For the animated displays, certainly. The pixels usually contain an RGB LED with a built-in driver IC. The serial data is daisy-chained from one to the next. The big issue is voltage drop; DC is usually injected from both ends or at multiple points in a chain. For addressing, they are controlled by position in the chain, looking like a large shift register to the controller. Mapping between the address and physical position is still primarily manual, but there are a few systems that let you point a camera at your display and it will automatically address each by blinking it and seeing which one blinks.
For some display props, the individual props (a large lightbulb, a small tree, a grouping of candy canes), they often use wireless communications (often ARTNet over wifi) for control to reduce the wiring needed.
/mike
