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 MARNE-LA-VALLEE In 1987, when the Walt Disney Company broached the idea of putting one of its theme parks in Europe, intellectuals recoiled in horror. Nothing could be more offensive to them than building a palace for Mickey Mouse, that icon of American cultural imperialism, 30 km east of Paris. To many, it was like holding up a mocking fun-house mirror to the palaces of Versailles west of the city. During construction there were protests around the once peaceful agricultural district, but local farmers profited handsomely by selling their fields to Disney, and many of their children were among the throngs answering the call for employment before the place opened in 1992. Since the addition last year of nearby Walt Disney Studios, Mickey’s magical realm employs 12,500 people and has elbowed its way to the top of the list of France’s tourist attractions, with some 13 million visitors a year — James Graff |
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Europe Then & Now, a TIME photographic exhibition based on this issue, opens Aug. 18, 2003, in the Olivier Exhibition Foyer of the National Theatre, London. |
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E-mail your letter to the editor
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Disneyland
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Ariane Mnouchkine
French theater director
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Posted Sunday, August 10, 2003; 16.11BST
I used the phrase cultural Chernobyl back in 1992 for Disneyland Resort Paris in a private conversation with Robert Fitzpatrick, who became its first chairman. He’s the one who made it public, not me.
But there’s no question that we are experiencing a cultural Chernobyl in Europe today. If you want to see it, just turn on your television: rank commercial garbage across the board. It’s not just from America; the ideas wouldn’t emanate if there were no accomplices.
We Europeans are imitating the American idea that culture is just one more product in the marketplace. Many French intellectuals will tell you that the ‘cultural exception’ is a nuisance. Yet so many American artists have come to Europe to bloom precisely because here we still think the state is in a way responsible for finding the means for culture to exist.
But we’re losing ground. Little by little, there’s less money for culture, which is being treated less as an educational obligation than as a luxury for the élite. It’s up to Europe not to sell out.
We have to guard our languages, our theaters, ballet and music. Disneyland Resort Paris isn’t the half of it.
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