An Alternate Future from Yesterday's Vision of Tomorrow
It was amused reading Salon's "Walt Disney’s radical vision for a new kind of city," with its full drinking of the Disney Kool Aid about Walt's dream of a future city, the original E.P.C.O.T., Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow. (Walt Disney's own video about it is here.) The article enthuses over its environmentalist, utopian, anti-car vision.
I'm amused because a year ago I watched Defunctland's documentary about E.P.C.O.T., which started with its environmentalism and gradually went into how this "dream city" would be an authoritarian, ageist, ableist, corporate, surveillance state, company town/human zoo. Given that we're talking about Walt Disney and the 1960s, probably racist too. Some of the ways its environmentalism is expressed is what makes it impossible for the disabled or elderly to live there but in case that wasn't enough, the way E.P.C.O.T. excluded them is also the way it "solves" poverty within the community, which is by mandating that only employed adults or an employed adult's spouse and children would be able to live there. Neither video says if getting fired from your job means there will be a security team at your now former home ready to evict you; maybe plans hadn't gotten that far. The elderly and disabled have to live elsewhere. Given a choice, Mr. Traditional Family Values would prevent you from living close to your elderly parents or kids' grandparents. Or certain varieties of your special needs children. There would be no messy democracy here, no government officials elected by E.P.C.O.T.'s citizens, because only Walt Disney knows what's best for E.P.C.O.T. And that's not all! Watch the documentary, since, as usual for a Defunctland video, it's quite entertaining, even as the subject matter this time is somewhat chilling. You can comment here or at the Dreamwidth crosspost.
comments at Dreamwidth.
I'm amused because a year ago I watched Defunctland's documentary about E.P.C.O.T., which started with its environmentalism and gradually went into how this "dream city" would be an authoritarian, ageist, ableist, corporate, surveillance state, company town/human zoo. Given that we're talking about Walt Disney and the 1960s, probably racist too. Some of the ways its environmentalism is expressed is what makes it impossible for the disabled or elderly to live there but in case that wasn't enough, the way E.P.C.O.T. excluded them is also the way it "solves" poverty within the community, which is by mandating that only employed adults or an employed adult's spouse and children would be able to live there. Neither video says if getting fired from your job means there will be a security team at your now former home ready to evict you; maybe plans hadn't gotten that far. The elderly and disabled have to live elsewhere. Given a choice, Mr. Traditional Family Values would prevent you from living close to your elderly parents or kids' grandparents. Or certain varieties of your special needs children. There would be no messy democracy here, no government officials elected by E.P.C.O.T.'s citizens, because only Walt Disney knows what's best for E.P.C.O.T. And that's not all! Watch the documentary, since, as usual for a Defunctland video, it's quite entertaining, even as the subject matter this time is somewhat chilling. You can comment here or at the Dreamwidth crosspost.
comments at Dreamwidth.