Week Five: In Which Mickey Mouse Decides To Play Historian…

I’m going to try and keep this post short and sweet, as I haven’t the time this week to wax verbose as I generally prefer to do. This week, the reading assignment focused around two essays from Mike Wallace’s Mickey Mouse History and Other Essays on American Memory. I’m going to focus on one of them, “Disney’s America.”

As many Americans older than I am may remember, Disney was facing a financial crisis in the 1980s. For a while, it was uncertain whether the company would recover or fold. By the end of the 80s, they had succeeded in producing some new movies which were big hits, such as Who Framed Roger Rabbit? and The Little Mermaid. Their brand was bouncing back, and my generation benefitted from it greatly. But Disney was also facing increased competition from other movie companies. In order to keep up, the company decided to launch a few new projects, including a theme park just outside of Paris, which struggled greatly, and registered hefty losses the first couple years, though it eventually became a profit-maker, and is still in operation, 20 years later. 

Because the theme park in France got off to such a rocky start, Disney decided to pursue a new project: Disney's America. Originally, it was supposed to be just outside of Washington, D.C. only five miles from the Manassas Battlefield. Of course, many people were concerned about the proximity of the park to the battlefield, worried that urban sprawl would threaten the battlefield's preservation as an important place in American history. This is definitely problematic for me- of course building any kind of large theme park or resort would threaten nearby areas, and a battlefield as important as Manassas should be protected. But for me, the park itself was the most problematic issue.

Originally, Disney claimed the park would contain various areas focusing on different parts of American history, including Native American culture and history, the Civil War, WWII, and Vietnam. Yes, I said Vietnam. Disney wanted to include the debacle that was Vietnam in a theme park. With rides. And games. Ehrm, I read that and actually said aloud, "What the heck, Disney? What the heck?!" Call me unreasonable, but I do have a problem including anything that's supposed to be accurate and thought-provoking on Vietnam, only to have it set up where people are on roller coasters minutes later. 

Of course, Disney quickly amended their original claim that the park's displays would be thought-provoking and accurate, saying, "The idea is to walk out of Disney's America with a smile on your face. It is going to be fun with a capital 'F'." Um. Wait a second, hold the phone. Are these people for realz? The theme park is going to include Vietnam, slavery and the underground railroad, the Civil War, Native American history...and yet somehow, these people are supposed to have as much fun exploring the horrors involved as in Disney World? I'm sorry, people. Not possible. If you're going to do that, back off the serious topics. In fact, just back off of history. 

The goal of presenting history should always be to provoke thought and increase knowledge. Sure, some things can still be fun and do those things. But to seek out "fun" while trying to educate about Vietnam and American slavery just seems so very wrong to me. Are we so addicted to "fun" that we must make all of life fun? Clearly, Disney did not end up building this theme park, and for that, I am grateful. It would have most likely severely trivialized history. Disney is not a learning company. It is an entertainment company. They specialize in drunk pirates, pixie dust, singing mermaids, and elephants that can fly. If Disney was to truly pull off a *good* site focusing on American history, and doing it accurately, it would have to realize that their profit margins on that site would probably be significantly lower than that of their other parks. They would also have to take special care to make sure that over time, they didn't "Disnefy" history. To do so would be a true atrocity.

One last observation I want to make. In the process of battling the public over the proposed site, Disney insulted historians. Wallace writes, "Adopting a populist stance, company publicists attacked opponents as 'landed gentry' foxhunters, or genteel 'no-growth proponents' who would turn the piedmont into an economic no-man's land and deprive working people of jobs." Disney included historians in this group, being painted as elitest and bourgeois. Nevermind that they're historians and might actually care to preserve the heritage that Disney seemed so eager to trivialize.
I like Disney, I really do. But Disney should stick to what it does best: fiction, fantasy, and animation.