University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses

World building with Joe Rohde: a profle of a Disney Imagineer and visionary artist

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World building with Joe Rohde: a profle of a Disney Imagineer and visionary artist

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WORLD BUILDING WITH JOE ROHDE:
A PROFLE OF A DISNEY IMAGINEER AND VISIONARY ARTIST

By

Ajay Orona

A Thesis Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC ANNENBERG SCHOOL FOR
COMMUNICATION AND JOURNALISM
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
MASTER OF ARTS
SPECIALIZED JOURNALISM (THE ARTS)

August 2021

Copyright 2021 Ajay Orona
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Acknowledgements

I wish to thank all of the people who supported me in the completion of this project. My deepest
gratitude to Sasha Anawalt for accepting me, equipping me, and saying yes to my dream. To
Sandy Tolan for treating me as if I were already a hard-nosed reporter. To Alex McDowell for
introducing me to world building and coaching me through the various nuances of the practice.

Much appreciation for my former coworker Stacy “Quilly” Armstrong, who proofread
numerous magazine pitches and my application to USC. For Dr. Richard Fernandes for letting
me audit his architecture course and for sharing stories about being a Disney Imagineer with me.

To the talented, generous, and prolific artist — Joe Rohde — thank you for taking the
time to meet with me. To my friends and cohort who worked tirelessly alongside me during this
strange, quiet time. To my parents and my in-laws, who showed endless love and support by
cooking meals, washing clothes, shopping for groceries, and watching my daughter Noelle, as I
worked for hours in their homes. Most importantly, to my beautiful wife for being my faithful
partner in this journey, and to my God, who shepherds me. Thank you.

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Table of Contents

Acknowledgements………………………………………………………………………………ii
Abstract………….……………………………………………………………………………….iv
Introduction………………………………………………………………………………………1
The Joe Rohde Legacy: Disney’s Journey from Cultural Appropriation to Appreciation…..…...5
#Worldbuilding with Joe Rohde…………………………………………………………………17
A Disney Imagineer’s Vision for the Arts………………………………………………….……21
Bibliography…………….……………………………………………………………….………25

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Abstract

This thesis is a profile of former Disney Imagineer Joe Rohde with a special focus on the
philosophies that shaped his work as an artist and designer, including his vision for the arts in the
near future.
The idea for this profile began with an exclusive two-hour interview with Rohde which
covered world building, city planning, mathematics, and theme park design. Fractals, a
mathematical subset of Euclidian space, was a recurring topic during the discussion and has
since proven to be a concept Rohde frequently uses to understand psychological and emotional
responses to the built environment, as well as how he describes his own work processes and team
management skills. Rohde’s approach to world building — the process of designing imaginary
worlds framed by coherent narratives — is also informed by his understanding of fractals and
how objects with fractal dimension produce self-similar patterns at increasingly smaller scales.
When Rohde announced his retirement from Disney Imagineering in early 2021, media
outlets published stories celebrating the many attractions he had helped build throughout his
career. The articles nicely summarized Rohde’s most famous accomplishments, yet I have found
only a few that touch on the intellectual, conservational, and cultural underpinnings of Rohde’s
work, such as his ability to include indigenous people groups in important design decisions,
which this thesis argues will be his most lasting legacy. Through a series of articles, this thesis
seeks to offer an in-depth understanding of Rohde as an artist and thinker and to conduct a
thorough analysis of his legacy as an Imagineer at The Walt Disney Company.

