Walt Disney's Epcot Center by Richard R. Beard

Inasmuch as the Disney parks clarify, reaffirm, and reinforce their audience's understandings of themselves as Americans, and brings them together in the process, it performs a religious function. The conception of religion implicit in this argument is a Durkheimian one, that is, that the way to understand a religion is by its functions, and that the primary function of religious beliefs and practices is to unite into one community all those who adhere to them. 'This essay is an inquiry into the elective affinities between the themes and symbols of America's civil religion and the Disney theme parks, investigating the thesis that these parks are in fact shrines of American civil religion. Xicano was a project by the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center as part of the Getty's inaugural Pacific Standard Time initiative on the emergence of Los Angeles as an art center between 1945-1980. Noriega, Terezita Romo, and Pilar Tompkins Rivas (Los Angeles: UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center Press, 2011).

The essay was published in the multi-exhibition catalog, L.A. The exhibition looked at the work by nine Chicano art groups or organizations that were active in Los Angeles between 19: Goez Art Studios and Gallery (1969– ), Mechicano Art Center (1969–1978), Plaza de la Raza (1969– ), Self Help Graphics & Art (1971– ), Asco (1971–1987), Los Four (1973–1977), Los Dos Streetscapers (1975–1980, renamed East Los Streetscapers in 1980), Social and Public Art Resource Center (SPARC, 1976– ), and Centro de Arte Público/Public Art Center (1977–1980). Noriega and Pilar Tompkins Rivas for the exhibition Mapping Another L.A.: The Chicano Art Movement at the Fowler Museum at UCLA in Fall 2011 - Winter 2012.

Walt Disney's Epcot Center by Richard R. Beard