I am on vacation with the family in Orlando, and will drive down to visit my sister and brother for a few days tomorrow. We're enjoyed two days at Universal Studios with the masses. What hits me about these theme parks is how all the artificiality and fakery is so very well done. Everything, of course, is built on a steel frame, but what wonders they can do with cement, a brick facade and reproduction everything.
Then I think that the whole of America is built like that. Go down any modern suburban shopping street and it is like Disneyland or Universal studios. Oh look! there's an Italian restaurant that's built to look like an villa in Tuscany. Oh look! It's a Mexican restaurant built to look like a hacienda. Why there's a shopping center built in the early American style, and there's another shopping strip built to look like a Victorian American main street. Go into the shopping mall and every shop has a fake 'mood' or an artificial 'atmosphere' right down to the uniforms of the staff, the piped in music and all of it composed and manufactured as one big illusion.
Do Americans realize how fake most of their society is? Do they realize how much the ordinary shopping experience or restaurant experience is now conditioned by movies, stage sets, theme parks and the whole entertainment society? So our dining experience, our shopping experience, our whole experience is fabricated to produce a 'mood'.
The saddest thing of all is that our homes and churches are now built like this too. "Building a church?" We'll just put up a steel box and then decorate it however you want. Want Gothic? Great. We'll make some pointed arches out of two by fours and plasterboard. Want Romanesque? No problem. We'll make round arches. Of course the arches don't actually DO anything, and the pillars are fake but it looks pretty."
Some day someone will write a book on the history of American architecture and they will have to write a chapter on the influence of the film set and theme park on the rest of teh architectural profession.
Enjoy the Wizarding World of Harry Potter!! I've been 3 times (going back again this summer for the movie/convention!) so I have some advice for first timers:
ReplyDeleteIf you want to go into Ollivander's (the wand shop) get in line EARLY. It's the smallest of the stores and the lines are ridiculous. They will pick a child of about 11ish years old for the wand ceremony (like in the book) which is very cool to watch. Be aware though that the wands are $30-40, and it's kind of assumed if you do the wand ceremony you buy a wand. Just a heads up.
The lines for the Forbidden Journey (the coaster inside the castle) will be very long too, but they are worth it. The line snakes through the Castle, and it's very cool. The ride itself is amazing too, with talking portraits and such.
If you want to buy merchandise like scarves and keychains and some of the wands, a lot of it is available at the WB shop in the airport, with far less ridiculous lines than at the park.
If you buy postcards or write letters, be sure to get them postmarked by the Owl Post! There will be an employee at the stand near the covered area next to Dervish and Bangs and they will stamp your postcards and letters there. However, if you don't mail them from the mail slot in the park they will be quite delayed. Since the only stamps available at the park are the expensive collector's stamps, I'd recommend bringing a roll of normal stamps, writing your postcards, getting them owl-post-stamped, and then mailing them.
The butterbeer is VERY sweet. I have never been able to finish a whole glass myself; I usually share with my sisters. Even the frozen stuff is more like cream soda or ice cream. If you're very thirsty and craving a magical drink, go for pumpkin juice. It's very light and good.
The food at the Three Broomsticks seems expensive ($10-15 a plate) but it is very good and the portions are huge. My favorite is the chicken. The chocolate cake/mousse thing is also very good.
If you use the on-site ATM (near the bathrooms) your bank statement will read "Gringotts," which is just awesome. Same goes for any of the stores- on your credit card or bank statement it will read "Honeydukes" "Zonkos" etc.
If the park is incredibly busy and operating above capacity (as it has been 2 of the 3 times I've gone) you will be deferred into either a line to stand by and wait to get in, or you can send one member of your party to get return pass tickets with a specific entry time. When that happened to us, we did both; I went to get return entry tickets, and then my family stood in the stand by line. We were able to get in via standby line by 10 am, and then leave the park to go eat lunch elsewhere (where it's cheaper) and then use our specific return time passes to get back in after lunch.