1
Introduction

When Joe Rohde announced his retirement from Disney Imagineering on social media
(@JoeRohde, November 23, 2020) the overwhelming sentiment online was dismay.
Disney park fans grumbled all sorts of things, but the most prevalent was, “Now the Yeti
will never get fixed.” The Yeti, a 25-foot animatronic structure within Expedition Everest, a
rollercoaster ride in Disney’s Animal Kingdom, is the largest and most complex animatronic
ever built by Disney Imagineering. However, three years after Expedition Everest debuted, the
Yeti malfunctioned and since 2009 has been set in B-mode, a temporary status in which the Yeti
remains stationary but appears to reach and grab at riders due to strobe light effects, earning it
the moniker, The Disco Yeti (Insider 2020).
For years, fans have pleaded with Disney, and more specifically, Rohde, to address the
problem. Rohde has repeatedly explained that the Imagineers plan to get the Yeti moving again
but that it is an incredibly complex machine and cannot be done easily, especially with the park’s
high visitor rates. In 2019 alone, 13,888,000 people visited Animal Kingdom (Orlando Sentinel).
I never cared if the Yeti would be fixed or not, but I read as many Tweets and blog posts
about Rohde’s retirement as possible. At the time, I was researching the connection between
theme park design and urbanism and had just interviewed Rohde. We spoke on said subject for
nearly two hours, and a month later, I was still transcribing our interview and reading several of
the books he recommended. I was also starting to question if Rohde, as a designer, artist, thinker
and person, was more interesting than the topic I had been researching. The very fact that his
retirement generated such buzz and was written about in the Los Angeles Times, Orange County
Register, and other major news outlets only further intrigued me (MacDonald 2020).
2
Imagineers were not supposed to have such celebrity.
The initial crew of animators, set designers, and miscellaneous artists whom Walt Disney
collected in 1952 to develop Disneyland attained legendary status both within and outside the
company. They were known as WED designers (after Walter Elias Disney), and many were still
employed decades later in 1986 when Michael Eisner, then-CEO of Disney, changed the name of
WED Enterprises to Walt Disney Imagineering (Disney Imagineering, n.d.). The next generation
of Imagineers were trained by the original WED designers to work quietly and not bring
attention to themselves or their individual contributions (the company’s official description of
Imagineers as a “creative engine” suggests they produce out of sight). Since then, only a few
Imagineers have achieved fame equal to the WED designers. None more so than Rohde.
Rohde’s image as a globetrotting adventurer, which he helped cultivate with leather
jackets, a handlebar mustache, and nine or so earrings in his left ear, certainly contributed to his
stardom. Looking like a time-traveling Magi more than a Disney executive, he is immediately
more memorable than other Imagineers. For years, even before I learned about his participation
in various projects, I knew him as the Imagineer with the earrings.
The manner in which he communicates only adds to his mystique and likeability. Rohde
speaks quickly, jumping from one esoteric concept to the next, yet he enunciates clearly,
sometimes even emphasizing each word in exaggerated staccato, like an elementary school
teacher signaling to his students that the point he is making is very important. Because of this,
whether Rohde is discussing Euclidian geometry or the process of constructing a new ride, it is
easy to understand him and to get excited about whatever he is talking about.
Throughout his 40-year career at Disney, Rohde led the development of some of the
company’s most beloved parks, resorts, and attractions across the globe, including Animal
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Kingdom and Aulani, A Disney Resort & Spa. This body of work, coupled with his talents as a
visual artist, storyteller, and communicator, have since cemented his legacy as a creative leader
within Disney and a personality whom fans adore, earning him nicknames like, the Father of
Animal Kingdom, The Maker of Worlds, and my personal favorite, The Philosopher King of
Disney (Los Angeles Times 2017).
Yet, the more interviews I watched and read about Rohde following his retirement (and
reflected on our own conversation), the less convinced I became that his legacy was being fully
understood. Most articles from the press focused on the many rides he had helped build, his trips
to remote corners of the earth, and his passion for conservation. Indeed, those are part of Rohde’s
legacy, but what about his philosophies, convictions, and leadership skills that gave rise to so
many projects and informed both the way he and his teams operated on the ground? What about
his deeply held belief that Disneyland is a continuum of the great works of art throughout
history, or that his work could be understood by grasping a mathematical concept called fractal
dimension?
A turning point for me was meeting Rohde a second time when he visited my arts
criticism course as a guest speaker at USC Annenberg School for Communication and
Journalism. His presentation on world building helped put our interview and the many other
interviews I had seen of him in perspective. Rohde can paint, sketch, sculpt, and recall an
extensive body of knowledge on myriad subjects when telling a story. When developing a
project for Disney, he often will rely on all of these skills, making it difficult to describe his
overall working process. World building helped make sense of him and his work.
World building is a complex multidimensional practice in which worlds, whether
plausible or fantastical, are constructed to contain narratives that can lead readers, viewers or
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participants to a variety of tangible outcomes. Whether these outcomes are concerned with
change in the real world or invite participants to explore an imaginary landscape in any medium
or environment, they are grown from the holistic, evolved and multi-layered world.
The worlds that Rohde conceives and nurtures to life engage participants in
environmental, empathetic, populated, but always tangible narratives because each world is rich
enough to contain them at source. Rohde’s methodology, rigorous research, and attention to
detail is what makes this possible and what has distinguished him from other Imagineers. World
building essentially provides a platform where Rohde’s many talents converge and manifest into
a powerful form of storytelling.
The first article in this thesis analyzes Rohde’s research process for Animal Kingdom and
Aulani and how his concern for authenticity and cultural appreciation will become his greatest
legacy.
The second article is an inquiry into the philosophical and intellectual foundations of
Rohde’s world building, as well as a study of Rohde in the present as he creates and collaborates
with the public. And finally, the last piece of this thesis narrows in on Rohde’s vision for the
future, and more specifically, the future of the arts, which in itself is a form of world building.
When considered together, the following articles demonstrate how Rohde’s philosophy
and methodology of world building provides a framework for understanding his legacy, his
current activities, and his future as an artist and thinker.

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The Joe Rohde Legacy: Disney’s Journey from Cultural Appropriation to Appreciation

