
Elie Wiesel Visits Disneyland - Thevet
http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-arts-and-culture/books/206125/elie-wiesel-visits-disneyland
======
padobson
It's strange to me to read a gifted author lavish such praise on another
creative talent. It felt very genuine and inspired - which is pretty much how
I feel when I visit Disney World. For all the flaws of Disney, the creations
of the man and the company hit the target exactly - I feel like a kid again
when I experience them.

I wonder if we would have gotten such an honest description of awe from
Wiesel's contemporaries. Would Sartre, Camus or Orwell have been as impressed?
I couldn't say for certain, but I can say that no one had experienced more
atrocities to contrast the experience with. That says something big about the
magic of Disney's creation.

~~~
forgotpwtomain
> I wonder if we would have gotten such an honest description of awe from
> Wiesel's contemporaries. Would Sartre, Camus or Orwell have been as
> impressed? I couldn't say for certain, but I can say that no one had
> experienced more atrocities to contrast the experience with. That says
> something big about the magic of Disney's creation.

Sartre and Camus were almost certainly less compassionate, nostalgic or
otherwise prone to being guided in their writing by emotion; I would also say
they were more serious authors than Wiesel, one cannot really imagine them
being excited by as an adjacent commentator pointed out:

>> “Futuristic man will live such a wonderful life! Everything will come to
him so, so easily! If someone knocks at the door, you won’t have to go to see
who it is: He will appear on the screen of your television. If the telephone
rings, you’ll be able to see the person you’re speaking with and not just hear
his voice. And a thousand other such conveniences will turn your house into a
royal palace and transform you yourself into a lazy, fat, lonely king.”

> Quick, someone put this into an Internet-of-Things sales pitch!

Consider Wiesel's words in this article:

>> Wiesel understands why: “If one wants to calm his nerves and forget the
bitter realities of daily life, there is no better-suited place to do so than
Disneyland. In Disneyland, the land of children’s dreams, everything is
simple, beautiful, good. There, no one screams at his fellow, no one is
exploited by his fellow, no one’s fortune derives from his fellow’s
misfortune. If children had the right to vote, they would vote Disney their
president. And the whole world would look different.”

There seems to be an immediacy, and almost childish sincerity to them and his
own willingness to suspend reality (including his own personal experience) and
believe in the Disney world. Constrast this to e.g. Sartre's No Exit - in the
later there is also the suspension of reality for illusion if you will, but
rather than being immediate or sincere the reader is faced with it unraveling
into something Hellish. Which is to say that I cannot imagine a serious author
calling Disney a genius - but take this with a grain of salt if being serious
means being unable to suspend your own reality for a brief moment of childish
happiness.

~~~
padobson
Excellent comment. Especially this:

 _Which is to say that I cannot imagine a serious author calling Disney a
genius - but take this with a grain of salt if being serious means being
unable to suspend your own reality for a brief moment of childish happiness._

I like writing fiction, but I'll gladly give up being taken seriously as an
author if being a serious fiction writer means giving up the ability to enjoy
flights of fancy. In fact, I have trouble understanding how even the most
serious fiction can work without it.

------
spking
Walt Disney, the World's First UX Designer:

[https://uxmag.com/articles/walt-disney-the-worlds-first-
ux-d...](https://uxmag.com/articles/walt-disney-the-worlds-first-ux-designer)

------
11thEarlOfMar
There is, or at least was, a plaque above a bench on a Main Street porch
dedicated to Disney's business partner for Disneyland. He was, IIRC, an expert
in hospitality.

The plaque read: 'A clean environment is a pleasure to the senses.'

As a kid, I remember being amused at the number of sweepers, dressed in
striped shirts, pressed white pants and straw hats, whisking popcorn and straw
wrappers off the walkways. In spite of tens of thousands of people, mostly
kids, running and discarding, the park was always immaculate. It impresses me
to this day not just that so much attention was given to cleanliness, but that
Disney realized how much it mattered.

------
jpm_sd
“Futuristic man will live such a wonderful life! Everything will come to him
so, so easily! If someone knocks at the door, you won’t have to go to see who
it is: He will appear on the screen of your television. If the telephone
rings, you’ll be able to see the person you’re speaking with and not just hear
his voice. And a thousand other such conveniences will turn your house into a
royal palace and transform you yourself into a lazy, fat, lonely king.”

Quick, someone put this into an Internet-of-Things sales pitch!

------
c0nsumer
Because of the author's background I couldn't help but get a morose chuckle
out of the popover ad which read "We'll come for you".

~~~
markmontymark
It says "We'll come to you!", not "for you".

~~~
c0nsumer
Ah! Sorry. I read it, clicked the X, and now it's not coming back. (I don't
feel like faffing around with trying to make it come back...)

------
mark_chosenberg
It's funny because Walt Disney was known to be a raging antisemite.

