Team Rodent - Carl Hiaasen [5]
My theory: Eisner is the Insane Clown Posse. Hell, those fabled “Imagineers” of his could have knocked off the liner notes on their lunch break, and had a hoot doing it. Who ever heard of white Detroit street rappers? And what’s with the candy-ass faux-Kiss mascara? The songwriting is so strenuously witless that it’s got to be a parody. How else to explain this ballad:
I got shot, the murder was heinous
It went in my eyeball and out my anus.
On the day Disney yanked the Posse’s CD, Messrs. Violent J and Shaggy 2 Dope lashed out in cyberspace: “It all starts with a friendly big fluffy mouse named Mickey, who is really a lying rabid infested filthy rat in disguise.”
I wouldn’t be surprised if that turned out to be an Eisner riff, tweaking all of us who harbor such acid sentiments. Undoubtedly he’s aware that his empire is the subject of percolating distrust, hatred, and even fear. The question he probably asks himself is why. What has Disney really done but brought joy, wonder, and laughter to billions of people? What accounts for the rising backlash?
Insane Clown Michael surely has his theories. My own virulence is rooted in this belief, based on what I’ve seen with my own eyes: Disney is so good at being good that it manifests an evil; so uniformly efficient and courteous, so dependably clean and conscientious, so unfailingly entertaining that it’s unreal, and therefore is an agent of pure wickedness. Imagine promoting a universe in which raw Nature doesn’t fit because it doesn’t measure up; isn’t safe enough, accessible enough, predictable enough, even beautiful enough for company standards. Disney isn’t in the business of exploiting Nature so much as striving to improve upon it, constantly fine-tuning God’s work.
Lakes, for instance. Florida’s heartland is dappled with lovely tree-lined lakes, but the waters are often tea-colored from cypress bark. For postcard purposes, tea-colored water was deemed unsuitable for Disney World’s centerpiece, Bay Lake, so in the early 1970s Team Rodent sprang into action—yanking out many of the cypresses, draining the lake, scraping out the bottom muck, replacing it with imported sand, then refilling the crater. All this was done to make the water bluish and therefore more inviting to tourists. For good measure, Disney even added beaches.
(My own Bay Lake fantasy: sneak in one night and dump a truckload of hungry bull gators in that lovely deep-blue water. I know friends who’d be thrilled to help, and who also have experience in the transport of large crocodilians. My conscience is all that’s stopping me—the Magic Kingdom is not a safe place for a reptile, and I fear the alligators would be systematically hunted down and trapped, or worse.)
In recent years Team Rodent has become even less bashful and more technologically advanced at superimposing its own recreation-based reality. Disney-brand fun needs a script, and a script needs performing, and a performance needs a stage. No one is fussier about the production details than Team Rodent, and it pays off. Operating profit from Disney’s theme parks and resorts has risen steeply in recent years and now accounts for more than 25 percent of company earnings.
One place the formula didn’t work so well was France, where Disneyland Paris (then called Euro-Disney) opened at a cost of $4.4 billion in the spring of 1992. Dreary weather and a weak economy weren’t the only reasons for disappointing attendance. The wine-loving French resented Disney’s no-alcohol policy, while employees balked at the company’s famous Aryan-android dress code, which forbids makeup, nail polish, and facial hair. Critics and commentators despaired that Disneyland Paris was a blight on native French culture, and the leftist newspaper Libération harshly dubbed it “Mousewitz.” At one point the park was losing the equivalent of $1 million a day, and was reported to be on the verge of closing. It was saved by a complicated financial restructuring and a grudging decision by Disney executives to act more European and loosen up the rules. Today wine is served