars through corporate control.
And here's just...an actual documentary. I'm always stunned at the effort some people put into a piece of edited video that may or may not ever earn them a cent, and certainly won't make history. But for some random guy just looking for something to pass the time, finding such quality and thought-provoking content for free is a blessing. Thanks for all the hard work you put into this!
if the PEOPLE chose to make epcot then It would be communist but I think since its one dictator deciding whats best, its closer to capitalism without free will
Oh dont you worry, this guy is making lots of dough off these videos. They are all monetized and since they are not political for the most part its safe content for the high tech overlords of speech content.
I legitimately believe this season should be included in any museum about Walt Disney/the Disney company. It is a fair and well-researched series of videos portraying both the positives and the negatives about this iconic and pivotal figure in American history.
"Because the teens of the 60s loved nothing more than hanging out with a bunch of narcs in a building designed by a sixty year-old man." I love how completely neutral you deliver great lines like that.
regarding white flight, they're escaping the economic and social ills that come from an abuse of the mentioned factors. nothing inherent about immigration or integration drives white flight. but government mandates and the crime that result, does. also, cities do not fall into disrepair because of white flight itself, but from the root factors that drive white flight, ie increasing crime rate, expanding government oversight, etc. it's important to remember that any one habitat does not have unlimited resources, living space, or job opportunities. the surplus people that arrive into an environment introduces scarcity and have an overall damaging effect on the surroundings because they have to obtain resources outside of normal means. this means crime, corruption, kick backs, etc. i'm not saying immigration or integration is bad, but when it's artificially ramped up such that there is a surplus population and thus a scarcity of resources, it becomes damaging.
@@cagneybillingsley2165 A good chuck of crimes in America happens from white people, so I highly doubt that's the reason why it happens. Sounds like excuses to justify not wanting to live with people they consider to be minorities if you asked me.
@@SM-ok3sz Rei: Tell me, you’re Commander Disney’s son, aren’t you? Shinji: Mhm. Rei: Then why are you scared? Don’t you have faith in EPCOT? Shinji: No, how could I? I mean, how could anyone? *SLAP*
The problem with any city of the future is it will require prisons, hospitals, morgues and men/women with guns. Bad people, rapists, murderers, thieves, whores, slackers and vandals exist in every community. Finding ways to deal with them is a necessity for any community even if you use a mouse logo on the city seal.
I wish someone could have explained to Walt that "entertainment" and "distractions"' are important. Sometimes the stories change lives, sometimes they just provide enough of a breath of fresh air for people to keep going in a hard world. Media is a powerful tool. There's a reason everybody loved what he did, and it wasn't a superficial one.
I was just thinking this. Storytellers sing the praises of the knights and rulers, of the skilled, the daring, or just the regular everyday person, but in so doing they themselves inspire all these to live their best story, no matter who and what they are. There's something so tragic and frustrating about an artist who evidently doesn't see themselves as a part of the humanity they're expressing -- whether it's someone acting like they're above everyone because they "made it as an artist and don't have to be an ordinary schmuck like you losers" or, as you mentioned, an artist who devalues their own contribution because they're comparing themselves to some other measure of productivity.
Im in 1000% agreeance with you on how powerful and important being a creator is, but i don't think that would have helped him. The paranoia and denial of his own mortality and his legacy was beyond him learning to appreciate the arts.
I was thinking this too. As someone who was inspired to be an animator because of Disney films, because I thought it was so incredible I could relate to a drawing of a deer that had lost his mom-- something I was aware wasn't REAL-- but how that felt so real and incredible that we as humans could empathize so strongly with drawings done by other humans... it really made an impression on little kid me who was going through a rough childhood. And I know I'm not alone in that, having met so many other passionate animators and storytellers. Or how there were so many people who watch these movies again and again because they feel something. It's so disheartening to hear the guy boil down that legacy to "he invented a mouse."
@@fizzles5 Thanks, friend. And keep up the writing! (Incidentally reading your comment without context nearly gave me a heart attack. I was trying to remember what grammar crimes and heresies I'd committed to get that response :P )
Kevin, I want to give you the highest compliment I can give within the context of my family: While discussing the Reedy Creek Improvement District controversy, I told my 82 year old father about this documentary and how he'd walk away from it understanding everything. I know he never likes sitting through ANYTHING for very long, so I figured he'd never get around to it. The next day he texted me and we discussed the issues in your video, from beginning to end, meaning he watched every second. This is, truly, a testimony to how great this is.
This really gives insight into the human spirit and existentialism. Here you have a guy who's name is practically embedded into American history and culture. Yet he still wasn't satisfied. His ambition drove him into madness to believe that he could overcome his own mortality just by dreaming hard enough.
Watches neralink video from rem sleep stasis mode seeing it back in October 2020. Mmm. makes sour face and waits for confirmation and cutting them after they sellout and self-expose who they truly are.
@@benh3518 Yeah, I’ve been binge-watching season 3 of this show and I can see a lot of parallels. (C.V. Wood possibility inspiring Bertram Piedmont? Not to mention the harsh workplace treatment in both animation studios.)
I feel like if Walt stayed alive, this could've been fleshed out into a working concept. It's a beautiful city from a design standpoint but because the city design came before the city planning, it didn't get the chance to work out these problems. Or maybe it would've stayed as this dystopian city overseen entirely by one person. Who knows? Still badly wish its transportation concepts were used more though, even Disney's own parks underutilize them.
And now us Floridians are saying the same thing. It completely boggles my mind that the people mover stands abandoned in Disneyland, it gave Tomorrowland so much kinetic energy. I hope we don’t lose ours as well.
We're coming up on a technological revolution in transportation where cars will basically be People Movers except the track is just a street and the car drives itself. The future that people at GM are preparing for is a complete driver-less experience where you don't even own the car. You call the car, whether that's through an app or other future technology, and the car will drive itself to your driveway where you get in, tell it where you want to go, and the car will drive itself at 100mph with other computer-driver cars that are all sensing each other. There won't be any need for stop lights; the cars will just miss each other as they're zinging through the intersection. A 30-minute drive would take about 5 minutes. You don't buy the car and you don't have to pay for insurance or maintenance. It would be like a super-fast computer-driven taxi. The current technology is such that the driver-less technology is accurate to within 3 inches. It can even avoid pot holes. The biggest roadblock (excuse the pun) is that the insurance companies, lawyers, and car manufacturers don't know who's at fault if there's a car crash.
No because Walt was obsessed with the idea of what was basically the world's biggest ant farm. He was forcing a limited vision of what a society or community was onto the potential population. No retirees allowed? You have to move out of the house that you would have raised your kids in? Shuffled off to Old People City?
What this showcases more than anything to me is Walt's absolute inability to compromise. There were so many incredible ideas in epcot that could of changed the world, if he didn't demand absolute 100% control and require all inhabitants to sacrifice all of their rights he could of really been onto something revolutionary. However his absolute inflexibility to his own ideals made this impossible from the start which is why his legacy will forever just be cartoons. Also if he was this completely overwhelmed and delirious just from planning a city, I can only imagine how he would feel running it. I can't imagine he'd actually want that kind of responsibility.
To be fair, it's likely had he survived and the project continued that he would have been forced to confront and solve those problems long before they became real. It was still at the stage where inflexibility is rather warranted tbh. Time and inevitable pushback would have distilled concepts. How, though we'll never know.
@XvX XvX Why the aggression? He was essentially trying to make a zoo of human experimentation where all the inhabitants had to not only work for Disney but also sign away all of their rights. Do you really think that's a winning idea?
@@duplexidemic We sign away our rights to autonomy when we are at work. That's what Disney wanted; He wanted society to work. He wanted us to get beyond our freedom to fail and suffer and to awaken and broaden ourselves.
It's kind of sad that Walt couldn't see his contribution to industry and culture through the arts. He changed people's minds about animation, and themed attractions in general. Convincing many that these were forms of art that deserved appreciation, instead of derision. If only he understood how important entertainment and storytelling is to the preservation of America's cultures for future generations. If only he could have actually looked to the future, instead of trying to recreate the feeling of the past.
All you say is true, but I'd add that recreating the feeling of the past to exist side-by-side with the progress of the future ("Yesterday" and "Tomorrow") was too ambitious to succeed.
@@Shari_Jessica23 Everything Walt Disney sounds like that when you take it out the context of Walt Disney. "Florida man makes fortune off tall tales regarding imaginary mouse." "Florida boss bans employee relationships, marries employee." "Florida man holds company party, horse jumps in pool." "Florida man pays young women to dress as fictional characters." "Florida man sells affection of furries to young children." "Florida man bans homosexual fast dancing on property."
This video is a good example of good ideas from bad places. A mostly carless city with a lot of green areas, self powered homes with renewable energy, with emphasis on pedestrian ease of travel with a radial design where most civil service vehicles are away from public eye to reduce congestion and noise? It sounds like a dream. and of course Walt turns it into a nightmare by making it a dictatorial surveillance state where the only way to retire is to "retire" from life itself. I have to wonder if walt ever read 1984.
The residential idea is on point with some hiccups. The ruling idea is where the issue sparks because many European countries follow this green and sustainable ideaologies
The most telling aspect of the city is that it still relied on cars and trucks, it just hid them underneath the city. The squeaky-clean, “eco-friendly” city of tomorrow is just a cover. Underneath is all the problems that modern urbanites are used to, and many of the people living there would be faced with these problems directly since they need employment somewhere. The same thing is true with all cities now; the rulers claim to care about environmental concerns by planting trees on top of ugly glass buildings and using “renewable” energy (which still needs non-renewable energy for manufacturing and still damages the environment by taking up a ton of space and disturbing wildlife in general).
@@thesapphiremawile5180- You brought up an interesting point. All those subterranean spaces... how much control could the Disney corporation possibly have had over them? Would they have become havens for the homeless and conduits for black market activities or worse? What corporation would want to spend the money that policing them would require? I disagree with your side-point about renewable energy, though, although I hear it all the time. It takes non-renewable energy to build renewable energy tech now, but that won't always be the case. It took water power and literal horsepower and blacksmiths using human muscle power to build the first steam engines, but do we still use horses and blacksmiths in manufacturing? No. Opponents of green energy look at each individual part - just transportation, or just wind power, or just solar power, or just energy storage, etc. - as if research and development on each were all that is happening, but progress is being made on all fronts simultaneously (which scares the Established Providers and their stockholders to death).
@@thesapphiremawile5180 except that’s… not really true? The city wouldn’t really rely on them at all. Did you even watch the video? People living within the city would be able to commute to work and the city center entirely via public transit, and would only need to use cars to go outside of Disney’s territory (which is fair because at the time Florida wasn’t even considering basic public transportation). Trash would be managed by pneumatic tubes. He even stated he didn’t want people to own cars unless they absolutely needed to. People coming from outside the city would have cars (unless they came in via plane), but again, this was Florida in the 60’s.
I’ve always thought that Epcot was way too ambitious a project for one man, and kinda doomed from the start, but at least cool in theory. But as soon as he started talking about ‘residency determined by how much you work’ and the Disney animation strike, I knew exactly what it reminded me of. Company towns were a big thing in the late 1800’s/early 1900’s, and they were pretty much slave towns. I come from a family of coal miners, so I kinda grew up with this stuff just a generation behind us. All stores were owned by the company, so they could raise prices to whatever they wanted, causing their employees to go into debt and therefore needing to work more hours to pay it off. Some towns even paid their employees in ‘company credits’ that were useless outside of the town. I’ve known about this stuff for years, but I guess the magic of Disney kept me from seeing through the veil of Tomorrowland, huh.
"I sold my soul to the company store" Yeah. I think having a very small portion of some of those controls would work. 500 slots of Singles who intern at the company (This is early 60s 'interning' mind you) and 500 Family slots where they spend a few years in one of the controlled environments for the sake of data, and as a result can be fast tracked to owning property. Just as a thought experiment. Or if there's no more property available, company stock options on the cheap for the involved corporations so they can accumulate some wealth and move elsewhere. etc. I think there are some work arounds, but yeah- Ultimately not going to work.
The speed at which I went from "man, this would never work but I kinda wanna live there" to "Jesus Christ I would never want to live here" was RAPID. We were cool with limited cars and lots of fun circles, and then it went completely off the rails. Thanks for the info about company towns, btw! I know of them in theory but your info was really interesting and helpful. :)
These places still exist. Morenci, Arizona is a mining town owned by Phelps Dodge. They own all of the stores that the employees buy their groceries and stuff from. They own the housing that their employees rent. So the wages they pay, just get paid back to the company.
