From the bottomless reserves of rehashed vintage imagery that have become our Tumblrs, desktops and by default, our minds, one trend has recently captured my imagination thanks to its singular weirdness and capacity to stick like cheap candyfloss on a hot day. Photos of Disneyland California through the ages are just about the most vivid way of telling us what the aspirations of a slightly older generation might have been: women wearing cats-eye sunglasses, their hair set, arm in arm with Mickey and the gang against a backdrop of a once vivid, now faded, Magic Kingdom.

There is something quaintly beautiful about these pictures and something equally unsettling. First conceived in the early fifties and opened in 1955, Disneyland was the utopian vision of its creator and namesake, who purportedly wanted to create a place where adults and children could play together. It was the forerunner to the now much larger Walt Disney World in Florida, Disneyland Paris and the Riverfront Square – a park planned to be built in St. Louis fifty years ago in 1963, which never reached fruition. Many speculate whether this was because Walt Disney was insulted by brewing mogul Anheuser-Busch’s suggestion that the park wouldn’t succeed without selling liquor. Among the many proposed plans for the entirely indoor theme park were a bird room, an opera room and an animatronically-powered weather system.

"Disneyland was the utopian vision of its creator and namesake, who purportedly wanted to create a place where adults and children could play together."

Inevitably with time, the reality of these ideas grew tired and clichéd. The Disney theme park is today a guilty pleasure, something to enjoy under the pretence of spoiling the kids. A place for a last ditch attempt at keeping the family together, or failing that, winning your child’s affection post-divorce. It was the preferred hang out of the fairly miserable, such as the Cruise family, who seem to have bought into the Disney experience with all the scepticism that they did fame.

In fact the outright gaudiness of Disneyland is almost too obvious to state. But going by these photos, only a few decades ago it seems to have been the preserve of an East Coast middle class looking for a good time. Like the final scene of Blue Velvet, where painted smiles, Technicolor foliage and faux-wicker fences remain capable of concealing the corruption underneath; so these parks, for a time, really did convince visitors of their magic.

Text by Nathalie Olah

Nathalie Olah is the Dazed & Confused Staff Writer. She has contributed to titles that include The Sunday Times Style, The Sunday Times Magazine and The Esthetica Review.