EEQUE! A MOUSE! : As Disney Prepares to Unveil a Theme Park Outside Paris, French Intellectuals Are Asking, Apres Mickey, le Deluge?

IN THE FRANTIC DAYS BEFORE THE opening of the latest Disney resort complex, Euro Disneyland, in the former sugar-beet farming area of Marne-la-Vallee outside Paris, Antoine Guervil stood at his post in front of the 1,000-room Cheyenne Hotel practicing his “Howdy!”

But when Guervil, a 40-year-old political refugee from Haiti, said the word, it sounded more like “Audi.” Native French speakers have trouble with the aspirated “h” sound in words like hay and Hank and howdy . Guervil, one of the 12,000 “cast members” hired to staff the park, had been given the job of wearing a cowboy costume and booming a happy, handsome howdy to guests as they entered the hotel. The Cheyenne is designed to look like a Western movie set, with such campy touches as Western saddles on the bar stools of its “saloons.” Remember the Space Age dude ranch in the movie “Westworld”? That’s the impression a visitor has of the sand-covered, false-fronted back streets of the Cheyenne Hotel compound. Dodge City on Mars. Cheyenne in the Val de Marne.

The muscular, gap-toothed Guervil, father of four, was glad to have the job. He had been unemployed off and on since coming to France in 1974. Trained in accounting, he hoped the cowboy gig at 6,000 francs a month (about $1,100) would lead someday to a higher-paying job in the Euro Disney back office. It was clear he had the requisite Disney esprit, the welcoming enthusiasm that is integral to the Magic Kingdom biz. He looked splendid in his hip-hugging jeans and Western shirt, a silk cowboy scarf knotted around his powerful neck. His smile was as broad as the Colorado River after the spring thaw. His voice was hearty as a heifer. His whole presence (an entire section of the “Disney Cast Member Behavior Guide” is devoted to body language) seemed to say, “Now, you folks just come on in and make yurselves mighty comf’table. Settle down and rest a spell and the missus will be here soon with a nice cold bottle of sarsaparilla for the littl’uns.”

The only sticking point was that ridiculous “Howdy!”

“Audi,” said Guervil, the strain of linguistic effort showing on his face. (“I’d never heard of such a word before,” he confided in French.)

“AUDI!!” he tried again, perhaps hoping that volume would somehow make up for that missing h . This was clearly a struggle. Unless things got better it was not hard to imagine objections from Renault, the French car company that is one of the corporate sponsors of the park. Picture the rage of a French auto executive arriving with his family at the Renault-sponsored Euro Disney resort only to hear the doorman of the Disney hotel advertising a German car.

EURO DISNEY IS THE FOURTH entertainment resort built by the Walt Disney Co. Not as big as Orlando or Tokyo, but substantially bigger than Anaheim, Euro Disney was the most expensive to build, financed largely by stock sold in European markets. Since its 1989 groundbreaking, the work site at Marne-la-Vallee, 20 miles east of Paris, has been the second-largest construction effort in Europe, overshadowed only by the English Channel Tunnel project.

When the sprawling, $4.4-billion Euro Disney complex (“covering an area one-fifth the size of Paris”) officially opens at 9:01 a.m. April 12, it will be Europe’s first experience with a theme park on the Disney scale. According to Disney projections, the park needs 11 million visitors in its first year to break even--otherwise, it’s got an uncertain Tomorrowland. That’s the equivalent of 30,000 guests a day, 365 days a year. In its first year, therefore, it needs to nearly meet the attendance figures of venerable Disneyland in Anaheim, which drew 13 million visitors in 1991. (Orlando’s Disney World, with 25 million, is in another league.) To get into the Euro Disney park, adults will pay 225 francs ($40), the highest tariff of all the Disney parks (children will be charged the equivalent of $27). These are high prices in a country where one of the most beloved Disney characters is Scrooge McDuck--known by his French name, Picsou.

Despite the prices and the often gloomy Parisian climate, Disney and its partners are confident the park will meet its goals. Disney also appears confident that it will avoid the problems faced by smaller French theme parks hurriedly erected in recent years to preempt the Disney challenge. The rival parks, including the spectacularly unsuccessful Mirapolis near Pontoise, built around a giant, belching statue of Rabelais’ Gargantua, learned to their financial ruin that the French rarely snack, migrate en masse into restaurants at precisely 12:30 p.m. and prefer going out with their children only on Sunday--disastrous behavior from the bottom-line point of view. Disney is betting that half the park’s customers will come from other European countries where eating and child time are not quite so regimented.

