Nearly religious positivity in the face of doom lies at the heart of the Disney brand, after all - which may be why Banksy’s Dismaland, a theme-park homage to dystopian despair operating in the British seaside town of Weston-super-Mare until the end of September, incites such a powerful feeling of vertigo. Naturally, such skepticism is just a setup for that climactic moment when old-fashioned, Disney-style hope wins out. You thought you were special, but you’re not.” As George Clooney’s character tells a young optimist at the start of Disney’s Tomorrowland, “You’ve been manipulated into thinking you were part of something incredible. Instead, you feel like you’ve yanked your impressionable kids straight into the white-hot center of the tyrannically cheerful consumerist farce we call American culture. You don’t feel proud of yourself for delivering the dream of Disney to your offspring.
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But even after you navigate the labyrinthine parking structure and slog amid impossible crowds pushing double-wide strollers across miles of hot concrete, even after you stand in the last of a dozen endless lines, all the while fielding existential riddles from your kids like “Why are we still standing here?” and “What are we doing?,” even after you endure a series of lackluster rides that amount to interactive advertisements for undead franchises, no sense of calm and well-being descends. The theme park has become a compulsory routine of modern American parenting. No matter how your heart is grieving over the absurd cost, you must take your kids to Disneyland.