space and time

You know you're a big huge geek when you're riding on Space Mountain and you're thinking the entire time about Kant's Critique of Pure Reason wondering if Kant had it right, that time and space are indeed the a priori intuitions that make human experience possible.

And then, while still on the ride, you find yourself wishing Kant had picked something else, like sedation and somnolence as his a priori intutions for experience, and start wondering what translation of Heidegger's Being and Time would be the best to read, or what the ancient Romans would have thought of the Magic Kingdom, what with their fondness of spectacle and gratuitous excess, themselves.

And, while you're having a Fesitval of German Thought during a theme park ride, you also start thinking seriously about writing several essays on the machination of what passes for modern amusement and publishing them in the next issue of The Journal of The Disgruntled Snotty Pseudo Intellectual.

I don't recommend becoming a brooding Prussian on your next family vacation to Sea World, or the Icecapades, or what not, but even if you've never read a drop of philosophy in your life, I would assume at least your pocketbook is disturbed by ruthlessly efficient and brilliant marketing scam engineered and thriving in such "places of amusement."

Personally, I kind of don't get it. The one and only ride I actually liked was only because it was so absurd, it made me feel like I'd dropped acid and reminded me of that Simpson's episode where Lisa and Bart visit Duff World and she hallucinates through the It's a Duff World attraction. (And no, it wasn't It's a Small World, either.)

Otherwise, the whole thing seemed kind of creepy to me, with the leering monolithic plastic figures everywhere, and the sanitized fake forced happiness of the employees clad in what look like heat-stroke inducing polyester uniforms.

As I was shuttled along in and out of endlessly roped lines and gates into small coffin or cell like compartments, respectively, I started wondering if Disney executives and park planners didn't rely heavily on Mssrs. Goebbel and Himmler's notes on the efficient transportation and genocide of Jews in an effort to control crowds and ensure their timely and expedient movement towards a horrific death full of agonizing suffering. I'm not offering up this comparison lightly, and it is not meant in any disrespectful way to those who suffered the Holocaust; I mean I felt a real sense of dread and fear of becoming a dehumanized, marginalized object of commercialized explotaition ("a body of consumption"--it felt like a Foucaultian moment!) as well as psychological discomfort akin to mild forms of torture due to the constant exposure to physical restraint and deliberate manipulation of sensorum.

Or, in a perhaps a less dramatic and more genteel comparison, I felt I was cast deus ex machina into a bizarrely Orwellian world, where the State controlled all means of access in and out of shelter, to food and water, music, entertainment, and audio broadcasted thoughts of happiness and discipline everywhere and always to its inhabitants. ("For your safety, keep your valuables in a secure place under the seat, and do not stand up or place hands or other object outside your projectile vehicle during your 50 feet plunge to your death in a small grey cubicle much like that of your work station! Thank you for your cooperation, comrade brothers and sisters!")

I felt, however, that I should kindly spare these wildly unpleasant thoughts from my unwitting companion, who seemed to be very happy and not in the least bit perturbed in any way by Foucaultian deconstructions of Mickey Mouse or Kantian a priori intuitions of the Small World singing international Chuckie dolls at any time during our excursion. Meanwhile, the least biting of my complaints is that I had essentially exchanged hard earned money to partake in a spectacle that felt much like a day at work except perhaps worse in one respect: not only was it loud, chaotic, and tiring, I was without fucking air conditioning for most of the time on a hot summer day.

(Other interested parties may like to return to my blog at a later date when I return to my critique of the theme parks in installments such as: Orientalism and The Representation of the Exotic in America's Collective Imagination; The Fantastic Mythology of the American Cinema Portrayed as Historical Reality and The American Dream Defiled: Simulacra ,Spectacle and Society.)