On the Inability of a  French Post-Modernist to Enjoy the Magic Kingdom

At least once every 365 days, I take some time out of my life to visit Disneyland. This week, I journeyed back into Magic Kingdom to exploit the fruits of a free birthday pass (I turned 14), and titillate my insatiable addiction to churro smell (not taste). So, while wandering around the all-too-real reality of Disneyland’s stroller-pushing, teenaged mothers and churro-eating masses, I, of course, remembered the words of my, and undoubtedly your, favorite postmoderist, poststructuralist Frenchie philosopher, Jean Baudrillard:

Disneyland is presented as imaginary in order to make us believe that the rest is real, when in fact all of Los Angeles and the America surrounding it are no longer real, but of the order of the hyperreal and of simulation.

The late Baudrillard apparently had a complicated time at D-Land–he even calls the parking lot a concentration camp– but he penned this (perhaps pretentiously) hilarious treatise on the why Disneyland is, like, soooo PoMo. I’ve posted the short excerpt from Simulacra and Simulations after the jump. If only Baudrillard was able to experience fully the Russian doll, So-Cal microcosm of California Adventure…

Put this in your pipe and smoke it…

Read the rest of this entry →

Few things will get the fraz to haul his tired sleeping butt out of bed on a Saturday morning.   All the reasons pretty much involve old cars and car shows.   I went to the Donut Derelicts cruise in Huntington Beach, full story over at the OC Metblogs.  (yup…posting there too, always nice to expand the group I can annoy one key stroke at a time).