In late October, Minneapolis's Walker Art Center is opening an exhibit, curated by Marling, called Designing Disney's Theme Parks: The Architecture of Reassurance. And on November 20, Marling will be the keynote speaker at a Weisman Art Museum conference commemorating the fifth anniversary of the megamall.

Marling seems impatient with academics who cling to old ideas about what should and shouldn't be studied. "We don't need another book about Michelangelo," Marling says. "Disney and the Mall and all this stuff are under our skin as part of our culture. So why not see how it works, and why it was created?"

Disney in particular has been a long-time interest for Marling, who at the age of 13 won a two-week, all-expenses-paid trip to Disneyland from a cereal-box coloring contest. She's been a dedicated mouseketeer ever since.

Q: Tell me about the origins of Disneyland. Many of the original designs for Disneyland came from the movies, right?

A: Walt Disney noticed that many people came to Hollywood in the '40s and '50s expecting to see the Wild West or Mars or other things they saw in the movies. They were disappointed when they couldn't see those things. So he took set designs for films and turned them into three-dimensional environments you could walk through. In Adventureland, for example, he took the plot line from The African Queen and allowed you to be Humphrey Bogart or Katherine Hepburn. It was an opportunity to have a play experience without any consequences.

Q: A lot of people object to the without-any-consequences quality of the Disneyland experience, complaining that it's too well-scrubbed and unreal.

A: When Disneyland opened, one critic almost went berserk because when you went on the jungle ride, you saw plastic hippopotamuses and crocodiles, and he thought there was something morally depraved about people who would think that was interesting. He wanted everyone to go to the Amazon. I suppose that's great, but I have no interest in going to the Amazon, and I also have no interest in seeing my children savaged by a crocodile. We don't all have the same tolerance for danger, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't enjoy whatever part of the experience we can tolerate.

Q: In the exhibit catalog you call Disneyland an implicit critique of Los Angeles. What does that mean?

A: Walt Disney was crazy about L.A. He loved to prowl around it after work. But he saw it changing very rapidly with the influx of cars after World War II. For Walt, the car was really the enemy, so he built a walkable park. I think Main Street USA was Walt Disney's effort to give an urban walking experience to a city that increasingly didn't have one.

Q: Malls are urban walking experiences too.

A: Yes. Urban centers seem to have lost sidewalk cafes and all those other things that Barbara Flanagan keeps telling us that we need. Malls can give it back.

Q: You have a pretty positive take on malls.

A: I'm not a foe of capitalism. I've always wondered why my colleagues in academia-who, after all, work for wages-foam at the mouth whenever the concept of spending a dime is mentioned. I won't get it if I live to be a thousand.

Q: What do you say to people who complain that malls take business away from downtowns?

A: First of all, they should look at the figures, which show that there's a synergistic effect between good shopping experiences. But I also feel that any damage that's been done to downtown Minneapolis or St. Paul was done long before the Mall of America came around. Ours is a culture that favors suburban development. I don't believe that the mall created that. Its creators simply observed that fact, and catered to it.

Q: Although the mall seems like a public space, it's actually a private one. If there's trouble-homeless people or protesters, for example-security personnel will remove those people. Doesn't going to the mall mean people are turning their back on real life?

A: Is it the responsibility of a retail establishment or an amusement park to change the world? I think we're all entitled to go where we choose. We're Americans. We can avoid what we choose to avoid, and we don't have to cope every hour of every day with urban problems. It's like gated communities, which I know are also anathema to many folks. That's a lifestyle choice and, damn it, we are entitled to that lifestyle choice.

Q: Do you see yourself as anti-elitist?

A: I've never had any interest in elitism. I don't come out of an elite culture. I go to malls.

Q: But you work in a university, which can be an elitist place.

A: I don't spend much time at the university. It drives me absolutely wild, this kneejerk attitude that such and such is exalted, and something else isn't. To me, everything human is worth looking at. I don't make a hell of a lot of a distinction between a hat made out of beer cans by an old lady in a church basement and a Thomas Hart Benton. To me, it's all interesting and a significant human utterance.

Q: Why do some academics hate the Mall of America so much?

A: I have no idea. I think some people need to lighten up and enjoy life a little more.

This article appeared as "Pop Scholar" in the November 1997 issue of Minnesota Monthly. Copyright Minnesota Monthly.