Constructing a “democratic” dreamworld: Carnival cruise ships and an aesthetic of optimism

Luxury and the ocean liner

Before the era of Carnival Cruise Lines and the mainstreaming of pleasure cruising in the 1970s and 1980s, ocean travel was sold as an exclusive way to explore exotic locations, providing guests the chance to mingle with celebrities and dignitaries and to be treated as dignitaries themselves. The era of the ocean liner – in which ships were used primarily as expensive and stylish means of transportation from one region to the next – was an era in which large-scale ease of travel had not yet become the norm, in which getting from one far flung place to another was a privilege and an event. In the interwar years, transatlantic ocean travel was a means to forge important connections with prominent people, and to experience extravagant eating, drinking, and socializing in a first-class, socially elite atmosphere (Dickinson and Vladimir, 1997: 16–20). Ocean travel was, indeed, a way to see and be seen.

Holiday, a travel magazine published by the American Automobile Association and that ran from 1922 to 1977, acted as a sort of clearinghouse of the most exalted vacation trends in the United States. The magazine, once hailed as “a favorite chronicle of the café society and of growing interest to the world jet set,” contained a wealth of ocean liner ads that were awash with allusions to the high life. In the 1940s, ads for American President Lines billed the brand as “America’s finest post-war luxury liner,” and “your American hotel abroad,” while Matson Lines promised “a dream you’ve always had more glorious than you ever dreamed it”(American President Lines, 1948: 155; Matson Lines, 1948: 91). It seemed some form of the word “luxury” appeared in nearly every ocean liner ad in the 1940s–1950s, and potential passengers were constantly regaled with promises of top-notch pampering and elegant surroundings, as stylishly-attired passengers were shown lounging on pool decks, relaxing with cocktails in swanky lounges, and being attended to by dignified-looking, tuxedoed ship stewards.

Constructing a sense of high status and privilege was foremost in such ads. In one particularly striking ad for the Caribbean-bound Alcoa Lines, a man dressed in a white suit was shown smoking a pipe next to a svelte young woman, while an older man with white hair and a mustache tossed coins to small boats below. As the swimming-trunk-clad island boys and men smiled up at the travelers, the ad copy explained that “the welcoming fleet of tiny native boats elbow each other to get close to your ship. And the lithe, flashing bodies of diving boys plunge through deep blue water after your tumbling, twisting coins,” (Alcoa Lines, 1947: 116). The implied relationship between the wealthy ship-goers and the “plucky and grateful” natives was clear; the passengers, whose every needs were attended to by suave stewards, stood in a double layer of privilege and power – both onboard the ship, and literally over and above the rest of the world. Such imagery exoticized and Othered the locals while exalting the cruise-ship passenger, constructing a narrative of privilege in which partaking in an ocean liner voyage elevated the social and economic status of the traveler.

While the allure of traveling the world in a bubble of luxury was no doubt appealing to many, the leisurely pace and generally prohibitive cost of luxury ocean travel would eventually fall victim to the appeal of the speedier and more novel option of air travel. With the first non-stop transatlantic flight in 1958, offered by Pan Am, the transatlantic ship industry was officially sunk (Dickinson and Vladimir, 1997: 22). The early cruise lines had banked on a palpable sense of opulence and elitism, and by the 1970s, the romanticism of an ocean voyage could not hold a candle to the futuristic allure of air travel. In addition, the well-mannered and status-conscious aura of the luxury ocean liner seemed increasingly out-of-step with the more casual world of 1970s America, leaving an entire realm of leisure looking quaintly outdated and antique to many. The cruise industry would have to retool its image if it was to persevere beyond a privileged few.

The rise of “the most popular cruise line in the world”

Carnival Cruise Lines worked in earnest to re-sculpt both the aesthetic of the cruise vacation itself and the public's perception of cruising. In 1970, only a small number of Americans had ever been on an ocean cruise, and few would have considered it an option. It was in 1972 that Ted Arison, the founder of Carnival Cruise Lines, launched his first cruise ship – the Mardi Gras – to considerable disappointment; the ship ran aground on its initial voyage. While the company got off to a shaky start, the birth of the TV show The Love Boat in 1977 only worked to increase the overall visibility of cruising and to construct the popular image of what a cruise vacation was all about. By 1988, word of cruising had begun to spread, and more than 3 million had taken a cruise of three days or longer (MacLead, 1990). By the 1990s, cruising had become the fastest-growing segment of the vacation business, and by 1997 the North American cruise industry was carrying nearly 5 million passengers annually and was worth over US$7 billion (Dickinson and Vladimir, 1997: ix). In addition, the dethroning of New York by Miami as the biggest ocean travel port in the United States, hastened in part by Carnival’s Miami headquarters, illustrated both the changing patterns of American leisure habits and the rising power and influence of the Sunbelt. When Arison, who came to be dubbed “the godfather of the modern cruise industry,” died in 1999, he was one of the richest men in the world (McDowell, 1999).