Nettie Tiffany pointed a finger at Joe Rohde and said, “You need to find a stone to mark
the piko!”
The piko, which translates literally as “navel” or “umbilical cord” from Hawaiian, is
believed to be the spiritual center of a site, in this case, that of Aulani, A Disney Resort & Spa.
Aunty Nettie, as she’s affectionately called on Oahu, in her role as the kahu — a
traditional Hawaiian shaman — had designated the piko on the Disney property years earlier. In
fact, Aulani had been redesigned around the piko so that it would be a place for reflection, as
opposed to being in the middle of a shaved ice stand. With three months until the resort’s
opening, Aunty Nettie explained that Rohde, Disney’s then-executive designer and vice
president of creative, who had overseen the resort’s development, had a duty to commemorate
the spot with a large stone that the Hawaiian elders could bless.
Although Aunty Nettie has a warm smile, her intense gaze accented by razor thin
eyebrows turned her into an intimidating presence (Harowitz 2019). Rohde started hunting for a
rock.
In a 2018 presentation at USC Annenberg titled “Creativity, Narrative and Organization,”
Rodhe recalled shuffling down the path and musing to himself. Well, we’re in deep trouble. I
know we can’t just go get a rock from anywhere. That’s not how it works here. And we just
buried this place in 20 feet of dirt to meet tidal wave laws, so any stones that were here are 20
feet underground (USC Annenberg 2018).
Despair set in. Rohde was about to turn back when he remembered that years earlier —
when his team was clearing the site — a large dump truck was preparing to haul away a load of
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fossilized coral blocks. Rohde had stopped them and asked them not to take the stones away, but
instead, to dump them close to where the workers parked. He couldn’t explain why, but
transporting the rocks away from the site just didn’t seem to mesh with the ethos of the project.
Rohde ran to the employee parking lot, and years later, the rocks were still there. After
sifting through the pile, he found a stone that seemed worthy of Auntie Nettie’s consideration.
The stone was large with pockets of lava in it; fossils were trapped in it too. Essentially,
the record of living creatures was teeming in the stone.
Aunty Nettie approved right away. Soon after, Hawaiian elders came and blessed the
stone. They then carried it to the piko and consecrated it in a ceremony of chanting.
Aulani was ready for business.
A History of Blunders
The most curious aspect of this story is that only 17 years before Aulani opened, Disney
may have engaged in one of the most blatant acts of cultural appropriation committed by a
modern corporation (Keeley 2019).
When Disney released The Lion King in 1994, the company boasted that it was the first
entirely original animated feature not based on previously known tales. Supposedly, the entire
narrative had been developed in Disney’s story department. Once released, the film garnered
unprecedented acclaim from viewers and critics alike and became one of the highest grossing
films of all time.
Then, the accusations came.
Disney drew ire from fans (Donaldson 2019) who pointed out that The Lion King
resembled a beloved Japanese manga, Kimba the White Lion, a little too closely to be
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coincidence. Several scenes appeared to be lifted frame by frame from episodes of the Japanese
show, including a moment of a deceased lion appearing to its son in a cloud.
Despite how many similarities existed, Disney denied copying anything (Sunder 2012,
chap. 7), even going so far as to say that The Lion King filmmakers had never even heard of
Kimba the White Lion.
It was a dark stain on the Disney name — one that would haunt the company for years to
come.
Disney didn’t do itself any favors, though. The studio followed The Lion King with the
equally controversial Pocahontas, a film that The Atlantic called a “glorification of the European
conquest of the Americas (Bodenner 2015).”
For a company wanting to save face from being perpetrators of cultural appropriation,
making a film celebrating a white-washed version of history wasn’t the best move.
So, how was Disney able to turn this around? How did Disney reinvent itself from a
megacorporation gobbling up individual and other culture’s intellectual property to a creative
force that attempted to honor indigenous communities and partners?
Curiously, Disney pivoted by making a theme park.
A theme park that wouldn’t have existed if it weren’t for a tiger.
Tiger in the Boardroom
The nine board members of The Walt Disney Company wondered why they had to listen
to yet another pitch about starting a zoological theme park at the Walt Disney World Resort in
Florida from Imagineer Joe Rohde.
8
Then-Disney CEO Michael Eisner had expressed doubt about the project, and after
Rohde’s first pitch, said that “Disney didn’t do zoos (Thomas 2013).” When Rohde tried to get
the park approved a second time, Eisner wasn’t convinced that animals would be that exciting.
This time, there were no smiles around the large wood table. Eisner and the other
executives were one bad idea away from scrapping the whole project. Rohde’s pitch had to be
good.
When Rohde entered the room, he immediately addressed the board’s main concern:
Could animals really be that exhilarating? Rohde claimed that proximity to animals is what
creates excitement.
As he spoke, the doors swung behind him and a 400-pound Bengal tiger sauntered into
the room.
The room fell silent. The tiger, rippling with muscle, with only a chain leash around its
neck, began to circle the room. Rohde had the board’s full attention.
And this time, he pitched the idea of the park from an emotional angle, eschewing park
design and layout in favor of how guests would feel when they were close to the animals.
Everyone in the room, especially Eisner, whom the tiger walked directly behind
(Welbaum 2008), could not stop staring at the tiger. The room was already experiencing the
exhilaration from being around a wild animal.
The board unanimously approved the idea.
(Years later, a Disney fan would recount this story by saying that Rohde brought the tiger
into the room in a cage. Rohde corrected this retelling via Twitter: “No cage. That would defeat
the purpose (@JoeRohde, March 20, 2019).”
9
According to The Imagineering Story, a documentary on Disney +, Rohde’s reward was
to convert 580 acres of “sink holes, swampy land and cow pastures”— the largest space of any
Disney park — into a world-class destination: Disney’s Animal Kingdom.
The World According to Rohde
The idea for the park was to model its two main sections, or lands, after Africa and Asia.
