So if I told you someone was using century-old hand-crafted artisanal methods to adapt traditional folk tales into a quaintly obsolete art form from the American Golden Age that would sound like the most twee, precious, non-normie thing ever and I just described Disney animation.
Disney’s pretty weird like that. Like, take the parks. They’re combinations of Coney Island and World’s Fairs with this undisguisable midcentury earnestness. These are places that get seriously psyched about the potential of noveltransitmodalities.
And the theming – “Let’s look forward to the wonderful future of space exploration, celebrate our roots in farm towns and the frontier west, AND enjoy the exotic charm of the South Pacific and Old Dixie!”
THERE IS A PAGEANT WHERE ROBOTS PAY TRIBUTE TO EXECUTIVE-DRIVEN WHIG HISTORY.
Oh. Oh. And. “The rides aren’t very thrilling, but your kids will love the chance to explore the worlds of all their favorite authors – A.A. Milne, J.M. Barrie, Kenneth Grahame, Mark Twain, AND Lewis Carroll – while you’ll marvel at the exquisite background design.”
(Sun-dappled Edwardian neoteny and obsessive set decoration. Wes Anderson makes movies like Walt Disney made parks.)
And we’d recognize this all as a weird thing to exist in 2015 if we weren’t just used to it as the background noise of America. Like, I don’t really watch TV so I don’t see commercials much these days.
Oh man, they’re a trip in their own right if you’ve stopped taking them for granted. Like, “oh hey, for the next 30 seconds some of our best artists are going to use all their techniques and leverage all your emotions and desires and every social value in a masterful, unapologetic, and unforgettable bid for you to give us money, and then everyone will move on and no one will acknowledge this even happened.”
But the Disney World commercials in particular – you notice they don’t really make a case for going to Disney World, or even really explain what Disney World is. Because they’re not pitching Disney World, they’re reminding you of Disney World. It’s not “hey, Disney World is a thing you could go to”, it’s “hey, maybe it’s time for this generation’s pilgrimage”.
Disney’s weird. It’s kind of a company, but also custodian of some of the cultic functions of American culture, something like the priestly colleges of ancient Rome.
Like, they maintain sites of pilgrimage. I’m not saying that as a joke. Back of the envelope calculation, Americans go to Disney parks at a rate 7 times higher than Muslims go to Mecca. (The line between “tourist trap” and “religious site” has always been thin.)
And they’re custodians of the national narrative. Like I’ve said, they pitch “continuity with prewar small town and earlier frontier culture” as a fundamental, almost taken-for-granted aspect of Americanness with a confidence and charm you don’t often see these days. And I mean, hell, the Disney animated canon itself basically is to America what Grimm’s was to Germany.
And as custodians, they curate that narrative – like, we joke about “you know your identity group’s made it in America when you get your own Disney princess”, and laugh at the people reediting Disney character designs to look like their specific subgroup, but that only works because it’s fucking true, your identity group’s made it in America when you get your own Disney princess. I’ve worked with Disney Channel casting, and they mix ethnicities with the same care, precision, and scale that Pfizer mixes drugs.
And that robot pageant, the Hall of Presidents? Look at this history. It started out in the ‘70s as a celebration of consensus history and popular triumph, with character actors playing great men and Civil War tensions understood as a challenge to national unity. In 1993 it was reworked by Eric Foner to be narrated by Maya Angelou, use “regular people” unknowns to portray more vulnerable takes on historic figures and re-frame the Civil War in terms of slavery as a moral challenge. In 2009 they redid it again, mostly keeping the changes but bringing back some of the old Hollywood charm and putting Morgan Freeman as the voice of civic authority.
And like, as a representation of how America understands itself and its history, correct. That is absolutely, in every way, 100% correct.
(In the other direction, Walt Disney originally wanted to call it “One Nation Under God”, which yikes)
They say American copyright terms keep getting extended under pressure from Disney who wants to keep hold of all their founding properties, I almost wonder if it wouldn’t be less of a corruption of the civic system to just carve out special protections for Disney in recognition of their distinct role in America.
