It’s an American product that most people consider as pure as rain and as wholesome as apple pie. Is it possible to criticize Disneyland as a ‘gigantic world encompassing brain-washing facility’?
After attacking the insidious way that Disney stories have soft-peddled destructive Western man to the globe’s children, this article from Mexico’s La Jornada criticizes a new Mexican theme park called Excarat for aping Disney’s treatment of the natural world.
For La Jornada, Víctor M. Toledo writes in part:
“The Disney empire is without doubt a great factory of anesthetization; a gigantic, world encompassing brain-washing facility that has endured for five decades. … Disney’s banalization of nature and indigenous cultures has left its mark on millions of human beings (particularly children), injecting into their minds a twisted and superficial idea of the natural world and those who for thousands of years lived in it and with it. Disneyland has become a model to imitate.
Toledo then turns his attention to Mexican President Calderon and that nation’s new Disney-like theme park, Xcaret:
“Today, hunting paths and golf courses are turned into eco-oriented theme parks … Like Xcaret, an entertainment complex on the ‘Riviera Maya,’ which is said to violate a number of Mexico’s environmental laws.”
“After committing electoral fraud, ‘saving humanity’ from the [H1N1] flu virus, battling drug trafficking, endorsing the use of transgenic corn in agriculture and celebrating Wal-Mart’s birthday, [President] Felipe Calderón offered our country another sampling of his brand of ideology by confusing Xcaret Park, which is a private entertainment center, with a preserve for the conservation of biodiversity. …
“Luckily, thanks to the military forces deployed in advance, neither the wicked witch, nor Captain Hook nor Uncle Scrooge managed to infiltrate the festivities. And for this, we Mexicans, without exception, surely ought to be grateful.”
By Víctor M. Toledo
Translated By Halszka Czarnocka
June 17, 2009
Mexico – La Jornada – Original Article (Spanish)
Thirty years ago, Ariel Dorfman and Armand Mattelart wrote what would later become a classic of Latin American political science: How to Read Donald Duck (1972), a book in which the authors reveal the maddening ideological messages of Walt Disney stories that have now been converted into readings for the masses. In reality, the book only addresses one dimension of Disney – that of dressing up the world in magic, lights and illusion, while its other dimension, its sequel of amusement parks – hasn’t even been touched and, as far as I know, awaits critical analysis and deconstruction. Disney is credited, with reason, as being the great anesthetist of modern times, the greatest virtuoso in the art of masking reality, coming close to the achievements of Hollywood and Las Vegas.
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