Disneyland and the fading premise of reality in postmodern society

Disneyland the fading premise of Disneyland: The Fading Premise of Reality in a Postmodern Society

Postmodern society is frequently accused of being rife with spectacle. The modern assimilation of sensationalism, mediatisation and commercialism combines to create a society in which the real and the unreal are only distinguishable by the outsider. Every popular scene is simulacrum of an idealized reality, unlike any that actually creates context in this world. The society as a whole is even marked by the symbolic representation of branding and the dramatic artistic expression of its standards. There is no greater example of this than Disneyland, as it is a place where the eye is clearly meant to be fooled along with the whole rest of the being. Baudrillard claims that as a culture we have created a world in which there is no longer a representative "real" from which the simulation or hyperreal representation is based, it is instead now the replacement and the "real " and that;

the generation by models of a real without origin or a reality: a hyperreal. The territory no longer precedes the map, nor survives it. Henceforth, it is the map that precedes the territory -- precession of simulacra -- it is the map that engenders the territory (Baudrillard ND).

Disneyland is an expression of just such hyperreality as even though many of the stories the characters were once based upon ("historical" characters that is) no longer exist in any real sense of historical representation so the images we see of the hyperreal, real only better are the reality. The place envelopes the spectator in a postmodern representation of the ultimate simulacrum, an alternative reality that is made from the imagination of stories and standards once realistic but now fully watered down into a collective soup of illusion.

Baudrillard actually directly discuses Disneyland and describes it as an attempt to capture the "real" world and integrate it into a synthetic world of its creation in an attempt to make the outside world, which is also simulacrum look more real;

The Disneyland imaginary is neither true nor false: it is a deterrence machine set up in order to rejuvenate in reverse the fiction of the real. Whence the debility, the infantile degeneration of this imaginary. It ~s meant to be an infantile world, in order to make us believe that the adults are elsewhere, in the "real" world, and to conceal the fact that real childishness is everywhere, particularly among those adults who go there to act the child in order to foster illusions of their real childishness. (Baudrillard NP)

Disney appeals to false nostalgia, the desire to recreate a better world that never existed except in fantasy. The world of Disneyland is a false world where beautiful castles and complete lack of stress and responsibility reign supreme. If such a scene never really existed, then the images of the past that Disneyland attempts to foster as simulacra, in its most banal form. "When the real is no longer what it was, nostalgia assumes its full meaning. There is a plethora of myths of origin and of signs of reality" (Baudrillard NP)

Disneyland and other theme parks create a need for escapism, idealized individuation and instant gratification that produces a universal theme among most visitors. (Wilson 26) This is also true of other theme parks and is supported by the idea that if an individual physically participates in an action inside of such a place then the place and its "reality" must be real.

Baudrillard discusses this enigma by discussing the difference between dissimulation and simulation;

To dissimulate is to feign not to have what one has. To simulate is to feign to have what one hasn't. One implies a presence, the other an absence. But the matter is more complicated, since to simulate is not simply to feign: "Someone who feigns an illness can simply go to bed and pretend he is ill. Someone who simulates an illness produces in himself some of the symptoms" (Littre). Thus, feigning or dissimulating leaves the reality principle intact: the difference is always clear, it is only masked; whereas simulation threatens the difference between "true" and "false," between "real" and "imaginary." Since the simulator produces "true" symptoms, is he or she ill or not? The simulator cannot be treated objectively either as ill, or as not ill. Psychology and medicine stop at this point, before a thereafter undiscoverable truth of the illness. For if any symptom can be "produced," and can no longer be accepted as a fact of nature, then every illness may be considered as simulatable and simulated, and medicine loses its meaning since it only knows how to treat "true" illnesses by their objective causes. Psychosomatics evolves in a dubious way on the edge of the illness principle. As for psychoanalysis, it transfers the symptom from the organic to the unconscious order: once again, the latter is held to be real, more real than the former; but why should simulation stop at the portals of the unconscious? Why couldn't the "work" of the unconscious be "produced" in the same way as any other symptom in classical medicine? Dreams already are. (Baudrillard, NP)