Carnival's meteoric rise as a broad-appeal cruise line led a journalist for The New York Times to proclaim, in 1988, that Carnival had indeed become “the cruise line to the masses: the biggest, most profitable and fastest-growing line plying the Caribbean,” a cruise line that had “shaken up the once-staid cruise ship industry,” “unabashedly promoting cruising for the common man” (Wayne, 1988). While ocean travel had previously been an option only for the rich, Carnival had crafted a cruise line that challenged the stereotypes of elitism, aiming as far in the direction of accessibility as possible. After all, Carnival had been the “first to use TV to sell cruises like toothpaste, as a brand name,” (Albright, 1989). The line was also the first in the industry to focus almost exclusively on the shipboard experience itself (Dickinson and Vladimir, 1997: 33). In an effort to break away from the aura of stodginess that hung over ocean travel, Carnival embraced a carnivalesque image and quickly established itself as the good times brand. As a Carnival press release from 1985 put it, “destroying class distinctions and pretensions of formality with a vengeance, the line turned traditional passenger cruising topsy-turvy, making the shipboard experience so vibrant that voyaging between ports turned into total recreation,” (Carnival Cruise Lines, n.d., approx 1985a). In order to destroy such distinctions, Carnival promoted itself to a mass audience by constructing a landscape of pleasure that was theatrical and boundlessly optimistic; Carnival promised a democratized and accessible version of the garish flash that the Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous-era United States was increasingly fascinated by, wrapped up in a pleasingly snobbery-free package.

A similar phenomenon had arisen in Britain in the years between the First and Second World Wars in the shape of holiday camps. Holiday camps were all-inclusive package vacations marketed towards the working class that included hotel accommodations and all meals, and promised to fill the hours with fun-filled activities and popular entertainment. Such camps adopted a message of democratization, and a promise to treat all holiday-makers the same way. While such camps were popular from the late 1930s through the 1970s, they were the object of much derision from critics who abhorred their contrived nature, “enforced gaiety,” and “Americanising” ways via their promotion of standardization and a sort of mass mentality of tastelessness (Dawson, 2011: 72–73). Carnival Cruise Lines indeed arose in a different time and place, yet drew upon this tradition of “cheap and cheerful” gaiety that had come to be associated with a particular brand of mass culture amusement. Providing a sense of luxury and extravagance at a relatively affordable price had come to define a certain sector of American culture, and the particular ways Carnival Cruise Lines did this happened to intersect with the construction of a message of unity amidst an ever-fragmented world.

Carnival’s dedication to constructing a dreamworld of fun led the company to Joe Farcus, self-proclaimed coiner of the phrase “entertainment architecture” (The Avid Cruiser, 2008). Farcus, along with wife and design partner Carole, comprised the earliest design team for Carnival cruise ships (Carnival Cruise Lines, n.d., approx 1980). Farcus served as interior architect for all of the Carnival-branded ships, crafting an aesthetic known as the “Joe Farcus” style, a style that merged popular icons from across time periods and from across geographical bounds. Carnival ships became so tightly linked with Farcus’s singular style that the company’s promotional brochures and press releases frequently pored over Farcus’s unique interiors, focusing on myriad design flourishes with great attention.