I used to be a lot more libertarian than I am now, and one of their tribal boogiemen, the idea of a “Ministry of Culture” – a government that sees the national culture as its domain, to shape as it will, “as it will” meaning as it always does with governments “through the instrument of bureaucracy” – that still rankles.
But what’s the alternative, though? You think about it and you realize it’s this – the national mythos rests in the hands of a publicly traded corporation.
(And then you maybe start to appreciate WHY having your king as the head of your church once made sense as a symbol of liberty and self-determination.)
#a few years ago OP began putting blanket infohazard warnings on his writing #I think his level of seriousness about that‚ from his own perspective‚ was somewhere above 0% and below 100% #but it’s been my experience that when people say stuff like that‚ they’re usually right even if they think they’re not #so I blacklisted his username #but blacklisting doesn’t apply to webpage view‚ so I did end up learning today of his death #I went back and checked the kontextmaschine posts that were on my dash today #and found that he was the one who wrote this classic post #which‚ it turns out‚ I have never actually reblogged #so‚ then‚ in honour of his memory‚ here is that one post with the thing #Disney #disappointed permanent resident of The Future #(is that tag about Disney or about the existence of mortality? yes) #death tw #this probably deserves some other warning tag but I am not sure what
Mom didn’t plan this, but my sister went to Cedar Point September 15, 2001.
Because the hotel was non refundable.
The lines for everything were so short my mother eventually started letting a 7-year-old ride alone because she couldn’t handle 6 rides an hour on Millenium Force.
but really, not going to cedar point would have been letting the terrorists win. riding millenium force twenty times in a row as an expression of the indomitable american spirit, etc
God, being at Disney World on 9/11 was such a pain.
They closed the parks. September 11th was supposed to be the monthly open-late night, and they didn’t hold a replacement open-late night (I think they did refund the tickets, but the late hours worked better with our sleep schedule and I was looking forward to that). We were on hold so long trying to find out if our plane back had been cancelled that I took a shift of keeping an ear on the phone because Dad was getting tired, and eventually we learned that it had been. All of the adults were very sad all the time and spent an entire day watching the same two clips over and over, as if it would help anything. My parents wouldn’t come out of their room that night: I had to make myself microwave popcorn for dinner.
(It wasn’t *as* much of a pain as it could have been. The hotel let us stay for free for a couple of extra days until we could make alternate travel arrangements. The rental-car company let us take their car and drop it off at their Philadelphia branch.)
The length of the lines was not what stuck out to me.
Tags:
#posts from seven-year-old me #9/11 #Disney #home of the brave #my childhood #reply via reblog #this probably deserves some warning tag but I am not sure what
I can’t trust any take on Disney from someone so clearly ignorant of what he’s talking about that he can say this with a straight face:
“That is because in normal times you must choose perhaps four or five big rides, each lasting mere minutes, and spend hours waiting in line to be admitted to each.”
Dude, just showing up at a major Disney ride and expecting to be seated is like just showing up at a fancy restaurant and expecting to be seated: in both cases *you are supposed to make a reservation*. When I went in the autumn of 2015, ride reservations (“FastPasses”) were quite flexible (one-hour usage window) and very often available on a same-day basis: while we *had* reservations months in advance, we made last-minute adjustments to them pretty much every day (you can do this on your phone, thanks to the complimentary Wi-Fi [link]).
(Also a part of me is going “you’re complaining about how expensive everything is and yet you stayed at the fucking *Contemporary*??”, while another part goes “why did the Atlantic send some poor dude with a COVID-19-naive immune system to fucking *Florida*? they’re a bunch of Americans in the summer of 2020: did they *seriously* not have anybody who’d had it already that they could send instead?”)
Still, it’s interesting to hear some reporting from the field. Just…with some caveats.
That is all relatively recent, though. Fastpass was introduced in 1999; I definitely remember the process he describes from when I was growing up. And the author is of course describing how Disney “usually” is off of secondhand reports, since he’s never been before.
But yeah, the article is great as a description of how Disney is now. And the observations about it as being part of the American civic religion aren’t original but they are fairly good points.
I *suppose* you could call 21 years relatively recent compared to the total span of Disney World’s existence, but it’s simultaneously a long time.