In Tokyo, the Disney park, which has been franchised to a Japanese company, is viewed as a kind of benign anthropological zoo of curious American habitats. In France, the imminent implantation of Euro Disney is felt to be a violation of culture-space. Segments of the intelligentsia see it as a barbaric invasion, the cultural version of the Germans crossing the Rhine. Euro Disney arrives at a time when France feels particularly menaced by things American. Not only does American music dominate radio, American movies pervade the screen, American casual styles (“ les baskets “ athletic shoes, sweat shirts and even gimmecaps) clothe the youth. At least one McDonald’s opens in France every week.

Once unleashed, French cultural protectionism can take bizarre turns. The Francois Mitterrand government has proposed quotas for foreign (read “American”) television programming--never mind that the French version of “Wheel of Fortune” (“La Roue de la Fortune”) is one of the most popular shows on the six networks. Not too long ago, Minister of Culture Jack Lang, alarmed at the ubiquity of American pop on French radio, named a “minister of state for rock ‘n’ roll” in an effort to put a little back-beat into the moribund national rock scene, still leaning heavily on the 49-year-old legs of Johnny (“Elvis Was My Hero”) Hallyday.

So far, Euro Disney has survived verbal attacks from Left Bank intellectuals (the resort, charged one, will be nothing less than a “cultural Chernobyl”) and assaults by the mischief-making youth wing of the French Communist Party. With theatrical timing worthy of the Main Street Electrical Parade, in 1989 the Young Communists staged an attack on Euro Disney President Robert J. Fitzpatrick and Disney Chairman Michael Eisner during a public stock-offering ceremony, complete with Disney characters, in front of the Paris stock exchange. TV viewers all over Europe were treated to the spectacle of Mickey, Minnie, Donald, Bob and Mike dodging flying eggs.

Euro Disney’s latest hassles include charges from a low-level labor official that the strict rules of conduct for employees violate French law. Inspector Claude Triomphe accused the company of failing to submit its dress and behavior codes for approval by the Ministry of Labor. The clear implication is that if Disney did submit the work rules, they would not be approved. However, few believe the complaint will get that far. “A case of Cartesian subterfuge,” sniped Fitzpatrick.

Symbolically, the action represents fears that Disney is introducing something more than a giant theme park into the French countryside. Although the squeaky-clean Disney image and dress codes are familiar to Americans, they are alien to the French. Is Disney, like a body-snatcher from another planet, coming to France to change the ways French people work and play?

PARISIAN JOURNALIST NATACHA TATU was assigned by the Nouvel Observateur magazine to penetrate the ranks and find out. The journal, a longtime flagship of the intellectual left, has been wary of Euro Disney from the beginning. Two years ago it featured a cover picture of Mickey with a headline asking: “Should France Be Afraid of This Mouse?”

Dressed in a conservative suit, the 29-year-old Tatu visited the Euro Disney offices in February seeking work. Tatu told Disney she was a law-school dropout with experience working as a hotel receptionist and hamburger helper at McDonald’s.

Tatu’s interviewer was particularly impressed with her experience in “ le fast food. “ She was hired on the spot as a hostess for the Fantasyland ride Dumbo the Flying Elephant.

Initially the journalist was put off by the list of grooming and behavior rules issued by Euro Disney. For example, in a country where only 55% of households buy deodorant products, new employees were instructed in one of the rule books: “Due to close contact with the guests and fellow cast members, the use of deodorant and antiperspirant is required.”

Employees are also “required to wear proper undergarments while working” and told that “fingernails should not exceed 7 millimeters beyond the tip” of the finger. The rules are nearly identical to those at the American parks, although Disney officials claim the French rules were liberalized to allow such adornments, forbidden in Anaheim and Orlando, as red nail polish (on women only).

As Tatu began her training, she was put off by the smiley-face Disney mentality. One memorable encounter was with a woman who was coaching the workers on their demeanor.

