The movie house showed cartoons on Saturday. The grocery store delivered. And there was one teacher who always knew you had that special something. Remember that place? Then winter came and a chill wind blew.
People lost their jobs, families foreclosed on their homes. One morning you woke up and turned to greet your neighbours but found they had gone. The movie house closed. The quiet of those early twilights was shattered by news of a brutal murder right in the centre of that place followed just days later by a man killing himself after a shoot-out with police.
That's not what is meant to have happened to the script of Celebration, the magical "American home town" that Disney built in Florida 14 years ago. The first paragraph of this article is lifted verbatim from the town's original sales brochure from , written by Disney's famous "Imagineering" team. The words were matched in visual form by the new town's seal, which was stamped on everything from storm drains and mugs to golf towels. It showed a little girl with a ponytail riding a bicycle past a wicket fence and an American oak with her dog running dutifully behind her.
That was what Celebration was meant to be. A small-town idyll built to the Disney corporation's lauded high standards.
It would be imbued with nostalgia for the prelapsarian America, and it would capture the sense of community that Walt Disney spent his whole life trying to distil, bottle and sell.
So how to make sense of the events of the last 10 days? The news that Celebration — population 11, —had suffered its first murder with the bludgeoning to death of a year-old retired teacher? Followed less than two days later by the sight of a Swat team in an armoured car staking out a house, which ended with the homeowner's suicide?
How do you fit these events into the Disney dream? Walking around the centre of Celebration — they call it "downtown" though it's not much more than a village square — is like stepping on to the set of The Truman Show, the film in which Jim Carrey plays a man trapped inside an invisible urban bubble.
There are shops with names such as Day Dreams selling Barbie dolls, the streets are lit by olde worlde lanterns and you are followed everywhere by muzak from the 40s and 50s piped out of speakers hidden beneath palm trees.
The town centre is steeped in that great Disney aesthetic: the art of deception. The 40ft Christmas tree has plastic needles. The ice rink in the central square is a sheet of white plastic. At first glance the snow that falls on the hour, every hour on winter evenings looks as convincing as fake snow could, until you realise the artifice is double-layered: it's not artificial snow but shaving cream.
Founded in , Celebration was actually dreamt up and created by the Walt Disney Company. The plan for Celebration was to experiment in community planning. It was also meant to be a place for its residents to live and work. But the clientele was kinda crummy.
It was immigrants and the scummy people you see in Poinciana. Celebration is a wonderful place to live. Even though it may not be perfect, it is as close to perfect as a town can get. Do not judge it because you have never lived in our town even though you live close. It is funny how people like to comment on its imperfections but yet come to our town frequently to enjoy everything it has to offer.
The residents here pay the extra cost of living so visitors like you can enjoy it and all its functions, too. It does not bother us though to pay the extra costs, because we love it and would not want to live anywhere else. Hi Anna and thanks for writing. I am genuinely very happy that you enjoy living in Celebration. And that is perfect for me, just as Celebration is apparently perfect for you. I worked there for 13 years, running the post office and was very involved in the community. The biggest misconception is about the residents.
The people in the town are a much closer knit group of people than any I have seen elsewhere. When someone in town has any misfortunes people pull together to come to their neighbors aid like nowhere else. They had to live through more scrutiny from media around the world because of Disney. They weathered 2 books written about the towns beginnings in the first 3 years of existence and neither were close to accurate. Traditional or thin crust.
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