Kelly Anne's post brought up the quote from Eco that "Disneyland tells us that technology can give us more reality than nature can" (Eco, 203). Kelly Anne discusses growing up in Orlando influencing her subjective perspective on Disneyland as variant from those non-Orlandians who are distinctely "other" in this case. I am one of those folk who are distinctely "other". I also grew up watching Disney movies and longed to visit the park itself and eventually did with my family but my experience was far different. Whereas Kelly Anne viewed the fireworks nightly from her docks I was in awe of the spectacle and grandeur of the display when I first witnessed it at Disneyland when I was a 5th grader. Being a severly A.D.D. child growing up the illusion provided me by Disney was a welcome refusal of reality. Admittedly I spent an enormous amount of time role-playing with my friends growing up, not dressed in the contemporary manifest of role play i.e. World of Warcraft characters but I'd run around and pretend I was an X-men, Power Ranger or a number of other characters in whose reality I saw something much different and superior to my own. The Disney movie that impacted me the most growing up was and still is "Hook" with Robin Williams and Dustin Hoffman. I remember being blown away by that when I saw it the first time. I was a huge Peter Pan fan as a tater tot and had ridden the Peter Pan ride during my visit to Disneyland but seeing it in live-action, modernized was unbelievable to me. This is where my thoughts differ from those of Eco as my reactions to "Hook" were the opposite to the quotation Kelly Anne brought into discussion.
I saw in "Hook" the battle between kids, adolescence and real life against the struggles of Peter's wonderboys/native bunch versus the technologically advanced mob of pirates in Hook's corner. Looking back and inspecting what I thought was so cool about "Hook" it was precisely this contrast. The kids and Robin Williams travel from an uninticing version of contemporary reality to this fantastical world. I saw in the family in the 'real world' of "Hook" as much like my own and admittedly wished for the escape. What is interesting in this is that in my daydreams I never played a technologically advanced pirate or Hook, but one of the wonderboys, mainly Rufio, fake sword fighting and throwing pudding at unnsuspecting neighbors (to their dismay). I would rub mud on my face and flip around the yard yelling 'RUUUUUFFFFFIIIIOOOOOOOOOOOOOHHHH" and annoy everyone around but the suspension of my disbelief was to a less civilized 'native' character not a technologically advanced pirate character. In fact I hated the technologically advanced pirates - I used to fake my brother was a pirate and attack him unsuspectingly in the kitchen using whatever I could find as a sword. I think the brilliance of Disney is exactly this, the lack of emphasis on technology over nature. When I think of that statement I think of all the films I loved growing up that disproved this sentiment; The Junglebook, The Little Mermaid, The Lion King, Snow White etc. In fact in the Junglebook I hated the technologically advanced 'white folk' coming into the jungle with their guns and found myself relating to Mogli, wanting to remain an uncivilized wild thing for as long as possible. I think the balance Disney plays with is childhood vs. adulthood, which is evident in the main characters primarily being cast as distinctely "other" (Mogli, Aladdin, Peter Pan, Pochahontas etc.) and the technologically advanced being cast in a negative light reminiscent of parental authority figures (Hook, The bad guy in Aladdin, Scar, the corporation in Fern Gully etc.). This toying with childhood ideology vs. parental ideology always resonated with me. I always wanted to play and be free and my parents were always reeling me back in and establishing dominance and that, in contrast to Eco, is where I find the child consumer resonating with Disney ideology - as a celebration of childhood naivety, not technological advancement as pre-requisite to happiness.
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