I guess a generational thing does add another layer to the bit about his parents refusing to go there: *I* grew up hearing Dad complain about “standing in line for hours for every five minutes of ride” as the reason he refused to go to *Six Flags*, and perhaps even specifically as a reason why Disney was better than Six Flags.
(A bit of context: I was born in 1993 to a family that *was* upper-middle-class at the time and a mom that loves Disney World. I’ve been five times: 1998, 2000, 2001 (we were there on 9/11, it was a hell of a thing), 2004, and 2015. Our trips were generally around 1.5 – 2 weeks long: trying to cram everything into a long weekend is a recipe for exhaustion and FOMO.)
—
In additional to the description of how things were going on the ground, I thought the bits about the Disney World government having legitimacy in the eyes of its constituents, in a way the American government does not, were an interesting way of looking at it.
Yeah, I think there’s something of a generational thing going on there maybe?
I was born 1986 and we went to Disney World like eight or ten times when I was a kid/teenager. I think we might have gone there, one way or another, every year from 95 or 96 to 2000 or 2001 or something like that? And then I wound up there again in 2004.
(And then I also went to Disneyland in August 2004 because it was effectively a compulsory part of college orientation, long story. I used my deep knowledge of Disney World to go around with a couple friends and maximize the time we could spend in air conditioning. I think we rode Small World multiple times becuase it was shady, air conditioned, and had short lines.)
Fastpass was introduced toward the end of that, so I definitely remember it as “that new thing they just rolled out that makes the lines easier to deal with”. But by the time they’d introduced it I was absolutely fucking sick of going to Disney World.
But yeah, if you asked me what Disney World was like, my gut reaction was “Standing in these awful lines constantly, although I think they did a thing to make that better recently.” Also, I don’t know how the system works now, but when Fastpass was new you could only have one at a time. So you’d get a Fastpass for a long-line ride like Space Mountain or something, and then you’d go stand in long lines for other attractions while you waited for your time to come around. So it let you do more things but still the dominant experience was “standing in line”.
But yeah, the bits about Disney’s “governmental” legitimacy were really interesting. I kept using the phrase “American Singapore” to a Disneyphile friend today, who eventually responded: “I think there’s a limit to my appreciation of the dystopian artwork in which we find ourselves.”
As of 2015, there were three tiers of ride and you started off with one reservation in each tier. There were circumstances (I’m not sure of the exact rules now) where you could snap up extra FastPasses that other people had abandoned (and/or perhaps that Disney had added upon seeing the ride wasn’t full enough), and I remember them being fairly easy to find. But OTOH this *was* September, a month so slow that Disney bribed us with a free meal plan to schedule our trip for that time period.
(Joke’s on them: we were planning to go for September anyway. That meal plan was great: more credits than we could possibly use (presumably it was aimed to accommodate people with much higher appetites), and with prices denoted simply in “meals” and “snacks” rather than dollars. Being 100% price-insensitive in your food-buying decisions is a wonderfully liberating experience.)
Tags:
#reply via reblog #Disney #politics cw #illness tw #covid19 #home of the brave #food #adventures in human capitalism #disordered eating?
I can’t trust any take on Disney from someone so clearly ignorant of what he’s talking about that he can say this with a straight face:
“That is because in normal times you must choose perhaps four or five big rides, each lasting mere minutes, and spend hours waiting in line to be admitted to each.”
Dude, just showing up at a major Disney ride and expecting to be seated is like just showing up at a fancy restaurant and expecting to be seated: in both cases *you are supposed to make a reservation*. When I went in the autumn of 2015, ride reservations (“FastPasses”) were quite flexible (one-hour usage window) and very often available on a same-day basis: while we *had* reservations months in advance, we made last-minute adjustments to them pretty much every day (you can do this on your phone, thanks to the complimentary Wi-Fi [link]).
(Also a part of me is going “you’re complaining about how expensive everything is and yet you stayed at the fucking *Contemporary*??”, while another part goes “why did the Atlantic send some poor dude with a COVID-19-naive immune system to fucking *Florida*? they’re a bunch of Americans in the summer of 2020: did they *seriously* not have anybody who’d had it already that they could send instead?”)
