Mickey Mouse marches into China
By Alexandra Harney in Hong Kong
Published: July 30 2005 03:00 | Last updated: July 30 2005 03:00
I have been to Walt Disney's first theme park in China and I can report that it is the scariest place I have been since I visited North Korea a few years ago.
The US entertainment giant recently threw open the gates of Hong Kong Disneyland to the media, nearly two months ahead of its official opening. The tour, featuring free burgers and fries and a ride on Buzz Lightyear Astro Blasters, was presumably intended to convert cynical journalists to Disney's all-American entertainment philosophy. Instead, it created a slightly uneasy feeling of pervasive control.
From the phone calls the day before the visit ("Please be prompt! The buses will leave for the park at 12:45pm promptly!") to the marching orders of the impossibly cheerful Disney employees who greeted us at the park, Mickey directed my every move.
When I wandered off Main Street, lined with gingerbread-trim shops, a beaming Disney staffer stopped me, raising her arms like a policewoman at a crime scene. Elsewhere, grinning Disney employees formed human blockades to prevent journalists straying to off-limits attractions. It reminded me of being tailed by my minders in Pyongyang.
Disney's control extended even to language. There were no meals during our tour, only "food experiences". We did not ride the Astro Blasters, we had an "attraction experience".
It was not a photo opportunity, but a "special moment" when Bob Iger, Walt Disney's president, Jay Rasulo, president of Walt Disney Parks and Resorts, and Angela To, Hong Kong Disneyland's "ambassador", said a few words and posed for the cameras, surrounded by men and women dressed like cartoon characters.
That "special moment" felt eerily similar to the cheerful authoritarianism displayed in certain aspects of communist propaganda. China's rulers know well the value of such staged events, the filmed handshake with an aggrieved peasant, the face-to-face chat with a group of laid-off workers. How far off, I wondered, was Disney's script?
I am not the first to chafe at Disney's rules. A French labour union took Euro Disney, 40 per cent owned by Walt Disney, to court in the early 1990s for requiring its staff to sign up to a dress code that banned beards and moustaches. Nor is Disney alone in its appropriation of language: Starbucks spokesmen in Hong Kong recently referred to "flavour profiles" and the "bandwith" of its menu.
I've got nothing personal against Disney: I wore my Mickey ears as a little girl. Perhaps the company's recent boardroom wrangles have made it more sensitive to media criticism. Queried about its heavy-handed approach, Disney insists the visit was "not really that carefully managed" and that its employees were only trying to move reporters through the park as efficiently as possible. That statement, however, suggests that Disney's new venture will fit in perfectly in China.
The writer is the FT's south China correspondent
By Alexandra Harney in Hong Kong
Published: July 30 2005 03:00 | Last updated: July 30 2005 03:00
I have been to Walt Disney's first theme park in China and I can report that it is the scariest place I have been since I visited North Korea a few years ago.
The US entertainment giant recently threw open the gates of Hong Kong Disneyland to the media, nearly two months ahead of its official opening. The tour, featuring free burgers and fries and a ride on Buzz Lightyear Astro Blasters, was presumably intended to convert cynical journalists to Disney's all-American entertainment philosophy. Instead, it created a slightly uneasy feeling of pervasive control.
From the phone calls the day before the visit ("Please be prompt! The buses will leave for the park at 12:45pm promptly!") to the marching orders of the impossibly cheerful Disney employees who greeted us at the park, Mickey directed my every move.
When I wandered off Main Street, lined with gingerbread-trim shops, a beaming Disney staffer stopped me, raising her arms like a policewoman at a crime scene. Elsewhere, grinning Disney employees formed human blockades to prevent journalists straying to off-limits attractions. It reminded me of being tailed by my minders in Pyongyang.
Disney's control extended even to language. There were no meals during our tour, only "food experiences". We did not ride the Astro Blasters, we had an "attraction experience".
It was not a photo opportunity, but a "special moment" when Bob Iger, Walt Disney's president, Jay Rasulo, president of Walt Disney Parks and Resorts, and Angela To, Hong Kong Disneyland's "ambassador", said a few words and posed for the cameras, surrounded by men and women dressed like cartoon characters.
That "special moment" felt eerily similar to the cheerful authoritarianism displayed in certain aspects of communist propaganda. China's rulers know well the value of such staged events, the filmed handshake with an aggrieved peasant, the face-to-face chat with a group of laid-off workers. How far off, I wondered, was Disney's script?
I am not the first to chafe at Disney's rules. A French labour union took Euro Disney, 40 per cent owned by Walt Disney, to court in the early 1990s for requiring its staff to sign up to a dress code that banned beards and moustaches. Nor is Disney alone in its appropriation of language: Starbucks spokesmen in Hong Kong recently referred to "flavour profiles" and the "bandwith" of its menu.
I've got nothing personal against Disney: I wore my Mickey ears as a little girl. Perhaps the company's recent boardroom wrangles have made it more sensitive to media criticism. Queried about its heavy-handed approach, Disney insists the visit was "not really that carefully managed" and that its employees were only trying to move reporters through the park as efficiently as possible. That statement, however, suggests that Disney's new venture will fit in perfectly in China.
The writer is the FT's south China correspondent
