When North Korean leader Kim Jong-eun
recently watched a concert that included Disney
figures like Mickey Mouse, it was big news.
Foreign analysts rushed to the conclusion that the
young leader was presiding over a shift in
Pyongyang's attitudes about the West. After all,
Mickey Mouse is a symbol of American imperialism
and Western penetration almost as potent as
McDonald's.
But the worlds created by Walt
Disney and Kim's grandfather, Kim Il-sung, are
actually not that far apart.
The world of
Disney is the closest thing to totalitarianism
that the entertainment-industrial complex has ever
produced. The founder, Walt Disney, created a
saccharine, air-brushed utopia that has been a
dystopic reality for so many who have worked in
the many enterprises of the Disney universe. The
affinity between
Disneyworld and the world of North Korea goes
beyond any taste for Western-style entertainment
that Kim Jong-eun might have picked up during his
Swiss education.
Walt Disney, born in
1901, created an empire of cartoons, movies, and
theme parks, first in the United States and then
throughout the world. He is described today in the
Disney materials much as North Korean literature
describes Kim Il Sung. "One hundred years ago,
Walt Disney was born. And the world changed
forever," reads the Disney website. "We all hold a
special place for the magical legacy of this one
man."
You can buy a book called Walt's
Famous Quotes, published by the Disney
company, in which the founder gives his insights
about the world. Disney himself maintained tight
control of the company when he was alive, engaging
in his own form of "one the spot guidance" to
ensure that the Disney brand remained consistent.
Maintaining tight control has allowed
Disney to penetrate the minds of children
everywhere. Disney's successors, like Michael
Eisner, worked hard to maintain the founder's
vision. "It was Eisner's dream that the typical
consumer would patronize Disney movies, watch
Disney TV shows, buy Disney videos, spend money at
Disney stores, vacation on Disney cruise lines,
take his or her kids to Disney theme parks - all
the while becoming completely enveloped in the
Disney subculture," according to Peter Bart of
Variety.
Disney, in other words, is not
simply a choice among many. Disney is intended to
be all-encompassing.
The novelist Robert
Harris, who has written books about Nazi Germany,
has analyzed the totalitarian nature of Disney and
critiqued its project of rewriting history and
myths in order to produce its own version of the
truth. He points out that Disney, like all
totalitarian leaders, focuses on children,
employing "that classic totalitarian technique of
preaching family values while subverting the
family structure, appealing over the heads of
parents directly to their children".
Disney was not content to create theme
parks. He also wanted to build entire cities. The
town of Celebration, Florida, is Disney-built and
Disney-maintained. It looks like the set of a
Disney movie depicting the 1950s: manicured lawns,
white picket fences, kids on bicycles. The company
even controls the weather, organizing fake
snowfalls in December. Behind the scenes, however,
Celebration has suffered the same problems as the
rest of America: a high rate of foreclosure,
suicide, and even murder.
Then there's
Disney's approach to labor regimentation and
surveillance, which rival that of North Korea.
Those who aspire to work at Disneyland, for
instance, go through a training period in which
they are instructed to look "all-American." In
other words, according to one such aspirant, "Men
were not allowed piercings, visible tattoos, or
unkempt facial hair; we could wear one ring on the
left hand if we wanted. Women were given an
'appropriate' range of hair length and amount of
skin showing." Trainees and workers are closely
watched to make sure that they never violate any
of the rules of Disney.
And those who
manage to get a job with the company discover
that, after all the deductions, they barely make
enough to survive. Some employees have to rely on
church donations and government assistance to get
by.
Disneyland presents one face to the
world: cheerful, child-like. But the reality
behind Disneyland is grim.
The world of
Walt Disney is the kind of social engineering that
the North Korean regime has aspired to create.
North Korea, too, has a founder who serves as a
substitute father for all children, who
established a governing template that his
successors religiously maintain, and whose wisdom
continues to be celebrated through word and image.
North Korea projects a utopian vision of smiling,
hard-working people that turns out to be very
different in reality. The government attempts to
maintain strict social control, particularly in
Pyongyang, the showcase capital.
And both
Walt Disney and Kim Il Sung realized the power of
film to capture and shape the imagination,
particularly of children. They realized that if
you change the minds of children, you can change
the future. In North Korea, children imprint on
Kim Il-sung, much as baby ducklings will imprint
on the first face they see and much as children
all over the world imprint on Mickey Mouse and
Donald Duck.
Kim Jong-eun may turn out to
be a Gorbachev-style reformer in North Korea who
moves his country in the direction of the West.
But the evidence for this belief is rather thin.
He studied in the West and, it turns out, has a
very pretty wife who is a stylish dresser. But
then, Assad in Syria also studied in Europe and
has a stylish wife, and that hasn't prevented him
from launching large-scale repression in his
country.
As for Kim Jong-eun's embrace of
Mickey Mouse, it may just reflect a deeper
affinity between North Korea and Disneyland. The
sons of Kim Jong-il have all reportedly visited
Disneyland in Japan, with Kim Jong-nam deported
from Narita airport in 2001 after trying to use a
fake passport to gain access to his favorite
destination. Portrayed as temporary escapes from
their rigidly controlled country, these visits
were nothing of the sort. At Disneyland, Kim
Jong-eun and his brothers must have felt right at
home.
John Feffer is the
co-director of Foreign Policy in Focus at the
Institute for Policy Studies, writes its regular
World Beat column, and will be publishing a book
on Islamophobia with City Lights Press in 2012.
His past essays can be read at his website.
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