Rohde was encouraged by Herb Ryman — the legendary designer who sketched the first map of
Disneyland — to travel when searching for inspiration. Heeding the advice of his mentor, Rohde
and his team of junior designers trekked across two continents to make sure they documented
and eventually nailed details accurately.
Months later, Rohde and his team found themselves in a Newari village in Nepal. They
studied window designs, touched roof shingles, and ran their hands over wood carvings. But, the
Imagineers were not trying to record everything to later make an exact replication. What Rohde
wanted for his team was to get a sense of place, to identify what made the various designs they
encountered special.
In a conversation with Rohde over Zoom, I asked him about his approach to studying
Newari and Indian architecture and why he made a distinction between inspiration and
replication with his designers.
Rohde said: “We kind of create a park experience where everybody can feel that they are
being transported, rather than a park experience where everybody except people from India feel
like they're being transported. So [Animal Kingdom] it’s not India. So a person from India can
come to this place, and it's still surprising enough to them because it's not exactly India.”
The nine or so earrings stretching Rohde’s left ear to his beard jangled as he enunciated
certain syllables slowly and carefully.
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“So if you were from India, you go: ‘Where am I? I'm not in India, that's not Hindi.’ You
know? Like that. That's the feeling we get when we travel. Right? And when we go to India —
India is strange and different to us — but not if I'm an Indian. So how do I make it [the park]
strange and different, so that you the Indian can have a sense of adventure?”
When considering a place in Africa to model for Animal Kingdom, the Imagineers had to
first ask themselves what kind of story they wanted to tell. The team didn’t want to share a
colonialist’s version of Africa; they wanted to tell a native story about the problems and realities
they face. Trade emerged as a dominant theme, and Rohde and others began looking for an
architectural style in Africa that both exemplified and was steeped in trade history.
They traveled extensively throughout Africa and eventually stumbled upon Swahili
architecture.
“The reason Swahili architecture is the way it is, is because it pulls influences from so
many different places,” said Rohde on “The Rohdes, Less Traveled,” a web-based series about
the making of Animal Kingdom. “There are Islamic influences from the Arabian Peninsula,
wood carving from India, and fabrics made in India for the African market, as well as plenty of
indigenous influences in textiles and architecture. All these influences come together so that the
place itself is about trade, and that underlies the storytelling.”
The reason for picking Swahili architecture makes sense, but did it absolve Disney, as a
company, from appropriation?
In a recent conversation about appropriation with author, academic and music critic Josh
Kun, he said: “I firmly believe that all culture and all art, and the history of all art and culture, is
the result of borrowing and exchange, and of cross influences.”
But when it comes to corporations and capitalism?
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“That’s a different story. Is the work honored? Is the history of the original creation
honored? Are the original creators honored financially, artistically? Are there names said aloud
when the work is mentioned?”
Kun raises an important distinction. The issue is not so much whether or not a culture’s
art and style is borrowed, but how it is borrowed.
Conversation with Rohde
Rohde was more than keen to discuss appropriation. His openness and approach toward
the process of borrowing and using elements from other cultures was insightful.
Essentially, his philosophy boiled down to three key ingredients: firstly, you have to ask
another people group if you can borrow their culture to make profit. Secondly, you have to spend
the time and energy to learn the true meaning of what you are borrowing, and thirdly, you must
involve someone from that culture in your creative endeavor to be somewhat of a guide and
guardian of the process.
“So the next step above that — I think — is most of what Animal Kingdom is, which is
still on a gradation just to be clear, on a gradation,” said Rohde. “At this level of gradation,
you're going to say, ‘I did indeed study deeply. And I did rely upon the advice and consultation
of representatives of the culture to specifically choose elements that I am putting together for a
specific reason.’”
The idea of gradation may be the most helpful way of describing how to navigate issues
of appropriation. It provides someone like Rohde — a white man working for a corporation —
with something like a roadmap to engage with other cultures. Following his steps doesn’t
necessarily lead to perfect outcomes in every instance, but it allows for a process that can be
refined and improved upon.
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It seems that Animal Kingdom, which may not have been perfect, was certainly a step in
the right direction.
An example is a set of murals tucked away on the Maharaja Jungle Trek, a section of
Animal Kingdom. On “The Rohdes, Less Traveled,” Rohde explains how he had asked artists on
the island of Bali to create works of art from stone, a tradition dating back thousands of years on
Bali. The artists then made a mural depicting a man — wearing only a loincloth and earrings —
crying out as jungle foliage grips his legs and twists around his body, dragging him to his knees.
A monkey watches in horror, shrieking and covering its ears to drown out the man’s screams.
The scene is a warning: Disrespect the land, and the jungle will consume you too.
Murals, stone reliefs, and stupas, all made in traditional Balinese and Javanese style, are
now strewn about throughout Animal Kingdom. And they’re not simply nods to Southeast Asian
craftsmanship. Each work was chiseled by Balinese hands.
While Anandapur may be fictional, the art in Animal Kingdom is real.
The same collaborative process included tribesmen who traveled from Africa to thatch
huts for Harambe, and Newari woodcarvers who made window frames for Serka Zong, both
areas of Animal Kingdom. All the artists were paid for their work, and their versions of their
culture’s stories were shared, not a Western reimagining of those stories.
The Place that Speaks for the Great Ones
Rohde believes the Imagineers did a fine job with Animal Kingdom and that it also paved
the way for their work on Aulani, in which not one design decision was made without input from
Hawaiian elders.
