Walkabout: Mickey Mouse Messiah

AN STYLE="font-size: 75%; color:#990000">Friday, Feb. 23, 2001 | Hong Kong, it is true, is not wonderland. The harbor is choked with all manner of overpowering poisons and exotic effluents. Rudeness is a way of life and shoving a daily commuter thrill. Animals are loved in cartoons but ignored in life; there are few reminders of Daffy or Donald in the rows of Peking ducks strung up by their honey-glazed necks in restaurant displays.

So it seemed Hong Kong had found its ideal savior this week when some of Disney's top managers stopped by to announce they would soon be rescuing the city from itself. Disney's disciples will be using the buildup to the 2005/6 opening of their $3.3 billion theme park generously, educating their fellow businessman, spreading environmental enlightenment to children, and returning a little lost innocence to all.

"We are in the business of storytelling," a radiantly wholesome Paul Pressler, chairman of Walt Disney Parks and Resorts, told bewitched reporters. And so it proved. Pressler and his legion of rosy-cheeked adjutants spun a tale of cultural imperialism at its most benign. Disney was going to "reach out" to fellow hoteliers, easing the suffering of recent years by inviting them all to the parade and sharing around the extra 1.4 million tourists Mickey's Magic Kingdom was expected to attract. Nor would there be competition with other attractions. Rather the Mouse's men would work hand in hand with them to build "a quality package of vacation reasons."

After doing right by business, Disney was going to do even better by everyone else. The park's managers would take a lead on the environment to show other businesses the light, while in the community, the corporation would set up outreach schemes for children, about which Pressler admitted to feeling "very passionate." He added: "We hope we will have a positive influence and hopefully they are things that will become important to the community."

The front man for these projects, bizarrely, was Walt Disney Executive Counsel Bob "Bob" Antonopolis, quite the cuddliest legal shark ever to graduate from the Ivy League. "These are the things we love to do," he cooed. "It's something we would really love to do here." Disney had long known indoctrination worked best on the young, he explained. "When children take hold of an issue, when they're adults, they view the world a little differently. That's something we have seen time and time again with our programs in the United States."

To mention the massacre of thousands of fish -- estimated to be worth $3.84 million in lost catches by Hong Kong's fishermen -- during the government's dredging off Lantau island to form the 310-acre reclaimed site at Penny's Bay seemed almost churlish. Not to worry. "We did express our concern," said Disney's local managing director, Steve Tight, but "the government has assured us that there is no problem there" and Disney was "very comfortable" with that.

As for questions about cultural sensitivity, any adjustment of the Disney brand was unconscionable. Focus groups in Hong Kong and southern China had given "very strong" feedback in favor of an all-American experience and no one was about to break Walt's first commandment and disappoint the children.

We all have our Messiahs and it seems Hong Kong's is coming. The queues will soon be forming for the new opium of the people as the murky dens of the past are replaced with a 21st century neon dispensary. The road to salvation, it seems, is total fantasy.