Walt's World

I'm now on leg three (out of six) of my Christmas perambulations around the United States, a stop at Disney World in Orlando Florida to see an exhibition at Epcot I curated for the Norway Pavilion that has been up for about 2 years now.   

For an intellectual, even an American intellectual, I have a decidedly uncritical attitude toward Disney.  There are sentimental, emotional reasons for this -- I grew up nearby Disneyland and have many fond memories of it from my childhood -- but as I've gotten older it has become more about a profound respect for Walt Disney himself. He had drive, creativity, a desire to imagine the world in a completely new way, and the confidence to see that through. I know there are people who have done more radical things in their lives, but Walt, in my mind, attained perfection in what he set out to do, and then did. The critiques leveled at Walt Disney stem from the fact that other people tried to take over his vision and in so doing over commercialized it.  There is in fact no "improving" on perfection. So I remain a Disney loyalist, overlooking all the recent flaws (like Little Mermaid 2) and instead see only the fundamental magic of the Magic Kingdom.  I'm pretty sure my son will feel the same.  

Comments

Ko-Leen said…
little mermaid 2 was a disappointment to all
December 17, 2008 at 7:02 PM
Lissy said…
A friend of mine tells me that Walt Disney is known in Germany as a Nazi supporter. This is a bit harder to overlook than little mermaid, but of course Walt was not the only one to be fooled early on by Hitler, and I think the vision he gave to the world thereafter says enough about his core beliefs to make me give him the benefit of the doubt.
December 19, 2008 at 3:17 AM
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