Did any of you Work For Walt? Maya Hope? Find someone who Worked making Disney's Signature for him, Disney could not Write his Signature and Could not Draw. He Abused his workers and had a Sexual Crush on J. Edgar Hoover, did I mention my Grandmother and Her Husband worked as Cartoonsts and Inkers? Yeah, I am 73 Years old and Met Disney when he came to Hot Springs National Park to scout out his next Disney Land, in Arkansas. Hey, Disney told my Grandmother "I will not build anything in Arkansas, these are crooked people worse than My Hollywood Greed Masters, People like think Disney was a Nice Guy? You are fools. He was a pedophile from the "get-go." I am so disgusted that the "Real Horror that was Disney and his Children Show, in 1950's, showed Muskateers etc? Do you remember Walt's Kids? Were you alive in 1949? Well, I was. Walt Disney was a Baby Raper and liked fucking 9 Year Old Boys.....Personally I thought it Hurt Too Much for a $.50c. Tip. I snitched him out and Grandmother went Toxic on that bastard. Ash about the Maybellene Hieress in Hot Springs, her house on Lake Hamelton that burned down and killed her. Disney used to have Sex Parties there. Millionares who had Sexual Orgies in not a new thing, Hollywood is known for it, Hot Springs was EATEN UP by Pedophiles. A city of Perverts and Child Molestors Gayness should Not Be allocated to Rich Perverts, Walt Disner was the Jeffery Lolita Express King before Jeffery the Lolitia Island Millianare Baby Rapist.
I remember hearing in an interview at least a decade ago that character of Andrew Ryan from Bioshock was in some part based on, from his mannerisms to his ideology, Walt Disney. I guess I see what they were getting at now. Really goes to show how you'll never quite know how history will remember your actions until you are long gone. I'm glad he's remembered for his effect on our childhoods and not whatever the hell this would have ended up becoming.
"This is where the park bench will be, where Lillian and I are going to sit at night, and watch all the people." God that fucking hurt to hear. In spite of all his flaws, that's just one of the most human things I've ever learned Walt said. The fact that he died just a few months after makes it even more tragic.
I don't know if it was true, but there was a thing like apparently Disney recorded a last video before dying where he actually showed how proud he was toward all the people of his company, showing that despite he was a terrible Boss director, he was just a strict father who didn't showed his real emotion.
That was so sad, in combination with him dying and the project getting scrapped *immidiately* He was a controlling jerk to a lot of people. But he was also a human with dreams and love for his family.
There are some pretty cool ideas here: Radial housing layout, trams running to each residential area, diminished need for personal vehicles, a semi-automated waste management system, zoom for schools, basically a city-level internet, before internet was really a thing. It's like the modern perception of the cyberpunk genre, viewed through the lens of the Brady Bunch.
As an Australian who has never been to the Us, I know there are a lot of surprising things in this video, but I'm honestly still shocked to learn that Disney Land and Disney World aren't the same thing
Don't feel bad, I've lived in America all my life and only found this out recently myself. Like, within the last year and a half since I found this channel. I'm turning 30 in February, for the record.
Honestly, the education system and transport system would have been revolutionary. Kids and people in general learn best from gamification, and the layered transport system would have helped with min-maxing spaces. His idea of automating trash is something that I LOVE seeing in apartment buildings, and his idea to ban overhead traffic would have made a much easier way of planning. His goal to make an ideal community that worked towards the future of mankind and culture... it's admirable. And then he went all Big Brother.
@@revoltaiignoto3881 Brand recognition is not even remotely the same thing as companies being in control of education. Many brand logos are simple shapes and bright colors and are designed specifically to be easy to recognize. Imagine if your school taught The History of Carbonated Beverages (Sponsored by PepsiCo) instead of just history. Automotive classes sponsored by Ford. That's what we'd be looking at.
@@Manigeitora Newsflash. If you wouldn't had your head under a stone you shouid have known how the lobbing control science and thus education. The famous pyramid of good eathing is corporate trash. The industry knew about tobaco relationshio with cancer but the public wouldn't know it after a 40 years. And why do you think in history courses there isn't much discussion about the link between Wall Street and the transatlantic slave trade? I may sound harsh, but as someone who had a career in science I'm actually mad on how much resources were diverted from basic science reaserch to brand-usefull things, and thus in to half backed STEMs careers which emphatize corporate utility rather than knowledge or insight or general utility.
i'm convinced more and more epcot was symptom of disney developing depression he was obsessed with leaving something behind, he didn't feel like he really did change the world in any meaningful way. He told one employee 'fancy being remembered for inventing a mouse' He didn't realize how much he brought to the world and didn't realize how significant he truly was. and he poured the last years, months, weeks, days, even hours of his life into epcot, to a project 'i'll be remembered by' which makes all of it so inherently tragic. He was chasing the legacy he already had.
I completely agree with you. The deeper I got into this documentary, I found that Walt was just desperately trying to grab at something that was already there, but he couldn't get any joy from anymore. A sad way to end a life.
@@danielleshinbine2076 glad to see someone else thinking the same too, Walt's chase for what he had already could be adapted into a great play or movie
It's amazing to me that up until the whole dictatorship part, this city sounds genuinely better designed than any modern city I've been to. A city where you can actually walk around as a pedestrian and not worry about being 5 feet away from cars moving past at all times is fantastic.
People in the 50's could already see the problems of car dependency and suburbia, which is how some places managed to avoid it. Others *points towards the entire USA, Canada, and Australia* did not
Yeah but the whole corporate dictatorship city fuled by test subject residents who have no say over their life and lived to purely test corporate projects really detracts from the clean air tbh
@@liammoy5911 europe was just built before cars, any person from europe will tell you horror stories of the traffic, although it might not look good cities with cars in mind are very convinent
@@presumedeagle10 The United States was also built before cars. What Europe did differently is that they didn't adopt the American suburban infrastructure, nor their insanely draconian zoning laws. Every european city is accessible for cars while also lacking the massive traffic problems of american cities, you just need to have good public transportation and good city planning.
the minute kevin mentioned that you would be _required_ to work in Epcot, if alarm bells weren't ringing before, they definitely were now. and as much as Walt hated the suburbs, he was essentially making another suburb, a much more authoritarian one.
@@dopaminedreams1122 less in structure, more in spirit. the same sort of people who would normally be in suburbs would be in these new homes, and keep the suburb mentality with them
@@dopaminedreams1122 and it was all about appearance, too, much like a lot of suburbs were - they wanted nice, clean, very very white neighborhoods, and disney wanted a neighborhood so neat it can be presented to tourists regularly
Thank you for providing such a nuanced look into Walt Disney. It's absolutely fascinating how you went about depicting his dreams and his shortcomings. Great job!
I certainly agree with you Issac. This video is a precise and thorough analysis of Walt Disney’s initial plan. Excellent comment and please continue with your interesting theory videos. Bye!👋🏿
Well nobody liked him when he was at work as was exacting and demanding. But his legacy lasted. Greed though will kill it dead soon though. Savages what's left for modern-day common sense usage for smart city and community designs for space and undersea colonies and for bad weather designs post ai robots quickly constructing a 3 story home that can handle EF-5 winds from tornadoes and flooding up to 30 feet living underwater with full power from water filtration to power systems for the city to survive underwater like a ship can do at sea submerging.
"I4 was under construction- and still is today" I nearly spat out my dinner hearing that. It's the freaking truth. The I-4 corridor project is never ending.
There is no exaggeration when I say this is the best RUclips video I’ve ever seen. As a Disney historian, the information was stellar, and as a film teacher the extended comparison of Charles Foster Kane and Citizen Kane was simply brilliant. This isn’t just a RUclips video, it is an elevated form of historical art. I’m left speechless!
The real problem with Epcot is the mental stress it would bring you at all times. Everything in your life is teetering on the edge of falling apart. If you loose your job, you loose your home. Your transportation all your furniture and appliances. You’d have to prepare a completely different home from scratch when you get kicked out.
One of the sad takeaways from Walt's life is that, when considering his legacy, he discounted (or maybe forgot about) the power of nostalgia. The titans of industry that he admired (Ford, Rockefeller, etc.) were idolized by people who had already achieved adulthood. Disney didn't understand that he would surpass them purely because the entertainment he championed leaves indelible imprints on little people. And those little people carry him in their hearts throughout their whole lives.
Exactly. People today, from what I've seen, don't really know who Ford and Rockefeller are, especially children and teens today. However, everybody knows Disney. His impact on the world is more huge and grand than he could have ever imagined. He wanted his legacy to be E.P.C.O.T but didn't realize he already had one. And that's honestly a shame. He died thinking he did nothing of real value when in fact the opposite was the case.
The Burj Khalifa and many buildings in Dubai took design directly from Walt's EPCOT blueprints. Really cool to see on google maps, and see actual images of places built almost identical to what he sketched. To their credit.. the researchers weren't wrong. These cities are largely ghost cities, incredibly separated by wealth.
I briefly visited that area a few years ago, but never the super-rich areas. Being ferried in a cab from the city's outer limits to what I assume was a low- to medium-income district was so surreal - blocks and blocks of hotels, in various states of unfinished or unfurnished or unsold, all uninhabited, 30-story buildings built in a huge grid that to my eyes seemed to stretch for miles in any direction. Like being in a flyover panorama shot in a Blade Runner film. One of the more unbelievable experiences of my life, but the unbelievability came from the thought that none of what I saw could possibly be sustainable or ever put to use on the scale to which it was being built. I've seen some ghost towns, but nothing like outer Dubai before or since.
Imagine had Walt built it in the 60's and it was successful for a few years, then eventually becomes dated and abandoned as economic interests pull away and Defunctland in this alternate timeline has a video exploring the decaying city.
I don't think he has the patience or the self control to do something like manage traffic flow in Skylines. He might just break and decide to conquer the world.
I think the brilliant thing about this episode is exploring how trying to design a perfect city also exposed the deeply flawed, deeply _human_ side of Walt Disney. The line “this is where Lillian and I will sit at night and watch the people” haunts me.
@@ShootingStarNeo A dying man who refused to accept his mortality, and felt he had so much more to give to this world, blind to the awful implications of what he wanted to bring into existence. It's genuinely so tragic.
I think about this video constantly because it begs us to consider Walt’s legacy and what to make of it. And honestly i think the whole thing reflects how we see him today. Because Epcot and all its likely consequences never came to be, it remains simply a heap of inspiring ideas to consider. And that’s a blessing in disguise. Because its consequences never came to reality, Walt’s reputation doesn’t have to be tangibly tarnished by it. He remains a fascinating figure in a grey area between inspiring and troubling. For better or worse, that’s his legacy, but in my opinion its for the better as far as he should be concerned.
Being in harmony with the Folkways of America does not make one "conservative" nor does planting a better future constitute "progress". Stop being American and people might stop thinking you have a disability
@@TheFansOfFiction A good dictator will foster a good nation. Its not a communist utopia. it simply nativism taken to a level which American capitalists are not comfortable with.
I just had the most horrible mental image of Walt sitting on that park bench, all alone in the long abandoned and crumbling city he created, muttering to himself: "My legacy... this is my legacy..." Maybe being remembered for inventing a mouse ain't such a bad thing after all.
@@briannajohnson3623 Are you sure? Because there's many who say otherwise, and that there were many other things that he did draw that were placed in Kansas City
I was just thinking Disney World is a greater legacy than the one he planned. Because if he had lived he would've fought for his vision. And like you described, it would've been a failure. Which hurts so much more as a creative. I think God did him a favor because now he has the legacy he always desired, and it created a joyful environment that people love to visit. By leaving the politics to the rest of the world, he created a fun and enjoyable blueprint.
The sad part? That most likley is what would have happend. Poeple would have riotet and the hole thing would have crumbled away. Honestly I think deep down Walt knew he was dying..and that made him more and more irrationol and obsessed
What’s crazy to me is that Walt didn’t realize the legacy he already left behind. All of the cartoons, movies, and theme parks he created raised generations and will continue to do so. He truly was a visionary, but he was his biggest obstacle. The ideas for Epcot weren’t so bad, he just needed outside influences to help balance out the feasibility of his plans. Epcot was sounding great until he said that the residents there had to work and that they couldn’t retire, or that if you were fired from your job you were evicted as well. Walt knew how to build a city, but he didn’t know he had to let the city function by itself without his involvement, or he didn’t want to
The man had ideas! He really thought outside the box and he came up with new stuff - lots of bad, unworkable, nasty, and worse things that needed to be winnowed out, but the creativity was undeniable.
That's one of the reasons why I admire him. He was very creative and it seems like his creative thinking was endless. I want to own an animation company like him one day and hope to be as creative as he was.
I deny it; virtually everything Disney did was derivative. I defy anybody reading this to give me an example of his unique creativity, I'll show you why its not.
With the housing prices now in 2024, I gotta say having a multi bedroom house with any job sounds kinda dreamy. I'd happily live in the people zoo today and would wager a lot of people would do so now.
if you ever feel scared or hopeless about the world today, just remember that we narrowly escaped a world where schools, churches, hospitals, and roads were all owned and designed by disney.
Thankfully, we live in the reality where single family homes are unaffordable to the younger generation, and getting sick and getting a higher education can ram the average citizen into debt for several years.
I really appreciate that these videos exist, because otherwise I don’t think I would have ever learnt about how complicated of a man Walt Disney truly was. Everything I learn about him makes me equally fascinated and also a bit sad. He achieved so much in his lifetime and yet his true ambitions were never truly reached. I get the feeling he would hate what Disney has become today and his legacy in the eyes of the public.
