Treatise on Disney
by Bean Newton
E.W. Wilder's foreword to the Burnt Coffin Series One: Disney
17. Americans need theme parks to remind them of their own
plasticity.
18. Perhaps part of the reason people don't connect with
Whitman and Dickinson anymore is that they were writing
pre-theme park.
19. Whitman's reaction to simple work, a glorification, an
apotheosis even, has been replaced by a six-foot tall
neotenistic mouse.
20. In the larger scheme of things, I guess, this makes perfect
sense.
21. I mean, why not deify mice? Especially mice that look like
babies?
22. No stranger is this, really, than a God of Thunder, or a God
with the head of a jackal and the body of a human.
23. Commandment #1. "Thou shalt have no other Mouse before Me."
24. And Walt sayeth unto them: "Love the Lord thy Mouse with all your
heart and all your soul and all your mind."
25. Plastic adj. Able to be molded easily; the quality of
malleability.
26. No matter how good are theme parks' sanitation, they all
smell like armpits.
27. And why not worship armpits?
28. "And He looked down at all the Money he had wrought, at all
the stocks in the arms of the shareholders, at the electric
revenue humming brightly in the bank, at the cash reserves
with their tight, neat packets of bills, and He saw that it
was Good."
29. I'd like to think that somewhere, back in the dark, infernal
recesses of our restless little minds, there is some part of
us, weak and spineless as it may be, that is utterly
nauseated by all this.
30. Heaven 1. paradise, eternal reward, the Garden of Eden.
2. Orlando, Florida.
31. Paradise, fortunately, only costs about $120 a day.
32. If, that is, you don't ride any of the rides.
33. God must put much into His image control department.
34. A Disney employee should always smile.
35. "I liked the part where the infant Hercules floated through
the soul-music inspired song-and-dance number. Made me
feel warm and sort of good towards him. Like a croissant."
36. Do you think they'll do Dante next?
37. We want the world to be perfect. Just like Ward and June.
Soon, everyone will think like us.
38. Experiments in theme-parks for the born-again have (Branson
excepted), for the most part, been failures. This is due
mainly to the fact that Disney is not falling in line with
Christianity or any orthodoxy except Capitalism. Instead,
it is supplanting Christianity.
39. It's about time this happened: Finally we have a religion
that actually represents our true values: making money,
being mildly entertaining, glossing over our difficult
history and challenging literature, making money, making
money.
40. Giving to the poor is too icky. It also does not reflect
our values. In DisneyWorld, there are no homeless.
41. I am Purchasing Power. Hear me roar.
42. We like Impressionism for much the same reasons: it seems to
represent a tradition of some kind; it's different, but not
too different; it has no harsh shadows; and it's sort of
fuzzy when you look real close.
43. I used to dream. Now I Disney.