“Aulani — now with Aulani — that was definitely not appropriation. We can safely say
that was cultural appreciation,” said Rohde.
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When asked if he felt proud about making Aulani, since he grew up in Hawaii, Rohde
was quick to correct that he didn’t make anything, but was more of a facilitator of the Hawaiian
natives’ vision for Aulani. In fact, it was the local elders, not Disney, that chose the name Aulani,
which can be translated as, "the place that speaks for the great ones."
The name was apt.
On opening day, August 29, 2011, as large, puffy clouds floated across the vast Hawaiian
sky (Oh 2011), Rohde stood outside the hotel resort. He smiled, shook hands with guests and
posed for pictures. The landscape surrounding him was 100% authentically Hawaiian — no
monkey pod trees, no giant philodendron plants or any other vegetation (USC Annenberg 2018)
associated with Hawaii that’s nonetheless not native Hawaiian. Instead, taro plants, a food of
deeply cultural and even spiritual significance to Hawaiians, encircled the resort.
A Hawaiian native approached Rohde and held up a hoʻokupu, a traditional offering
wrapped in leaves to honor a sacred site. He said, “I presume you have a place for this.”
Rohde did, in fact, have a place for the offering. Rohde led the man to the piko stone.
The man placed the hoʻokupu next to the stone and said a prayer.
Aulani had lived up to its name.
Wearing the Mantle
While not all guests at Aulani may understand the relevance of the piko stone, many have
visited The ‘Ōlelo Room, the resort’s lounge and bar. And surprisingly, the room pays as much
homage to Hawaiian culture as the piko stone.
Ōlelo means “word” in Hawaiian, and every aspect of the bar is designed to immerse
guests in the Hawaiian language. When guests enter, they are met with over 150 carved plaques
at the bar, each one denoting a sound, letter, or phrase in Hawaiian. Across the room of warm
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reds, browns, and golds, wood chairs and tables also have their Hawaiian names carved into
them. The bartenders, all of whom are fluent in Hawaiian, are trained to coach guests through the
language’s pronunciation and syntax.
Seven years after Aulani opened, the Hawaii Tourism Authority presented the resort with
its organization’s highest honor, the Tourism Legacy Award, for “helping to normalize Hawaiian
language into everyday life.”
Rohde explained that Disney accomplished this by making fluency in Hawaiian language
a preferred requirement for employment at Aulani. While anyone could technically work there,
due to the language requirements, native Hawaiians naturally comprise the majority of Aulani
staff. Rohde claimed that linguistics researchers from the University of Hawaii often visit Aulani
to hear the Hawaiian language spoken in a casual setting (Rohde 2020).
The cultural triumph of Aulani and Animal Kingdom brings into relief recent
controversies surrounding Disney’s parks. Beginning with fans calling for changes to log-flume
ride Splash Mountain in Anaheim for its connections with Disney’s 1946 film Song of the South,
which was accused of reinforcing “a nostalgia for a plantation in the Reconstruction era,” several
attractions throughout Disneyland and Walt Disney World have come under fire for preserving
outdated, culturally insensitive depictions of minorities (Tobias 2019). To address these
concerns, Disney announced that Splash Mountain would be rethemed to The Princess and the
Frog, and that several scenes in the Jungle Cruise ride depicting natives as “colonialist
caricatures” would be removed and replaced with lighthearted gags involving chimpanzees
(Tremaine 2021).
While Disney’s motivations to make said changes may be well-intentioned, updating
existing content, whether in the parks or in film, to align with current expectations of cultural
15
appropriateness is not a long-term strategy for success. It’s reflexive, feeling more like a
scramble to “fix” things than a desire to build something new, refreshing, and wonderful. At the
moment, Disney has unashamedly made clear that for the next decade or so — with 23 live-
action remakes of its animated films slated for production and a new Marvel-themed land in
California Adventure set to open —it will focus on repackaging its existing intellectual property
(IP) to retain and attract new audiences. This is the case for both its films and theme parks. But,
what will happen in the future when Disney runs out of material to recycle? How will Disney
navigate the nebulous process of creating an original park or resort — not rooted in its or another
company’s history — without appropriating or disrespecting other cultures?
Rohde’s retirement from Imagineering in early 2021 only complicates Disney’s future
with cultural appropriation.
As Bob Weiss, president of Walt Disney Imagineering, wrote on Instagram following
Rohde’s retirement: “His [Rohde] demand for authenticity and including diverse, indigenous
cultures in design and production, are hallmarks of his projects and what differentiate them from
all others” (d23.com 2021).
While Weiss’ comments are a touching tribute to Rohde, it also reveals how much
Disney leaned on Rohde as its unofficial cultural ambassador. If “including diverse indigenous
cultures in design and production” was specific to Rohde, in what position does that leave the
company?
Weiss hopes that Rohde will return from time to time as a “mentor” for the next
generation of Imagineers, but most likely, Rohde will be too busy. A month after his retirement,
Virgin Galactic announced that it had tapped Rohde to be its “experience architect” to oversee
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what space travel might look and feel like for tourists in the near future (Virgin Galactic 2021).
Evidently, Rohde has moved on.
Disney will have to figure out how to move forward by itself, which will be a
monumental task, as Rohde did not have a no one-size-fits-all solution to developing a park or
resort, especially when it involved stories, motifs, and objects from other cultures. He had no
style guide. The work was consuming and intentional in each instance. It took time and deep
research into the other culture’s history, language, and customs to arrive at the conclusions
Rohde reached.
Will Disney improve and continue to produce works that honor other cultures and
indigenous groups? If so, it will not come from a company memo or strategy developed in a
board room. Rohde’s retirement made this clear. The finished projects that honor and remain true
to various cultures over decades are the result of relationships, and that of people with other
people.
If Rohde left behind any lesson, it was that.

