believe his own gushing press releases, a guy who honestly doesn’t see the whole picture.
Maybe that’s the kind of person it takes, and maybe that’s what is so scary. To do what Eisner’s Team Rodent does, and do it on that scale, requires a degree of order that doesn’t exist in the natural world. Not all birds sing sweetly. Not all lakes are blue. Not all islands have sandy beaches.
But they can be fixed, and that is Disney’s fiendish specialty. What Team Rodent has “recreated” in Orlando—from an African savannah to an Atlantic reef, from a Mexican pyramid to a Chinese temple—has been engineered to fit the popular image and to hold that charm for tourist cameras. Under the Eisner reign, nothing in the real world cannot be copied and refined in the name of entertainment, and no place is safe.
Chamber-of-commerce types in Key West got ticked off recently when Disney World unveiled its own quaint version of America’s southernmost city, a half day’s drive from the real thing. Granted, Disney’s version of old Key West is cleaner, safer, and less margarita-sotted than the place after which it’s modeled. Yet there’s an element of insult—not to mention hard-hearted arrogance—in erecting a replica gingerbread townto compete with the original for tourists. I don’t mind, because it means fewer rental cars speeding past my house, but a business owner in Key West might feel differently.
The point is, you can spend a solid month at Disney World and never see evidence of the
real
Florida, save for the occasional renegade buzzard on a roadkill. The Magic Kingdom might as well be in Tucson or Nashville or Tacoma; it wouldn’t matter. Once inside the gates, the experience would be virtually identical—not at all unpleasant, just fake. A sublime and unbreakable artificiality. People might like it, but it’s not natural.
Which brings us back to the story of Nala, the lioness that escaped from the JungleLand zoo. For three glorious days she eluded searchers who tracked her by foot, 4-by-4, and helicopter. Satellite trucks lined State Road 192 and concerned-looking news correspondents beamed updates to points around the globe. Was the lion heading toward Disney World? How long before she got there? Was it safe for tourists to stay? What should they do if they encountered the animal? The drama escalated hour by hour, experts warning that the cat soon would be growing hungry.…
Now, in my lifetime I’ve seen many tourists so poorly behaved they deserved to be eaten alive by
something
. Tourons, they’re called down here. They come to Florida, they trash the place, then they go. So out of reflex I began fantasizing what might happen if, by providence, a Disney touron crossed paths with the half-starved lion—a rustle in the vinyl topiary, a tawny flash, a muffled outcry … and somewhere the ghost of Charles Darwin exclaiming, “Right you are! This is what it’s come to!” Or if not a loutish snowbird, then perhaps Ms. Kathie Lee Gifford, although for her the cat probably would need its claws. Another tasty possibility: Insane Clown Eisner himself, dragged down from behind as he hotfooted it across the phony savannah. Yo, Mikey, here’s your frigging “animal kingdom.”
But nothing so brutally ironic unfolded. Nala the lost lioness never made it to Walt Disney World; as a matter of fact, she headed in the other direction. Game wardens found her sulking beneath a palmetto bush, barely 150 yards from JungleLand. They zapped her with a tranquilizer dart and hauled her back to the cage, where she awoke and promptly began to chow down. The international press corps packed up and departed, as did the police, wildlife officers, and highway patrol.
And life goes on as before at the plasticfantastic Reedy Creek Improvement District. All is safe. All is secure.
A new project, Disney’s Wide World of Sports, has opened on what once was a two-hundred-acre wetland. Now there’s a double-decker baseball
Maybe that’s the kind of person it takes, and maybe that’s what is so scary. To do what Eisner’s Team Rodent does, and do it on that scale, requires a degree of order that doesn’t exist in the natural world. Not all birds sing sweetly. Not all lakes are blue. Not all islands have sandy beaches.
But they can be fixed, and that is Disney’s fiendish specialty. What Team Rodent has “recreated” in Orlando—from an African savannah to an Atlantic reef, from a Mexican pyramid to a Chinese temple—has been engineered to fit the popular image and to hold that charm for tourist cameras. Under the Eisner reign, nothing in the real world cannot be copied and refined in the name of entertainment, and no place is safe.
Chamber-of-commerce types in Key West got ticked off recently when Disney World unveiled its own quaint version of America’s southernmost city, a half day’s drive from the real thing. Granted, Disney’s version of old Key West is cleaner, safer, and less margarita-sotted than the place after which it’s modeled. Yet there’s an element of insult—not to mention hard-hearted arrogance—in erecting a replica gingerbread townto compete with the original for tourists. I don’t mind, because it means fewer rental cars speeding past my house, but a business owner in Key West might feel differently.
The point is, you can spend a solid month at Disney World and never see evidence of the
real
Florida, save for the occasional renegade buzzard on a roadkill. The Magic Kingdom might as well be in Tucson or Nashville or Tacoma; it wouldn’t matter. Once inside the gates, the experience would be virtually identical—not at all unpleasant, just fake. A sublime and unbreakable artificiality. People might like it, but it’s not natural.
Which brings us back to the story of Nala, the lioness that escaped from the JungleLand zoo. For three glorious days she eluded searchers who tracked her by foot, 4-by-4, and helicopter. Satellite trucks lined State Road 192 and concerned-looking news correspondents beamed updates to points around the globe. Was the lion heading toward Disney World? How long before she got there? Was it safe for tourists to stay? What should they do if they encountered the animal? The drama escalated hour by hour, experts warning that the cat soon would be growing hungry.…
Now, in my lifetime I’ve seen many tourists so poorly behaved they deserved to be eaten alive by
something
. Tourons, they’re called down here. They come to Florida, they trash the place, then they go. So out of reflex I began fantasizing what might happen if, by providence, a Disney touron crossed paths with the half-starved lion—a rustle in the vinyl topiary, a tawny flash, a muffled outcry … and somewhere the ghost of Charles Darwin exclaiming, “Right you are! This is what it’s come to!” Or if not a loutish snowbird, then perhaps Ms. Kathie Lee Gifford, although for her the cat probably would need its claws. Another tasty possibility: Insane Clown Eisner himself, dragged down from behind as he hotfooted it across the phony savannah. Yo, Mikey, here’s your frigging “animal kingdom.”
But nothing so brutally ironic unfolded. Nala the lost lioness never made it to Walt Disney World; as a matter of fact, she headed in the other direction. Game wardens found her sulking beneath a palmetto bush, barely 150 yards from JungleLand. They zapped her with a tranquilizer dart and hauled her back to the cage, where she awoke and promptly began to chow down. The international press corps packed up and departed, as did the police, wildlife officers, and highway patrol.
And life goes on as before at the plasticfantastic Reedy Creek Improvement District. All is safe. All is secure.
A new project, Disney’s Wide World of Sports, has opened on what once was a two-hundred-acre wetland. Now there’s a double-decker baseball
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