Walt's attitude that there should be no retirees and that everyone must "productively" contribute until the moment they died seems to mirror his own obsession with work and his aversion to thinking about mortality, aging, and death. But it also seems like a reflection of the kind of America that reared him, where the primary measure of a person's worth was their labor-based contribution to the capitalist engine of production. We see this reflected in the progress of American culture over the course of a century, as the elderly are increasingly pushed away into hidden places and special homes to keep them out of view and out of mind. Had Walt lived longer, and continued to develop the epcot concept, I wonder if the realities of human life would have altered his perspective or if he would have stayed in denial.
Retirement in the modern sense is actually a relatively new concept. The idea that there’s a standard age where you stop your primary vocation and pursue other interests can be traced back to economic reforms in Germany (Prussia at the time?) under Otto von Bismarck in order to artificially decrease the labor pool and raise wages. For most of history, people worked in one form or another until they died, and if they became so frail in their old age so that they couldn’t work at all, they would be supported by immediate and extended family.
Sometimes old people are put into homes because they're not safe on their own? I cant take my grandma in but she has dementia so she has to live in a home? Idk, im not obsessed with staying young so I can't really understand that mindset. It is sad, though
I'm surprised they didn't mention how Walt's father, Elias, had worked on the World's Columbian Expo in 1893 and how the blueprints he showed his sons years later helped to inspire Walt's fascination with structured pavilions and planned communities.
for a somewhat Disney-centric channel this is one of the most level headed and unsentimental documentaries on Walt Disney that I have ever seen...admirers of uncle Walt get a refreshing dose of harsh reality here...
Me: "This is all extremely cool! I wonder what came of it." Also me: "Oh... Wait a minute. I'm watching Defunctland. Nevermind." Also, spectacular recreation of Citizen Kane. These intros just keep getting better and better!
Expected a video of Walt's crazy plans to build his own futuristic city. Got a sad biography on the final years of a man who contributed so much to history and kept wanting to do more.
The man never lost his youth and his vision keeping close to his vest as most scuessful CEOs do this like steve jobs as it generates hype and buzz leading to others wanting in.
Nicely put together documentary! It really does come off as something of a harrowing as well as cautionary tale... painfully ironic, almost. Walt focused so much on "tomorrow" that he missed "today," it would seem. He was unsatisfied with his life as head of a film studio and wanted to be more than that. Which, I mean, is understandable, but like...that's what makes it a cautionary tale, I think. Anyone can get obsessed over a dream. Anyone can make that dream all about them and fail to think of all the other people involved and affected by it, hence him falling into this classic trap of making a utopia which quite likely could have fell into the opposite direction. However, even though most people don't nearly the amount of resources as Walt, I just find the story in this light to be so striking, because I feel like I *see* this exact attitude in so many other places, without us even realizing it. I guess, at the end of the day, it comes down to balance? Don't get so wrapped up into yourself? Pursuing passion is great, but don't let any project become your god, especially when you make yourself the god of that project
Yes, his great prior successes under unlikely circumstances made him think that, as long as he was in control, he couldn't possibly fail to fulfill his urban dream the way other community planners of the past had done (including himself, as seen in the previous Disneyland strike!)
This would make a great Disney movie, ironically. What a city of the future created in the 1960s would look like 60 years later. A pseudo-apocalyptic social commentary sprinkled with animatronics decaying in the background of Floridian hurricane rubble. I'd pay to see it.
@@TimOdell Thanks for the suggestion, the cover for that book is pretty badass with the robot looking guy wearing what it looks like a Jurassic Park poster.
How did a poor man get in? Guess I was pre-selected not selling out being for taxes and id cards for voting. Damn kids rinning past as they live in a bubble paradise as the world dies.
holy SHIT you've outdone yourself. What an incredible, compelling, well-researched and well-paced documentary, and the Citizen Kane framing is fucking genius. This channel is one of the best on RUclips. I love you. Also Walt's vision for Epcot sounds like a grotesque dystopia, and I'd LOVE to read a story or watch a show/play a video game set in a city that seems pristine and futuristic on the surface but is this hyper-surveilled, hyper-regimented nightmare underneath. It's a planned community in which EVERYONE must have a job or be banished, the citizens have no say in their government, corporations can teach school classes, appliances and other technology can be replaced in anyone's home at any time without warning, AND the whole thing is a tourist attraction. What could go wrong?
Boy, do I have a podcast for you! It's called "Murder In Progress" and it's currently my favorite podcast ever. The plot is a murder mystery in a city like what EPCOT would have been and it's basically exactly what you describe. And I was introduced to it because Kevin plugged it on his other channel. Enjoy!
In all seriousness, though, given he threw a fit every time someone brought up death to him, tried to go back to work right after surgery, and worked on this right up until the moment he died, I'm going with Kevin being right about Walt having been in deep, deep denial over his own mortality.
Geez, I wish I had a brother like Roy, he held down his brothers legacy and then passed on. He’s like the unmentioned Theo to Van Gogh, only in this case he’s the older brother.
I too have dreamed of living in a Wal Mart test-market store, the size of a city, run by an autocrat with delusions of immortality. I'm not sure which is worse, that these business tycoons kept trying, or that they always are surprised when it ends with a riot.
You know, I thought when I was younger that living in a shopping mall would be cool. You have apartments there, never have to go outside in the cold to get to work, can work in your community, get all your major shopping done nearby... The insanity only becomes apparent after you get into the logistics.
Look into Celebration, Florida. It basically IS exactly what EPCOT would have originally been, a perfect little community managed by local government: THE DISNEY CORPORATION. It's got some Stepford Wives vibes and that alone should tell you how perfection simply is too perfect to comfortably live in.
You know, Walt wasn’t a perfect person, by some accounts he wasn’t even a good person. But his life is ultimately a relatable tragedy. A parable in a sense. He was so busy looking forward to his person sense of tomorrow and backward to his sense of nostalgia he never payed attention to where he was. So many people alive then and now would be content, no, so incredibly thankful to have done what he did. He revolutionized the entertainment industry, he made an unfathomable amount of people happy, but for him it was never enough.
It is a tragedy, looking at his life, and that he was never satisfied with his legacy. True, when I think of him, probably to his chagrin, the first thing I think is "the man that made Mickey Mouse, and who sparked 2D animated films." But the thing that I takeaway from him is that he didn't treat those things as inconsequential, as childish. Sure, he lost interest in them later in life, but he believed these "cartoons" had artistic power behind them. It isn't his own work exactly the fascinates me, but the efforts he and others made to make animation an art form created some of my favorite films. And when I watch one of those animated films, I find something greater than just a cartoon - I find something that impacts my life. And that desire to create, that's what I remember as Walt Disney's greatest legacy. He showed you can have crazy ideas, and make them real. Today, we have people like Elon Musk who do the same. I don't want to be Walt or Elon, but my own smaller dreams feel possible when I see what people like them can do.
Walt Disney was, first and foremost, a human being. He had flaws, he had skills, he was helpful in some ways and a hindrance in others. Just like all of us. We just know his name.
I don’t think anyone who actually knew him has said he wasn’t a good person or would ever say that. Obviously, he had his issues and treated some people poorly, but he was human (as has already been said). We are all guilty of those things to an extent, and I don’t think someone who would go through so much to make entertainment for people could be anything but decent at their core, especially when there was so much risk involved.
I am grateful I live in the timeline where I have to wait 3 hours to see a talking raccoon at Epcot and not the timeline where people are essentially a zoo exhibit with zero rights.
This video feels like a very different experience for me after getting so attached to the documentary on the disney channel theme. Every defunctland video is, in a way, about legacy, but these two stick out as the most directly involved with the subject, and the difference in tone and feel for what legacy these people leave behind is incredible, especially relative to the supposed significance of their respective legacies. I can't help but contrast the quote of "Fancy being remembered around the world for the invention of a mouse" to "Any one of us, artist or otherwise, would be fortunate, blessed even, to be remembered for a single note"
Walt Disney was absolutely ahead of his time, he was the first person who developed a crippling SimCity addiction
Thank you for the aggressive chuckle I experienced
Dude was living the sim city life
If this man had cities:skylines, we would've never got Disney world lmao
if there's one thing you should've learned from this video, it's that EPCOT was planned as a company town, and company towns are way older than Disney's attempt at one. More broadly, planned cities are ancient.
BRUTAL 😂
I get the feeling Walt Disney would’ve really loved the sims.
He would build some epic houses
This made me laugh harder than it should have lmfao
He’d love stellaris
He is probbly rolling in his grave now...
It is now Divisionist Park.
I just rewatched this for the second time and muttered the same thing to myself, lol.
Meanwhile in an alternate universe: Today on Defunctland, we will discuss the history of Walt Disney's EPCOT, from it's inception, it's opening, the political problems, and the infamous 1974 riots that led to it's collapse, as well as explore the ruins of this controversial autocratic city.
Gd, I would love to read that story.
@@4dultw1thj0b Me too
Haha did you get nervous when he read off Disney's list of requirements? No retirees, everyone has a job, population control, and on and on haha
That sounds like a great story idea!
Disney world is actually awful tbh
I clicked expecting a theme park documentary and ended up learning that the bioshock games were a lot closer to potential reality than I'd thought
Where's the lighthouse?
Bioshock cities does draw Analogies from Company towns like these
It's not the first, nor the last
Doesn't hurt Andrew Ryan was visually based on Walt.
It's not a coincedence. BioShock WAS partially inspired by EPCOT.
Who is John Galt? That's right, it's Walt Disney!
I love the overarching reason behind Epcot is "Old Walt trying to stop shit that annoyed him."
"Uncle Walt is Watching You."
That is seriously where my mind is going with the whole WEDCOM system. Maybe I'm just too cynical or paranoid, but a private city with a centralized surveillance system that also runs all the communications, where some of the citizens are already going to be incentivized to inform on each other, and where everything is perfect all day, every day? Sounds pretty Orwellian to me.
PABadger13 maybe orwell had the right idea. Humans on their own free will elected trump.
@@PABadger13 It makes me think of The Truman Show.
@@NissanSkyline901 Actually that was filmed around the Disney town of Celenration (a wholesome, clean - but slightly creepy - toy town).
@@TedShatner10 It was Seaside, another New Urbanism town in Florida, but on the Panhandle.
The irony is that he was so obsessed with his legacy, but if he had managed to do this in his lifetime, he'd be remembered as a madman
He kind of still is.
@@akabaneolivia9550 “Kind of” is. Had Disney gone through with it, his legacy would have been “America’s Uncle with a few control issues that slowly deteriorated into a micromanaging lunatic” instead of the mixed bag he is today.
Walt supported Germany during ww2 and so the little hat people got salty and destroyed his imagine as revenge
@@rumchata6569 how many times were you dropped on your head as a baby and why doesnt your mother love you
@@rumchata6569 isnt the Fuhrers face making fun of Hitler tho?
It's seems that Walt's vision of EPCOT was less like a real city and more like a performance of a possible city. He wanted real people to act out what a city of the future could be, as if you were making a sci-fi movie with a entire city as the main cast.
Honestly I agree. And it makes sense that it would be like that, he wasn't a city planner. He was an entertainer. While he may have been good at just designing the basic layout of a small town, who knows, he couldn't have actually controlled it after the way he wanted. He was trying to play director with people's real lives and assumed he'd be able to because he bought into his own personal mythos. It's really interesting.
Agreed
It’s like an above ground rapture
The man just needed to play sims
He truly was born in the wrong generation
As someone who's been to Florida several times I'm convinced there's something there that turns you insane the more you stay.
The EPA recently said that Florida has the most lead pipes in use in the US.
As a florida resident, I blame the heat
The heat here is an anomaly. It does more than make you sweat gallons; it messes with you, it gets to you man. In certain areas I wouldn't doubt its the reason the "florida man/woman" was being created
@@Maswartz226 and the fucking lead in the water
it's like how Arkham Asylum is warped in reality in that one story except it's an entire state
My now-ex lived there for 2 years with the military, can confirm he went irreparably sideways on that tour. We didn't last long after the FL stint ended.
Walt Disney really kept that childish innocence up to his old age, including the childish desire to become the iron-fisted dictator of a utopia.
It's his vision for what he can offer to society. You dont think most of the big tech ceos and leaders online are like walt disney now?
@@john-paulhunt8967 breaking news: CEOs today are also terrible people
"Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven." --Matthew 18:3
@@Mnemoniforma9.00 “Ummm...Chile...anyways so-“ - Nicki Minaj 6:9
@@eurydice72 My point is that God isn't much better than Kim Jong Un
Walt really said "I'm a good animator, so I think I can manage a small dictatorship"
Nothing really changes, does it? People still think someone is entitled to talk about any topic just because he invented an app someday.
Imagine living as a commercial for tourists. It's like living in Monsanto's House of the Future. Walt can come in at any time to tear out your appliances. Oh, Westinghouse dropped their sponsorship? There goes your washer machine. Here's a tiny Kenmore. Don't like it? Too bad. They bid less. No you can't buy your own.
