It’s interesting that while Baudrillard seemed to lose relevance in the 1990s while they pursued photography and the web came along in a different modality based on publishing, since the “social” web and now the anti-social network the analysis of simulacra seems to have regained so much explanatory power. I enjoyed your tour, perhaps a prompt to revisit Andrew Ross’ Celebration Chronicles on the Disney model town, the chapter in that on the dismantling of the school is one of the most useful case studies on failed technocratic utopia.
Enjoyed the article, really brought me into something new! I am an avid Disney fan and not so sure it requires a deep dive into its existence. 😁Not everything can be or need be analyzed.
Disney World seems to me to act as a sort of Rorschach blot — reactions to it at least in part revealing to ourselves what our minds choose to foreground.
When I took my children there almost 15 years ago (as much as anything because my own parents refused to take us when we were young) what struck me most was the number of immensely corpulent patrons riding their scooters between rides — scooters which seemed to grant them priority in the lines, no less. That, the ubiquity of gift shops, and the marvel of efficiency with which the whole enterprise marshalled its army of employees to keep the whole gigantic mechanism turning in all its vast complexity.
Oh — and the surveillance. On our last day when we were in Downtown Disney my nine year old daughter threw up on the pavement near a wall out back of one of the shops, well away from any crowds. It couldn’t have been more than 30 or 40 seconds before maintenance personnel appeared (from where, exactly, I couldn’t determine) to dispose of the evidence of gastric misfortune. You can draw your own conclusions about the extensive camera and surveillance system necessary to respond so rapidly to such an innocuous incident.
This is what I think of when I think of Disney World--oddly enough from Huizinga's classic on the Middle Ages:
"French-Burgundian culture of the waning Middle Ages counts among those cultures in which beauty is replaced by splendor. Late medieval art reflects the spirit of the late Middle Ages faithfully, a spirit that had run its course. What we had posited as one of the most important characteristics of late medieval thought, the depiction of everything that could be thought down to the smallest detail, the over saturation of the mind with an endless system of formal representation, this, too, constitutes the essence of the art of that time. Art, too, tries to leave nothing unformed, unpresented, or undecorated. The flamboyant Gothic is like an endless organ postlude; it breaks down all forms by this self-analyzing process; every detail finds its continuous elaboration, each line its counterline. It is an unrestrainedly wild overgrowth of the idea by the form; ornate detail attacks every surface and line. That horror vacui, which may perhaps be identified as a characteristic of end periods of intellectual development, dominates in this art."
It’s interesting that while Baudrillard seemed to lose relevance in the 1990s while they pursued photography and the web came along in a different modality based on publishing, since the “social” web and now the anti-social network the analysis of simulacra seems to have regained so much explanatory power. I enjoyed your tour, perhaps a prompt to revisit Andrew Ross’ Celebration Chronicles on the Disney model town, the chapter in that on the dismantling of the school is one of the most useful case studies on failed technocratic utopia.
Enjoyed the article, really brought me into something new! I am an avid Disney fan and not so sure it requires a deep dive into its existence. 😁Not everything can be or need be analyzed.
Disney World seems to me to act as a sort of Rorschach blot — reactions to it at least in part revealing to ourselves what our minds choose to foreground.
When I took my children there almost 15 years ago (as much as anything because my own parents refused to take us when we were young) what struck me most was the number of immensely corpulent patrons riding their scooters between rides — scooters which seemed to grant them priority in the lines, no less. That, the ubiquity of gift shops, and the marvel of efficiency with which the whole enterprise marshalled its army of employees to keep the whole gigantic mechanism turning in all its vast complexity.
Oh — and the surveillance. On our last day when we were in Downtown Disney my nine year old daughter threw up on the pavement near a wall out back of one of the shops, well away from any crowds. It couldn’t have been more than 30 or 40 seconds before maintenance personnel appeared (from where, exactly, I couldn’t determine) to dispose of the evidence of gastric misfortune. You can draw your own conclusions about the extensive camera and surveillance system necessary to respond so rapidly to such an innocuous incident.
This is what I think of when I think of Disney World--oddly enough from Huizinga's classic on the Middle Ages:
"French-Burgundian culture of the waning Middle Ages counts among those cultures in which beauty is replaced by splendor. Late medieval art reflects the spirit of the late Middle Ages faithfully, a spirit that had run its course. What we had posited as one of the most important characteristics of late medieval thought, the depiction of everything that could be thought down to the smallest detail, the over saturation of the mind with an endless system of formal representation, this, too, constitutes the essence of the art of that time. Art, too, tries to leave nothing unformed, unpresented, or undecorated. The flamboyant Gothic is like an endless organ postlude; it breaks down all forms by this self-analyzing process; every detail finds its continuous elaboration, each line its counterline. It is an unrestrainedly wild overgrowth of the idea by the form; ornate detail attacks every surface and line. That horror vacui, which may perhaps be identified as a characteristic of end periods of intellectual development, dominates in this art."