Carnival’s interiors were glitzy, shiny, tangible worlds of color. The ship Tropicale, for instance, had colors that “change gradually from aqua blue to dark blue,” with a “black glass dance floor, interspersed with neon panels, [which] form a background for neon sculptures,” (Carnival Cruise Lines, n.d., approx 1975b). The onboard Exta-Z disco included “decorative neon designs on the walls [which] create the sense of sitting on an island watching the waves roll in on a moonlit night” while “the neon vibrates with the music while tiny stars blink from above,” (Carnival Cruise Lines, 1974). The nighttime spaces of the Fantasy utilized light, color, and glass to create zones of sparkling disorientation and ephemerality. Farcus also used tricks of light and color onboard to construct the “fourth dimension” – or sense of time – via “computer-controlled dimmers constantly, although slowly and almost imperceptibly, changing the colors of the lights,” resulting in “vibrant hues [which] pour through the Grand Spectrum – bouncing off every surface and creating the dramatic illusion that the entire atrium itself is changing color,” (Carnival Cruise Lines, n.d., approx 1988b).

Carnival carried this playfulness over in the names of its ships as well. With names like Mardi Gras, Carnivale, Festivale, and Tropicale – the extra “e” adding a touch of flamboyance – Carnival’s early ships embodied exuberance and excess. The brand's second line, 1985’s Fantasy class, too conveyed a sort of accessible over-the-top attitude, with ships called Ecstasy, Sensation, Fascination, Imagination, Inspiration, Elation, and Paradise. The garish style of Carnival, with its constant juxtaposition, worked to position the ships as demarcated worlds apart in which passengers were encouraged to cast aside many of the rules and behaviors of their everyday lives. Carnival cruise ships were marketed as spaces in which people from all walks of life could supposedly be united in their pursuit of the eye-catching, the campy, and the self-consciously garish. Such an aesthetic flew in the face of the sleek and minimal style of more upmarket cruise lines, embodying an aesthetic of accessible excess more in line with theme parks and shopping malls, and against an aesthetic of primness or refinement. In constructing their democratized spaces of leisure, Carnival Cruise Lines and designer Joe Farcus embraced an aesthetic of play and made concerted efforts to diverge from the “Old World” stiffness of class striation.

While the symbols of wealth and excess aboard a Carnival ship may have been particularly appealing to passengers in the 1980s, the excessive decoration and abundance of imagery aboard a Carnival cruise ship was also a product of the era in which the line was born – the 1970s. While the 1970s entailed a celebration of glitzy consumer realms, the decade also embodied a particular messy and abundant domestic look as well. In The Great Funk, design critic Thomas Hine described the 1970s aesthetic within homes as “an aesthetic of accumulation” (Hine, 2007: 165). As Hine wrote, “instead of interiors that welcomed the new, householders embraced eclecticism and clutter, a layering of textures and patterns. Patterns became bolder, and people felt free to juxtapose two, three, or five bold patterns” (Hine, 2007: 164). Such layering and texturing of design within homes in the 1970s represented “a quest for comfort in a difficult and seemingly deteriorating world” (Hine, 2007: 165). The 1970s home, bursting with texture and messy accumulation, became a refuge from the world, just as the cruise ship interior had become, in the words of industry insiders, “a controlled and confined atmosphere, a cocoon if you will” (Dickinson and Vladimir, 1997: 95). While the earth tone wallpaper, shag carpets, and spider plants of the 1970s ranch house indeed differed from the flashing neon railings, Renaissance-themed supper clubs, and bald eagle-laden showrooms common to Carnival cruise ships, both represented a similar impulse to construct layered bubble worlds reinforced and bolstered by an aesthetic of abundance.

Carnival’s deliberate construction of playful juxtaposition embodied the ethos of postmodern mélange. As David Harvey noted, “postmodernism abandons all sense of historical continuity and memory, while simultaneously developing an incredible ability to plunder history and absorb whatever it finds there as some aspect of the present” (Harvey, 1990: 54). Carnival cruise ships overflowed with historical juxtaposition, cultural borrowing, and a wide range of signifiers from the past, most of which were utilized to signify good times in the present. Although each of Carnival’s ships have been loosely based around a unifying theme, the enactment of the themes cannot be seen as espousing a singular, focused approach, and instead utilized an aesthetic of messy democratic mixing and matching. The cruise ship as a format, in fact, has been particularly deft at enacting this postmodern style (Berger, 2004; Miles and Miles, 2004; Williams, 2002). While the sparkle of a Carnival cruise ship helped construct a fantasy realm stocked with allusions to worldly treasures, the shiny metallic surfaces and glittering lights also linked the Carnival world to the aesthetic of discos and themed hotels, signaling a kinship to other popular and populist spaces of leisure.

