Run, Willard, Run
Heard an interesting story this morning on NPR:
Great Expectations for Dickens Theme Park
Morning Edition, April 19, 2007 · A $125 million Charles Dickens theme park is set to open outside London in May. Attractions will include cobblestone streets, staff dressed as pickpockets and wenches. Plus rat catchers who will hunt down vermin.
You can listen to the full story here.
I’m all for Dickens and all for getting kids (and adults) to become more interested in history and literature. I have discovered many of my own areas of interest because I watched some historical (but fictional) TV drama about, e.g., the Revolutionary War, and thought, “Hey, I really want to find out more about the geography of 1770s Boston.” (Thank you, John Jakes.) And I think it’s great to have a theme park based on one of the greatest writers the world has ever produced.
But rat catchers? They’re going to have persons dressed as rat catchers? And where, “prey” tell, will be their animatronic (one imagines) twitching-nosed scaly-tailed booty? Do they really have to go that far into authenticity? Perhaps they should have people emptying their chamber pots out of upper-story windows; I hear that was the way things were sometimes done back then too. Or at least have a few open sewers to go along with the rat catchers. For that real down-London flavor.
Maybe I’m closed-minded, but I just don’t see how rat catchers can ever be marketed as something fun and amusing and “theme-park-ish.” Blimey, me wee lass, here’s a nice plump one I got for ya, now let’s off for a spot of tea why don’t we? Right after we make sure this here furry fella never harms Brittania again, God Save The King.
This makes Disney’s obsession with picking up every piece of trash that should happen to find its way to the ground that much more appreciated. Of course I don’t like trashy streets in the first place, and especially not on streets which are part of someplace I’ve paid big bucks to get in to, but it’s vaguely unsettling to see the pristine state of a Disney park. Like it’s slightly fake. Which of course it is. It’s totally fake. But I would rather, any day of the year, go with their plastic-surgery-i-fied cleanliness than have rat imagery follow me around all day.
I’m just not seeing getting the attraction of this one point. Some things are better left in the past.