The Problem with Pleasure

Why are you so critical? Wasn't anything fun?" This was how one listener greeted our panel on Disney World. We, the coauthors of this book, were in New Orleans at a post–Mardi Gras American Studies conference. Together, we had assembled what Karen Klugman refers to as an "alternative ride" through Disney and we wanted to test our ideas on an audience as a way of gauging our book's reception. Many in the audience seemed to agree with our critical observations. Some academics said Disney just didn't appeal to them and they had no intention of ever visiting the park. One man said he was bored during his entire Disney stay; another said his trip was pleasant, but "everything was so contrived." Consensus was broken by one obviously upset woman who resented everything we had to say. Her question–put in a rather hostile manner–has preoccupied me* ever since. As a group, we have offered a number of panels at scholarly conferences and it seems there has always been someone in the audience who has raised the question of pleasure–either pointedly as did our inquisitor in New Orleans, or with consternation–as if the questioner felt she might have been duped into some sort of false enjoyment. During all our trial runs, I don't think any of us adequately answered this question. In canvassing adults as to why they go to Disney World, I tend to get positive, but uninteresting assessments: "It's fun," "It's safe," "It's easy," "It's clean." I suspect these responses betray a comfortable acceptance of Disney ideologies, which in turn reside in the pleasure of not having to confront the flip sides of Disney's patriotism, hygiene, and gender codes. To get a better handle on what's enjoyable about Disney World, I polled my children who, like most kids, know exactly what they like about the park and responded emphatically: "The rides," "Staying in a motel," "The characters," "No school."

The problem of whether or not Disney World is pleasurable begs the question of the larger cultural context. My own meditations on whether there is any pleasure in mass culture predate the Disney Project. They began one afternoon on a street corner in Claremont, California. I was jogging, but had gotten stuck at a four-way signal light where one traffic-clogged boulevard intersected with another. To my left was a grove of stunted, water-starved lemon trees soon to be bulldozed for yet another development, to my right was a strip mall, and in front of me loomed condo-city. I peered into the cars, saw drivers drumming their fingernails on the steering wheels, punching the radio scan button, fluffing their hair, or just sitting like zombies, and I asked out loud (although no one could hear) "What are you all doing here–where's the pleasure?" Surely it's not reducible to Southern California's commodity glut: the private health spas, the hair and nail salons, the frozen yogurt and doughnuts.

The problem of pleasure comes up and is dealt with throughout our book. It haunts Shelton Waldrep's concern with storytelling; it teasingly emerges from Karen Klugman's photos; it shapes Jane Kuenz's stories of people who use the park alternatively; and it hangs suspended in my accounts of peoples' vacations. My aim here is to interrogate pleasure more directly. As always I approach culture as a consumer, so my inquiry is guided by the perspective of a visitor to the park. Taking my cue from John Kasson's book on Coney Island, I'm most interested in the sorts of pleasure that users/consumers make. In Amusing the Millions, Kasson argues that the rides at Coney Island enabled visitors to subvert the structures and mechanisms of early twentieth century industry. Technology could be experienced as fun. Moreover, visitors to Coney Island could reap the pleasures of challenging social hierarchies. As Kasson puts it, this was the only place in the city where Anglo shop girls could rub shoulders and more with Italian immigrants. On both counts, Disney World is the antithesis of Coney Island. Its relatively homogenous population makes both risk and risqué social encounters unlikely. The fact that Disney World deploys some of the same technologies that facilitated the Gulf War is nowhere imprinted in the amusements as were the wheels, gears, and conveyors of industry rendered visible at Coney Island. Hence the subversive pleasure of bending arms into ploughshares, turning militarized technologies into fun, is not available at Disney World. The specifics of Kasson's observations can't be translated into Disney World; however, the notion of consumer participation in the production of pleasure is inseparable from amusement and can be the basis for deciphering what's affirming–possibly utopian–about a trip to Disney World.

"This ain't Disney World." This is how our cab driver introduced us to New Orleans at Mardi Gras. We had arrived a few days before our conference in order to take in the sights before getting down to business. Truer words were never spoken. The reek of urine nearly knocked me off my feet. And I had yet to discover the brisk trade in tits for beer and beads. My teenage daughter, who has no qualms about marching through a moshing pit, was so taken aback that she and her girlfriend spent most of Mardi Gras in the hotel bathroom dying their hair various shades of punk. My daughter's reaction enabled me to see how thoroughly our culture condemns carnival: the bawdy and rude revel of the appetites and its consequent waste and dissipation. In my experience the only thing that comes close to Mardi Gras is the North Carolina State Fair (and I suspect other state fairs do as well), although sexuality is less a feature than the carnival delights of greasy fried foods. Otherwise, ours is a proscribed and prescribed society that monitors consumption: no salt, no fat, no cholesterol, no calories, no sugar; and heaven forbid drugs, alcohol, and cigarettes. Fiber is clearly all that's left. No wonder many of my neighbors in the South flaunt their cholesterol and tobacco intake in the face of what they perceive as bourgeois or yuppie ideas about health and taste. Being in "bad taste" can be, as Pierre Bourdieu points out, an act of resistance. Bourdieu based this conclusion on his observations of the French working class and peasantry. I don't know if cassoulet represents the same level of defiance as fried pork rind, but I would argue that southern obesity (both black and white) can be partly attributed to the oppressive victimization of a society that makes junk food fun, sexy, and plentiful and partly to the individual's active resistance to a perceived bourgeois norm....