Andres Fluffy Aguilar

Andres Fluffy Aguilar is a scholar, a higher education professional, and theatre practitioner, playwright, and director from San Bernardino, California. He is currently the Assistant Director for Educational Outreach at the Draper Center for Community Partnerships at Pomona College (and an alumnus of the Pomona College Academy for Youth Success (PAYS) program.) He graduated from Hamilton College with a BA in Interdisciplinary Studies titled Theatre Arts in Education as Social Change (focused on Latin America). As a young emerging professional, he questions and focuses on whether personal, societal, and communal identities are subjects to their own performance(s) with the social-economic/socio-political climate in Latin America. More recently, Fluffy has focused on the affects of Disney onto immigrant populations in the United States, questioning the liminal spaces in-between magic/imagination and reality. 

Title of Project

The Magical Immigrant Illusion: Disneyland

Description of Project

The power of Disney’s imagination and magic has transversed space and time for many populations, especially immigrant communities in search of their “happily ever after” in lands that are far from their own. Disneyland, a center of magic and imagination, has been a liminal space of desire from reality – a place of encounter with illusory lands that resemble the hope of the immigrant. This site replicates a cycle of the migrant child who wishes upon a star for their dream(s) to become reality.The cooperate giant of Disney monetizes this dream to fantasize about a life that could be. Through personal and familial relationship to the site of Disneyland, I will examine the ways in which this space has been an illusionary site of hope and being for an immigrant family in the United States of America. The performative lands and acts of Disneyland have served immigrant populations with an illusion of escapism from realities – desiring to live in an imaginative state of perfect endings.

Areas of Academic Interest

Performance Studies; Latin American Studies; Immigration Studies; Queer Studies; American Studies; Humanities and the Arts