It must be made clear though that Disneyland is not the only destination for the hyperreal, as many other nations contain theme amusement parks that answer the same call within the context of the culture in which they are developed. BonBonLand in Holme Olstrup, Denmark provides and excellent comparative model to the hyperreal Disneyland. Though Disneyland and BonBonLand are certainly not on the same scale in planning and development BonBonLand is the fourth largest amusement park in Denmark, the fifth biggest tourist attraction and it offers outstanding examples of hyperreality. BonBonLand is an amusement park owned by a candy manufacturer that like Disney creates multimedia stories around their very popular products including dog fart candy. The park includes some rather strange rides including a rollercoaster called 'dogfart switchback', as well as some rather risque themed rides and advertisements.

This work will compare the two parks in conjunction with the key terms hyperreality, simulation, simulacrum, representation, postmodernism and identity and according to a set of six research questions surrounding these thematic terms. Namely: How do Disneyland and Bonbon Land Differ in terms of hyperreality? Do Disneyland and Bonbon land say anything about the national identities associated with the parks? In What way to Disneyland and Bonbon land differ in terms the simulation of life? Is there any particular representation at either park that is profound for the observer? Is postmodernism a reflection of the illusion of either parks or just one? And lastly What aspect of each park most represents the simulacrum of the modern world?

How do Disneyland and Bonbon Land Differ in terms of hyperreality?

The demonstration of Disneyland as hyperreal is evident from the idea that those things which are hidden at Disneyland are those things that are intended to be hidden from reality in America, sexuality, vulgarity, disunity, racism, neglect...and so forth. Disneyland skirts even the most banal issues associated with the representative reality of the park, the bathrooms, which are exceedingly hard to find. Bonbon Land on the other hand flaunts many of these issues like a fart joke. We as a society the place is saying need to laugh at our real situation, that we humans are all sexual animals, often seeking escape that defecate regularly. The characters that flood the park through its many winding paths demonstrate pun, base human existence including sexualization and excrement, and frequent intoxication. There are themes that run the gambit of human baseness, that are completely absent at Disneyland. Can you imagine all the small children in Cinderella's castle singing "It's a small world after all" ad nauseam and then bending over and farting in the faces of the ride goers? No, this is not something we can imagine as human reality is non-existent, while at Bonbon Land this is exactly what the characters do. They make fun of humanity, the hyperreality being that we have a good thing here, fart jokes make us laugh, so lets make this reality even better by creating as rancid a representation of human baseness as possible within the rather risque characteristics of our own limits on decency. In a sense the park demonstrates less of a simulacra than Disneyland, as its illusion is a hyperreal representation of reality, in Technicolor vomit.

This brings to mind and interesting point about fashion, as within the Bonbon Land park there are many women cartoon animals in scantily clad fashion, breasts bare to the park goers. While the converse is true of Disneyland where the characters are covered nearly from head to toe, in what the American public universally considers the clothing of royalty. This sense of fashion as an extension of the unreal is universal to the Disneyland image and really the hyperreal conservatism that is characteristic of the American illusion. In the fashion of America women are objectified and the images are demonstrative of sexuality, be it a much tamer version than in some cultures, this tamed down sexuality then becomes the replacement for real sexuality through the representation of fashion, "women are separated from themselves and their own bodies under the sign of beauty and the pleasure principle."

Gane 107) This potentially creates a stifling and an inability of women, the holders of virtue (especially given our imagery the virgin princess) to laugh at a torn dress and an exposed areola the way some European cultures do.

Fashion has become modern sexuality in the sense that it has the function of establishing these qualities or attributes. As everything gets drawn into this system gradually all culture is affected by this specific sexual character, not sex itself but sexualization; by an inverse movement sex itself is influenced by this new sexualization of all spheres, unique to our culture. As it is the feminine body which is the emblem of this process

The standards expressed by the Disneyland Princess are those that pervade the ideal, but do not represent the reality. In Bonbon land though the cow with its nipples frequently showing is not a "real" girl she is a realistic body morph, a normal sized woman endowed with a real set of breasts that are openly seen by the adults and children alike who visit the park.

Do Disneyland and Bonbon land say anything about the national identities associated with the parks?