People would also be able to invade your privacy to whatever extent deemed acceptable by Walt to see how you're living. Open House every day. 🏠 😂
He wasn’t even an animator!! 😂
@@bruja_cat He animated the living dead in his rides.
Wait a minute. There is a timeline not fair from our current one where MacArther state park and Singer island is turned into Epcot.
Walt Disney: "Death is not an acceptable Topic"
Also Walt Disney: *dies*
i mean RIP to him but if i were walt, i would have simply Not Died
@@sonozaki0000 same
Death is not an option!!!!
Claims to be anti death
Dies anyway
What a hypocrite
Despite how dystopian epcot would have been, Walt's thoughts on pedestrian-centric urban planning and gamified remote learning are surprisingly prescient for a mid-century mogul.
The failure of car-focused cities was already in people's minds by then, as evidenced by the books he had read to get those ideas in the first place
It is, but at the same time his solutions are more like an Elon Musk-esque techbro than those of a modern city planner.
I think he had ADHD
Incredibly smart and passionate about his special interests / hyperfixations but no patience or attention for things he found boring or unimportant
On the positive side, a creative and original thinker. On the negative side, mood swings and rejection sensitive dysphoria (couldn't be told "no").
Gamification is one of the best strategies for managing ADHD without medication. Disney probably realized that in his own life and knew it would have been a good way to teach him growing up
I have ADHD, and it's interesting me to see signs of potential ADHDers from the past
Especially since DNA research has found evidence of ADHD early in the human genome
We're a variant of humanity that has been around for a long time
@@AuDHDarling ding ding ding you're right he did have ADHD
I really want a dystopian film based on these plans. Everything is EXACTLY how Walt planned it, but it's the furthest thing from paradise
Disney is now building "Cotino", an actual community in CA, we might not need a movie...
@@imvzz
is it anything like that "Storyliving" idea they have?
Just play the Bioshock games for a glimpse of what could have been.
Cheers
It's basically Logan's Run (1976).
i've thought a lot about a movie like this ever since i first watched this video, and the only way i can imagine it ending would be with a terrible city wide riot
Since Epcot is just Disney's version of Rapture, I'd like to see it after the society collapsed and theres just 10 foot tall Mickey animatronics roaming the overgrown swampy grounds.
So Nuka-world from Fallout 4?
Oh man Epic Mickey 3's gonna be bitchin'.
That sounds like that one creepypasta mixed with Bioshock with no powers.... Fuck that would make a good game
That sounds like it would be a good premise for a good indie horror film or something
"Disneys version of Rapture"
YOU SAY THAT AS IF ANDREW RYAN WASNT DIRECTLY INSPIRED BY WALT DISNEY
As a former Disney World employee: According to management , EPCOT stands for "every paycheck comes on Thursday." :D
That's bloody brilliant!
Nice😩😂😂😂👌
I don’t get it. What’s clever about that?
@@eddierichard1104 you don't get acronyms?
@@eddierichard1104 What's clever about it is its mundanity...for how high-minded the concept originally was, only for it to become something so plain...it's like watching a skyscraper being overtaken by creeping vines and crumbling. It's a degree of reduction of such scale that it elicits such a diverse range of emotions that the only thing left to do is nervously laugh at the absurdity of it all...a monument reduced to soft humor, so common in its implementation, that one might call it a cliché.
The image of a dying walt disney seeing a blue print on the ceiling is absolutely chilling
thanks defunctland
what is smigbob? the thing in your pfp, smigbob, what is smigbob?
It also shows how absorbed he was with Epcot. He saw it everywhere and likely near the end of his life consumed his every waking moment, hell it wouldn't surprise me if he frequently dreamed of Epcot too. In his desperate desire to create the city of tomorrow he was reduced to a man who lived in tomorrow... until he no longer existed in the present
@@scoopishere7881 Look up "JERRY HE SMIGBOBBED ME"
Tragic that some people just miss their true calling of starting a cult -R
how does someone with 1 million subs only get two likes
Oh hey, nice to see you guys here
Oh he started a cult alright lol
Mr. Ozzie and Mofy Probably because it’s a week old comment on an 8 month old video. Not many people are gonna be roaming the comments section to see it I think.
But hey, wild OSP sighting, nice!
I mean, he did succeed in a funny, fandomish way.
"Walt and his team noticed a large undeveloped swamp area on Florida's turnpike near I-4, which at the time was under construction, and still is today."
As a native Central Floridian that gave me a good laugh. That road will stay under construction forever.
Got 'em. 😏
Ah, the Floridian equivalent of the Seattle Mercer Mess, which was under construction while my mom was in high school, and is /still/ a Big Mood today.
Is this because it's on a swamp? The floor beneath it is probably so damp that the ground is not stable. Right?
@@docmartian6938 same
There's something tragic about Walt's drive to construct EPCOT in the waning hours of his life. His desperation to secure his legacy at the very cost of it comes across like a man hopelessly searching for immortality.
Everyone feels the end coming as they age. All people learn they want to leave a legacy. For most this means being kinder and perhaps more giving and involved in church and charities...allowing for a nice turnout at the funeral. For those with rapidly acquired wealth so heavily in the public eye, internal pressure can build, and has in many, to do something spectacular with that wealth to create lasting change. But that kind of wealth comes with the belief that anything can be bought...even freedom.
One thing never changes, people who lack the ability to create dedicate their live to throwing stones at the successful
@@DarkPesco
Jesus fuck, this reads like the prologue to some deeply disturbing thriller packed with social commentary…not a RUclips comment 😂
It is. As grim and terrifying an idea as a privately owned city is.
Honestly I think Walt had a lot of unresolved issues. Probably stemming from his childhood and all the difficulties he had in his life.
"There will be no retirees"
Walt, retirees are 20% of Florida's population.
Walt, my dad and stepmom are retirees.
20% of Florida's population and people who go to Disney are retirees.
Waltuh, put your retirees away Waltuh. I'm not building another country club with you right now.
20%? That probably a lowball honestly (I live a hour away from Disney world)
They would have been executed in EPCOT
I wonder if EPCOT would also have a nice big exectution ground
@@TheLambdaTeam
There’s a serious “work will free you” theme underlying the entire project
Walt Disney's plans for Epcot sound like the motivation and goals of a Pokémon villain
THIS COMMENT HKJFHAKAF
Summons Eternatus to power Epcot
Literally Andrew Ryan
@@twistanturnu529 max raid battles against Mickey Mouse 👀
That is unironically a great idea for that. I’m taking this for fakemon concepts.
I work at Epcot now. Never thought I would, but literally every single day I use information learned from this video to explain things to my guests
Like what?
@@IGuessThisIsHello that epcot was originally meant to be a futuristic neighborhood for example, or that epcot was the plan BEFORE Disney World, or that Epcot is a circle with the fireworks in the middle instead of like magic Kingdom which has a bottleneck where people have to crowd around to see the one spot the fireworks are I order to address a magical day ending with such trampling that can aggrevate many especially parents w young children so being able to see them from all around the Epcot park almost equally is an improvement on purpose. Tons of stuff. The subterranean transit thing but I always point out it is impossible here because you hit limestone and water within 9 feet in Florida which is also why we dont have basements. Tons of things really.
That's really telling. There are some really nauseating hagiographies of Walt Disney out there. The Disney corporation is responsible for some of them, and it's not hard to see why Disney prefers to whitewash their history. Thankfully, there are videos like these (and books like _Walt and the Promise of Progress City_) that help to set the record straight.
I’m visiting in October! Tell me where you are around then 😂
@@MediumDSpeaks I've often thought Epcot is perhaps the best place in the world for fireworks, especially for whomever plans the show. The audience is equidistant with stellar viewing lines, you can sync audio nearly to the millisecond as there are speakers everywhere around the ring, you have fences and water to keep the audience at a particular distance, the island allows for hiding the mechanics, water surrounds the launch area for safety, etc. etc.
Living at EPCOT sounds a bit like having to deal with Windows Update. "New appliances are ready to be installed. Would you like to restart your house now or tonight?". Then sometimes you won't get the warning and the appliances get installed anyway, right in the middle of cooking a meal.
Hahaha 😂, amazing!! Or even an explanation of why the EPCOT ride was so torturous. I grew up in Florida and never experienced the whole ride without stopping (or getting stuck in it for a few hours) until I was probably 25. It did make for a decent nap, rain shelter though.
This comment made me realize how annoying it would be to swap out the fridge.
HONEY I GOT MY ARM STUCK IN THE TOASTER AGAIN
FUCK MY FOOT IS STUCK IN THE CABINET
OH GOD NO NOT THE FRIDGE
wow. when i went to disney world, our family hung out in epcot the ENTIRE time. we loved the cultural theming combined with the futuristic look... and the radial design. we loved it. i always had this feeling in the back of my head that it was somehow *different* from the rest of disney world for some reason. there was just... something about it. never in my FUCKING LIFE would i have EVER GUESSED THIS.
That's soemthing I love about defunctland. A lot of us would have never learned or thought about these things if it weren't for these videos.
I thought it was just some weird side thing Walt was invested in, but never, "futuristic dystopia."
I watched the Epcot movie when I got the Disney app for my girls a few years back! Same time this video was produced and I was amazed! So hoping one day I can visit it.. would rather see Epcot than Disney World :)
@@kmchatzkendra all power to you, but epcot *is* a part of disney world 😭its just kind of one of the sectors now in the same way magic kingdom and animal kingdom are
I’m waiting for the day (because it’s certainly only a few years away) that Walt Disney’s dream of the world of tomorrow can be fully realized in near-lifelike Virtual Reality. It might be a nice place to live in as one of its 20,000 inhabitants.
EPCOT was just a giant transmutation circle so Walt could sacrifice his workers for eternal life. I've seen this plot before.
oh my gosh, what a perfect comparison
This made me want to read FMA again 😭
Full Motion Animator
FOR WHAT COULD EQUAL THE PRICE OF A HUMAN SOUL!?!?!
@@pyro-millie5533 the 17.6 billion a year Disney world makes must come close. That’s all those boys needed. Unlimited money.
I dunno if this is a strange thing to admit, but I'm currently watching this with my hands clasped together on my desk like this is some kind of secret presentation
this finally "un-spaghettified" the old EPCOT map plan for me, finally! i've wondered for years what was drawn really meant.
How shiny are your anime glasses glinting in the darkness right now, on a scale of 1920s vaudeville mad scientist pulling a lever, to Gendo Ikari?
Cause the secret of Epcot is this. If you have the creativity, the will and the dream. IT can become real. So long as people have that. Epcot the city of tomorrow has a chance of becoming reality. If you presented this to people like from Clownfish tv or say a few others right now like the guy from the quartering they would likely say something negative and chew out modern Disney. If you presented this to a artist, to a dreamer. To a child. They see a possible future.
@@Quetzalcoatl_Feathered_Serpent
Not sure about that Quartering fella, but Clownfish prooved many times, that they are on the side of the of the artists. They hate the corporate bullshit, not the artist themselves.
@@kompuglobalhypermega I would hope. Just so much negativity these days. The last 4 years indeed been the worse.
If you don’t have the sims you just gotta do it the analog way, I guess
You win lol
i dont wanna be remembered for cartoons. i wanna be remembered for something fucking insane
i say this
This really was the vibe, god damn. Crazy how he kinda viewed his entire life's work as a silly little distraction and thought this weird dystopian company village would be the real thing that immortalized him.
@@AlbinoTuxedoi like to believe the world would be really god damn different if he had stayed alive for longer
@@AlbinoTuxedoI mean it certainly would have, but maybe not in a good light whereas his company is fairly mixed reception these days
Iger: "Fine, I'll do it."
This feels like a genuine classical tragedy. Hubris, fatal flaws, and sorrow in the end as the protagonist fails. You’re a storyteller among storytellers.
The choice to reference Citizen Kane in the intro and outro is brilliant.
And all in a desire to get back something he never could. The framing device really hit the nail on the head: EPCOT was Walt's Rosebud.
@Bubble Wrap he could've been a classic Simpsons writer
A classical tragedy has good intentions behind it. Epcot was a pretty despicable idea from the start. It was a company town, through and through
@@harrylane4 Everyone must be employed and nobody gets to retire. A true capitalist paradise.
Epcot sound like the setting of an amazing dystopia game franchise. The law of Disney isn't aggressively enforced, but all the citizens know to stay in their line. You've lived there since birth and have never left. Your father moved to the secondary community three years ago, and you have very little contact with him. Theres a big reveal about the outside world being 1992, despite Epcot still having a 1960s Futurism vibe. Your objective is to get your family out, but the authorities are onto you and have locked down all the outermost regions of the city. You meet a journalist from the outside who has a reputation for going to dangerous parts of the world, and she wants an interveiw with whoever is in power in the city. Whammo, video game shenanigans ensue
Haha!
You ever play Bioshock?
@@bee2bee880 maybe a hybrid between bioshock, we happy few and a few totalitarian novels.
