La salle de cinéma comme attraction spectacle : le cas Captain Eo à Disneyland Paris

Abstract

This article tries to question the link between the public and a precise movie theater, in Disneyland Paris Marne-La-Vallée, proposing again since june 2010 the attraction Captain Eo, science-fiction 3D movie by Francis Ford Coppola in 1986, starring Michael Jackson. Replaced since 1998 by another attraction, Captain Eo comes back one year after the death of the star, and implies un specific link with its public, being a post-mortem tribute. We have to understand the way the attraction builds its public, and the way this one can build the movie signification in return. We have chosen to favour a semio-pragmatic approach, based on Roger Odin’s writings, in order to think, from the movie and its conditions of projection, what Captaine Eo theoretically reveals of the link between the viewer and a star like Michael Jackson, one year after his death. We have to understand how Coppola’s film and projection context – Disneyland Paris Park – allow us to think or question a different type of spectatorial practice than in another movie theater.

Keywords

• attraction
• Captain Eo
• cinema
• cinema audience
• spectatorial practices
• three-dimensional cinema