How the Disney dream died in Celebration

[Liberal_in_LA]

How the Disney dream died in Celebration

Disney invented Celebration as an ideal American small town. But recession, a brutal murder and a suicide have killed the magic


There once was a place where neighbours greeted neighbours in the quiet of summer twilight. Where children chased fireflies. And porch swings provided easy refuge from the cares of the day. The movie house showed cartoons on Saturday. The grocery store delivered. And there was one teacher who always knew you had that special something. Remember that place?

Then winter came and a chill wind blew. People lost their jobs, families foreclosed on their homes. One morning you woke up and turned to greet your neighbours but found they had gone. The movie house closed. The quiet of those early twilights was shattered by news of a brutal murder right in the centre of that place followed just days later by a man killing himself after a shoot-out with police.

That's not what is meant to have happened to the script of Celebration, the magical "American home town" that Disney built in Florida 14 years ago. The first paragraph of this article is lifted verbatim from the town's original sales brochure from 1996, written by Disney's famous "Imagineering" team. The words were matched in visual form by the new town's seal, which was stamped on everything from storm drains and mugs to golf towels. It showed a little girl with a ponytail riding a bicycle past a wicket fence and an American oak with her dog running dutifully behind her.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/dec/13/celebration-death-of-a-dream

[flvegan]

1. One should peruse the Declaration of Restrictions for Celebration.

I don't think you're allowed a wicket fence, and porch swings are probably banned as well.

Couldn't pay me enough to live there.

[hatrack]

27. So I guess raised-bed gardening and beehives would be out of the question . . .

:rofl:

[Toucano]

2. Nostalgia is a disease.

Reality is the cure.

[KT2000]

5. No kidding

Sounds like they are nostalgic for life in a Disney movie.

[Toucano]

7. Bingo!

"Ozzy and Harriet" could have never existed without Dave and Ricky's premarital sex-fueled, drunken binges!

You can't have the pretty scenery without the seedy underbelly. Yin meet Yang.

[KoKo]

17. Wouldn't we all ..these days...want for the Disney Dream...instead

of what is? Dreams are GOOD...Don't TRASH DREAMS! Not "DISNEY DREAMS" for Corporatists...but DREAMS that push one's IMAGINATION..for a BETTER WORLD...a WORLD FOR YOU...and ME to find EQUALITY.

DO NOT EVER TRASH DREAMS...and EARLY DISNEY...with WALT...was a FANTASY DREAM.. Just because Corporatists belittled and trashed and then used it to EXPLOIT...shouldn't make us trash what Walt Disney DREAMED for America... He died and the Corporations did THEIR WORK on Walt's Dreams of the Era he lived in.

Disney TODAY is NOT the FOUNDER's VISION...He's DEAD AND GONE.

[RaleighNCDUer]

9. Nostalgia is a nice place to visit

but no place to live.

[DeSwiss]

3. K&R

- Art imitates life.....

[blue neen]

4. One thing Disney can't control is human nature.

People will always have their strengths and weaknesses, no matter where they live.

[derby378]

6. Isn't Celebration akin to a modern company town?

Granted, I think you can buy goods in Celebration with dollars rather than company scrip, but the general idea is the same.

I love nostalgia and a sense of old-fashioned community, but you can't manufacture it. It's organic. You can grow it, cultivate it, and nurture it, but community doesn't come in a pre-fab box with an instruction sheet.

[blueamy66]

8. Welcome to 2010.

Screw these fantasyland families. Welcome to the real world.

I know a few "Disney crazies". They are not all there.

I'm sorry for the losses, but come on, grow up already.

[HEyHEY]

10. uh

""One murder in 14 years! Where can you go in this entire planet and find this type of statistic? Tell me," says Jodi Meyers, who lives on the same street as Giovanditto's apartment."

Well, there's about thirty MILLION places with stats like that.