Joe Farcus’s glitzy yet accessible style of architecture, in which odes to Egyptian revival, Art Nouveau, and the “funky style” could be found aboard a single ship, is perhaps most reminiscent in tone of the work of 20th-century architect and designer Morris Lapidus, who became famous for his whimsical, Miami Beach-centric designs, the signature components of which were known as “beanpoles [long spindly rods], cheese holes [holes everywhere], and woggles [squiggly and undulating lines]” (Duttman and Schneider, 1992: 10). Lapidus’s creations were meant to be meandered through, and gazed at with a sense of curiosity, excitement, and wonder; as such, he claimed to have packed most of his designs with “intentional nonsense” (Duttman and Schneider, 1992: 155). Like Farcus, Lapidus wanted his creations to represent a stark break with the everyday world, and it was said that Lapidus “dreamed dreams for people who could never have dreamed before, or who could not afford to dream” (Duttman and Schneider, 1992: 7). Such a tradition too hearkened back to the spectacularized amusement parks of turn-of-the-century Coney Island, whose over-the-top architecture “democratized the hunger for aristocratic splendor that was driving rich industrialists to construct palatial houses at the turn of the century. It provided a Newport for the masses” (Kasson, 1978: 66). In a 1991 interview, Lapidus commented on the title of Duttman and Schneider’s book – Morris Lapidus: Architect of the American Dream, noting:

I started to think: did I create a fantasy or is it the American dream. I thought of Thomas Jefferson, who wrote in the Declaration of Independence: “What we want is life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Happiness is the word. If you can create happiness for people, that is the American dream. (Duttman and Schneider, 1992: 21)

In Passing Strange and Wonderful: Aesthetics, Nature, and Culture, geographer Yi-Fu Tuan discusses his notion of an “American aesthetic,” and ventures:

… in sharp contrast to the austere and “elevated” conceptions of beauty embraced by the socially established in both the Old World and the New, the American aesthetic appears at times to be driven by a sense of fun. It happily accommodates what might be called a democratic and folksy fondness for the extreme, the eye-catching, the amusing, and the grotesque. (Tuan, 1993: 144)

As Tuan continued:

American democracy contains all these different, even contradictory, elements. Few citizens can embrace them all. Those who do – the true lovers of American democracy – must have an appetite for plenitude and contrarieties – for order and disorder, the grand and the comely, an overarching unity of purpose and, within it, teeming voices that offer simultaneously division and new life. (Tuan, 1993: 209)

Pitching to the everyman: The marketing of carnival cruise lines

In Selling the Sea, former Carnival executive Bob Dickinson and industry insider Andy Vladimir chided the stodgy obsession with royalty implied in the names of cruise lines like Royal Caribbean, Majesty, and Princess, and argued that “contemporary cruisers are for the most part North Americans who not only don’t relate to monarchies but whose forefathers fled Europe two hundred years ago to escape them!” (Dickinson and Vladimir, 1997: 149). Carnival’s emphasis on non-pretention served as a distinct contrast to cruise lines that utilized appeals to ego and prestige. “There are those,” argued Dickinson and Vladimir, “who do seek this kind of special validation – they are the same ones who purchase heraldic seals from London mail-order companies that advertise in the New Yorker” (Dickinson and Vladimir, 1997: 149). To avoid attracting the wrong kind of crowd, Carnival encouraged travel agents to direct only “fun” clients towards their line, urging them to steer clear of “stuffy” types, or “the kind who seem to perpetually wear overstarched underwear,” (Dickinson and Vladimir, 1997: 116). Carnival told travel agents “not to send us curmudgeons – on the theory that one bad apple spoils the bunch,” (Dickinson, 1980: 125). Dickinson and Vladimir also showed concern for the potential class insecurities of passengers when they argued that “The last thing [vacationers] want to do is pay good money to be in a socially threatening environment that puts them down rather than builds them up” (Dickinson and Vladimir, 1997: 152). Scholar Arthur Asa Berger made a similar point when he argued that “one of the biggest problems cruise lines face involves perceptions by the general public that cruises are for elites, upper-class snobs, ‘uppity’ types, and so on. People don’t want to pay for cruises and suffer from status anxiety” (Berger, 2004: 34–35). Carnival's oversaturated landscape of juxtaposition helped construct a sense of openness and non-discrimination through the use of a wide array of design styles, images, and historic periods, while the use of well-known symbols of luxury and prestige helped allay notions of the déclassé. Passengers' fears of feeling alienated and out-of-place were addressed by Carnival through its continuous emphasis on fun – a counternarrative to that of prim class-posturing.

