Two years ago, when I wrote a column assailing the Easter Bunny, I was flooded with letters denouncing me as a grinch. Having sufficiently recovered, I now feel bold enough to challenge an icon even more dear to American sensibilities: Mickey Mouse.
Last summer I made my first pilgrimage to Walt Disney World. Patty and I spent three days being towed from Fantasy Land to Tomorrow Land and back again by our six-year-old grandson. Charlie sported a “Goofy” hat, complete with ears and buck teeth; I narrowly escaped being forced to wear a pair of Mickey Mouse ears emblazoned in gold across the back with “Chuck.”
But on to the cause of my distress. Certainly I have no desire to assault America’s favorite playground, a dazzling showcase of creativity and imagination. But as our days there unfolded, I was struck by two observations.
First, no one around me—and there were lots of people around me—seemed happy. Fathers who had probably saved all year to afford transportation, lodging, food, and entry tickets spent a good deal of time arguing with their spouses, yanking tired children through interminable lines, and surreptitiously checking their watches to see how long until closing time.
Granted, it was August in central Florida: hot, muggy, and with every foot of park space filled with sweaty fellow tourists. But the crowds seemed to be rushing from amusement to amusement, feverishly checking off attractions seen against those still to be seen. One flushed mother mopped her child’s sticky face while barking at her husband, “Awright! Now how many more to go?”
Driven in the pursuit of pleasure, they were miserable.
Watching the unsmiling crowds, I was reminded of a young woman profiled in Psychology Today. Counseled to give up the endless round of parties, drugs, sex, and alcohol that was driving her into despair, she gasped to her psychiatrist: “You mean I don’t have to do everything I want to do?”
On this point, of course, the wonderful world of Disney is but a mirror of the world at large, which tends to exhaust itself on the mistaken notion that multiplying pleasures produces happiness.
My second observation was even more troubling. After a day of Mr. Toad, Tiki Tiki birds, and “It’s a Small World” relentlessly ringing in my ears, I was ready for the wonders of Epcot Center, Disney’s tribute to humanity’s accomplishments.
Inside Epcot’s famed “Spaceship Earth,” we were treated to the history of human civilization. Before our eyes, man discovered the wheel, Rome fell, the printing press was invented. It was uplifting, exhilarating—except that this selective presentation omitted any reference to man’s spiritual history. Christianity, Judaism, Islam, the world’s three major religions, were ignored completely, barring one quick mention of monks who passed written history down for generations to follow.
Other exhibits were similarly selective. Energy, we were told, originated from “the pure radiance of the sun, giving rise to the first stirrings of life—microscopic plants.” I asked a spokesperson if this meant all life came from the sun. “Oh, we’re just concentrating on energy here,” he explained. “The Living Seas exhibit deals more with the origins of life in general.”
I resolutely made my way to the Living Seas building. The theater darkened; I watched as the molten Earth was incubated by the sun and then spawned volcanos, which yielded vapors, clouds, and condensation. A sprinkling of rain, then torrents. “The Deluge,” intoned the narrator. Thus the seas were born, and in them, life itself—“tiny, single-cell plants—plankton—capturing the energy of the sun …” This “seems to say life on Earth began in the ocean,” a spokesperson asserted as I winced. “But,” he added quickly, “[the filmmakers] aren’t committing themselves. They don’t like to do anything controversial—especially if there aren’t a lot of facts to back it up.”
Further exhibits on technology, transportation, and science sparkled with human ability to conquer any frontier. Yet the person of the world of Epcot is evidently a two-dimensional being, for nowhere in Disney’s grand tributes to mind, body, and science is there to be found even a passing reference to the human spirit.
It is a curious omission. Is it realistic—or even intellectually honest—to present humanity and the world apart from the great dynamic of history, which is at root spiritual? How does one understand the tragedies of the twentieth century, for example, without examining our greatest dilemma, knowing our own nature?
Yet I pressed on in my exploration, even to the point of waiting an hour and a half to get into “Captain EO.” For the uninformed, “Captain EO” is the 3-D fantasy featuring pop star Michael Jackson as a crusader against the wiles of an evil queen, personified as a spider. Patty and I prayed we would see no one we knew as we donned purple 3-D glasses and the special-effects movie began. Charlie squirmed with delight between us.
And there I realized that Disney World’s humanistic paradise is not without its own messiah: Michael Jackson, dressed in white, who by the power of his music supernaturally transforms both the evil spider and her henchmen into agents of light.
Far be it from me to denigrate Michael Jackson, that androgynous boy-girl-child-man who recently issued this oddly messianic statement of his mission: “I was sent forth for the world, for the children. But have mercy, for I’ve been bleeding for a long time now.”
Jackson’s Epcot performance and the breathtaking special effects were marvelous entertainment for all the kids, myself included. But “Captain EO” capped off my visit to the world of Disney. I’ll return in a few years, when I’ve recovered and my next grandchild has come of age. And I’ll enjoy it, as she will.
But we will do so, I pray, with no illusions. The Magic Kingdom, glorious as it is, is but a toy that mirrors this broken world. It ignores, even obscures, the ultimate reality—the enduring kingdom where God, not humankind, reigns.
