A sense of calm settles over the nation

The new installment of Nostrum appeared on iTunes without a hitch. The masses can lay down their arms and return to their homes.

Whew.

So I'm rather interested in the following, as it relates to S&S. My premise is that one good way into this remarkably obtuse theorist is through a reading of Disney (speaking of which, I am presently literally reading the ms of Neal Gabler's new bio of WED, and it's the best ever, simple as that). We all know Disney. We've all been there and done that, even if we haven't. So we can take some very complex coin (the old Baudleroo) and exchange him for some very common coin (Disneyland and/or Disney World). Baud's own writing on Disney is no easier than his writing on anything else, but if we can't understand him specifically, at least we can sense what he's talking about.

To wit: Pirates of the Caribbean. Which, as far as I know, Baud doesn't write about (he's too hung up on the hyperreality of the parking lot; as I said, he's the last person you want to go on a Disney trip with).

Once upon a time, there were pirates in the Caribbean, and elsewhere. Edward Teach--Blackbeard--was abroad in the early 1700s. Scotland's own William Kidd strolled out to the gallows in 1701. That old privateer Francis Drake thrived even earlier, in the Elizabethan era. The open sea was hardly a place of safety to begin with in those great days of exploration and discovery, and add to this the politics of the age (Drake's targets were Spanish ships) and the lack of, say, the Coast Guard, and you've got a pretty lively ocean. Pirates may still exist to the present day, but the Age of Piracy, if we wish to call it that, had already diminished by the time the American colonies became the United States. Oh, sure, there were those marauders on the shores of Tripoli that the early Marines had to contend with, but the concept of pirate as exemplified by the Blackbeards and the Captain Kidds was all but over. That original Age of Piracy, nevertheless, had been, in a word, real.

By the end of the 19th Century, after much passage of time, the real pirates had been transmogrified by the popular culture. Whatever these fierce outlaws had been hundreds of years ago, they had become something of a myth. They had been transformed from the fear of every ocean-going traveler (and of many port inhabitants) into cultural icons. New Year's Eve, 1879, marked the premiere performance of "The Pirates of Penzance," where pirates are perceived as somewhat better than politicians on the social scale, where it is easy to confuse a pirate and a pilot, and where the state of being an orphan is enough to bring a tear to the buccaneering eye. Better still, think of J. M. Barrie. By the time he writes Peter Pan, 1904, pirates are images of childhood fantasy, so completely removed from reality that Barrie can use them freely as safe villains to entertain five-year-olds.

Pirates, by this time, have come a long way.

The golden age of Hollywood was an age of myth. Hollywood created myths, Hollywood explored myths, Hollywood was myths, Hollywood was myth. (I'm starting to sound like the OB, now!). Hollywood processed myths with great avarice. Pirates were among those myths. Dashing buccaneers like Errol Flynn and Tyrone Power filled the screen with a new image of pirates and piracy. Wallace Beery (what a great and appropriate last name) as Long John Silver. The dreams of America, fueled by the films of Hollywood, were filled with pirates as perhaps no dreams had ever been filled before.

Any relationship to real pirates was totally coincidental, of course. These were newfangled pirates, a myth unto themselves. These pirates were fun and exciting, not unlike the pirates of Peter Pan, only now much more real thanks to the production values of the major Hollywood studios.

Walt Disney himself was on the pirate bandwagon. Because of post-WWII financial issues, Walt was forced to make some movies in England, and the result was a series of live action stories including a fine remake of Treasure Island. Walt also made a version of Peter Pan, thus recycling the already recycled pirates of Neverland. To say that pirates were a solid part of the American imagination in the '50s is to utter a simple, objective truth. And if I'm not mistaken, the idea of including pirates somewhere in Disneyland was on the boards as early as the very opening of the park in 1955, or at least shortly thereafter. Thanks to the New York World's Fair, for which Disney's team created the boats of It's a Small World, in the mid-60s Disney finally had a vehicle to move people through an audioanimatronic world of pirates, and Pirates of the Caribbean, opening in the mid-60s, was the last attraction that Walt himself worked on personally before he died.

Pretty much from the day of its opening, Pirates of the Caribbean was a signature attraction at Disneyland. When Disney World opened a few years later, fans were dismayed that there was no Pirates ride in Florida (Disney management felt that pirates would be banal to Floridians because of their proximity to the Caribbean and, theoretically, real pirates). Disney quickly corrected the error, and soon Pirates of the Caribbean was a signature attraction at Disney World. And, eventually, Disneyland Paris. And Tokyo Disneyland.

But there's a problem now. Pirates qua pirates no longer inhabit the dreams of Americans (much less Europeans and Japanese.) I mean, how much did you read about real pirates when you were in grammar school? Did you even know Blackbeard's real name? In other words, the reality of pirates has gone away from our personal reality. Additionally, the dream reality (the Hollywood reality) of pirates has also gone away from our reality. Nobody made pirate movies anymore in the years after Pirates of the Caribbean opened at the two American Disney parks. Pirates had reached the end of their run, so to speak. They were over, except for one thing, that thing being the attractions at the Disney parks. The real pirates of the Caribbean now only existed in the simulacrum of the attraction of Pirates of the Caribbean. Pirates of the Caribbean is not a simulation of anything: it represents no real people and no real place. It is a collection of "signs" of pirates detached from their reality and placed into a new sort of reality, the recreation of something that never existed, a simulacrum.

From this point on, given the popularity of the Disney parks, the pirates that inform the dreams of Americans are no longer either real pirates, or simulations of pirates, or Hollywoodizations of pirates, but simulacra of pirates. How many American children knew nothing about pirates except what they learned from the attraction Pirates of the Caribbean?

Baudrillard would be pleased. But the story then gets perverse.

About 40 years after Pirates of the Caribbean opens, after a long drought of anything piratical in the popular culture, the management of Disney is casting around to, as we like to say in business, repurpose some of its material. Out of this slough of creative turpitude they decide to make movies out of some of the rides, thus inverting Walt's original idea of making rides out of movies. They make a movie of Country Bears. They make a movie of Haunted Mansion. And they make a movie of Pirates of the Caribbean.

Bingo!

I doubt if Disney management imagined the success that would ensue from the film Pirates. But our question here is, what exactly is the film based on? Well, it's based on the attraction. It's based on the simulacrum. They even sing the song from the ride as if it were a real song! The film is entirely informed by the unreality of the ride. And even given the popularity of the various attractions in the parks, more people would see this film than would ever ride the ride. Which means that, for more people, the new image of pirates is derived from this film, based on God knows how many layers of reality displacement from the actual pirates of the Caribbean! Talk about the precession of simulacra, as the Old Baudleroo would put it. But it doesn't end there. This summer, the attractions in both Anaheim and Orlando will reopen after short breaks of a few months of refurbishing. And the new attractions will feature characters from the films, including Jack Sparrow and Barbarossa.

If you can keep track of the reality displacement in that, you're a better postmodernist than I am. But this does all act as an anecdotal explanation of the development of simulacra, and perhaps even the precession of simulacra, which is more than the OB ever does.

This weekend, after we get the little trooper, I hope to record S&S. I'll include this material, but I thought I'd write it out here anyhow, just for the fun of it. And it is fun. If you don't get a kick out of it, then don't bother taking up cultural studies any time in the near future.