In a blurb entitled “Everyone goes to the head of the class,” a Carnival brochure from the mid-1970s explained that “the stuffy formality and antique class system of trans-Atlantic cruising has gone the way of the bustle” (Carnival Cruise Lines, n.d., approx. 1975a). A Carnival cruise would instead embrace the informal, as “on a modern Caribbean cruise ship, all passengers are treated alike and enjoy the same privileges, whether they have purchased the least expensive cabin or the most deluxe suite” (Carnival Cruise Lines, n.d., approx. 1975a). Carnival sought to dispel any lingering black-tie dress-code rumors when it mentioned that “while there are a couple of formal nights, the rest of the week ranges from sport coat and tie to casual island shirts. So, relax and save your penguin impressions for parties” (Carnival Cruise Lines, n.d., approx 1975a). The fact that Carnival did preserve “a couple of formal nights” helped to construct a sense of dynamism onboard, and allowed those who wanted the opportunity to dress up the chance to do so, without alienating those who did not. While ads for interwar and postwar ocean liners, and for some contemporary cruise lines as well, emphasized the privileged nature of the cruise experience, Carnival’s approach had been to emphasize the universality and widespread appeal of its cruises, never shying from a chance to call attention to its status as “The most popular cruise line in the world.”

The meaning of Kathie Lee

In the mid-1980s, Carnival launched a massive television advertising campaign featuring Kathie Lee Gifford, then co-host of morning chat-show “Live! with Regis and Kathie Lee.” The former cheerleader and winner of a Kraft Hostess Award when she was a teenager, Kathie Lee stood for a kind of gee-whiz folksiness and freewheeling non-threateningness that helped solidify Carnival's brand of non-pretention. A Carnival executive had said that, with the selection of Gifford, he had been looking for a spokesperson “who had talent, who could sing, dance, and was attractive to men without being threatening to women” (“Kathie Lee Gifford Works Hard,” 1996). In the early 1990s, the Kathie Lee campaign was seen by 70 million households, in time slots that could “best be viewed by the broadest cross-section of viewers” (Carnival Cruise Lines, 1990b). This constant visibility led Carnival to claim that “virtually every American has been captured by Kathie Lee’s charm and enthusiasm,” (Carnival Cruise Lines, 1992). Kathie Lee was cast as a relatable figure, positioned as an optimistic and trusted friend, a sort of bursting at the seams kinetic whirlwind who could most effectively convey the Carnival message of whimsy.

As Carnival's leading frontperson, Kathie Lee, who was in her early 30s when she began her Carnival career, appeared in numerous Carnival ads in which she exuberantly danced and sang her way through shipboard montages of showgirls, diners, aerobicizers, and loungers, all while singing “If Your Friends Could See You Now!” Kathie Lee acted as the purveyor of Fun, a perpetually perky travel guide who gleefully spun around in Carmen-Miranda-inspired party dresses just as gamely as she worked up a mid-afternoon sweat on an Exercycle. In one mid-1980s ad, Kathie Lee swirled and whirled past an elaborate buffet overflowing with lobsters and cakes, sashayed around a sundeck filled with sunbathers, slid down a waterslide into an onboard pool, danced around with happy passengers at a disco, and breezed by a line of Vegas-style showgirls, the message ringing loud and clear: this was the place to have Fun!! (Carnival Cruise Lines, n.d. approx 1985b). All this, while Gifford sang “Ain’t We Got Fun!” In highlighting such lines as “Not much money, oh but honey, ain’t we got fun!” and “The food is great here, there’s never a bill,” (Carnival Cruise Lines, n.d. approx 1985b) Gifford and the Carnival marketers handily displayed the message that Carnival was all about breezy lightheartedness.