We Happy Few kinda sorta hits that vibe, me thinks.
half life 2 vibes also strangley enough. Imaging walking out into town square and beamed on a massive 60's tv screen. "TO ALL WHO COME TO THIS HAPPY PLACE... WELCOME..."
“Why be a major when I’m a king?”
*worried laughter*
*mayor
King of what as you sold out for the money? Respect is lost just like that here as your side fights for the oil money.
@@pariahmutt3589 you do know you can edit your comments, right?
Smart man ... and dont forget, he was constantly negotiating with the rest of the "Kings" running their portion of the world. I am reminded of Gates, one of the 10 most powerful people in the world, being called before .. Congress .. sitting there smiling.
*shrug* why let your vision be absconded by people actively impeding progress if you can help it.
Been watching a lot of old defunctland lately after the disney channel theme documentary, and honestly this is one of your best. Your ability to paint a mental picture is insane, and the description of a man on his deathbed fruitlessly planning his legacy nearly brings me to tears every time i watch
Same dude
its a citizen kane reference
But also... The NEW Epcot documentary...
NEXT LEVEL.
There are a ton of good videos on RUclips, you don’t have to keep watching this one…
"A futurist, that traded in nostalgia."
Excellently put, Kevin.
That's fascism
@@DiodeMilliampere bruh
@@DiodeMilliampere that word hardly has any meaning anymore
@@Wewwers Considering fascism is on the rise in a way that is only rivaled by the 1930s it has more meaning than ever.
@@MongyBongy Nostalgia for an idealized past that never really existed is a key element of fascism.
Someday, we will hear about Roy... who carried on... balanced books... made things happen... in the real world. A hidden hero that doesn't get nearly the recognition he deserves. And he finished Disney World and died 2 months later after giving up his retirement to make it so. Crushing really.
Theres always a Maes Hughes pushing a Roy Mustang forward from behind the scenes.
This! And the fact he changed the name to Walt Disney World to make sure everyone knew who the man behind the dream was, selflessly dismissing the man behind the completion of the project. He literally gave up a part of his life for his brother's legacy. Big respect to Roy ❤
I was thinking that too. The video spent almost no time focused on Roy’s passing. It’s sad because behind every insane rich person surrounded by yes men, there are the people that keep them in check. The people who literally have to learn their psychology in order to keep them realistic while not making them mad. The people that basically have to babysit the “visionaries“ those people should get more appreciation because the visionaries could never exist without them.
I’m not trying to be controversial, but think of someone like Elon musk. Constantly gets enthusiastic about ideas that could never work, lies about how science works, etc. there are many people who work with him that literally have to learn how to keep his tantrums at bay so that they can have him around while keeping the company functioning. Imagine if those people also had the same temper. They would just get fired. The only people who are allowed to get away with being so ridiculous are the people who are viewed as true visionaries even if that image is largely fake. We know so much about Elon Musk but we don’t know about the people who keep him at bay to keep things functioning
@@ultimatehamsandwich734 this is such a dumb comment but it’s so accurate
@@ultimatehamsandwich734 It's a terrible day for rain...
He had some genuinely good ideas: the radial design, the people movers, the renewable energy, and the underground road and parking. If he treated it like a normal but advanced neighborhood with privacy and freedom it could’ve worked.
He should have started with a community of his own, some of his Board and family, etc. See what troubles may arise from there.
I think he was just so afraid of losing control. It had to be the perfect city, and, if the people of the perfect city had the ability to control the city, they might make it not so perfect.
Just an inability or unwillingness to consider the imperfections of life. Any city, in reality, wouldn’t be perfect, but, maybe, with complete control, he’d be able to convince himself it was.
Yes, there were a lot of great ideas in his plans. The biggest flaw was the vast scale of the project which of necessity would have to incorporate strong central control. If he hadn't been so grandiose in establishing his legacy, he might have succeeded in promoting portions of the design in different locales instead of failing because of attempting a totally unwieldy conglomeration of all of them all at once. I think it was his vanity (and all the sycophants he surrounded himself with) which couldn't be reigned in with any consideration of realism.
yeah it's more good in theory, modern musk with his tunnels is a good example where on a theoretical level it works but when you start to reach into modern safety regulations and especially fire laws, you're going to be in a world of hurt very fast.
@@libbybollinger5901He was a perfectionist. Apparently, he nitpicked every single frame of Snow White and had the animators redo drawings if they weren't perfect. This attention to detail is what makes Disneyland work and makes their films so beautiful. However, it just doesn't work when you have thousands of people not employed by you living in one area.
Yknow, the viability of EPCOT aside, it's kind of sad that the project literally died with walt. I suppose that most people knew that it was never really going to happen, but they wanted an old man to pass away in peace believing that it would happen, but that line, "Marvin, Walt's dead," just hit quite hard.
Thing is though.......alot of the core concepts of EPCOT could have worked out PERFECTLY fine.
Dude was foaming at the mouth for something he called "revolutionary".........when alot of people overseas..... *_would just call them WALKABLE CITIES._*
Its revolutionary _FOR AMERICA_ due to his idol Ford...........but most places overseas didnt have Ford's nonsense influencing every aspect of life that exists and still vibed with the usual city planning that was originally built around walking and biking. Walt hated the new city planning that apparently prioritized automobiles and seemed to not know what he was DIRECTLY asking for.
Nowdays........everyone knows to just say "American city structure sucks ass. Walkable cities are better for everyone involved." But he didnt know that. He TOOK some concepts from a walkable city in switzerland.......but just didnt say, "Man. This walkable city is great! Why are we moving away from that in America." I give him MAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAD props for trying to brute force walkable cities back into America....
but its his own fault for why it failed.
He was his own opposition to his project by ultimately being a "rich white man" about it.
You know the type......rich, entitled, controlling, not used to people telling him no, invincible, powerful, no concern for others A.K.A: the residents wont have a say on the place they live in, doing this 60% for YOURSELF and NOT because you noticed that we as a society started losing something and rightfully so.
He was more concerned with his legacy and control....that too many people ended up not beliving in him.
He smoked like a chimney apparently and he failed to convince Roy on his dream.
oh well.
Im not bothered only because the idea of walkable cities didnt die. There is currently a small city in Arizona that is currently experimenting with the idea.......and theyre doing it THE GOOD AND HONEST WAY. Down to earth with none of the privacy invading and control issues. the idea isnt going anywhere.
People just dont want corporations going fucking feral and doing it. Cause Disney is what we invision when a corporation goes fukin feral with a good idea.
@@Tentegenbro calm down Walt wanted do something more than just walkable cities. was it insane yeah but also that’s how Walt got to the top never saying no and pushing limits.
"It is worth noting that the unruly generation Walt was attempting to corral, was in fact, the baby boomers" My, how the times, and roles, have changed.
In 40 years we’ll be mocked by the present day generation.
Yeah
What are you talking about? Boomers are still unruly and hard to corral, it's just that nowadays they use money and political power instead of knives and molotov cocktails
Boomers ruin everything.
That entire generation protested the Vietnam war by raiding/burning buildings on their college campuses and now tell Millennials to sit down and shut up and conform. They became the very thing they sought to destroy. *Mainstream adults.*
Every time I caught myself thinking "You know, that doesn't sound so bad," I then remembered that a lot of EPCOT's function hinged on corporations being benevolent overlords and I'd almost immediately think of both mining towns (good on you for mentioning company cities!) and cyberpunk wageslave cities.
I saw a video about the lore behind Night City from the Cyberpunk RPG series, and my first thought was, "This is just EPCOT but black and chrome."
It made me think of the coal company towns pre-mining wars.
Corporations weren't even willing to stick around in the EPCOT we did get and that one was purely marketing, imagine trying to get companies to try to stick around for this, a city where they have to pay for every appliance and employ everyone.
Yeah Company cities with terrible idea. Walt Disney and Epcot remind me of Elon musk and Mars. I love the idea people settling on Mars but having private corporations and controlled of anything sounds like a truly be terrible idea.
@@aurorawaxwing5866 when it comes down to the eventual exploration of space,
there are two spectrums that people fall under there are The Optimist and the realist. Optimist hope for something more along the lines of Star Trek, while realist view it from aliens perspective that will reach the Stars through corporate control.
And here's just...an actual documentary. I'm always stunned at the effort some people put into a piece of edited video that may or may not ever earn them a cent, and certainly won't make history. But for some random guy just looking for something to pass the time, finding such quality and thought-provoking content for free is a blessing. Thanks for all the hard work you put into this!
Bright Sun films is also really good, they made a goddamn feature length documentary about the abandoned Six Flags in New Orleans.
if the PEOPLE chose to make epcot then It would be communist but I think since its one dictator deciding whats best, its closer to capitalism without free will
Oh dont you worry, this guy is making lots of dough off these videos. They are all monetized and since they are not political for the most part its safe content for the high tech overlords of speech content.
Agreed - I can no longer stomach the tripe of corporate media.
@@scasey1960 did you used to like it?
I legitimately believe this season should be included in any museum about Walt Disney/the Disney company. It is a fair and well-researched series of videos portraying both the positives and the negatives about this iconic and pivotal figure in American history.
"Because the teens of the 60s loved nothing more than hanging out with a bunch of narcs in a building designed by a sixty year-old man."
I love how completely neutral you deliver great lines like that.
Thank you!!!! That line had me folded!!!
regarding white flight, they're escaping the economic and social ills that come from an abuse of the mentioned factors. nothing inherent about immigration or integration drives white flight. but government mandates and the crime that result, does. also, cities do not fall into disrepair because of white flight itself, but from the root factors that drive white flight, ie increasing crime rate, expanding government oversight, etc. it's important to remember that any one habitat does not have unlimited resources, living space, or job opportunities. the surplus people that arrive into an environment introduces scarcity and have an overall damaging effect on the surroundings because they have to obtain resources outside of normal means. this means crime, corruption, kick backs, etc. i'm not saying immigration or integration is bad, but when it's artificially ramped up such that there is a surplus population and thus a scarcity of resources, it becomes damaging.
@@cagneybillingsley2165 wow that's a lot of whistles you got there
@@nuclearbiologist they going "toot toot"
@@cagneybillingsley2165 A good chuck of crimes in America happens from white people, so I highly doubt that's the reason why it happens. Sounds like excuses to justify not wanting to live with people they consider to be minorities if you asked me.
"'Why would I run for mayor when I am already king?' It was a joke."
I love that this needed to be clarified.
Get in the Spaceship Earth, Shinji.
@@SM-ok3sz Rei: Tell me, you’re Commander Disney’s son, aren’t you?
Shinji: Mhm.
Rei: Then why are you scared? Don’t you have faith in EPCOT?
Shinji: No, how could I? I mean, how could anyone?
*SLAP*
The problem with any city of the future is it will require prisons, hospitals, morgues and men/women with guns. Bad people, rapists, murderers, thieves, whores, slackers and vandals exist in every community. Finding ways to deal with them is a necessity for any community even if you use a mouse logo on the city seal.
@@guidedmeditation2396 somebody has to scrub the toilets
"President? Do you know how much power I would have to give up to be President?"
-Lex Luthor
I don't think Walt was joking one bit.
I wish someone could have explained to Walt that "entertainment" and "distractions"' are important. Sometimes the stories change lives, sometimes they just provide enough of a breath of fresh air for people to keep going in a hard world.
Media is a powerful tool.
There's a reason everybody loved what he did, and it wasn't a superficial one.
I was just thinking this. Storytellers sing the praises of the knights and rulers, of the skilled, the daring, or just the regular everyday person, but in so doing they themselves inspire all these to live their best story, no matter who and what they are. There's something so tragic and frustrating about an artist who evidently doesn't see themselves as a part of the humanity they're expressing -- whether it's someone acting like they're above everyone because they "made it as an artist and don't have to be an ordinary schmuck like you losers" or, as you mentioned, an artist who devalues their own contribution because they're comparing themselves to some other measure of productivity.
Im in 1000% agreeance with you on how powerful and important being a creator is, but i don't think that would have helped him. The paranoia and denial of his own mortality and his legacy was beyond him learning to appreciate the arts.
I was thinking this too.
As someone who was inspired to be an animator because of Disney films, because I thought it was so incredible I could relate to a drawing of a deer that had lost his mom-- something I was aware wasn't REAL-- but how that felt so real and incredible that we as humans could empathize so strongly with drawings done by other humans... it really made an impression on little kid me who was going through a rough childhood.
And I know I'm not alone in that, having met so many other passionate animators and storytellers. Or how there were so many people who watch these movies again and again because they feel something. It's so disheartening to hear the guy boil down that legacy to "he invented a mouse."
@@eyesofthecervino3366 Hate to leave a trite comment, but as a writer, I think I'll take that second sentence of yours and hang it on my wall.
@@fizzles5
Thanks, friend. And keep up the writing!
(Incidentally reading your comment without context nearly gave me a heart attack. I was trying to remember what grammar crimes and heresies I'd committed to get that response :P )
Kevin, I want to give you the highest compliment I can give within the context of my family: While discussing the Reedy Creek Improvement District controversy, I told my 82 year old father about this documentary and how he'd walk away from it understanding everything. I know he never likes sitting through ANYTHING for very long, so I figured he'd never get around to it. The next day he texted me and we discussed the issues in your video, from beginning to end, meaning he watched every second. This is, truly, a testimony to how great this is.
