Disney World

By Douglas Lummis

After the great success of Walt Disney's version of "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" way back in 1996, the Disney people began to make movies from a greater variety of stories than ever before. They realized that they did not have to limit themselves to happy children's stories but could make movies about anything at all - tragedy, horror, naturalism, whatever.

Within a few years they had made Disney versions of Shakespeare's "Macbeth," "Richard III," and "Timon of Athens" (The Lady Macbeth T-shirt sold very well). The Disney version of "Heart of Darkness" didn't do very well in Africa, but was quite popular in Europe, especially Belgium. One of the songs from the Disney version of Strindberg's "Ghosts" got into the hit parade. The Disney version of "Finnegan's Wake" won three Academy awards. The musical "Chushingura" had the whole world singing, and the comedy version of "The Odyssey" had the whole world laughing.

The original versions of these classics still existed in libraries, but fewer and fewer people read them, as the Disney versions were more attractive. Most children did not even know that the originals existed (just as in the old days children didn't know there were non-Disney originals of Pinocchio and Bambi).

More and more people - not only children, but also adults - wore clothing with pictures of Disney characters on them. More and more people went to theme parks on their days off. More and more housing developments came to resemble theme pards, modeled after Florida's Disney World.

City planners developed a whole new concept: The City as Theme Park. First the suburbs, and then the world's great capitals were made over into Disney versions of themselves.

Sociologists coined the expressions "Disnification of consciousness" and "Disnification of reality." In Japan, sociologists spoke more generally about "Mangafication of consciousness" (ishiki no mangaka).

Zoos also gradually evolved into theme parks on the Disney model. And in these parks it became more and more difficult to distinguish between the real animals and the robots.

Eventually, much of the population of the world's animals ended up living in zoos and theme parks; fewer and fewer in their natural habitats. Of course, little by little their natural habitats were being destroyed by "economic development," so zoos and theme parks became the only places for them to live. The new generation of children understood "wild animals" as "animals in zoos," and "animals in zoos" as Flipper, Bambi, and Dumbo.

And so the world changed little by little. Wildness was abolished from it. Nature was abolished. All stories now have happy endings. The world has become a cartoon version of itself. It has become Disney World.

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