While Carnival’s formative Kathie Lee Gifford campaign was said to have worked so well that “people in a competitor's focus group associated the words ‘cruise ship’ with Carnival's slogan ‘the fun ship,’ and a wholesome looking woman dancing across the decks” (Albright, 1989), Gifford, and Carnival, were not without their critics. While Gifford was dubbed “America's sweetheart” by her agent, she inspired countless barbs and jabs from critics for her saccharine and unceasingly upbeat ways. In 1990, she received much public flack for leading a mock campaign to garner votes for TV Guide's “Most Beautiful Woman on Television” reader's survey. By presenting an apple pie, flag, and a picture of her son on “Live!”, Kathie Lee proclaimed that a vote for her “was a vote for motherhood, apple pie and the American way,” (Haenlein, 1990). Such relentless wholesomeness (she once referred to herself as “the Moral Majority's Madonna”), led shock-jock Howard Stern to comment, in 1995: “She has this phony-baloney quality and Pollyanna attitude that I just don't buy,” (“Kathie Lee Gifford Works Hard,” 1996). It was perhaps because of this very visibility that Carnival’s long-running Kathie Lee campaign was also “the seventh-least popular campaign among the 38 measured by Ad Track since May 1995,” despite “29% of consumers rating [the ads] ‘very effective’”(Enrico, 1996). According to that same poll, 19% of those making US$50,000 or more per year disliked the ads, while only 9% of those making US$25,000–50,000 per year disliked the ads (Enrico, 1996). While such figures demonstrated a class divide, Carnival’s focused emphasis on fun helped connect its image to upbeat friendliness, leaving little room for fears of onboard status anxiety and class positioning among potential passengers. Realities of class schisms and disconnects associated with Carnival could not be obscured, however, when in 1996 Gifford came under attack when it was revealed that her line of blouses for Wal-Mart had been produced in sweatshops.

Shipboard fun

In the 1970s–1980s, the daily newsletter aboard Carnival Cruise ships was called Carnival Capers, and detailed the various activities, itineraries, menus, and events scheduled aboard the ship. While many events – such as the “Unattached Cocktail Party (only the footloose and single may attend),” “Person to Person Bingo (Fill Out Your Cards And Play Bingo With Names For Prizes And Fun),” and “Grandmothers Bragging Party,”(Carnival Cruise Lines, 1972) – seemed to be designed to get passengers to mingle, connect, and share, several other events had a mildly carnivalesque bent to them, most notably the “Male Nightgown Contest” and the “Men's Knobby Knees” contest. It was in 1986 that the “Men’s Knobby Knees Contest” (“Men show us your knees at this funny event! Ladies will act as the judges! Bring Your Camera!”) first appeared, along with the passenger Talent Show and the “Male Nightgown Contest” (Carnival Cruise Lines, 1986b). Of the Men’s Knobby Knees Contest, Capers intoned, “Don’t miss this funny event as we see who will be voted the honour of Mr. Knobby Knees!” (Carnival Cruise Lines, 1988a). In a similar vein, the Male Nightgown Contest, dubbed “the craziest event of the cruise!”(Carnival Cruise Lines, 1986b) was an event at which one could “cheer and scream as these ‘lovelies’ strut across the stage. You won’t believe your eyes!” In one version aboard the Carnivale, the Capers advertised the Male Nightgown Contest with sketches of men in drag beneath the headline, “Adult Rated!” (Carnival Cruise Lines, Inc., 1986a). Potential contestants were alerted that they could procure “wigs for rent at the beauty salon,” (Carnival Cruise Lines, 1988a) and that contestants should “be in costume by the perfume shop at 2:15 pm!” (Carnival Cruise Lines, 1986b).

In the case of both the Male Nightgown Contest and the Men's Knobby Knees Contest, Carnival was attempting to subvert typical social conventions. The carnivalesque switching of roles and re-ordering of the hierarchy (Bakhtin, 1984) seemed intended to democratize and unify. Such events instead no doubt worked to bolster the existing social order by reinforcing the hilarity of the wildly misplaced female gaze upon the male body – an inversion of the “natural” order. Carnival’s male-as-spectacle and object of humiliation seemed to have the goal of conveying the message that aboard a Carnival Fun Ship, hierarchies of power and gender positionality would be joyously broken down, further democratizing the experience. These events of course rested on the premise of the existence of unchanging norms and structures of power – the events were funny and outrageous because everyone “knew” that men’s body parts should not be objectified, isolated, and scrutinized, and that men should, under no circumstance, don female clothing. This element of topsy-turviness thus appeared to subvert the social order while implicitly supporting it.