“When you ask the French to smile,” the trainer repeatedly told her students, “it is always forced. How do you expect to communicate your enthusiasm if it’s fake?” Not only, Tatu discovered, were the French being asked to smile, they were also being told to mean it.

But as time passed, Tatu grew impressed with the contagious esprit de corps of the Disney employees. When Tatu was late for work one of her first days on the job, she expected to be reprimanded. Instead, she was served coffee and doughnuts along with the rest of the Dumbo crew. After arousing suspicion by asking too many questions, she was uncovered as a journalist- poseuse. But instead of being shown the gate to Outsideland, Tatu was allowed to finish her weeklong training to complete the research for her story. At the end she was handed a diploma signed by Fitzpatrick congratulating her on her “conversion to honest work.”

The result was a mostly positive story, a subversion of politically correct thinking that caused a minor stir among the editors of the Nouvel Observateur.

“I went into the story totally against Euro Disney from what I knew and read,” Tatu says. “But what amazed me when I went to work there was how positive everyone was. Everyone I met liked it there. It was contagious.” Some of her editors, she confessed, jokingly accused her of being brainwashed.

Tatu says she noticed a certain hypocrisy in French attitudes toward Disney. “I’ve worked a lot of French jobs,” says Tatu. “The difference is that the Americans tell you the rules before you go to work, the French tell you after.”

THE CHALLENGE FOR FITZPATRICK WAS to build a bridge between France’s culturally protective intellectual class and the less discriminating general population.

Few Americans would be better suited to the job. A hyperkinetic, blade-thin former professor of medieval French literature, Fitzpatrick studied at Avignon and married a French woman, the former Sylvie Blondet. He served for 12 years as president of the California Institute of the Arts and was director of the 1984 Olympic Arts Festival before taking the Disney job in Europe.

With his impeccable, lively French, the persuasive Fitzpatrick has appeared before group after group of artists, writers and thinkers attempting to reassure them and stroke their egos, often drawing on French literature to illustrate his points.

“I told them,” Fitzpatrick recalls, “ ‘Look, this is a culture with several thousand years of history. It has successfully resisted multiple invasions. If it really feels threatened by the arrival of a mouse, then the culture is in much greater danger than you think.’ ”

Except for minor concessions to French chauvinism, the new park seldom varies from the familiar formula of Anaheim and Orlando. But Fitzpatrick has ordered subtle changes aimed at protecting cultural sensitivities. For example, Disney themes with French origins, such as Sleeping Beauty, have reverted to their original names. Thus, the castle of Sleeping Beauty is known here as Le Chateau de la Belle au Bois Dormant. Likewise, in the Pirates of the Caribbean ride the French pirates speak French. One of the few original attractions is a time-travel film in “Circle Vision 360” based on the writings of French science-fiction writer Jules Verne, starring Michel Piccoli as the great Verne.

Fitzpatrick also made sure that displays were erected emphasizing the French and European connection to the American people. One depicts the construction of the Statue of Liberty, the gift of a grateful revolutionary France to its American precursor. A black-and-white photo at the Main Street City Hall shows young Walt Disney as a World War I Red Cross ambulance driver in the same Marne River Valley where the park is located.

By stressing the French connection, Disney hopes to buffer the criticism. But soothing elitist egos while pandering to the hunger of the masses for American culture is a tightrope act. Disney, says Fitzpatrick, recently conducted an exhaustive opinion poll across the Continent, gauging attitudes about Euro Disney. The poll showed a gap between the concerns of intellectuals and the hopes of the public. “One of the most startling things that came out,” says Fitzpatrick, “was that if there is one concern, it is to make sure that we are going to give them a real Disney park. Part of their concern is that we would try to over-adapt, that we would over-Europeanize, over-Gallicize.”

Still, Fitzpatrick and his packaging geniuses couldn’t resist making one last link between Disney and its new home among the beet fields. The Disney park will note that the family of Walt Disney, whose words are quoted throughout the place like the entertainment world’s version of Chairman Mao, was originally French.

“The founders of Walt Disney Company,” announces a park brochure, “have deep roots in Europe. The family originated in a small village on the coast of Normandy known as Isigny-sur-Mer. Among the French soldiers involved in the Norman invasion of England in 1066 were Hughes d’Isigny and his son Robert. The family settled in England and Ireland, anglicizing their name to Disney. . . .”