This really gives insight into the human spirit and existentialism. Here you have a guy who's name is practically embedded into American history and culture. Yet he still wasn't satisfied. His ambition drove him into madness to believe that he could overcome his own mortality just by dreaming hard enough.
Watches neralink video from rem sleep stasis mode seeing it back in October 2020. Mmm. makes sour face and waits for confirmation and cutting them after they sellout and self-expose who they truly are.
Really puts into perspective where inspiration for Jerry Drew from 'Bendy and the Ink Machine' came from.
@@benh3518 As if it wasn't obvious lmao
It worked in Ducktales
@@benh3518 Yeah, I’ve been binge-watching season 3 of this show and I can see a lot of parallels. (C.V. Wood possibility inspiring Bertram Piedmont? Not to mention the harsh workplace treatment in both animation studios.)
I feel like if Walt stayed alive, this could've been fleshed out into a working concept. It's a beautiful city from a design standpoint but because the city design came before the city planning, it didn't get the chance to work out these problems. Or maybe it would've stayed as this dystopian city overseen entirely by one person. Who knows? Still badly wish its transportation concepts were used more though, even Disney's own parks underutilize them.
I just want the PeopleMover to come back
Welcome to the PeopleMover fanclub
And now us Floridians are saying the same thing. It completely boggles my mind that the people mover stands abandoned in Disneyland, it gave Tomorrowland so much kinetic energy. I hope we don’t lose ours as well.
We're coming up on a technological revolution in transportation where cars will basically be People Movers except the track is just a street and the car drives itself. The future that people at GM are preparing for is a complete driver-less experience where you don't even own the car. You call the car, whether that's through an app or other future technology, and the car will drive itself to your driveway where you get in, tell it where you want to go, and the car will drive itself at 100mph with other computer-driver cars that are all sensing each other. There won't be any need for stop lights; the cars will just miss each other as they're zinging through the intersection. A 30-minute drive would take about 5 minutes. You don't buy the car and you don't have to pay for insurance or maintenance. It would be like a super-fast computer-driven taxi. The current technology is such that the driver-less technology is accurate to within 3 inches. It can even avoid pot holes. The biggest roadblock (excuse the pun) is that the insurance companies, lawyers, and car manufacturers don't know who's at fault if there's a car crash.
No because Walt was obsessed with the idea of what was basically the world's biggest ant farm. He was forcing a limited vision of what a society or community was onto the potential population. No retirees allowed? You have to move out of the house that you would have raised your kids in? Shuffled off to Old People City?
What this showcases more than anything to me is Walt's absolute inability to compromise. There were so many incredible ideas in epcot that could of changed the world, if he didn't demand absolute 100% control and require all inhabitants to sacrifice all of their rights he could of really been onto something revolutionary. However his absolute inflexibility to his own ideals made this impossible from the start which is why his legacy will forever just be cartoons. Also if he was this completely overwhelmed and delirious just from planning a city, I can only imagine how he would feel running it. I can't imagine he'd actually want that kind of responsibility.
To be fair, it's likely had he survived and the project continued that he would have been forced to confront and solve those problems long before they became real. It was still at the stage where inflexibility is rather warranted tbh. Time and inevitable pushback would have distilled concepts. How, though we'll never know.
@XvX XvX Why the aggression? He was essentially trying to make a zoo of human experimentation where all the inhabitants had to not only work for Disney but also sign away all of their rights. Do you really think that's a winning idea?
@XvX XvX And who are you? What have you done?
@@duplexidemic We sign away our rights to autonomy when we are at work. That's what Disney wanted; He wanted society to work. He wanted us to get beyond our freedom to fail and suffer and to awaken and broaden ourselves.
@Garrett Powell Feel free to "enjoy" fascist, authoritarian, dystopias elsewhere outside the US. The rest of us prefer individual freedoms.
It's kind of sad that Walt couldn't see his contribution to industry and culture through the arts.
He changed people's minds about animation, and themed attractions in general. Convincing many that these were forms of art that deserved appreciation, instead of derision.
If only he understood how important entertainment and storytelling is to the preservation of America's cultures for future generations. If only he could have actually looked to the future, instead of trying to recreate the feeling of the past.
All you say is true, but I'd add that recreating the feeling of the past to exist side-by-side with the progress of the future ("Yesterday" and "Tomorrow") was too ambitious to succeed.
Florida Man Attempts to Create Autonomous Dictatorship in Swamp
LOL when you take out the context of Walt Disney it just sounds like an insane crackhead
@@Shari_Jessica23 Everything Walt Disney sounds like that when you take it out the context of Walt Disney.
"Florida man makes fortune off tall tales regarding imaginary mouse."
"Florida boss bans employee relationships, marries employee."
"Florida man holds company party, horse jumps in pool."
"Florida man pays young women to dress as fictional characters."
"Florida man sells affection of furries to young children."
"Florida man bans homosexual fast dancing on property."
Walt Disney is from California, though. Well, Illinois, but most of his adult life until death was California.
Ok, that gave me a good chuckle XD
@@fallingpetunias9046 As the above video shows, his heart was in the Florida swamp.
This video is a good example of good ideas from bad places.
A mostly carless city with a lot of green areas, self powered homes with renewable energy, with emphasis on pedestrian ease of travel with a radial design where most civil service vehicles are away from public eye to reduce congestion and noise? It sounds like a dream.
and of course Walt turns it into a nightmare by making it a dictatorial surveillance state where the only way to retire is to "retire" from life itself. I have to wonder if walt ever read 1984.
The residential idea is on point with some hiccups. The ruling idea is where the issue sparks because many European countries follow this green and sustainable ideaologies
The most telling aspect of the city is that it still relied on cars and trucks, it just hid them underneath the city. The squeaky-clean, “eco-friendly” city of tomorrow is just a cover. Underneath is all the problems that modern urbanites are used to, and many of the people living there would be faced with these problems directly since they need employment somewhere. The same thing is true with all cities now; the rulers claim to care about environmental concerns by planting trees on top of ugly glass buildings and using “renewable” energy (which still needs non-renewable energy for manufacturing and still damages the environment by taking up a ton of space and disturbing wildlife in general).
Let's not forget, this would've been *1960's era renewable energy* so, a huge joke.
@@thesapphiremawile5180- You brought up an interesting point. All those subterranean spaces... how much control could the Disney corporation possibly have had over them? Would they have become havens for the homeless and conduits for black market activities or worse? What corporation would want to spend the money that policing them would require?
I disagree with your side-point about renewable energy, though, although I hear it all the time. It takes non-renewable energy to build renewable energy tech now, but that won't always be the case. It took water power and literal horsepower and blacksmiths using human muscle power to build the first steam engines, but do we still use horses and blacksmiths in manufacturing? No. Opponents of green energy look at each individual part - just transportation, or just wind power, or just solar power, or just energy storage, etc. - as if research and development on each were all that is happening, but progress is being made on all fronts simultaneously (which scares the Established Providers and their stockholders to death).
@@thesapphiremawile5180 except that’s… not really true? The city wouldn’t really rely on them at all. Did you even watch the video? People living within the city would be able to commute to work and the city center entirely via public transit, and would only need to use cars to go outside of Disney’s territory (which is fair because at the time Florida wasn’t even considering basic public transportation). Trash would be managed by pneumatic tubes. He even stated he didn’t want people to own cars unless they absolutely needed to. People coming from outside the city would have cars (unless they came
in via plane), but again, this was Florida in the 60’s.
I’ve always thought that Epcot was way too ambitious a project for one man, and kinda doomed from the start, but at least cool in theory.
But as soon as he started talking about ‘residency determined by how much you work’ and the Disney animation strike, I knew exactly what it reminded me of.
Company towns were a big thing in the late 1800’s/early 1900’s, and they were pretty much slave towns. I come from a family of coal miners, so I kinda grew up with this stuff just a generation behind us. All stores were owned by the company, so they could raise prices to whatever they wanted, causing their employees to go into debt and therefore needing to work more hours to pay it off. Some towns even paid their employees in ‘company credits’ that were useless outside of the town.
I’ve known about this stuff for years, but I guess the magic of Disney kept me from seeing through the veil of Tomorrowland, huh.
"I sold my soul to the company store" Yeah. I think having a very small portion of some of those controls would work. 500 slots of Singles who intern at the company (This is early 60s 'interning' mind you) and 500 Family slots where they spend a few years in one of the controlled environments for the sake of data, and as a result can be fast tracked to owning property. Just as a thought experiment. Or if there's no more property available, company stock options on the cheap for the involved corporations so they can accumulate some wealth and move elsewhere. etc. I think there are some work arounds, but yeah- Ultimately not going to work.
The speed at which I went from "man, this would never work but I kinda wanna live there" to "Jesus Christ I would never want to live here" was RAPID. We were cool with limited cars and lots of fun circles, and then it went completely off the rails.
Thanks for the info about company towns, btw! I know of them in theory but your info was really interesting and helpful. :)
These places still exist. Morenci, Arizona is a mining town owned by Phelps Dodge. They own all of the stores that the employees buy their groceries and stuff from. They own the housing that their employees rent. So the wages they pay, just get paid back to the company.
Did any of you Work For Walt? Maya Hope? Find someone who Worked making Disney's Signature for him, Disney could not Write his Signature and Could not Draw. He Abused his workers and had a Sexual Crush on J. Edgar Hoover, did I mention my Grandmother and Her Husband worked as Cartoonsts and Inkers? Yeah, I am 73 Years old and Met Disney when he came to Hot Springs National Park to scout out his next Disney Land, in Arkansas. Hey, Disney told my Grandmother "I will not build anything in Arkansas, these are crooked people worse than My Hollywood Greed Masters, People like think Disney was a Nice Guy? You are fools. He was a pedophile from the "get-go." I am so disgusted that the "Real Horror that was Disney and his Children Show, in 1950's, showed Muskateers etc? Do you remember Walt's Kids? Were you alive in 1949? Well, I was.
Walt Disney was a Baby Raper and liked fucking 9 Year Old Boys.....Personally I thought it Hurt Too Much for a $.50c. Tip. I snitched him out and Grandmother went Toxic on that bastard. Ash about the Maybellene Hieress in Hot Springs, her house on Lake Hamelton that burned down and killed her.
Disney used to have Sex Parties there. Millionares who had Sexual Orgies in not a new thing, Hollywood is known for it, Hot Springs was EATEN UP by Pedophiles. A city of Perverts and Child Molestors Gayness should Not Be allocated to Rich Perverts, Walt Disner was the Jeffery Lolita Express King before Jeffery the Lolitia Island Millianare Baby Rapist.
Thankfully credits aka script is hard illegal now
I remember hearing in an interview at least a decade ago that character of Andrew Ryan from Bioshock was in some part based on, from his mannerisms to his ideology, Walt Disney.
I guess I see what they were getting at now. Really goes to show how you'll never quite know how history will remember your actions until you are long gone.
I'm glad he's remembered for his effect on our childhoods and not whatever the hell this would have ended up becoming.
And now this totally puts into perspective Phil Vischer's failed "Christian Walt Disney" dreams and why I'm like, *angelic choir*
"This is where the park bench will be, where Lillian and I are going to sit at night, and watch all the people."
God that fucking hurt to hear. In spite of all his flaws, that's just one of the most human things I've ever learned Walt said. The fact that he died just a few months after makes it even more tragic.
41:15
I don't know if it was true, but there was a thing like apparently Disney recorded a last video before dying where he actually showed how proud he was toward all the people of his company, showing that despite he was a terrible Boss director, he was just a strict father who didn't showed his real emotion.
While I'm glad this never came to pass, that did stand out to me as well. He genuinely wanted this to be a thing and to work.
That was so sad, in combination with him dying and the project getting scrapped *immidiately*
He was a controlling jerk to a lot of people. But he was also a human with dreams and love for his family.
@@sd-ch2cq Well even dictators are often humans capable of love, believing they create better world.
I really was not expecting a Citizen Kane reference.
Rosebud The Wooden Sled
ANYTHING can happen in Defunctland.
I was initially thinking he'd have disney say "kurt russell."
@@ajvark Those were his last WRITTEN words.
Appropriate though
There are some pretty cool ideas here: Radial housing layout, trams running to each residential area, diminished need for personal vehicles, a semi-automated waste management system, zoom for schools, basically a city-level internet, before internet was really a thing.
It's like the modern perception of the cyberpunk genre, viewed through the lens of the Brady Bunch.
Cyberpunk isn't the futurism; cyberpunk is 'high tech, low life'.
@@strakhovandrri Not familiar with 'arcologies' are you?
@@matohibiki still not the cyberpunk.
@@strakhovandrri yes it is. Futurism is inherently low life
@@user-js1mf7gg8t who said that? U?
