For someone who’s really into theme parks, Disney history, and the stories behind childhood favorites, I became a Defunctland fan far too late — but I’m so glad I did. The channel has a wonderful spread of videos, from the feature-length documentary-style ones that the channel is primarily known for to the shorter, quicker bite-sized dives into beloved educational children’s programming.
Every video on Defunctland, created by Kevin Perjurer, is sharp and funny and also incredibly informative. And every single one of those appeals to my interests, to the point where once I started watching, I had to ration them out so I didn’t just blitz through the channel all at once.
While many rave about the FastPass deep dive (which is so good!) or the investigation into who made the Disney Channel theme song (which might just make you cry!), my personal favorite has to be the story behind the American Idol Experience at Disney’s Hollywood Studios.
For many years, Hollywood Studios was my favorite Disney World park for two reasons: One, it originally housed an offshoot Disney animation studio which made two of my favorite Disney movies (Mulan and Lilo & Stitch), and two, it’s historically been a hot mess with an identity crisis that has only increased as time has gone on. But when I clicked on the American Idol Experience video, I wasn’t expecting it to actually be all about Hollywood Studios, specifically using this one very strange attraction as a touchpoint to really drill into what’s historically been weird and off about Hollywood Studios as a concept since its early days as MGM Studios.
That’s what Perjurer does so fantastically. He takes one specific thing — the American Idol Experience, FastPasses, the four notes of the Disney Channel theme, the Garfield dark ride — and uses it to examine not just the bigger-picture story of whatever theme park/media property the video is about, but also places it within a greater cultural context. What started as a YouTube series dedicated to the history of now-defunct (get it?) theme park attractions has grown into a channel with some of the most insightful cultural analysis on the internet.
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