Thursday, August 03, 2006

As An Introduction...

...a quote.
“The tat and kitschy quality that comes across in flat pictures dissolves when you go through those turnstiles. The lath and plaster is solid, the cardboard is so tough you never see it wobble. The paint is fresh, the flags flutter, the bands play, the people laugh and cry out for more, more security, more nostalgia, more happiness, more memories of a world better than our own. […] Is this bad? Is this, as critics say, like a drug, an escapist immature fantasy generated by an immature showman for cash? Or is it a work of art, as The Wizard of Oz or Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs or Singin’ in the Rain are works of art, commercially manufactured products that transcend their age and have a meaning to themselves as all great works of art should have?”

pg. 321, Robin Allan, Walt Disney and Europe. Indiana University Press, Bloomington. 1999.

This blog will be, hopefully, a respectable attempt to appreciate, editorialize, eulogize, or otherwise comment on the Walt Disney Company theme parks, or anything else I may have to say about this significant facet of American culture, in the form of internet blatherings. So let's begin!