Still, it’s interesting to hear some reporting from the field. Just…with some caveats.
That is all relatively recent, though. Fastpass was introduced in 1999; I definitely remember the process he describes from when I was growing up. And the author is of course describing how Disney “usually” is off of secondhand reports, since he’s never been before.
But yeah, the article is great as a description of how Disney is now. And the observations about it as being part of the American civic religion aren’t original but they are fairly good points.
I *suppose* you could call 21 years relatively recent compared to the total span of Disney World’s existence, but it’s simultaneously a long time.
I guess a generational thing does add another layer to the bit about his parents refusing to go there: *I* grew up hearing Dad complain about “standing in line for hours for every five minutes of ride” as the reason he refused to go to *Six Flags*, and perhaps even specifically as a reason why Disney was better than Six Flags.
(A bit of context: I was born in 1993 to a family that *was* upper-middle-class at the time and a mom that loves Disney World. I’ve been five times: 1998, 2000, 2001 (we were there on 9/11, it was a hell of a thing), 2004, and 2015. Our trips were generally around 1.5 – 2 weeks long: trying to cram everything into a long weekend is a recipe for exhaustion and FOMO.)
—
In additional to the description of how things were going on the ground, I thought the bits about the Disney World government having legitimacy in the eyes of its constituents, in a way the American government does not, were an interesting way of looking at it.
P.S. Oh, also we homeschooled, which meant we could arrange to go during the school year (usually in autumn, sometimes winter). So come to think of it, that’s another reason why my experience of Disney would paint it as less crowded (and with less miserable weather!) than many people claim.
(Florida in the autumn is basically the same as New Jersey in the summer: my body was already adapted to that temperature and humidity range in general, and in most cases had the advantage of having *recently used* said adaptations (since New Jersey summer had only just ended). (Though in 2015, when I’d spent the last eight years in Canada, I was pleasantly surprised by how intact my heat tolerance was. My body walked out of the airport into the 95F-and-very-humid dusk, went “Oh hey, it’s summer! I remember summer! I haven’t had summer in *years*!”, flicked a few settings, and happily continued on its way.))
Tags:
#reply via reblog #my childhood #Disney #politics cw #illness tw #home of the brave #covid19 #homeschool #weather
I can’t trust any take on Disney from someone so clearly ignorant of what he’s talking about that he can say this with a straight face:
“That is because in normal times you must choose perhaps four or five big rides, each lasting mere minutes, and spend hours waiting in line to be admitted to each.”
Dude, just showing up at a major Disney ride and expecting to be seated is like just showing up at a fancy restaurant and expecting to be seated: in both cases *you are supposed to make a reservation*. When I went in the autumn of 2015, ride reservations (“FastPasses”) were quite flexible (one-hour usage window) and very often available on a same-day basis: while we *had* reservations months in advance, we made last-minute adjustments to them pretty much every day (you can do this on your phone, thanks to the complimentary Wi-Fi [link]).
(Also a part of me is going “you’re complaining about how expensive everything is and yet you stayed at the fucking *Contemporary*??”, while another part goes “why did the Atlantic send some poor dude with a COVID-19-naive immune system to fucking *Florida*? they’re a bunch of Americans in the summer of 2020: did they *seriously* not have anybody who’d had it already that they could send instead?”)
Still, it’s interesting to hear some reporting from the field. Just…with some caveats.
That is all relatively recent, though. Fastpass was introduced in 1999; I definitely remember the process he describes from when I was growing up. And the author is of course describing how Disney “usually” is off of secondhand reports, since he’s never been before.
But yeah, the article is great as a description of how Disney is now. And the observations about it as being part of the American civic religion aren’t original but they are fairly good points.
I *suppose* you could call 21 years relatively recent compared to the total span of Disney World’s existence, but it’s simultaneously a long time.
I guess a generational thing does add another layer to the bit about his parents refusing to go there: *I* grew up hearing Dad complain about “standing in line for hours for every five minutes of ride” as the reason he refused to go to *Six Flags*, and perhaps even specifically as a reason why Disney was better than Six Flags.
