Well, It’s Not Exactly the Happiest Place on Earth

The last thing you’d expect to encounter in the shadow of the Matterhorn--OK, besides litter--is irony. But irony, that postmodern hallmark of hip, has gained a toehold in the Magic Kingdom:

Where once the inanely happy human employees seemed to be products of animatronic workshops, now khaki-clad Jungle Cruise tour guides crack dark jokes about their measly wages.

Where once the concept of the secondary sexual characteristic was anathema, now Roger Rabbit’s salaciously proportioned wife, Jessica, struts her busty stuff for teensy tots.

Where once a robot called Abraham Lincoln was portrayed as a warm, feeling political leader, now an American political leader is portrayed as a cold, calculating robot. Literally.

These are shocking developments.

And welcome ones too.

If Disney animated movies can make humorous allusions to the gastrointestinal eruptions of wart hogs (see “The Lion King”), then it’s high time Disneyland acknowledges our baser natures.

It was slightly startling to hear the Jungle Cruise guide “shoot” a “charging” hippo, then smirk “Welcome to L.A.” and somewhat disconcerting when he asked us to “say goodbye to this magical, mystical place that we call $4.25 an hour,” but it didn’t seem wholly inappropriate.

After all, we’d just heard a middle school band from San Jose erupt in a boisterous “Tequila!”--the imbibing of which anywhere near the Carnation Bandstand would probably earn you a stint in the Disneyland jail.

Clearly, this is not your father’s Disneyland.

Unless, perchance, your father is Tim Burton.

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Don’t misunderstand. Disneyland is still Disneyland: autocratic, rule-bound and immaculate. (So if the entire Jungle Cruise staff is suddenly relieved of its duties, I apologize.)

I have a few theories about why Disneyland inspires in normal adults the sort of ambivalence reserved for, say, vacations in highly regimented, child-caning countries such as Singapore.

First of all, if it were not the very symbol of American family values, Disneyland would be considered the communist ideal. (Now there’s an irony for you. Or maybe not. Maybe the American family is, in fact, what communism was modeled on, at least in the dictatorship of the proletariat phase. But enough about my authoritarian parents and joyless childhood.)

We have this idea, however preposterous, that America is a nation built on the principle of autonomy, of the rights of the individual. Then we subject ourselves, in the name of fun, to a place that requires us to empty our wallets for the privilege of behaving like sheep.

In the space of one hour, I was told that I had to stand in a roped enclosure to watch a parade, that I could not open a gate myself (only a highly trained gate opener was qualified to do the job) and that the balloon seller would be subjecting us all to arrest if she failed to attach a weight to the helium Minnie Mouse balloon my child was foaming at the mouth for. (I had offered to attach it to save the poor overworked thing and myself some time. But no. In Disneyland, tying a weight on a balloon requires the same heroic level of skill as opening a gate.)

Second, Disneyland is a virtual petri dish of social Darwinism: It’s survival of the pushiest. You observe this when small children, who are naturally shy, are prodded by parents to elbow other shy kids out of the way to be photographed with costumed Disney characters. Parents practically riot (Welcome to L.A.!) trying to get their kids to sidle up to Winnie the Pooh. We witnessed one mother pushing two little boys into a waiting area for Goofy’s house in Toontown, after the attendant, a kindly old man, had politely asked the children to wait behind the rope. “Go on!” said the mom, shoving her bewildered kids forward as soon as the attendant turned his back. “Get in there!”

The lesson: In order to behave well, people--freedom-loving American people--must be forced into the kind of submissiveness that comes when they are made to wait in lines.

Take a bow, Marx and Engels!

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Over the years, as prices have risen ($34 for adults, $26 for children) and lines have grown, it seems that rides have gotten shorter. Remember the languid, eight-minute pace of Pirates of the Caribbean? We waited 30 minutes for what seemed like a 30-second roller coaster ride in Toontown.

And yet, because evil geniuses have designed the switchbacks that cleverly disguise long waits, you have no idea what you are in for. Used to be that you could clearly see the number of people ahead of you. Now lines snake in and out of view, so that when signs announce a “30 minute wait from this point” you look at the people in front of you and think, “Naaaah. Couldn’t possibly take that long.”

By the time you have negotiated your 10th hairpin turn, the truth kicks in: Disneyland, dedicated to dreams and built on fantasy, never lies.

Ironic, isn’t it?

* Robin Abcarian’s column appears Wednesdays and Sundays. Readers may write to her at the Los Angeles Times, Life & Style, Times Mirror Square, Los Angeles, CA 90053.