The various games and stunts aboard a Carnival Cruise ship hearken, in a way, to the types of stunts and tricks common to Coney Island amusements, activities designed to break down physical and hierarchical barriers. In the environs of turn-of-the-century amusement parks, “momentary disorientation, intimate exposure, physical contact with strangers, pratfalls, public humiliation – conditions that in other circumstances might have been excruciating – became richly entertaining,” and “the laughter of participants and spectators testified to their sense of release”(Kasson, 1978: 61). Such a breaking down of constraints was just what Carnival cruise ships promoted through their marketing, and through their onboard activities. Although such games actually served to reify the existing social order, they were self-conscious attempts to break down barriers, level the playing field, and, in a way, redistribute power within the marketplace.

Showing the world how it’s done

In order to get an up-close view of Carnival's aesthetic of optimism, and to supplement my earlier historical overview and rhetorical analysis with an examination of the more contemporary lived spaces themselves, I took a four-night cruise to Cozumel aboard the Carnival Ecstasy in June of 2011. I selected this particular cruise because, in addition to leaving from the port closest to my home in Austin, the bulk of the journey would be aboard the ship (with a grand total of 8 hours in Cozumel); I wanted to get the fullest understanding of the passenger experience that I could. My methodology was participant observation, and I sought to attend as many of the ship's events as possible. Aboard the ship, I saw the worlds of Joe Farcus enacted in three dimensions quite similarly to the way they had been described in the marketing brochures. The Ecstasy was designed as a city in miniature, and was rimmed with neon, flash, and sparkle in nearly all zones of the ship – it did in fact resemble a floating Las Vegas hotel. While the design elements were consistent with the descriptions presented in both press releases and brochures, it was the onboard events that most solidified and concretized Carnival’s message of democratized pleasure.

For the purposes of this article, I will focus on two examples of the experience that most exemplify the Carnival aesthetic. The designers and marketers of Carnival, since its inception in 1972, have sought to construct a landscape focused on fun and inclusivity, and the print ads, brochures, and commercials have long been rife with representations of good times and non-pretentiousness. It made perfect sense, then, that the first onboard presentation of the cruise (other than the mandatory life boat drill) would be dedicated to this theme. The Ecstasy’s “Welcome Aboard” show took place in a large, two-tiered, Vegas-style showroom called the Blue Sapphire. It began with a medley of songs with the term “fun” in the title. In this opening number, the entertainment crew, part of which was known as The Fun Patrol, and who were all dressed in “sexy” naval outfits, danced onstage in front of a large, inflatable Carnival cruise ship. Halfway through the number, the inflated ship, which was in two pieces, split apart to make way for an inflated “F-U-N.” Fun Ship Freddy – the ship’s mascot, an anthropomorphic Carnival smoke stack – jumped on stage and led the dancers in their routine. Giant beach balls were unleashed into the crowd. “Who here is on vacation?!” A few yells from the crowd. “Who is missing work tomorrow? Who here is missing school? Ready to have FUN?!!” The cheers from the audience were loud, and battled to be heard above the blaring music.

The second two examples came later on in the cruise, at the end of the highly anticipated Newlywed and Married game, a game in which the audience roars with laughter as participants reveal the intimate quirks of their relationships. Taking advantage of the packed house, the cruise director had used the opportunity to shine a spotlight on the service staff once the game had ended. He called out for the ship’s staff members to come up on stage – the cleaning staff, the waitstaff, the Fun Patrol. Nearly all of the cleaning and waitstaff were Asian (most were from Indonesia, Thailand, or the Philippines), while the Fun Patrol and dancers (with the exception of one African American male and one Latino male) were white. When all the staff members were onstage, the cruise director bragged, “We come from many different cultures, religions, political views, etc. We’re away from our families 6-9 months out of the year. We all get along great. We work together, eat together, dance together, sleep together [chuckles]. Everyone should come here and observe how we do things here, and take that back to their own countries [emphasis my own].” With this last statement, U2’s “Beautiful Day” blared over the speakers, and guests started filing out.