[no_hypocrisy]

11. Celebration was Fantasyland with a mortgage.

It didn't exist in real life.

[markbark]

12. Chumbawamba had it nailed ten years ago

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYDhfHVP9_o

They're buying up nostalgia
For a time they can't remember
In Celebration, Florida.

[2Design]

13. people said it wasn't as safe or ideal even 6 years ago

[Newest Reality]

14. Disney is the reality in America,

the rest is simulation where the hyper-real is more real than real.

Manufactured reality is now so ubiquitous that pointing it out is like trying to tell fish what water is. Walls of distracting fantasy, emblazoned with jealous logos, rise-up everywhere, becoming more seamless from arising to sleep, cradle to grave.

The Simulation digests and regurgitates the past and the present and creates the future while selling corporate monoculture as the version of the only kind of life deemed worth living. Those who fall out of the system of intricate abstraction simply un-exist; their names removed from the Holy Database of Life; their bodies poured into unmarked holes; their memories and legacy paved over with the next shiny, engineered facade of technological, persuasive, commercial lust.

Stories, movies, news and spin gush daily into the yawning fields of addicted minds, deeply entranced by the sound and the fury of streaming influence without disclaimers.

The Simulation dreams you into an entertaining oblivion that you feed with your every effort as you were told to.

Welcome to the ... Desert of the Real!

Baudrillard ROCKS!

[virgogal]

15. Absolutely !

[snagglepuss]

18. Have you paraphrsed him or is that a quote? I ask because I found him

exceedingly difficult to understand (at least the book I attempted to read). Perhaps I should try again because I'm very interested in knowing more about his ideas.

[Newest Reality]

19. I know what you mean.

His writing and thinking was very deep and convoluted. Yet, I had to dig into it and consider his philosophy even more as I read. It was well worth it. Tough read as it is, it stretches your thinking.

Of course, I was inspired by the book that Neo opens to get the contraband in The Matrix. At first I wondered if there was such a book and managed to find it.

Oh, and my writing in the post was merely borrowing from his ideas and adding my own poetic justice. Or, could be channeling? :)

[snagglepuss]

21. If you don't mind my saying, you write very well. Too bad B didn't have

you as an editor.

[Newest Reality]

22. Thank you very much!

Creative writing can be enjoyable at times.

I appreciate your comment.

[Odin2005]

25. They directly quite him in The Matrix.

[Nye Bevan]

16. I actually like the concept of designing a town to be walkable, with sidewalks and front porches.

I hate the fact that suburbs like where I live are designed around the car. Even if people wanted to walk, most of the streets around here have no sidewalks.

[TARAmisu80]

20. The actual city/town of Celebration is...

a tiny city that simply has welcoming front porch style homes. There are shoppes and restaurants in the center of the town, with movie theaters, a nature walk, a lake. There's a university campus, a gorgeous state of the art hospital... it's beautiful, but not worth the $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$. They have a lot of visitors to walk the shoppes and restaurants, too.

[DirkGently]

23. It was a grotesque, deluded project, fueled by greed and manufactured hype.

A well-planned community is not a bad idea. But not the facades and plastic rocks and bullshit Hometown USA nonsense Celebration became. They held a "lottery" for "chance" to buy property there. It reeked of "fake" from top to bottom. Good riddance to it.

And no offense to anyone, but Walt was a bit of a fascist nutwad who pointed fingers at "commies" during McCarthy's Red Scare. It's not exactly tragic that his fanatasies bore sour fruit.

[Stevenmarc]

24. Celebration is a few animatronics short of Stepford

[DirkGently]

26. It's creepy there.

[cbdo2007]

28. Maybe there is a John Titor connection??

http://www.nicolabattista.it/is-john-titor-an-upcoming-disney-franchise.html

John Titor is the time traveler who came back in time from 2036. Turns out a lot of the connections to Titor are from the Celebration, FL area. Perhaps Disney and Celebration, FL are more important in the future than we realize.