GeekinthePink

I want everyone to know--I actually visited Disney yesterday. Ah. The incarnate desert of the real. What is really interesting is that both my Mom and Grandma are retired from Disney. As a result, we never have to pay because either they can get us in, or we can use an extra ticket. All of this exposition has a point--we always go in through the employee entrance and park across the street at the hotels to avoid the $11 parking fee (don't tell.)

So if you've ever been in the employee entrance, it is no exaggeration to say that it is ugly. White decrepit buildings, paint-chipped work trucks, people dressed in overalls and workpants--behind the scenes of the happiest place on earth does not strike me as happy. It looks like a regular workplace. This contrast to me is an even more significant application in creating Baurdrillard's "play of illusions and phantasms." Not only is Disneyland "a perfect model of all the entangled orders of simulation," but upon seeing its blood and guts, the heart that keeps it pumping and the "perpetual motion picture" rolling, we see that it's illusion does not even elude itself; morever, Disney has just a great sense of reality as the next person. If we were to personify it, it would tell us that its main street is simulcra in the truest form. Certainly, it could recognize all of the maintenance and power sources and reality that must exist in order to preserve this illusion. And I think you could ask it questions. Did there ever exist a mainstreet with a post office, restaurants, gourmet candy shops with smiling workers and fanny-pack tourists? No. What was this modeled from? Men's imagination. What happens when the lights are turned out and everyone goes home? I am lonely (okay maybe that would be a stupid and pointless question but you get my point).

Point is, reality exists in this case to preserve the illusion. Without a contradicting reality, this illusion could never survive. Disney is such a fantastic example of post modernity. Thanks Mickey.