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#Worldbuilding with Joe Rohde

Joe Rohde may have retired from Disney Imagineering, but the 65-year-old designer
hasn’t stopped creating and sharing new worlds with the public.
Since the pandemic began, Rohde has been painting landscapes inspired by patterns he
observes in sidewalk stains and bubbles on his pool cover, and occasionally, spots on quails’
eggs. He then posts the paintings to his Instagram page and asks his 87,000 followers to, “Give
us a tour, a report, an analysis, an anecdote. What happened, happens, or will happen here?”
His followers suggest everything from the mundane to the fantastical, but the point is not
to describe the most imaginative settings, but the most plausible, based on topographical details
in the paintings.
A recent example is a picture of blue and white paint on asphalt, which reminded Rohde
of an icy coastline. He shared the image on Instagram and pondered, “Somebody lives here. I
can’t really tell from here whether the land is forested or just an endless scattering of boulders
left behind by some prehistoric glacier. What are the long lines inscribed in the ice? What are the
rectangles in the forest and in the ice? Is it ice?”
Rohde then painted the image and posted it, sparking further conversation about the
landscape.
@Vanomedia, one of Rodhe’s followers, suggested that, “Local inhabitants might have a
ritual for clearing land and orienting dark rocks on the ice with an orientation that expresses
something like a temporal marker related to solar or other celestial events. Since the locals build
huts with thatch roofs (presumably seaweed), there would still need to be other natural building
materials for dwellings and umiaks. That’s what I see (@Vanomedia, March 10, 2021).”
18
When a cohesive narrative emerges, Rohde moves on, typically posting another
landscape after a few days. While these conversations might seem like a creative way to pass the
time, Rohde is actually demonstrating a theory central to his design philosophy — that theme is
the “strange attractor” or foundation of narrative structure.
Rohde believes that built environments, similar to novels and films, contain stories, and
therefore, are packed with information. But unlike the linear nature of plot, a constructed space,
whether it be a village or a castle in a theme park, can be interacted with and explored, making
the information within it incredibly rich and complex. When reduced to a basal composition, that
information reveals an underlying theme, e.g., good vs. evil, the glory of nature, survival of the
fittest, etc.
Rohde’s most well-known projects all began with clear and deliberate themes. Guardians
of the Galaxy – Mission: Breakout! in Disney's California Adventure was inspired by the idea of
not belonging, as well as disruption, evidenced by faux cracks in the ground surrounding the
attraction, hinting that the structure somehow dropped from the sky. Disney’s Animal Kingdom
was framed by “the intrinsic value of nature, transformation through adventure, and a personal
call to action,” Rohde stated at a 2018 presentation at USC Annenberg School for
Communication and Journalism.
The same value set that shaped Animal Kingdom also informed the making of Pandora
— The World of Avatar in Walt Disney World. “We had to…reassess how those things
manifested themselves through the vehicle of the world proposed by Avatar [the film] and then
rebuild the world from scratch,” Rohde said. “So, in fact, when you go to this place, there is not a
single thing that is a replica of what you would see in the film. You cannot go frame to frame
19
and see a thing that you would see in the film. It is regenerated from the foundational principle
(USC Annenberg 2018).”
The claim that an entire world could be made from a “foundational principle” suggests
that theme behaves much like DNA. A fully developed theme not only provides a general
structure for a new world, it informs every aspect of the imagined world, down to its smallest
minutia. Even more intriguing, a fully developed theme is capable of reproducing itself.
Because of this, Rohde argues that theme is fractal. First proposed by mathematician
Benoit Mandelbrot, a fractal is a mathematical structure that resembles itself when magnified or
scaled at increasingly smaller levels. Essentially, the general shape and pattern of a fractal is
repeated within itself in an infinite process called scale invariance or self-similarity.
When describing fractals found in nature, Rohde cites Places of the Heart by Colin Ellard
in which the example of a fern frond is used. Ellard wrote: “The shape of the frond can be
viewed at a number of scales — beginning first of all with one entire branch of the plant and
gradually descending to the level of its tiny individual ‘frondlets.’ But if you look closely at the
shapes contained in the plant, you will discover that at each level of scale, from the very large to
the tiny, the basic shape that you see is repeated over and over again.”
A common exercise Rohde uses to prove this theory is asking an audience to think of a
place defined by an arbitrary theme, such as, “the glory of nature.” He then asks how a door in
that place would look if he were to make one. Would it be round and rough, or smooth and
square? When the audience answers, “Round and rough,” Rohde then asks about the doorknob
and then the markings on the door. By the second and third example, the audience understands
how tapping into a theme allows for self-similar patterns and objects to continue propagating
until the narrative in said world feels complete and satisfying.
20
World building in this manner — without a formal system — may sound fun, as it affords
a great deal of creative freedom, but it can be a challenging process when leading a team. For
instance, if a team member is given the artistic license to design a certain area within a jungle-
themed world and decides to paint a wall in neon pink, it shows Rohde that the basal formula
and/or theme has not been understood.
Recalling work on Animal Kingdom, Rohde said: “The first week is hard. And the first
week might actually be a failure where you go, ‘You know what? This doesn't work. We got to
go back and restate the foundational premise, because it's not yielding fruit.’ Once it starts to
yield design fruit, you can then look at the evidence and go, ‘Look—the intrinsic value of nature
has yielded us a raw wooden wall with no paint on it.’”
As more and more decisions are made that align with the fundamental theme, Rohde can
grant his team members greater levels of autonomy, as it progressively becomes harder to make a
wrong decision and the theme becomes all the more pervasive.
This process, over time, becomes incredibly rewarding for both Rohde and his designers.
He has less to manage, and they have more room to create and interpret. Eventually, Rohde
expects his long-time team members to have the ability to recognize patterns and nuances in
geographical settings and understand how they may or may not fit into the overall narrative of
the world they’re constructing.
“I tell my own design teams: ‘You should be able to fly over this project in a helicopter,
or a jet, and look down and immediately recognize this place to the exception of other places,
and immediately be able to make a confident, intuitive leap of understanding of what it must be
like from the plan.’”
21
While Rhode’s Instagram worlds may not be as fully developed as Disney’s parks, the
process of developing them is in sync with Rohde’s philosophy of world building. Essentially,
the Instagram worlds are an invitation to collaborate with one of the most creative minds on the
planet, or, at least, to get a glimpse of how the process of world building works.
Who knows? These exercises may be the seeds of a new Master Class with Rohde. But,
for now, anyone wanting to get a taste of world building just needs a lively imagination and a
willingness to look hard at the details.

