Spectacular Nature: Corporate Culture and the Sea World Experience

by Susan G. Davis

This is the story of Sea World, a theme park where the wonders of nature are performed, marketed, and sold. With its trademark star, Shamu the killer whale―as well as performing dolphins, pettable sting rays, and reproductions of pristine natural worlds―the park represents a careful coordination of shows, dioramas, rides, and concessions built around the theme of ocean life. Susan Davis analyzes the Sea World experience and the forces that produce it: the theme park industry; Southern California tourism; the privatization of urban space; and the increasing integration of advertising, entertainment, and education. The result is an engaging exploration of the role played by images of nature and animals in contemporary commercial culture, and a precise account of how Sea World and its parent corporation, Anheuser-Busch, succeed. Davis argues that Sea World builds its vision of nature around customers' worries and concerns about the environment, family relations, and education.

While Davis shows the many ways that Sea World monitors its audience and manipulates animals and landscapes to manufacture pleasure, she also explains the contradictions facing the enterprise in its campaign for a positive public identity. Shifting popular attitudes, animal rights activists, and environmental laws all pose practical and public relations challenges to the theme park. Davis confronts the park's vast operations with impressive insight and originality, revealing Sea World as both an industrial product and a phenomenon typical of contemporary American culture. Spectacular Nature opens an intriguing field of inquiry: the role of commercial entertainment in shaping public understandings of the environment and environmental problems.

Genres: Nonfiction, Environment, Sociology

328 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 1997

Reviews

[Danielle · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really fascinating read about how Sea World is designed to keep us in the park and engaged in its "educational" experiences. I assumed wrong that it would talk about the horrible capitivity of the animals; it only touched upon it briefly.

[Carlos · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’ve been thinking about this one for a bit. It was a phenomenal read leaving me short of my usual social science criticisms, so I’m not really sure if I have much to offer in terms of a review.

I guess it’s worth mentioning at the onset that this book was written in the 90s, before the Tilikum controversy. While there is a chapter specifically on the park’s use of orcas, it is primarily to dissect the social constructions necessary to produce spectacle, rather than an animal rights or human safety piece. One could argue this makes the book dated, but I find that David’ insights are far deeper than typical documentaries on the theme park.

With her sociologist dedication, Davis spends years in the park, interviewing visitors, employees, managers, vendors, and community members to understand how SeaWorld inserted itself into San Diego’s geography and how it fuses postwar theme park conventions with greenwashing to market a version of nature that, yes, produces the incidents we associate nowadays with SeaWorld, but also self-propels a wasteful capitalism that can only be saved by its polluting corporate vanguard. Clean spaces, Muzak, limited screenings, educational materials, veiled research, and exoticism (social and natural) serve their individual purposes and crisscross to form a package enticing to upper middle class interests so ready to fuel the theme park urbanism monopolizing the headspace of populations so desperate for a better world.

The chapters build up to the spectacle of nature by discussing SeaWorld’s employment of urbanism, labor, time, space, education, animal bodies, and finally Shamu herself. They are long, and rather dense, but rich material for understanding the subject. I enjoyed recognizing the sources from my far flung geography education, especially having read “Uncommon Ground” earlier in the year. If you want to learn about the deeper woes of SeaWorld, this is the book for you.

[Peacegal · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you don’t mind wading through some academia-speak to get at the juicy parts, Spectacular Nature is a fascinating read recommended for Sea World fans and foes alike.

While one may already be familiar with the arguments for and against marine mammal captivity, Nature explores an essential, but neglected component of the argument: What is the nature and appeal of the Sea World parks? What is it that they are selling? Nature is not an animal rights or welfare book, but rather an exploration of the theme park and pop environmentalism phenomena.

Animal advocates who dismiss Sea World as nothing more than an underwater circus are missing the boat entirely. It is actually customers’ supposed sophistication regarding animal treatment and environmental concern that the theme park directly appeals to. As one Sea World spokesperson explains to the author:

It comes down to how people feel about the animals. That’s what Sea World is all about. If Disney is fantasy, Sea World is this feeling of sharing this planet with other species and animals, and the goodness you feel about the way they are cared for, or how much that trainer loves what he’s doing or appears to love what he’s doing.”

In other words, Sea World tries to appeal to the same part of the human brain as animal protection and environmental pleas. I personally visited the now defunct Sea World of Ohio with my family at around age twelve; I recall my reaction as being very similar to the findings of Davis’s research: I felt great amazement and affection for the animals, while at the same time having ambivalent feelings about the fact they were kept in featureless concrete tanks. Sea World’s attempts to deal with this apparently common mix of feelings in its patrons comprise some of the more absorbing aspects of the book.

In the wake of increased scrutiny of the park following the release of the movie The Cove and the Tilikum tragedy, it would be interesting to see an updated version of Nature. Sea World has since added roller coasters and other rides, anathema during the time this book was published. The park has also de-emphasized Shamu from its corporate logo, opting instead as a more generic stylized image.

I learned much from this book, including, much to my horror, that in the mid-90s “Shamu” was taught to “charge its trainer and threaten to bite him” during an action segment of the orca show. Any dog trainer can tell you what a terrible idea “attack games” are, let alone when the animal involved is a 5-ton apex predator. I couldn’t help but reflect on this in the wake of Tilikum’s attack.

Readers will close this book with a greater understanding of the workings behind the controversial Sea World empire.

[Charles · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an excellent, behind-the-curtain look at the operational side of Sea World parks--with application to theme parks, in general.

Sea World is a unique experience given it's juxtaposition of traditional amusement park attractions with zoological displays. Though riddled with academic jargon, the book does a superb job of relating the corporate cultural considerations of running and maintaining an enterprise like Sea World.

The amount of thought that goes into planning and designing such parks is certainly astounding. Any casual visitor to a theme park is astutely aware of the acquisitive power of such places. From the way that pathways are designed to maximize concession sales, to the way landscaping is utilized to create a sense of stumbled-upon surprise, Davis reveals how no detail is spared to promote profit.

The magic of Sea World, however, is that transactional themes extend beyond the commercial realm. In many ways, Sea World is a distillation of our complex attitudes about nature. In exchange for the relative safety of a manicured, processed "Nature," we forgo the unpredictability (and danger) inherent to "wildness." How else are we to forgive the artifice of Shamu Stadium?

In "Spectacular Nature," Davis provides an in-depth analysis of nature, public space, environmental discourse, and corporate motives through a sociological lens. The real fun of reading this book, however, is doing so before visiting (or revisiting) the actual park. It lends a surreal perspective to the adventure.

[Sam · Rating 4 out of 5]

Susan Davis offers a tour around Sea World, and in doing so, touches on themes of nature, class, spectacle, and the logic of theme parks. Reminding critical audiences that parks aim to make money above all, this book critiques Sea World's position as an educator and explains the reasons why visitors enjoy nature that is controlled (but doesn't appear too controlled). The visual and spatial rhetorics involved in parks is under investigation in this informative read.

[Melissa · Rating 3 out of 5]

A look at the "experience" of "nature", corporatized and packaged in the form of an environment/theme park/botanical garden. An interesting project but not as theoretically rich as the subject would demand.

[Jill · Rating 5 out of 5]

I used this book as a starting point for my undergrad thesis on Gettysburg, race identity and tourism. Really interesting analysis on the use of a tourist space.

[Raena DeMaris · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting, but perhaps not a real revelation...just confirmation of what I already knew