What’s Wrong With This Picture?
Something is missing.
The touted happiest place on earth has been shown to be a facade.
Granted, at first it is hard to see why.
I grew up with the dominance of Disney. Growing up in California I probably visited Disneyland thirty times in my childhood, many of them as school sponsored nights in the park.
Once I even performed at Disneyland in an honor band, which allowed me to see some of its underground passageways and the rest. It is an amazing place. The same is true about Disney World in Florida. I have not been to any of the other parks but I’m sure they are no different. They are all built on the Disney model.
But there is something missing in the picture above, and what it is, once you understand, you will never quite see it the same way again.
Sorry about that.
It reminds me of a verse
When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways.
1 Corinthians 13:11 (ESV)
The above picture was taken at the front entrance of Disneyland and looks down Main Street USA toward Sleeping Beauty’s Castle.
The layout for this slightly miniaturized Main Street was styled after Walt’s boyhood town of Marceline, Missouri and is intended to bring up a nostalgic feeling of what it was like growing up in the earliest years of the twentieth century - back with Mark Twain and Henry Ford, when Walt was a little boy.
But something is missing that would have been very prominent in the little midwestern towns of that time.
There is no church building with its steeple rising as the tallest man-made structure displayed above all the other buildings of commerce, calling town folk to gather every Sunday.
And why is this important?
Because it is the church that holds the sacred and provides men and women their true identities as creatures made in God’s image, not Mickey’s.
Society at that time was centered on church life. It was the church that provided a context for lives of hardship to include death from diseases and wars. It was built by their hands to administer sacred oaths and rituals like holy communion, baptisms, marriages, and funerals. It aided the people in the raising and protecting of children until they grew to adulthood when they too would carry on the meaningful traditions of their forefathers and mothers.
Sadly, I believe this omission by Disneyland is intentional. It is replacing the steeple with the pointed towers of a make believe castle.
And what is the message?
You don’t need God to make your dreams come true. Your highest calling in life is to yourself.
It is the sirens call to lose one’s self in myth and fantasy and never really come to see the deeper true story upon which myths, fables, and video games are built. It is to disconnect you from meaning and weaken your courage to oppose a culture designed, not for your and future generations best lives, but for someone else’s.
It is to tear down the sacred and replace it with a man made utopia.
Does this mean that Disneyland is godless?
Well the land is just that, land; and it is fair to say it is not sacred ground; and many have worked there over the years, and still do, who strive to serve customers well from the best of their intentions.
But it is also the case that more and more we are witnessing, through a clever bait and switch, an intentional undermining of the nuclear family, those who, ironically, gave it their hard earned money and allowed it to become super successful in the first place.