22
A Disney Imagineer’s Vision for the Arts
Joe Rohde believes art has the power to heal society.
“You know that old saying that ‘art is supposed to disturb the comfortable and comfort
the disturbed,’” Rohde asks, gesticulating in the air. “I think art still thinks its job is out there to
disturb. When in fact—we are disturbed—we’ve all been perfectly disturbed. We need
somebody out there to comfort.”
And for the comfortable?
“The 37 billionaires who run half the world, they’re quite comfortable. They can have
some artists go disturb them. The rest of us are not comfortable. So I think the role for art in our
time is actually kind of a higher call—to bring vision, and comfort, and direction—and to be
almost more shamanic.”
The idea of art bringing comfort may sound countercultural, but for Rohde, 65, who has
been a Disney Imagineer for 40 years, it’s not an alien concept.
He joined Disney in 1980 when some of the original designers of Disneyland, like John
Hench and Bill Martin, were still dreaming up new lands to enchant the public (Disney 2021).
Rohde’s first assignment at Disney was constructing papier-mâché models for the Mexican
Pavilion in Epcot, and, throughout the years, he rose to become one of the most prominent
Imagineers in the company, leading the development of Animal Kingdom Theme Park; Aulani,
A Disney Resort & Spa; and Guardians of the Galaxy: Mission Breakout, along with many other
attractions.
Rohde has been called the “Philosopher King of Disney” for his rich and cultured
approach to theme park design, as well as his gift for connecting seemingly disparate historical
and abstract concepts. Phenomenally, for an Imagineer, Rohde has achieved somewhat of a cult
23
following with theme park enthusiasts, and his nearly 90,000 Instagram followers consider him a
teacher for the mini art and history lessons he posts on a frequent basis.
At the time of his retirement, he served as Disney’s executive designer and vice president
of creative and oversees the company’s expansion of its Marvel property, which Disney acquired
in 2009 for $4 billion (Google 2021).
Yet when Rohde talks about the role of art in today’s world, he hardly brings up Disney.
He focuses instead on imagining a future where the definition of art and the means of art
production is transferred from elite patrons and museums to communities of artists.
Rohde calls this process of power shifting the “refolking of art.”
“The arts are starting to refolk because the means of creating artwork, sharing artwork
and the audience for that artwork are distributed. So, the question is what the meaning of
patronage will be.”
Rohde adds: “Previously, patronage meant, ‘We are the controllers of culture, and we’ve
made this kind of group decision that this constitutes art, and now we will distribute this to you
guys so you know what art is because we are the determiners of what is art.’ But they’ve lost
control of this now, and more so in the music business, but I think this will happen in the art
business.”
Perhaps Rohde is right and the arts world will undergo dramatic transformation, but if it
happens, it will be at the mercy of our hyperconnected society—a true double-edged sword.
Accessing and sharing information at exponentially blurring speeds can yield meaningful
interaction and dialogue. But what is stopping the Internet and our society from turning art, like
it does most things, into a one-note, generic slush? What does hyperconnectivity mean for the
artist?
24
Rohde and I are speaking face to face over Zoom when this comes up, but I like to
imagine we’re actually crossing the Mongolian highlands on Bactrian camels.
“So, when you’re a creative person you’re always fighting against the gravitational pull
of the middle,” Rohde says, enunciating in a deliberate and patient cadence. “And the middle
gets very, very big. It acquires a tremendous amount of gravitational power to pull things back
inside of it—like Jupiter.”
Rohde takes a deep breath then lowers his voice as if he’s telling a secret.
“We are kind of creating a Cultural Jupiter. On the other hand, all around this, is a very,
very effervescent sparkling of microcultures that are constantly cross fertilizing themselves
because of access they never ever, ever had before. And so the possibility always exists that any
one of those microcultures suddenly infects the macroculture and produces vast levels of change.
And we hope those changes are for the good.”
The idea of punk rockers mingling with sculptors and a corps de ballet to produce
something entirely new and undefinable is intriguing. Who knows? Collaborations like this could
change the way we understand and engage with art, and in the process, challenge our
assumptions about the way we live and interact with one another.
It screams revolution.
My hunch is that Rohde not only yearns for this time to come, but is actively trying to
push the needle. We discuss Minoan and Mayan culture, the lack of greenspace in Los Angeles,
and how creative entities self-propagate, but the discussion inevitably returns to art. I ask him
about any personal projects he’s pursuing.
He thinks about it, then lets off of his biggest smile yet in our conversation.
25
“I have this project that I’ve been nursing for a long time. It’s about several themes that
come together around elephants and ivory — but also around women and women’s roles — it’s a
story about a piece of ivory that’s been turned into something else. And then the thing that the
ivory has been made into sort of becomes aware of itself, like a ghost, and is trying to reunite
with these elephants. It’s all these very dark, noir-y kinds of images and stuff. It’s a really cool
project — I’ve written it as a story — but I think it’s more like a performance piece. Set design,
modern dance, music, projection.”
Rohde’s vision for his piece is bizarre yet alluring, a sort of heady mix between Disney’s
Fantasia and The Ghost and The Darkness. Trying to frame the piece in our contemporary
understanding of art is futile, though.
Rohde’s story transgresses previously guarded boundaries between disciplines and seems
emblematic of what we may soon experience during this anticipated creative revolution.
A revolution that can’t come soon enough.