As an Australian who has never been to the Us, I know there are a lot of surprising things in this video, but I'm honestly still shocked to learn that Disney Land and Disney World aren't the same thing
Don't feel bad, I've lived in America all my life and only found this out recently myself. Like, within the last year and a half since I found this channel. I'm turning 30 in February, for the record.
samee except i live here
I had been to both as a kid, didn't realize until I was nearly 20 that it was two different resorts.
Unless you grow up living in either Florida or California, half of US residents don’t know (or care) either
Lol meanwhile, I grew up in CA and have been explaining the differences since I could talk
Honestly, the education system and transport system would have been revolutionary. Kids and people in general learn best from gamification, and the layered transport system would have helped with min-maxing spaces. His idea of automating trash is something that I LOVE seeing in apartment buildings, and his idea to ban overhead traffic would have made a much easier way of planning.
His goal to make an ideal community that worked towards the future of mankind and culture... it's admirable.
And then he went all Big Brother.
Yeah… the whole “corporations will have direct control of the learning computers” didn’t seem like a good idea
Ah yes corporations in charge of the education of their future workers sounds amazing and not dystopian in the slightest.
@@AthosJosue And what do you think is happening right now?
The last time i saw, young children lerned first to recognize brands than letters.
@@revoltaiignoto3881 Brand recognition is not even remotely the same thing as companies being in control of education. Many brand logos are simple shapes and bright colors and are designed specifically to be easy to recognize. Imagine if your school taught The History of Carbonated Beverages (Sponsored by PepsiCo) instead of just history. Automotive classes sponsored by Ford. That's what we'd be looking at.
@@Manigeitora Newsflash. If you wouldn't had your head under a stone you shouid have known how the lobbing control science and thus education. The famous pyramid of good eathing is corporate trash. The industry knew about tobaco relationshio with cancer but the public wouldn't know it after a 40 years. And why do you think in history courses there isn't much discussion about the link between Wall Street and the transatlantic slave trade?
I may sound harsh, but as someone who had a career in science I'm actually mad on how much resources were diverted from basic science reaserch to brand-usefull things, and thus in to half backed STEMs careers which emphatize corporate utility rather than knowledge or insight or general utility.
i'm convinced more and more epcot was symptom of disney developing depression
he was obsessed with leaving something behind, he didn't feel like he really did change the world in any meaningful way.
He told one employee 'fancy being remembered for inventing a mouse'
He didn't realize how much he brought to the world and didn't realize how significant he truly was.
and he poured the last years, months, weeks, days, even hours of his life into epcot, to a project 'i'll be remembered by'
which makes all of it so inherently tragic. He was chasing the legacy he already had.
I completely agree with you. The deeper I got into this documentary, I found that Walt was just desperately trying to grab at something that was already there, but he couldn't get any joy from anymore. A sad way to end a life.
@@danielleshinbine2076 glad to see someone else thinking the same too, Walt's chase for what he had already could be adapted into a great play or movie
I really hope Mickey Mouse becomes public domain soon
@@Akkbar21 Only if Chapek allows it.
He wanted more if Epcot got done what would he do after
It's amazing to me that up until the whole dictatorship part, this city sounds genuinely better designed than any modern city I've been to. A city where you can actually walk around as a pedestrian and not worry about being 5 feet away from cars moving past at all times is fantastic.
People in the 50's could already see the problems of car dependency and suburbia, which is how some places managed to avoid it. Others *points towards the entire USA, Canada, and Australia* did not
Yeah but the whole corporate dictatorship city fuled by test subject residents who have no say over their life and lived to purely test corporate projects really detracts from the clean air tbh
There's a place that has these cities. It's called Europe. His idea for keeping cars outside cities was such a great idea and still is today.
@@liammoy5911 europe was just built before cars, any person from europe will tell you horror stories of the traffic, although it might not look good cities with cars in mind are very convinent
@@presumedeagle10 The United States was also built before cars. What Europe did differently is that they didn't adopt the American suburban infrastructure, nor their insanely draconian zoning laws. Every european city is accessible for cars while also lacking the massive traffic problems of american cities, you just need to have good public transportation and good city planning.
the minute kevin mentioned that you would be _required_ to work in Epcot, if alarm bells weren't ringing before, they definitely were now. and as much as Walt hated the suburbs, he was essentially making another suburb, a much more authoritarian one.
How was it a suburb, its was gonna be high density and walkable, not rows and rows of houses
@@dopaminedreams1122 less in structure, more in spirit. the same sort of people who would normally be in suburbs would be in these new homes, and keep the suburb mentality with them
@@dopaminedreams1122 and it was all about appearance, too, much like a lot of suburbs were - they wanted nice, clean, very very white neighborhoods, and disney wanted a neighborhood so neat it can be presented to tourists regularly
@@dopaminedreams1122The majority of the city was planned to be low density cul de sacs with large communal yards. A suburb.
I immediately thought of company towns and got chills thinking about how often they happen and continue to be proposed.
Thank you for providing such a nuanced look into Walt Disney. It's absolutely fascinating how you went about depicting his dreams and his shortcomings. Great job!
I certainly agree with you Issac.
This video is a precise and thorough
analysis of Walt Disney’s initial
plan. Excellent comment and
please continue with your
interesting theory videos.
Bye!👋🏿
Well nobody liked him when he was at work as was exacting and demanding. But his legacy lasted. Greed though will kill it dead soon though. Savages what's left for modern-day common sense usage for smart city and community designs for space and undersea colonies and for bad weather designs post ai robots quickly constructing a 3 story home that can handle EF-5 winds from tornadoes and flooding up to 30 feet living underwater with full power from water filtration to power systems for the city to survive underwater like a ship can do at sea submerging.
I hope that you hate Walt Disney he was not an angel or a devil
Perjurer using Citizen Kane as a framework for Walt's hunger for power and legacy stemming from something Walt tried to get back is hauntingly apt.
I loved the framing in this video
"I4 was under construction- and still is today"
I nearly spat out my dinner hearing that. It's the freaking truth. The I-4 corridor project is never ending.
Mr. Perjurer must be a Floridian.
There is no exaggeration when I say this is the best RUclips video I’ve ever seen. As a Disney historian, the information was stellar, and as a film teacher the extended comparison of Charles Foster Kane and Citizen Kane was simply brilliant. This isn’t just a RUclips video, it is an elevated form of historical art. I’m left speechless!
"What if it was something Walt was trying to get back." That's a good observation. It always goes back to Marceline.
The real problem with Epcot is the mental stress it would bring you at all times. Everything in your life is teetering on the edge of falling apart. If you loose your job, you loose your home. Your transportation all your furniture and appliances. You’d have to prepare a completely different home from scratch when you get kicked out.
That is just one of MANY problems I see with Epcot.
lose*
One of the sad takeaways from Walt's life is that, when considering his legacy, he discounted (or maybe forgot about) the power of nostalgia. The titans of industry that he admired (Ford, Rockefeller, etc.) were idolized by people who had already achieved adulthood. Disney didn't understand that he would surpass them purely because the entertainment he championed leaves indelible imprints on little people. And those little people carry him in their hearts throughout their whole lives.
Exactly. People today, from what I've seen, don't really know who Ford and Rockefeller are, especially children and teens today. However, everybody knows Disney. His impact on the world is more huge and grand than he could have ever imagined. He wanted his legacy to be E.P.C.O.T but didn't realize he already had one. And that's honestly a shame. He died thinking he did nothing of real value when in fact the opposite was the case.
how the fuck r youtube commenters more verbose than i am wtf
The Burj Khalifa and many buildings in Dubai took design directly from Walt's EPCOT blueprints. Really cool to see on google maps, and see actual images of places built almost identical to what he sketched.
To their credit.. the researchers weren't wrong. These cities are largely ghost cities, incredibly separated by wealth.
I briefly visited that area a few years ago, but never the super-rich areas. Being ferried in a cab from the city's outer limits to what I assume was a low- to medium-income district was so surreal - blocks and blocks of hotels, in various states of unfinished or unfurnished or unsold, all uninhabited, 30-story buildings built in a huge grid that to my eyes seemed to stretch for miles in any direction. Like being in a flyover panorama shot in a Blade Runner film. One of the more unbelievable experiences of my life, but the unbelievability came from the thought that none of what I saw could possibly be sustainable or ever put to use on the scale to which it was being built. I've seen some ghost towns, but nothing like outer Dubai before or since.
Imagine had Walt built it in the 60's and it was successful for a few years, then eventually becomes dated and abandoned as economic interests pull away and Defunctland in this alternate timeline has a video exploring the decaying city.
It starts as EPCOT, then it becomes EPCOT. Finally, it becomes EPCOY.
Would love to see the alternate universe "another dead city" video of EPCOT lol
Economic interest? Pushing a social experiment reducing civil rights in the middle of the civil rights movement would be a failure from day 1.
Someone should've given Walt a copy of Cities: Skylines to calm him down.
It would've been RT before RT was a thing.
@@Youhadabadday2021 rt?
@@CoolAndrew89 RumbleTumble Games
I don't think he has the patience or the self control to do something like manage traffic flow in Skylines.
He might just break and decide to conquer the world.
@@Youhadabadday2021 don’t do RT dirty like that!
pretty sure the three major symptoms of depression are fatigue, loss of interest in activities, and crying to feed the birds on a daily basis
I think the brilliant thing about this episode is exploring how trying to design a perfect city also exposed the deeply flawed, deeply _human_ side of Walt Disney. The line “this is where Lillian and I will sit at night and watch the people” haunts me.
@@ShootingStarNeo A dying man who refused to accept his mortality, and felt he had so much more to give to this world, blind to the awful implications of what he wanted to bring into existence. It's genuinely so tragic.
@@ShootingStarNeo yeah he definitely knew about the cancer way before he got admitted to the hospital.
I think about this video constantly because it begs us to consider Walt’s legacy and what to make of it. And honestly i think the whole thing reflects how we see him today. Because Epcot and all its likely consequences never came to be, it remains simply a heap of inspiring ideas to consider. And that’s a blessing in disguise. Because its consequences never came to reality, Walt’s reputation doesn’t have to be tangibly tarnished by it. He remains a fascinating figure in a grey area between inspiring and troubling. For better or worse, that’s his legacy, but in my opinion its for the better as far as he should be concerned.
You know, EPOCT sounds really cool until you get to the crazy dictatorship part.
We are already are living in a similar world already. Most of us just don't know it..
just like the soviet union
Only you would have the choice to live there
You can tell because the world is a 3d circle and walt loves circles
@@typhoonfox6478 You mean a sphere? lol
"a conservative obssessed with progress" is probably the best description I've heard of Walt Disney in my life
Yeah I'm quite happy with that too haha
Being in harmony with the Folkways of America does not make one "conservative" nor does planting a better future constitute "progress". Stop being American and people might stop thinking you have a disability
Conservative? He literally desined "utopia" and wanted to be it's dictator
@@TheFansOfFiction A good dictator will foster a good nation. Its not a communist utopia. it simply nativism taken to a level which American capitalists are not comfortable with.
@@TheFansOfFiction You do not understand what communism is. I would encourage you to do more research.
I just had the most horrible mental image of Walt sitting on that park bench, all alone in the long abandoned and crumbling city he created, muttering to himself: "My legacy... this is my legacy..."
Maybe being remembered for inventing a mouse ain't such a bad thing after all.
Christ, that is absolutely horrifying
the sad part is he didnt even make the mouse.. Ub Iwerks did after Disney lost the rights to Oswald the Rabbit
@@briannajohnson3623 Are you sure? Because there's many who say otherwise, and that there were many other things that he did draw that were placed in Kansas City
I was just thinking Disney World is a greater legacy than the one he planned. Because if he had lived he would've fought for his vision. And like you described, it would've been a failure. Which hurts so much more as a creative. I think God did him a favor because now he has the legacy he always desired, and it created a joyful environment that people love to visit. By leaving the politics to the rest of the world, he created a fun and enjoyable blueprint.
The sad part? That most likley is what would have happend. Poeple would have riotet and the hole thing would have crumbled away. Honestly I think deep down Walt knew he was dying..and that made him more and more irrationol and obsessed
What’s crazy to me is that Walt didn’t realize the legacy he already left behind. All of the cartoons, movies, and theme parks he created raised generations and will continue to do so. He truly was a visionary, but he was his biggest obstacle. The ideas for Epcot weren’t so bad, he just needed outside influences to help balance out the feasibility of his plans. Epcot was sounding great until he said that the residents there had to work and that they couldn’t retire, or that if you were fired from your job you were evicted as well. Walt knew how to build a city, but he didn’t know he had to let the city function by itself without his involvement, or he didn’t want to
The man had ideas! He really thought outside the box and he came up with new stuff - lots of bad, unworkable, nasty, and worse things that needed to be winnowed out, but the creativity was undeniable.
That's one of the reasons why I admire him. He was very creative and it seems like his creative thinking was endless. I want to own an animation company like him one day and hope to be as creative as he was.
That is true, even in that way he was like a child, ideas first -> construction and consequence layer
I deny it; virtually everything Disney did was derivative. I defy anybody reading this to give me an example of his unique creativity, I'll show you why its not.