It would go without saying that the cultural representation of Disneyland and Bonbon land are pervasive and would also be based almost entirely on conjecture, as placing meaning on imagery is often fraught with such. Yet it must also be said that Disneyland above all other places is synonymous with America;

The names of the Presidents change; that of Disney remains. Sixty-two years after the birth of Mickey Mouse, twenty-four years after the death of his master, Disney's may be the most widely known North American name in the world. He is, arguably, the century's most important figure in bourgeois popular culture. He has done more than any single person to disseminate around the world certain myths upon which that culture has thrived, notably that of an "innocence" supposedly universal, beyond place, beyond time - and beyond criticism.(1)So wrote David Kunzle in his 1991 introduction to Ariel Dorfman and Armand Mattelart's daring How to Read Donald Duck: Imperialist Ideology in the Disney Comic (1968).

Chris8)

Disneyland is an American ideal in Technicolor and with all the base human characteristics hidden behind the glitz and glamour of the place. Baudrillard describes the connectivity between the Disneyland ideal and the representation of culture that is pervasive there;

The objective profile of the United States, then, may be traced throughout Disneyland, even down to the morphology of individuals and the crowd. All its values are exalted here, in miniature and comic-strip form. Embalmed and pactfied. Whence the possibility of an ideological analysis of...: digest of the American way of life, panegyric to American values, idealized transposition of a contradictory reality. To be sure. But this conceals something else, and that "ideological" blanket exactly serves to cover over a third-order simulation: Disneyland is there to conceal the fact that it is the "real" country, all of "real" America, which is Disneyland (just as prisons are there to conceal the fact that it is the social in its entirety, in its banal omnipresence, which is carceral). Disneyland is presented as imaginary in order to make us believe that the rest is real, when in fact all of Los Angeles and the America surrounding it are no longer real, but of the order of the hyperreal and of simulation. It is no longer a question of a false representation of reality (ideology), but of concealing the fact that the real is no longer real, and thus of saving the reality principle. (Baudrillard NP)

Baudrillard even goes so far as to say that Disneyland is a cover for a whole of a society that is not real and only by its juxtaposition can one see the fact that one is "more real" than the other. This is actually andinterestign point in congruence with media sensationalism, which demonstrates that the "real" is actually much more base than reality, leaving the impression to outsiders that America is a criminal empire with pervasive social divides. So the world population has to choose one from the other a giant sensational criminal culture or a pretty princess castle land. (Krajicek 4-5) Where as in this other "Western" culture, Denmark, the base of the base is not necessarily sensationalized but made fun of, almost as if to desensitize people to it so it becomes less powerful, the way an drinking culture might allow young people to drink alcohol minimally so as to limit it psychological pull. We would presume that at Bonbon Land the majority of people keep their clothing on and also that most people are decent to one another there and elsewhere, so it may be conjectured that it could be working. Certainly the image of it is as crime is not seen as a serious problem in Denmark, where in America, the culture of juxtaposed denial v sensational (this is how you should live, feel and look v this is how most people live, feel and look) the culture is at the very least plagued by an almost universal bad image even though for the most part citizens are law abiding and decent absent a few common transgressions.

In What way to Disneyland and Bonbon land differ in terms the simulation of life?

The issue of simulation has been touched upon in comparison within the text of the previous sections, most logically the cultural representation section above, but more can be said about the simulation of life as both represent a different variation of simulation. American Disneyland the representation of peace, universal tolerance, prosperity and cleanliness while Bonbon land does and asks the park goers to believe nothing of the sort. Bonbon land is a simulation of extreme base culture. While Disneyland creates "Distory" Bonbon Land expresses real whimsy and the childishness that are claimed to be pervasive of Disneyland, but really a more adolescent childishness.

In "Memory and Pedagogy in the 'Wonderful World of Disney,'" Giroux raises a charge to which Disney has always been vulnerable: that the corporation/organization replaces fact with whimsy, sanitizes reality for its own nationalistic or narrative ends, and, in the words of Stephen Fjellman, rewrites history as "Distory."