26
Bibliography

Interviews

Interview with Rohde, Joe on September 29, 2020
Interview with Kun, Josh on September 4, 2020

Text

Bevil, Dewayne. “Report: Disney’s Magic Kingdom tops worldwide theme park attendance for
2019” orlandosentinel.com, July 16, 2020.

Bodenner, Chris. “Does Disney's Pocahontas Do More Harm Than Good?” theatlantic.com,
June 30, 2015.

D23team. “Joe Rohde Announces Retirement After Over 40 Years of Making Magic with Walt
Disney Imagineering” d23.com, November 23, 2020.

Ellard, Colin. Places of the Heart. New York: Bellevue Literary Press.

Harowitz, Sara. “Finding bliss and a Hawaiian blessing at the Four Seasons O‘ahu”
montecristomagazine.com, January 7, 2020.

27
Keeley, Pete. “Big Little Lions: Disney's New 'Lion King' Dodges the 'Kimba' Similarity Issue”
hollywoodreporter.com, July 22, 2019.

Krause, Amanda. “Disney World fans are worried that Animal Kingdom’s broken yeti will never
get fixed after a famous Imagineer announced he’s retiring” insider.com, November 23,
2020.

MacDonald, Brady. “Imagineer Joe Rohde reflects on 40 years of dreaming up Disney theme
park attractions” ocregister.com, December 29, 2020.

Oh, Jeff. “First Hand Account of Disney’s Aulani Resort and Spa Opening Day”

Disunplugged.com, September 1, 2011.

Sunder, Madhavi. 2012. From Goods to a Good Life: Intellectual Property and Global

Justice. London: Yale University Press

Thomas, Mike. “Bring the Tiger into the Room…a Prototype is worth 1,000 Ideas”

innovation-on-purpose.com, February 26, 2013.

Tobias, Scott. “Song of the South: the difficult legacy of Disney's most shocking movie”

theguardian.com, November 29, 2019.

Tremaine, Julie. “Disneyland makes notable change to Jungle Cruise ride, as man gets

28
backlash for 'wokeness' complaint” sfgate.com, April 26, 2021.

Virgin Galactic. “Virgin Galactic Announces Legendary Former Disney Imagineer as

Experience Architect” virgingalactic.com, February 22, 2021

Welbaum, Bob. “More of the Story” laughingplace.com, July 29, 2008.

Web Content

USC Annenberg. 2018. “Disney Imagineer Joe Rohde.” Filmed August 2018 at USC Annenberg

School for Communication and Journalism, Los Angeles, CA. Video, 1:53:40

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3fjO6Lqknc

Abstract (if available)

Abstract This thesis is a profile of former Disney Imagineer Joe Rohde with a special focus on the philosophies that shaped his work as an artist and designer, including his vision for the arts in the near future. ? The idea for this profile began with an exclusive two-hour interview with Rohde which covered world building, city planning, mathematics, and theme park design. Fractals, a mathematical subset of Euclidian space, was a recurring topic during the discussion and has since proven to be a concept Rohde frequently uses to understand psychological and emotional responses to the built environment, as well as how he describes his own work processes and team management skills. Rohde抯 approach to world building?the process of designing imaginary worlds framed by coherent narratives?is also informed by his understanding of fractals and how objects with fractal dimension produce self-similar patterns at increasingly smaller scales. ? When Rohde announced his retirement from Disney Imagineering in early 2021, media outlets published stories celebrating the many attractions he had helped build throughout his career. The articles nicely summarized Rohde抯 most famous accomplishments, yet I have found only a few that touch on the intellectual, conservational, and cultural underpinnings of Rohde抯 work, such as his ability to include indigenous people groups in important design decisions, which this thesis argues will be his most lasting legacy. Through a series of articles, this thesis seeks to offer an in-depth understanding of Rohde as an artist and thinker and to conduct a thorough analysis of his legacy as an Imagineer at The Walt Disney Company.

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Two worlds

Asset Metadata

Creator Orona, Ajay (Anthony) (author)

Core Title World building with Joe Rohde: a profle of a Disney Imagineer and visionary artist

School Annenberg School for Communication

Degree Master of Arts

Degree Program Specialized Journalism

Degree Conferral Date 2021-08

Publication Date 07/21/2021

Defense Date 07/18/2021

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag art,career,creativity,cultural appropriation,culture,design,Disney,fractal,Imagineer,Joe Rohde,legacy,OAI-PMH Harvest,organization,revolution,theme park,theme parks,urban design,Walt Disney,world building,worldbuilding

Format application/pdf (imt)

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Anawalt, Sasha (committee chair), McDowell, Alex (committee member), Tolan, Sandy (committee member)

Creator Email ajay@ajayorona.com,ajorona@usc.edu

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-oUC15613319

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Rights Orona, Ajay (Anthony)

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