by Naomi Leigh
When Jean Baudrillard walked out of Disneyland, he was struck by the utter solitude of the parking lot, the sudden transition from hyperreality back down to earth; the play of illusions and phantasms illuminated in Colorama in the park instantly gone dark, replaced by an endless sea of black concrete and automobiles. “A veritable concentration camp,” he resolved. For Baudrillard, Disney was to Los Angeles as Los Angeles was to America as America was to the old world of Europe. It was a postmodern desert, a perpetual present, an eternal now built of bright, flashing advertisements and signifiers without reference. On the third day of our vacation in Denmark, I find myself caught in an uncharacteristic patriotic fervor, suddenly souring on Baudrillard’s quips about America. It’s not so bad, really.
In Copenhagen’s Tivoli Gardens amusement park, nestled smugly among the specialty ceramics shops, hygge cafes, and inexplicably elevated convenience stores which Scandinavians adore, the old world lives on, defiantly at odds with my American chauvinism, even if just as a museum in all of its charming nostalgia and its self-referential past. My boyfriend and I stroll through its center, wandering along the manmade lake, as a slapstick performance unfolds upon the pantomime theatre set against the water. We munch on our marzipan logs with their surprisingly chewy insides and I feel his hand firm against the small of my back. At first, I feel silly. But like a hot tub, I figure the only way out is in. I immerse myself in the warmth of nostalgia and soon I'm giggling at the clown on stage as he sits on a spike and then bounces up with a roaring “YOWCH!” Around us, the rest of the park is divided into mini-worlds, each representing different peoples and nations.
Of course, the fairytale façade with its simulacrum of world travel (central domes flanked by Eurasian faux minarets, the Chinese pagoda littered with blossoms and dragons) comes to a literal halt on Bernstorffsgade, beside the city’s central train station. But extending well beyond the amusement park’s perimeter—into the clean lines and neutral colorways of the Danish mothers’ strollers, the understated form-follows-function two-bedroom apartments of Østerbro, the anthropomorphisms pressed against the panels of the toy stores lining cobbled streets—the fantasy oozes out in every direction, contaminating the air and reddening my nostrils.
The perimeter separating Tivoli from the old world of Denmark around it is an artificial one. Wandering through the cobblestone streets, it is impossible to tell quite where the amusement park ends and real life begins. Unlike Disneyland—an idealized infantile miniature world which one can cling to and which makes the world outside of it feel real—Tivoli’s endless unfolding owes itself perhaps to (depending on whom you ask) some combination of the wonders of modern social democracy, Novo Nordisk, sovereign wealth funds, oil fields, forced integration, subsidized childcare, babies left in strollers outside of supermarkets. Left- and right-wingers disagree on the sources, but all agree on the final result. It’s only in these conditions, suspended in time frozen by the Scandinavian cold like the block of ice preserving Walt Disney, that even those like me, damned by infertility, the early widows and widowers damned with worse, the spinsters, the kidults all find themselves freed from the chains of permanent adolescence and things binding them to the past, and are able to dream of a future presenting itself before them. This is a livable city. Every pocket park, urban forest, bike lane, and playground broadcast the same message: “Here, you can be a family.”
Back in the new world, one can speak of both Disney and of Orlando as two separate concepts, the latter evoking images of medical device salesmen in air-conditioned offices, skylines interspersed with palm trees, the Orlando Magic playing at the Kia Center.
Perhaps that’s why so many Americans—and I admit I must count myself among them—can’t help but harbor a bit of contempt for the Disney adult. In a cityscape segregated by age, what room is there for the adult in the child’s space? The delineation reinforces the discomfort. A man among women in a shared gender-neutral bathroom is innocuous; that same man in the women’s room is a pervert. For Americans, parenthood is a separate, scary place, to be found across the River Styx, in the suburbs of Westchester and Santa Clarita and Naperville, in the legion air-conditioned office buildings. Permission to exit this place is granted only to those escorting the next generation through the simulacra of Disneyland before they too come to cavort with the grim ferryman who escorts them past Cerberus.
As we pass under the gates of Tivoli holding hands, he tells me that people abstract their latent feelings into their politics. In that way, they become diffuse and depersonalized. “My hometown treated me terribly. Neither my teachers nor friends ever recognized my potential” becomes “rural areas are net fiscal recipients, benefitting immensely from a Senate that overrepresents them.” Or “my father emasculated me” becomes “liberal men are hormonally deficient soy boys” and so forth. He speaks to me with such confidence. It’s the same confidence I remember from our first date, the kind I’ve always been drawn to in men. I find myself nodding along, unsure if I’m signaling approval at his opinion or just at him.
Before me, I try not to step on the cracks between the cobblestones. Upon closer inspection, I see that they’re painted, the illusion of depth no realer than the storybook roofs with their undulated edges or the “galley ships” sailing the high seas in front of us. I make eye contact with a toddler in line for the wooden roller coaster, the Rutschebanen, standing behind us. He’s in little denim suspenders and his blonde hair lies thin in a bowl cut, nearly covering his eyes and half-covered by a pirate hat. I smile, first at him, then at his mother, who has joined him in line while the father watches on. She’s a bit older than I. Her big eyes crease when she smiles back, and the blush on her cheeks rises nearly to her temples. She’s wearing a pirate hat, too.
“Walkable cities are good for raising kids,” I say with a sigh.
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Naomi Leigh is a writer and publicist based in New York City. You can find more of her work at naomileigh.com.
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