Who's Afraid of Virginia's Mouse?

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Opposition to Disney's America, the "historical theme park" to be built about five miles from the Manassas National Battlefield in northern Virginia, is heating up. There are two categories of opponent: those who object to building any large enterprise in this bucolic area of the Virginia Piedmont and those who object to building this enterprise.

The former are just antidevelopment. They would object to any mini-city with all its attendant pollution and traffic implanted far beyond the nearest suburb in pristine country. But, as Frank Rich points out in the New York Times, that is not the reason for the great Disney debate.

Rich, who bitterly opposes the Disney park, admits that "the issues of money, urban sprawl and environmental disruption that attend the park are between the Virginia voters and their consciences." (Their consciences appear clear: the Virginia legislature has overwhelmingly approved the idea.) But "the esthetic issues dramatized by Disney's America concern everyone." Why? Because "the battle over Disney's America is part of a much larger struggle between theme-park America and authentic America."

So the issue is not urban sprawl. This is bigger stuff: a battle of cultures, a struggle between authentic and inauthentic America. Or as historian David McCullough, co-founder of the anti-Disney Protect Historic America committee, insists, a case of "synthetic history . . . destroying real history."

The heart of the case against Disney is not the fact of development but the content. Were the site slated for a new research campus for the Harvard School of Public Health with housing for several thousand (as Disney proposes), I doubt that McCullough and the other intellectuals on the committee would be in such a tizzy.

What they loathe above all is the meaning of Disney. William Styron denounces the still hypothetical park for "its inevitable vulgarization of our heritage." Barbara J. Fields waxes poetic about the value of the past, then declaims boldly that "such things cannot be consumed as entertainment, experienced by carnival rides, pictured on mugs or T shirts, or simulated by animated wax figures." Shelby Foote expresses "fear that the Disney people will do to American history what they have already done to the animal kingdom -- sentimentalize it out of recognition."

My, my. We're talking about an amusement park here, not Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study. Disney builds playgrounds for children -- loud, clangy, vulgar, kitschy playgrounds. One might as well denounce comic books for not being literature. Or Davy Crockett movies for vulgarizing Tennessee history -- and sentimentalizing bears. How many adult couples do you know who dress up, hire a sitter and head out for an evening at an amusement park? For that matter, how many adults do you know who frequent restaurants where teenagers, dressed in giant mouse outfits, snuggle up to them and offer a kiss for the camera?

That's Disneyland and Disney World and Disney everything. I know. I am an expert on Disney. I've done Catastrophe Canyon five times and can recall every diorama of the Great Movie Ride in order. I've seen it all in the company of my son, age 9, who loved every innocent, campy, vulgar bit of it.