CULTURE WATCH : Innocents Abroad

Since Henry James at least, the encounter of America and Europe has been the archetypal encounter of innocence and experience. The turn-of-the-century Bostonian emigre created in the novel “Daisy Miller” an American ingenue whose innocence baffles the Parisians because it seems to be not a way station on the route to experience but a terminal condition. Her brand of innocence drives them crazy.

American innocence has driven some of us crazy too. Ernest Hemingway was in headlong flight from it--from everything we now call “Mickey Mouse”--and, not by accident, Paris was his first refuge. The unsmiling expression on the young emigre’s face was a softer, American version of a frown found in its pure form perhaps only on the world-weary, desabuse visage of Albert Camus. Hemingway packaged French experience of that sort for export to America, and, starting with “The Sun Also Rises,” found millions of Americans eager to buy it, or buy into it.

But now innocence has become the export crop. Walt Disney offered American innocence for sale first to his fellow Americans, finding far more takers than Hemingway ever did, and now the company he founded has put the same commodity on sale in France. On opening day at Euro Disneyland, the avatars of Camus were frowning still, but thousands of Frenchmen and other Europeans were smiling--and buying.

They say every French kid is an adult at heart, and vice versa for the Americans. To which we say, Vive la difference! Paris may be just the experience Mickey needs . . . and vice versa.