Similarly, at the “Future Cruise Presentation,” where passengers could learn about upcoming cruises, the host listed the total passenger and crew combined capacities of each new ship. He explained that the ships could hold “up to [X amount of] people dancing together, eating together, having fun together.” He later added, of another ship’s total capacity, that that’s “5200 people sailing out together and enjoying life together.” In these instances Carnival strove for a narrative of democratic bliss, a coming together of cultures and backgrounds in presumed harmony, despite the obvious divide between passengers and employees. While neither the “Beautiful Day” acknowledgment of the ship’s staff, nor the statements on the harmony between employees and passengers included the words “America” or “The United States,” the entire experience fundamentally revolved around America’s fantasies about itself – its openness, its class mobility, its abundance, and everyone’s personal obligation and ability to “have a great time.” Through the plentitude of food and activities, the garish shininess of the interior spaces, and the constant din of fun fun fun, Carnival had created a landscape that was both cheerily optimistic and folksy, as well as indulgent and consumeristic; a hodgepodge of Bingo, Las Vegas, and the prom; an aesthetic of optimism akin to that which Yi-Fu Tuan had spoken of.

Carnival’s declaration of the quasi-utopian world of democratic togetherness onboard its ships was an attempt to turn what could have been a queasy feeling of privileged American superiority into a celebration of happy coexistence and progressive unity, all made possible by the marketplace. Built on a promise of anti-elitism, Carnival had created a hyper-narrated space in which its commitment to good times was communicated to the passenger at every possible turn. Carnival cruise ships are microcosms of how Americans perhaps like to think of themselves – friendly, non-pretentious, always up for a good time – and beyond class distinctions.

This celebration of democracy and community calls to mind an observation made by scholar Benjamin DeMott back in 1990:

American assumptions about society in the large comingle comfortably with American assumptions about class …; together they function capitally as social emollients and sedatives. By their action a nation comes to exist, in tens of millions of imaginations, as a family. Yale students and greasers rise as one in standing ovations for Springsteen; daytime bigots become, in prime time, tolerant and kind, enjoying The Cosby Show and moderating their “prejudice;” within the borders peace reigns. (DeMott, 1990: 52)

A Carnival cruise ship is a zone in which fantastical symbols of wealth and prestige have been redistributed to a mass audience. It is a place in which a narrative of communal pleasure and classlessness reigns supreme, in which passengers are encouraged to get up and dance whenever the atmosphere gets a bit too serious. Aboard a Carnival cruise ship, one can be goofy and informal, revel in a mood of community and camaraderie, and partake in a seemingly never-ending bounty of food and abundance, all while being assured that – despite the clear power differentials between server and served, corporation and individual, nation and nation – we are all happily in this together. This aesthetic of optimism works to convey an atmosphere of populist democracy in which class and taste hierarchies are dissolved in a blur of the carefully constructed carnivalesque; a marketplace enactment of the American Dream.

As such, the rhetoric of Carnival, and that of many other sites of commercial leisure, indeed alludes to the “ineradicable drive towards collectivity” that Jameson found within mass culture (Jameson, 1979: 148), here as enacted through the throbbing compulsions to dissolve into a mass of barefoot deck dancing, plastic bottles of Budweiser raised to the sky in unity. There is, of course, nothing approaching pure parity for passengers aboard the ship, and even the initial “Welcome Aboard” drinks that await guests as they first step onto the Lido deck come with a price tag. But these details of consumption are minor, and expected. In a United States of increased class striation and income disparity, the fantasy of togetherness and a shared, democratized opulence as woven by Carnival acts as an appealing counternarrative to the very fragmentation that has allowed a brand like Carnival to thrive.

This faith in the democratization of desire has been a foundational underpinning of American mass culture throughout the 20th and into the 21st centuries. Commercialized spaces of “manufactured” togetherness express desires for collectivity, yet their branded nature also serves to satisfy needs for personal distinction and consumer agency, a central feature of the current neoliberal moment. The products of contemporary consumer culture shape and are shaped by particular taste worlds, and connect with distinct and particular positions in the social matrix (Bourdieu, 1984). That another of the key events featured aboard the Ecstasy cruise was a Thomas Kinkade art show was not of course accidental and without meaning. Kinkade, known for his nostalgic and mass-produced prints of Dickensian villages, is perhaps best known, and castigated for, his broad appeal; his works inspire extreme polarization and personal posturing despite their supposedly idyllic aesthetic (Boylan, 2011). While it is doubtful that a universal consensus about the particular meanings that a consumer space or product holds for its users can ever be reached, consumer spaces that construct a narrative of unification act as a device by which one's attention can at least be called to the ideas of togetherness and democracy. One can be transported, optimistically, to the blurring of difference and the reveling in communal humanity, or one can be struck, perhaps also as affectingly, by the glaring inconsistencies. Spaces of mass culture exemplify the import of both.