As a West Virginian, the moment I heard the words "company town" was an automatic NOPE.
Use these smart glasses as then you can see behind the cover next time.
Off to plantation with you.
A little spin on the “off to gulag” quote.
With the housing prices now in 2024, I gotta say having a multi bedroom house with any job sounds kinda dreamy. I'd happily live in the people zoo today and would wager a lot of people would do so now.
@@bloodyhatter2692 I feel you'd regret that fast if you actually lived in one.
if you ever feel scared or hopeless about the world today, just remember that we narrowly escaped a world where schools, churches, hospitals, and roads were all owned and designed by disney.
he wanted to make a city, not take over the world lol
@@PePe-kv2se idk man, I wouldn't be surprised if the city was just a first step and an example of how he wanted the whole world to be.
hey now, there's still time!
Thankfully, we live in the reality where single family homes are unaffordable to the younger generation, and getting sick and getting a higher education can ram the average citizen into debt for several years.
@@PugandOwn exactly to bad his frozen head is DEFINITELY NOT in a barrel in the pirates of the Caribbean ride
I really appreciate that these videos exist, because otherwise I don’t think I would have ever learnt about how complicated of a man Walt Disney truly was. Everything I learn about him makes me equally fascinated and also a bit sad. He achieved so much in his lifetime and yet his true ambitions were never truly reached. I get the feeling he would hate what Disney has become today and his legacy in the eyes of the public.
"You can't experiment with people's lives?"
Walt Disney: "Why not?"
Modern Megacorps: "Yeah why not?"
I mean, why not?
"Yeah, you're not the boss of me! I'M the boss of YOU!"
Disney (today): "Why not?"
@@notgray88 *Bob Iger
Mmm I _love_ late stage capitalism 🥴
Walt's attitude that there should be no retirees and that everyone must "productively" contribute until the moment they died seems to mirror his own obsession with work and his aversion to thinking about mortality, aging, and death. But it also seems like a reflection of the kind of America that reared him, where the primary measure of a person's worth was their labor-based contribution to the capitalist engine of production.
We see this reflected in the progress of American culture over the course of a century, as the elderly are increasingly pushed away into hidden places and special homes to keep them out of view and out of mind.
Had Walt lived longer, and continued to develop the epcot concept, I wonder if the realities of human life would have altered his perspective or if he would have stayed in denial.
@Ricky Shiffer you mean kind of like how the horse got turned to glue once he fulfilled his purpose and stuff?
Retirement in the modern sense is actually a relatively new concept. The idea that there’s a standard age where you stop your primary vocation and pursue other interests can be traced back to economic reforms in Germany (Prussia at the time?) under Otto von Bismarck in order to artificially decrease the labor pool and raise wages. For most of history, people worked in one form or another until they died, and if they became so frail in their old age so that they couldn’t work at all, they would be supported by immediate and extended family.
@Tip Of The Riceburg No lmao,it was an anti communist book.
Sometimes old people are put into homes because they're not safe on their own? I cant take my grandma in but she has dementia so she has to live in a home? Idk, im not obsessed with staying young so I can't really understand that mindset. It is sad, though
@@mayplaysgames7978 We're going to die one day. :3
I'm surprised they didn't mention how Walt's father, Elias, had worked on the World's Columbian Expo in 1893 and how the blueprints he showed his sons years later helped to inspire Walt's fascination with structured pavilions and planned communities.
@E . A I'm pretty sure I saw it mentioned at Walt Disney Presents: Gallery Exhibit & Self-Guided Tour at Disney's Hollywood Studios Park.
for a somewhat Disney-centric channel this is one of the most level headed and unsentimental documentaries on Walt Disney that I have ever seen...admirers of uncle Walt get a refreshing dose of harsh reality here...
Defunctland has always taken the more unsentimental views on Disney in general.
Me: "This is all extremely cool! I wonder what came of it."
Also me: "Oh... Wait a minute. I'm watching Defunctland. Nevermind."
Also, spectacular recreation of Citizen Kane. These intros just keep getting better and better!
The more this video went on the more it felt like it was becoming Disney's Bioshock.
No Kings. No Gods. Only Walt.
Epcot where the sweat of your brow belongs to a mouse
That would be such a cool game.
Always thought Ryan looked like Disney, actually. That would go full circle.
Is a mouse not entitled to the sweat on his brow?
Expected a video of Walt's crazy plans to build his own futuristic city.
Got a sad biography on the final years of a man who contributed so much to history and kept wanting to do more.
Imagine if he was alive , he might run for president
Epcot just sounds like some primitive internet
@@enadlr2038 Based on this video, it's a good thing he didn't.
@@enadlr2038 Kevin explains early on that Disney didn’t even want to run for mayor of LA, i doubt he would want to be president.
The man never lost his youth and his vision keeping close to his vest as most scuessful CEOs do this like steve jobs as it generates hype and buzz leading to others wanting in.
Nicely put together documentary! It really does come off as something of a harrowing as well as cautionary tale... painfully ironic, almost. Walt focused so much on "tomorrow" that he missed "today," it would seem. He was unsatisfied with his life as head of a film studio and wanted to be more than that. Which, I mean, is understandable, but like...that's what makes it a cautionary tale, I think. Anyone can get obsessed over a dream. Anyone can make that dream all about them and fail to think of all the other people involved and affected by it, hence him falling into this classic trap of making a utopia which quite likely could have fell into the opposite direction. However, even though most people don't nearly the amount of resources as Walt, I just find the story in this light to be so striking, because I feel like I *see* this exact attitude in so many other places, without us even realizing it. I guess, at the end of the day, it comes down to balance? Don't get so wrapped up into yourself? Pursuing passion is great, but don't let any project become your god, especially when you make yourself the god of that project
If you can ask Walt now, I don’t think he regrets it.
Yes, his great prior successes under unlikely circumstances made him think that, as long as he was in control, he couldn't possibly fail to fulfill his urban dream the way other community planners of the past had done (including himself, as seen in the previous Disneyland strike!)
This would make a great Disney movie, ironically. What a city of the future created in the 1960s would look like 60 years later. A pseudo-apocalyptic social commentary sprinkled with animatronics decaying in the background of Floridian hurricane rubble. I'd pay to see it.
Look up Simon Stalenhag's _Things from the Flood_ and _The Electric State_. They have a ton of that imagery.
@@TimOdell Thanks for the suggestion, the cover for that book is pretty badass with the robot looking guy wearing what it looks like a Jurassic Park poster.
How did a poor man get in? Guess I was pre-selected not selling out being for taxes and id cards for voting. Damn kids rinning past as they live in a bubble paradise as the world dies.
Bioshock.
holy SHIT you've outdone yourself. What an incredible, compelling, well-researched and well-paced documentary, and the Citizen Kane framing is fucking genius. This channel is one of the best on RUclips. I love you. Also Walt's vision for Epcot sounds like a grotesque dystopia, and I'd LOVE to read a story or watch a show/play a video game set in a city that seems pristine and futuristic on the surface but is this hyper-surveilled, hyper-regimented nightmare underneath. It's a planned community in which EVERYONE must have a job or be banished, the citizens have no say in their government, corporations can teach school classes, appliances and other technology can be replaced in anyone's home at any time without warning, AND the whole thing is a tourist attraction. What could go wrong?
Boy, do I have a podcast for you! It's called "Murder In Progress" and it's currently my favorite podcast ever. The plot is a murder mystery in a city like what EPCOT would have been and it's basically exactly what you describe. And I was introduced to it because Kevin plugged it on his other channel. Enjoy!
@@missybarbour6885 ooohhhh I'm interested! Thanks so much!
What? You have never seen Star Trek?
I’ve never seen Citizen Kane, and I do plan to, but in the context of the video, what is that ending shot of?
that videogame? Bioshock, and also Bioshock: Infinite
This might be one of the most interesting RUclips videos I've ever seen
Well hello there Quinton👋
Have you seen this?
ruclips.net/video/vw7pcCj0ORk/видео.html
@@mister_john Youuuu sneaky tism..
@@jadeatrophis flism ma tism
On one of the best channels on RUclips period.
Walt Disney was so concerned about his legacy. Did he ever consider who was going to rule EPCOT after he died?
He was gonna be a head in a jar... He was gonna live forever!
Are you kidding me? He would have had someone freeze his talking head and put it on a robot body.
He was gonna do it Cave Johnson style.
@@hotcocoa8373hahah
In all seriousness, though, given he threw a fit every time someone brought up death to him, tried to go back to work right after surgery, and worked on this right up until the moment he died, I'm going with Kevin being right about Walt having been in deep, deep denial over his own mortality.
Geez, I wish I had a brother like Roy, he held down his brothers legacy and then passed on. He’s like the unmentioned Theo to Van Gogh, only in this case he’s the older brother.
I too have dreamed of living in a Wal Mart test-market store, the size of a city, run by an autocrat with delusions of immortality.
I'm not sure which is worse, that these business tycoons kept trying, or that they always are surprised when it ends with a riot.
Ever been to the malls recently? mmmm.
You know, I thought when I was younger that living in a shopping mall would be cool. You have apartments there, never have to go outside in the cold to get to work, can work in your community, get all your major shopping done nearby... The insanity only becomes apparent after you get into the logistics.
Look into Celebration, Florida. It basically IS exactly what EPCOT would have originally been, a perfect little community managed by local government: THE DISNEY CORPORATION. It's got some Stepford Wives vibes and that alone should tell you how perfection simply is too perfect to comfortably live in.
@@ScooterinAB
Imagine living inside a mall the rest of your life. It's a nightmare. I would go insane in a month.
Sounds like someone isn't drinking enough fluoridated water...
You know, Walt wasn’t a perfect person, by some accounts he wasn’t even a good person. But his life is ultimately a relatable tragedy. A parable in a sense. He was so busy looking forward to his person sense of tomorrow and backward to his sense of nostalgia he never payed attention to where he was. So many people alive then and now would be content, no, so incredibly thankful to have done what he did. He revolutionized the entertainment industry, he made an unfathomable amount of people happy, but for him it was never enough.
It is a tragedy, looking at his life, and that he was never satisfied with his legacy.
True, when I think of him, probably to his chagrin, the first thing I think is "the man that made Mickey Mouse, and who sparked 2D animated films."
But the thing that I takeaway from him is that he didn't treat those things as inconsequential, as childish. Sure, he lost interest in them later in life, but he believed these "cartoons" had artistic power behind them.
It isn't his own work exactly the fascinates me, but the efforts he and others made to make animation an art form created some of my favorite films.
And when I watch one of those animated films, I find something greater than just a cartoon - I find something that impacts my life.
And that desire to create, that's what I remember as Walt Disney's greatest legacy. He showed you can have crazy ideas, and make them real.
Today, we have people like Elon Musk who do the same.
I don't want to be Walt or Elon, but my own smaller dreams feel possible when I see what people like them can do.
Like great thinker Katya Zamolodchikova says: "If you got one leg in the future, and the other in the past, you're pissing on today"
Walt Disney was, first and foremost, a human being. He had flaws, he had skills, he was helpful in some ways and a hindrance in others. Just like all of us. We just know his name.
I don’t think anyone who actually knew him has said he wasn’t a good person or would ever say that. Obviously, he had his issues and treated some people poorly, but he was human (as has already been said). We are all guilty of those things to an extent, and I don’t think someone who would go through so much to make entertainment for people could be anything but decent at their core, especially when there was so much risk involved.
@@nikig2382 the guy was antisemitic, like virulently so
Okay, now I get why people say Andrew Ryan from Bioshock is basically a more deranged Walt Disney.
He was already modelled on him visually
Less deranged?
@@bunk95I mean... at least Walt didn't give people genetics rewriting drugs that caused superhuman powers?
"Walt Disney the politician" is something from the darkest timeline lol
Guess she don't like the cornbread either. mmm eats not caring.
President Walt Disney.... I shudder at the idea.
We’ve had worse celebrities play at president.
Would be have been worse then Trump? Somehow I doubt it.
@@jennifergriel861 IIRC, there is actually an alternate history story based on the idea.
It doesn't end well...
I am grateful I live in the timeline where I have to wait 3 hours to see a talking raccoon at Epcot and not the timeline where people are essentially a zoo exhibit with zero rights.
Don’t forget, you were also born on this planet rather than some other planet!
@@lookbovine hey maybe other planets are cool we dont know
No one HAS to live there.
When you think of it, things like the internet and social media do just that already.
A talking racoon? What where?
This video feels like a very different experience for me after getting so attached to the documentary on the disney channel theme. Every defunctland video is, in a way, about legacy, but these two stick out as the most directly involved with the subject, and the difference in tone and feel for what legacy these people leave behind is incredible, especially relative to the supposed significance of their respective legacies. I can't help but contrast the quote of "Fancy being remembered around the world for the invention of a mouse" to "Any one of us, artist or otherwise, would be fortunate, blessed even, to be remembered for a single note"
Me when Walt's talking about taking remote classes via computer: Oh just you wait...