Chris 8)

Bonbon Land is a graphic representation of all that is funny to a 13-year-old boy, accidental nudity, open drunkenness, flatulence and defecation. Cholodenko discusses that art and film represented by the Disney as well as other popular media outlets there is a sense of non-essence that then becomes the essence, not unlike the unreal becoming the real, simulacrum.

In the art of the twentieth century, it is Andy Warhol who exemplifies this protean plasmaticness, this nonessence that is the "essence" of not only drawing, animation and film but of all the arts and media, a nonessence at once enabling and disenabling all claims to purity, including those not only of pure film but of pure painting.

Cholodenko 9)

While Bonbon Land is all essence, Disneyland is a 3d flat screen of life, without bathrooms and real skin.

Is there any particular representation at either park that is profound for the observer?

Within the pictures of Bonbon Land there was one that stood out above all others, especially to me, an American observer with a keen sense of the many ills of this culture. It was of a statue titled Aunt Jemima Statue of liberty. Where the Danish culture actually makes fun of the pervasive cultural problems associated with America. Here is the statue of liberty, the universal symbol of America in the form of one of the most pervasively racist media icons in human history the Aunt Jemima, though it like many other racially driven advertisements have been heavily watered down in the last 50 years. The viewer cannot help but appreciate the irony of this cultural icon, debased in a surreal representation of the "unreal." Even if the Americans can't always find a way to laugh at themselves at least the Europeans can.

Is postmodernism a reflection of the illusion of either parks or just one?

Postmodernism is expressed in both parks as the simple development of elaborate leisure opportunity is an aspect of the postmodern. Illusionary leisure is essentially the most postmodern of all the postmodern developments. Denzin expresses well what it means to be postmodern and to live in a postmodern world.

We inhabit a cultural moment that has inherited (and been given) the name postmodern. An interpretive social science informed by poststructuralism, Marxism, feminism, and the standpoint epistemologies aims to make sense of this historical moment called the postmodern... We seek an interpretive accounting of this historical moment, an accounting that examines the very features that make this moment so unique (Denzin 743).

From this demonstration one can easily see that the illusionary leisure and escapism that is fed by places such as Disneyland and Bonbon land, though in remarkably different ways is a direct reflection of a postmodern culture. It is this time that we are in that marks an opportunity to step away completely from reality and express ourselves as part of a culture and individuals in the same sense.

We built the industrial world and now we can play with its technology, for illusion or desensitization, take your pick. The technology that drives Disneyland obviously surpasses that which is used to drive the maze that is Bonbon land but the puppetry and representation are still equally demonstrative of the postmodern emphasis on mimicry through technology and automation.

Counterfeit and reproduction imply always an anguish, a disquieting foreignness: the uneasiness before the photograph, considered like a witch's trick - and more generally before any technical apparatus, which is always an apparatus of reproduction, is related by Benjamin to the uneasiness before the mirror-image. There is already sorcery at work in the mirror. But how much more so when this image can be detached from the mirror and be transported, stocked, reproduced at will.. (Baudrillard NP)

Baudrillard, is likely speaking of the thousands of animatronic puppets present at Disneyland in the above note, and it is clear that any observer would consider them to be frighteningly lifelike and disturbing. In fact they are even more disturbing when one compares them to the "real" roving puppets of the park that are made to look like exact replicas of beloved Disney characters. Even people become a part of the attraction, building on the idea that even the real is not really "real."

What aspect of each park most represents the simulacrum of the modern world?

It would be difficult to completely conjecture as to the simulacrum experienced by the culture associated with Bonbon land as it is not a culture that engulfs me, but Disneyland on the other hand is a part of the culture that surrounds me. Disneyland and all the marketing that pervades it are responsible for one of the biggest and most destructive socio/cultural problems in the U.S. The fact that such places and programs cater to children, who are the most vulnerable of all too pervasive idealism, the hardly faked faces of children when they see and experience the "magical kingdom" represent a social trick that will likely continue to be a pervasive symbol of hidden truths that has become reality in America. Just like the teacher becomes the enduring authority at some point in the life of the child so does the Cinderella, and not the one of the Grimm Brothers ashe and bloody death but the one with the perfect teeth and perfect hair and perfect life.