It's strange to me to read a gifted author lavish such praise on another creative talent. It felt very genuine and inspired - which is pretty much how I feel when I visit Disney World. For all the flaws of Disney, the creations of the man and the company hit the target exactly - I feel like a kid again when I experience them.
I wonder if we would have gotten such an honest description of awe from Wiesel's contemporaries. Would Sartre, Camus or Orwell have been as impressed? I couldn't say for certain, but I can say that no one had experienced more atrocities to contrast the experience with. That says something big about the magic of Disney's creation.
> I wonder if we would have gotten such an honest description of awe from Wiesel's contemporaries. Would Sartre, Camus or Orwell have been as impressed? I couldn't say for certain, but I can say that no one had experienced more atrocities to contrast the experience with. That says something big about the magic of Disney's creation.
Sartre and Camus were almost certainly less compassionate, nostalgic or otherwise prone to being guided in their writing by emotion; I would also say they were more serious authors than Wiesel, one cannot really imagine them being excited by as an adjacent commentator pointed out:
>> “Futuristic man will live such a wonderful life! Everything will come to him so, so easily! If someone knocks at the door, you won’t have to go to see who it is: He will appear on the screen of your television. If the telephone rings, you’ll be able to see the person you’re speaking with and not just hear his voice. And a thousand other such conveniences will turn your house into a royal palace and transform you yourself into a lazy, fat, lonely king.”
> Quick, someone put this into an Internet-of-Things sales pitch!
Consider Wiesel's words in this article:
>> Wiesel understands why: “If one wants to calm his nerves and forget the bitter realities of daily life, there is no better-suited place to do so than Disneyland. In Disneyland, the land of children’s dreams, everything is simple, beautiful, good. There, no one screams at his fellow, no one is exploited by his fellow, no one’s fortune derives from his fellow’s misfortune. If children had the right to vote, they would vote Disney their president. And the whole world would look different.”
There seems to be an immediacy, and almost childish sincerity to them and his own willingness to suspend reality (including his own personal experience) and believe in the Disney world. Constrast this to e.g. Sartre's No Exit - in the later there is also the suspension of reality for illusion if you will, but rather than being immediate or sincere the reader is faced with it unraveling into something Hellish. Which is to say that I cannot imagine a serious author calling Disney a genius - but take this with a grain of salt if being serious means being unable to suspend your own reality for a brief moment of childish happiness.
Which is to say that I cannot imagine a serious author calling Disney a genius - but take this with a grain of salt if being serious means being unable to suspend your own reality for a brief moment of childish happiness.
I like writing fiction, but I'll gladly give up being taken seriously as an author if being a serious fiction writer means giving up the ability to enjoy flights of fancy. In fact, I have trouble understanding how even the most serious fiction can work without it.
There is, or at least was, a plaque above a bench on a Main Street porch dedicated to Disney's business partner for Disneyland. He was, IIRC, an expert in hospitality.
The plaque read: 'A clean environment is a pleasure to the senses.'
As a kid, I remember being amused at the number of sweepers, dressed in striped shirts, pressed white pants and straw hats, whisking popcorn and straw wrappers off the walkways. In spite of tens of thousands of people, mostly kids, running and discarding, the park was always immaculate. It impresses me to this day not just that so much attention was given to cleanliness, but that Disney realized how much it mattered.
“Futuristic man will live such a wonderful life! Everything will come to him so, so easily! If someone knocks at the door, you won’t have to go to see who it is: He will appear on the screen of your television. If the telephone rings, you’ll be able to see the person you’re speaking with and not just hear his voice. And a thousand other such conveniences will turn your house into a royal palace and transform you yourself into a lazy, fat, lonely king.”
Quick, someone put this into an Internet-of-Things sales pitch!
I wonder if we would have gotten such an honest description of awe from Wiesel's contemporaries. Would Sartre, Camus or Orwell have been as impressed? I couldn't say for certain, but I can say that no one had experienced more atrocities to contrast the experience with. That says something big about the magic of Disney's creation.