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 Andy Rooney on Entertainment
It's A Disney World
Andy Rooney - from Common NON Sense
It's difficult to act anything but your age. We all have to fight the old-fogy syndrome and remember that the good old days were not all great and life in the United States was neither better nor worse when we were younger.
Having said all that though, I want to act my age and tell you how much I object to all the artificially exciting playlands being built around the world. Disneyland and Disney World on our two coasts are the biggest entertainment extravaganzas in the United States. Disney built another monster outside Paris and giant amusement parks are springing up all over Europe. There's one in Spain south of Barcelona. Time Warner has a place called Movie World in Germany; Lego, the Danish toy company, has a theme park near Windsor, England, and another I've heard is very clever outside of Copenhagen; a Japanese computer-game maker has one in London. A Japanese amusement park in London?
It makes you wonder who's going to look at the scenery, the natural beauty, the architecture, the cathedrals, the museums and the ancient ruins in these old countries once all the amusement parks are operating. Why would an American go to France, Spain or England and then pay to get into an amusement park?
Packaged entertainment is a growing business, in part at least, because of the population explosion. People are looking for more diverting experiences than there is diversion to be had. Parents who used to take their kids camping or who owned a summer cottage on a lake, can't find any place to camp anymore. Lake shores are wall-to-wall with summer cottages. Entertainment parks get millions of visitors a year and one of the reasons is that Yellowstone and all our other great natural parks are full. The lip of the Grand Canyon is crowded with visitors trying to get a look down into the canyon.
Disneyland fills a need we have for amusing several million people in a relatively small space. The best thing about it is that while Disney has them, people aren't ruining our forests, our mountains or Yellowstone Park.
Kids used to provide their own amusement. They built tree houses, walked to ponds or lakes or swimming holes and invented their own games to play and their own fun to have. They gathered together Saturday mornings at one of the vacant lots in town and played football or baseball. Girls made chalk marks on the sidewalk and played hopscotch or they jumped rope. They organized games themselves because there was no Little League, no parental supervision.
Kids aren't out on their own as much anymore because vacant lots have disappeared. They're housing projects now. In many cases, neighborhood fields have been replaced as playgrounds by asphalt basketball courts which take up less space. The big amusement parks are technological marvels. They are kept antiseptically clean and well-policed. Their featured attractions are inventive and well-built but, in spite of all the good things you can say about any amusement park, they provide canned entertainment and canned means the same thing for entertainment that it does for peas. It isn't as good as the real thing.
It's been years since I've seen a little girl skipping rope or a small group of girls standing around while two of them swing a rope that a third is jumping over, all in perfect rhythm. Do kids still play jacks? Do boys make slingshots, walk on stilts or play on pogo sticks? Would a child eight years old know what I meant if I asked him to play hide-and-seek or is he too busy trying to find a Disney cartoon to watch on television? If kids get thirsty on a hot summer day do they make lemonade? Or do kids just go to the refrigerator and get a can of Coke?
There's nothing to be done about any of this. Time has marched on but in spite of my determination' not to join the parade bemoaning the fact that things aren't like they were in the old days, I can't help wishing kids weren't exposed to so much pre-packaged play and fake excitement. |
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