In today’s class we talked about Zizek, Eco, Dorfman and Poster’s theory. Eco’s view of Disney as a place of total passivity reminds me of memories that I thought were scary but did not ponder because “it is just Disney”. When I visited Disney during the summer, I went to one of the rides that automatically take pictures. I did not swipe my pass or anything that could indicate I went to that ride at that time. However, five minutes later there is a notification on my phone (the Disney app), sending me the watermarked photo and ask me if I want to purchase it. I remember me stopped walking and looked around as if I can check what tells Disneyland that I just went to that ride. I still have not figured out but I intentionally stopped thinking about it at the park because I did not want to start a rabbit hole of how might Disneyland was surveilling me. When we were discussing about the quote from Eco, this memory suddenly came to me and I realized that like Eco suggests “Its visitors must agree to behave like robots”, I did agree to behave like robots because I did not want to ruin the fantasy. If incidents like this happened anywhere else than Disney, I would feel terrified and aversive. However, because it happened at Disneyland, I actively chose to soothe myself and act like “robots”. Therefore, Disney did not create the fantasy world single-handed. By believing it and conforming into its ideology, every consumer helps Disney to create this fantasy city that feels so real to us. Doesn’t any ideology or religion work this way? This thought channels me back to a quote we read last week – “Disneyland is presented as imaginary in order to make us believe that the rest is real.” If Disney make people believe it is real by creating powerful ideology, any ideology and religion could work and might already work this way.
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