Katherine meets Mary Poppins.
Hey, Tower English has raised the drawbridge for two weeks and we are officially on holiday now. We just got back from Tokyo Disneyland and on the packed commuter train home, I struggled to find the ideal analogy to sum up the experience. Here are some of the contenders, arranged in alphabetical order for ease of reference:
- Abattoir: That image certainly sprang to mind on a few occasions as we dutifully lined up in snaking lines, shuffling forward like pigs to the slaughter, only we never knew if at the end of the line it would be a merciful bolt to the head or a painfully slow finish (have you been on the "It's a Small World" ride recently?)
- Communism: It's those lines. You get to the stage where you see a queue and just join the end of it hoping for something worthwhile at the end. Is this the queue for bread? Hey, the sign said it's only 30 minutes' wait. Let's queue! Oh, at the end of it is a performance of mechanical bears singing country and western (they really were)... great!
- Consumerism: Buy your ticket; buy some junk food; buy some plastic souvenir with a corporate logo on it to give to your loved ones who couldn't share the magic with you today.
- Fascist state: We were constantly reminded of Our Glorious Leader's vision - no, not the emperor, silly, but Walt Disney - his statue stood by the entrance, with his left hand holding Mickey Mouse, his right raised in a non-threatening half salute/wave to the youth of the world.
- A Science Fiction disutopia. Is this a Brave New World where we are bred to accept the needs of the collective good. Hey, you there, why aren't you having A GOOD TIME? THIS IS FUN. START SINGING! Oh, by the way, the machines are in charge now. They run the show and are the show (see the entry under communism for proof). Another troubling question nagged at me during my stint in D-land - what has happened to all the over 30s employees? Every single always-smiling-always-helpful staffer was well under 30. Was this place like Logan's Run, where everyone is bumped off before they are old enough to know better? When someone discovers the truth ("Hey, this place is a Mickey Mouse operation! I want out!") are they taken aside and rendered into a fibre-glass Polyfiller and smeared over the cracks in Western Land?
Or put it another way, I didn't like it much, but the girls loved it, they want to be princesses after all. Repeat after me: It's a small world after all, it's a small world after all...
Phew, rant over. I feel better now.
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2 comments:
Patrick, I enjoyed your alphabetical trip around Disneyland - it brought back memories of sitting in a gaudy mechanical vehicle in the California Disneyland passing through flocks of mechanical birds and there, in the midst, was a real sparrow foraging for food, quite indifferent to the artifice and artificiality around. 'Look,' I cried, 'a real bird - what a marvel of nature!' But people (and maybe you and Geoff) thought I was mad. Welcome to the madhouse. I think you could have added 'Infantilism' (to develop your observation that over-30s employees don't exist). All adults are expected to become children (suffer the little children to come unto me - Walt), indeed, some adults, without the excuse of accompanying children/grandchildren, voluntarily go to Disneyland. Hard to understand, except that child = good, adult = bad?
Yes, and here in Japan there is the added cult of kawaii - everything that is cute is considered good. During a stage show featuring gaudily made-up men and women dressed as Peter Pan and such prancing about the stage doing Hooray for Hollywood numbers, I looked around the audience and saw a number of middle-aged women wearing Mickey Mouse ears, rapturously fixated on the stage. Is this somehow related to the unhealthy fixation on Princess Di?
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