(A bit of context: I was born in 1993 to a family that *was* upper-middle-class at the time and a mom that loves Disney World. I’ve been five times: 1998, 2000, 2001 (we were there on 9/11, it was a hell of a thing), 2004, and 2015. Our trips were generally around 1.5 – 2 weeks long: trying to cram everything into a long weekend is a recipe for exhaustion and FOMO.)
—
In additional to the description of how things were going on the ground, I thought the bits about the Disney World government having legitimacy in the eyes of its constituents, in a way the American government does not, were an interesting way of looking at it.
Tags:
#reply via reblog #Disney #politics cw #illness tw #covid19 #home of the brave
I can’t trust any take on Disney from someone so clearly ignorant of what he’s talking about that he can say this with a straight face:
“That is because in normal times you must choose perhaps four or five big rides, each lasting mere minutes, and spend hours waiting in line to be admitted to each.”
Dude, just showing up at a major Disney ride and expecting to be seated is like just showing up at a fancy restaurant and expecting to be seated: in both cases *you are supposed to make a reservation*. When I went in the autumn of 2015, ride reservations (“FastPasses”) were quite flexible (one-hour usage window) and very often available on a same-day basis: while we *had* reservations months in advance, we made last-minute adjustments to them pretty much every day (you can do this on your phone, thanks to the complimentary Wi-Fi [link]).
(Also a part of me is going “you’re complaining about how expensive everything is and yet you stayed at the fucking *Contemporary*??”, while another part goes “why did the Atlantic send some poor dude with a COVID-19-naive immune system to fucking *Florida*? they’re a bunch of Americans in the summer of 2020: did they *seriously* not have anybody who’d had it already that they could send instead?”)
Still, it’s interesting to hear some reporting from the field. Just…with some caveats.
Tags:
#Disney #reply via reblog #covid19 #home of the brave #politics cw? #illness tw
Welcome back! I’m afraid I didn’t notice when you left…
I didn’t say much about it because…well, first of all it’s very hard to talk about going to Disney World without sounding awkwardly frivolous. It sounded awkwardly frivolous to me when Mom first said we were going. On the other hand, that “first said we were going” was two years ago. There’s been a fair few obstacles in the family’s path over those two years, and I saw the way that the thought of a Disney trip at the end of the tunnel kept Mom going. It was probably worth it for that alone.
(Especially when she managed to convince them to give us a whole bunch of Disney restaurant credits: one “snack” (roughly what you’d think it means, though it had to have a symbol next to it on the menu indicating you could use a credit on it) and two fast-food “meals” (entree, beverage, dessert, though you could swap out any or all of those three for any available snack) per person per day. She got all this for the low, low price of researching Disney enough to hear about the free-food promotion (that bit wasn’t really a price, as she enjoyed it), staying up most of one night to get in as soon as the deal opened, spending an hour and a half on hold while trying not to fall asleep, and promising to stay in a Disney-owned hotel and schedule our trip for mid-September, which is apparently a relatively bad time for them profit-wise because most kids have just gone back to school. Joke’s on them: we were going to go then regardless, and I think we were going to be in a Disney hotel too.
The portions in Disney, for the record, are very big, and our appetites (especially mine) are not so big, so it was rather more credits than we could actually use on the trip itself. We ended up bringing back about a hundred chocolate bars to eat at home later, as they were the least perishable tasty thing available for a snack credit.)
Also, I was taught as a young child that the fact that one is leaving one’s house unoccupied is a vulnerability that should be kept secret as much as practical until after it is over. Intellectually, I’m not convinced this is reasonable advice, but on more visceral levels I’ve inherited much of the paranoia of my native culture, and perhaps added some of my own.
This all actually sounds pretty cool. I hope you had fun!
Tags:
#(September 2015) #(was checking my ”replies” tag to confirm that I’d already posted a reply at the time and found this other post) #conversational aglets #Disney #food
Are you going to buy a stuffed animal at Disneyland for your future child? My parents did that while visiting Disney during their first trying-to-conceive stage, and I always liked being able to tell people that I’d had my Winnie the Pooh teddy for [current age + 1] years.
Brinens and Things 