Ross Douthat: 'Walt Disney World is back in the culture-war news this week, thanks to Gov. Ron DeSantis’ appointment of a new board, filled with his ideological allies, to oversee infrastructure in Disney’s Florida real estate empire.'
By Ross Douthat | The New York TimesWalt Disney World is back in the culture-war news this week, thanks to Gov. Ron DeSantis’ appointment of a new board, filled with his ideological allies, to oversee infrastructure in Disney’s Florida real estate empire. As it happens, I’m now a certified expert on Disney World, as my wife and I recently took our children there for the first time, and let me tell you, there’s a lot to say about the place.
To the extent that a Disney production manifests the sort of obvious and literal-minded progressive messaging that might outrage some Republican official, it is already failing by the Mouse’s own standards, and is destined for obsolescence no matter what. What survives to become fixed in the Disney canon has to feel deeply in tune with its vast and bipartisan audience even when there’s some kind of ideological vision underneath.
Next, a comment on Disney World and meritocracy: The one thing that isn’t efficient about the parks, for their customers, is the endless-seeming, near-eternal lines in the higher traffic seasons. We were warned by all our fellow overeducated professionals that the only way to cope with this reality was to buy into the park’s app-based “Genie+” and “Lightning Lane” system, where for a relatively modest fee you can schedule a quicker entrance into some number of major rides each day.
This all seems true without necessarily vindicating her claim that one should withhold judgment on parishioners at the church of Disney: Something can function as a religion without being a particularly healthy form of faith, and maybe it’s OK to worry a little about people who seek ultimate meaning in what is, at bottom, a temple built to separate them from as much of their savings as possible.
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