AMONG THE FUNNIEST American movies of recent years is a series called National Lampoon’s Vacation. They include black farce that is rare for Hollywood. Actually, I have long identified with the central character, one Clark W. Griswald, played to bemused perfection by Chevy Chase.
Clark Griswald’s manic enthusiasm for pleasing his kids will be familiar to many fathers at this time of year. In his first escapade, Griswald takes his offspring to Wallyworld. (Dare they call it Disneyworld, lest the heirs of kindly old Walt sue them to death?)
What immediately endeared Griswald to me was his disastrous odyssey to the juvenile Heaven on Earth. At an overnight stop, he tied the family dog to the back of the car and forgot about it. Further on, he was persuaded to pick up an unloved aunt who, once on board, expired. Thinking this one through, Griswald tied the body to the luggage rack, finally depositing it on the doorstep of an equally unloved cousin. ‘Nothing can stop us now, kids!’ he declared. ‘Wallyworld, here we come!’
When he finally reached Wallyworld, it was closed for repairs. Griswald, being American, pulled a gun and demanded that the security guard open it up. (I won’t tell you what happened then; you’ll have to get out the video.)
None of this was necessary when Zoë and I arrived at the gates of the real Wallyworld the other day. As a precaution, I had had my hair cut. Long before Zoë was born, in the days when the length of your hair was as hot a political issue as trees are today, I sought entry into Wallyworld, only to be stopped by a man shaped like a cigar-store Indian with ‘MARVIN’ on his lapel.
‘Sir,’ said Marvin, ‘you have a Factor Ten problem.’ Factor Ten turned out to be ‘undesirable facial hair’ and hair that overlapped your collar. (Factor Seven, mysteriously, was feet.) The Magic Kingdom was then an oasis in an America said to be in turmoil. Disneyland in California, and later Disneyworld in Florida, were places where all those threatening images of long-haired youth, and an unwinnable war in Asia, dissolved into Mickey, Donald et al., and Prince Charming’s castle lit up every night with ‘Honor America’.
Much has, and hasn’t, changed. Facial hair is still an issue, but only for those who work at Disneyworld. They must have none; and their teeth must be white and straight. If you want a ‘life with Disney’, you must wait six months while your background back to childhood is scrutinised. If accepted, you become a Disney Person, relatively well paid and with privileges otherwise regarded as the thin edge of socialism in America: medical cover for you and your family.
Zoë and I are not doing anything by half measures here. We are staying in Disneyworld – actually, on the corner of North Dopey Drive. The street signs have ears and the buses say ‘MK’ (Magic Kingdom). There are Mickey and Goofy dollars that are legal tender: and people are so nice that the trial of an all-American serial killer on the news (not the Disney Channel) comes almost as a relief.
This is not to say there are no ripples here at Disneyworld. The other day as Zoë and I, together with a wedge of other Griswalds and their kids, ran to get Snow White’s autograph, a scrum developed. ‘Please children, please parents,’ implored Snow White, ‘one at a time . . . Oh dear, oh dear, oh shi . . .’ There was no hulking Marvin to protect her. Only ‘new men’ with a pure past now guard the kingdom. They wear pink-striped shirts and they broadcast just the one tape: ‘Have a nice day . . . have a nice evening . . . have a nice day . . . have a nice evening . . .’
Alas, the Griswald pack was soon out of control as small people were thrust forward to be photographed, videotaped and otherwise authenticated by the hand of a Disney star. ‘Please,’ said one of the Nice Days, ‘let’s have some order here.’
‘Assholes,’ mouthed Snow White, her smile intact. Fortunately, several of the Seven Dwarfs were not far behind and were able to create a diversion. The Griswald pack now fanned out to seek the attention of Grumpy, Sleepy and Sneezy. Zoë and I, of course, hung in there.
Something similar occurred in the Hall of Presidents. A huge Griswald in red-striped calf-length shorts and multiple-zoom lens burst in. There were two small Griswalds, one of them armed with a Super Soaker 100, which is a neon-coloured imitation machine gun that spurts water for up to fifty feet. (It’s the current rage here.)
‘Look, you guys,’ said the huge Griswald, ‘they’re all here . . . Jefferson, Lincoln, Roosevelt . . .’
‘This one was a crook wasn’t he, Dad?’
They were standing next to a picture of Richard Nixon that looks like John the Baptist.
‘He was,’ came the reply, ‘our president!’
What is striking is the number of adults here without children. For many, Disneyworld is the logical extension of America itself: a vast shopping mall, albeit with cars and trolleys provided in which to load children instead of groceries. Above all, Disneyworld is brilliant child’s play; and all attempts at deeper analysis usually founder there. America’s two enduring gifts to modern civilised life are its music, based on black culture, and Walt Disney.
Certainly, Disney has given to millions of children all over the world a joy that his best imitators have never quite matched. A friend of mine, Peter Brown, who works for British Airways at Heathrow and helps to organise ‘Dream-flights’ to Florida for seriously ill children, can vouch for the positive effects of that first glimpse of the Magic Kingdom.
Why is Disney different? For one thing, Walt and his original draughtsmen and animators knew about kids. They almost never patronised them. There is a cinema just inside the main gates that shows some of Disney’s earliest, vintage cartoons that are both funny and wry to the point of irony. The story of Goofy as a suburban man who changes personality behind the wheel of his car is unsentimental social comment. I clearly remember seeing it at a Saturday matinee; I must have been only a year or two older than Zoë, who laughed out loud when we saw it together.
The highlight here is the electric parade at night. It was all going magically, as we say, until a great eagle appeared, lit up in incandescent white, its imperial beak spotlighted. ‘HONOR AMERICA!’ the eagle commanded yet again, thereupon the Star Spangled Banner boomed forth in super-fantastic Disneyworld stereo. Missing were Stormin’ Norman as Peter Pan and Saddam Hussein as Captain Hook. Then I read that General Schwarzkopf – whose child victims still suffer in Iraq – has been signed up to tape an ‘I’m going to Disneyworld!’ TV commercial.
He is in good company. According to the porter in my hotel, two US Army helicopters use a clearing near North Dopey Drive and a big, stooped guy with broad shoulder pads can be seen stepping out of one of them. ‘Mr Reagan,’ said the porter, ‘comes down to Disneyworld at least twice a year.’
August 16, 1991