When you first get near the park there is a large theater where they might be showing something. Odds are it's the same feature included on the DVD extras of the last 2 movie releases; if you own those it's not worth your time.
The sitting rollarcoaster, the flight of the hippogriff, tends to have shorter lines, but is still fun, especially for younger kids who might be intimidated by the dueling dragons coaster next door.
The Chocolate Frogs (available in honeydukes for $10) are HUGE. Easily large enough to share among a family.
If you think the US is that way, you should visit me in Japan! How I long to see a house that doesn't look like a cardboard box sometimes. Don't even get me started on Tokyo (St. Mary's) Cathedral!
ReplyDeleteIf you go to Disney World be sure to notice how the scale of the buildings decreases as they go up to increase the sense of their height (esp. Cinderella's castle).
ReplyDeleteExcellent point, Father. You can find an example of that kind of architectural influence right there in Orlando in the Shrine of Mary Queen of the Universe. It's on I-4, just north of Disney.
ReplyDeleteI was just there last week and was struck, as I walked around, at how visually and architecturally the Shrine is very much a product of its environment. The approach to the front doors is nice - big imposing doors and very well done mosaics above - but inside it's all acrylic installations and sterile spaces. It feels like a conference hall with a cross and an altar.
Which is a shame, really. The ministry is wonderful - all day confessions, exposition of the Eucharist - it's a great oasis in the midst of the rah-rah plastic banana-ness of the surrounding area. But wow, could they have made a better, and a more effective, statement about the power of Christ had they gone with a dramatically different architectural voice. As it is, it's almost indistinguishable from the outlet mall down the road. And thus, becomes invisible.
It won't stop me from going there when I'm in Orlando for business, but I can't help but regret the choices they made.
I've googled both St. Mary's in Tokyo and the Shrine in Orlando. Either the people who worship there are not Catholics or I'm not. Those places do not look like churches to me. Perhaps I'm Orthodox, because Orthodox churches look like churches to me. Verily, I believe that people who build such monstrosities and the clergy who happily offer the Mass in those places do not believe in the Catholic Faith, if they did, they wouldn't allow the Sacred Mysteries to be held in such soul crushing spaces.
ReplyDeleteVery good article Father!
ReplyDeleteI was at an amusement park (King's Dominion in VA) last weekend and was noticing some of those things myself. The part that got me was the great cost of the construction and some of the affects (and not to mention the research and development costs).
It blows my mind how much money we as Americans dump into entertainment (both customer and in building).
It's contagious. In the late sisties and early seventies UK, slighty before your time there FR? big brewers took over many small local brewers, adding score and hundreds of pubs to end up with thousands.They had national marketin policies. This involved places like the "king's arms coaching inn " in B**fd being gutted -"people don't like old stuff"unquote of it's 14thcent onwards oak beams , inglenook, etc: which were replaced by glass fibre decorative beams, chimneyless inglenook: "a olde worlde atmosphere encourages upmarket customers."
ReplyDeleteThe Usa may be a bit wierd, but it's on greenfield sites?
Father, this is all true, but maybe it wouldn't sting quite as much if you described our architectural and other stylistic proclivities in American society as "faux" rather than "fake" -- jus' sayin'!
ReplyDeleteThat story about the pub is the saddest thing I've heard in a while (re: architecture).
ReplyDeleteAnd yes, there's no point building American themeparks or minimalls anywhere but on unused land, for the most part. Usually it's scrubland or old farmland.
Re: weird American architecture -- To be fair, Americans come from everywhere so we like to steal ideas from everywhere. American architecture is a sort of visual equivalent of the American English vocabulary. The fact that it's fakey versions is just a reflection of wanting it fast and slick and cheap.
Call back in another 500 years, and maybe there will be an "American" style or "regional" styles again. We're still in the uncritical osmosis stage right now.