Monday, April 18, 2011

It's a Small (Fake) World!

---------------------------------

“To all who come to this happy place: Welcome. Disneyland is your land. Here age relives fond memories of the past, and here youth may savor the challenge and promise of the future. Disneyland is dedicated to the ideals, the dreams, and the hard facts that have created America, with the hope that it will be a source of joy and inspiration to all the world.
Walter E. Disney, July 17 1955 (ezmason512)

---------------------------------
Jean Baudrillard's critique of the postmodern world has referred to “the phenomenon of global financial speculation, ever-increasing tourism, and the frenzied stimulation of consumer desire through the media” (Baudrillard 1553). And what better example of all three of those things than Disneyland? In an excerpt from “The Precession of Simulacra,” Baudrillard discusses Disneyland as a simulacrum – an illusion or representation of something fabricated and somehow inferior to the original – was quite shocking to me. I never figured Disneyland in all its consumer splendor and flashing lights to be a false representation of the real world. Taking in part what was discussed in class, the concept that each of the “worlds” in Disneyland – Tomorrowland, Adventureland, Fronterierland, Fantasyland and Main Street – representing places, times and histories that never existed makes the theme park seem perverse and twisted. Where is the roller coaster that tells us of how the frontier folk slaughtered the Native Americans? Why aren’t there dead bodies piled up on the banks of the Jungle Cruise ride to represent the thousands killed by transmitted diseases from European conquerors? If Tomorrowland is the optimistic vision of the future, have the dystopian fiction writers like Huxley and Orwell been lying to us? Main streets exist in small and large towns all over the country, and yet none of them blend the home-grown, small-town feel with Victorian-esque attire that Disneyland’s Main Street has. As Baudrillard says, Disneyland encompasses American ideals, an “idealised (sic) transposition of a contradictory reality” (1565). Having Sleeping Beauty’s castle looming in the distance as visitors enter the park casts an unrealistic setting on the area, as if to say “here is where your boring real life ends; welcome to the fantastically wonderful and exciting dreamland of discouragement and unreal expectations!” for the perfect world that Disneyland claims to represent can never exist in real life.

Each cast member – and yes, this is what the park employees are called; they use show terms including backstage, on-stage and audience – is expected to be “on” all the time in order to keep up the illusion that this is how Disneyland is all the time. Last year, there was controversy when a Muslim park employee who was told she couldn’t wear her head scarf in observance of Ramadan because it wasn’t “part of the costume… [of] somebody in an on-stage position like hers” (Flaccus 1). While the Disney company is held in high esteem by mass culture, they have often blatantly ignored their own employees’ rights and individualism. I would argue that this directly opposes the Disney concept of a world of inclusion, equality and happiness, and thus voids the power that Disney holds. By identifying Disneyland as a simulacrum, we can understand that it is a fabricated, constructed and meticulously deliberate portrayal of worlds, cultures and people that never existed, as well as concepts (like equality) that are good in theory but much harder to put into practice.

If Disneyland is presented as a representation of American life, culture and values, what does that mean for reality? Because the truth of reality is covered up, toned down - there is, for example, no piles of trash blocking ride entrances from the overflux of overweight stroller-pushers - then Disneyland isn't based in reality at all. 

And don’t even get me started on the “It’s a Small World” ride!

(554)

Baudrillard, Jean. “The Precession of Simulacra.” Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. Ed. Vincent B. Leitch. W.W. Norton & Company: New York, 2010. 1553-1566. Print.

ezmason512. “Walt Disney Speech.” YouTube.com. YouTube, 3 May 2009. Web. 18 April 2011.

Flaccus, Gillian. “Muslim Disneyland Employee: Park Banned My Scarf.” HUFFPOST: Los Angeles. The Huffington Post, 19 August 2010. Web. 18 April 2011.

No comments:

Post a Comment