Santa's Factory Labor System

This 1932 Disney Silly Symphony cartoon is remarkable in that the elves in Santa's workshop are happily employed in a fully Taylorized factory labor system, with each task broken down to its simplest elements, making for utterly replaceable elves. No need for a union here. It's all happy and magical, "bringing joy to a million homes" through efficient production and quality control.

Given the immense pressures on the toy industry within a global marketplace, Santa's workforce will soon need to adapt, with elves of color, underage and women elves doing most of the work with no health-care or retirement benefits, drastically lowered wages, and little to no job security. Productivity will rise, wages will decline, and the Big Guy at the top will keep getting fatter.

The obligatory race humor of the era is present in a few spots, but goes by quickly. Tip of the Apesma hat to the always erudite Mr. Trevor Griffy, who troubled himself to reference this account of the 1941 Disney Animators' Strike, in which the Mouse eventually lost the battle, but won the war and lost his soul.

The Magical Fucking Kingdom

We did Disney World today, and it wasn't as horrible as I thought it would be. If you've never been to Orlando, it's hard to appreciate just how huge Disney is here. You drive down Highway 525, and Disney basically owns it. There are numerous parks, each with their own entry fees of about $71.00 a day, per person. There's the Magic Kingdom, the Animal Kingdom, the Disney-MGM Studios, Epcot Center, the Water Park, Downtown Disney, and Disney's Wide World of Sports.

As we attempted to buy our tickets, two different sales people did their best to give us a half-price deal in exchange for sitting through a hour and a half timeshare sales pitch. Life is way too short. We decided on the Magic Kingdom, got the conference discount and the after 2 pm discount, and paid $236 for two adults and two four year-olds.

We had some time to kill before 2 p.m., so we went off in search of lunch. Everything south of our hotel is owned by Disney, so we tried north. It was a corporate wasteland, and the best we could do was an Applebees. We paid $31.32 for a shitty light lunch. It was a reminder of how much our quality of life suffers when corporate Goliaths choke the life out of everything else. It took them 20 minutes to even notice we were there, and then, when the food finally comes a half hour later, they bring two four year-olds mac and cheese that's been warmed in a broiler and say, "Be careful. Hot plates!"

Fucking brilliant.

On the way to Disney, we stopped to pay a toll (there are toll booths every few miles in this part of Florida), and there are two booths and a sign. The sign says that if you run the toll, a photo will be taken and you will be fined. One booth is for those with a pass. The other booth is for fifty cents in change, and if you don't have the change, you're out of luck, because the machine doesn't accept bills and there is no bill changer.

I walked to the car behind us with a dollar bill in my hand and the driver was already digging around in his ashtray for dimes. He wanted to wave my bill away, but I insisted he take it in exchange for redeeming my faith in humanity.

By this time, I'm starting to dislike Florida rather intensely.

When you get to The Magic Kingdom, you pay $10 to park in one of their ginormous lots, get on a shuttle that takes you to a monorail, and then come through a security checkpoint where they look through your bags to make sure you're not bringing in food that they'd prefer you purchase inside.

Then, as you present your tickets, they instruct you to place your finger on a scanning pad. "Why are you taking a fingerprint," I ask. The woman looks at me blankly. "It's not taking a print. It's just measuring your finger."

Measuring my finger?

"Why," I ask. "Do the scans go into a database?"

"No," she says. "It's just so that if you lose your ticket we know who you are." Just as I'm thinking that this makes no sense at all and am working up my next question, I notice that Carolyn is giving me that "Don't be such an asshole" look, and I decide to let it drop. I have my finger scanned, walk through the turnstile, and look at the panel that the operator sees. The LED display reads, "Ask for biometric data."

In ten years, I think, these fucking things will be everywhere.

So, by the time we get to Main Street, which is filled with places to buy shit and has this incredible sound system that's like the voice of God coming out of the sky and every minute or so says that this is where dreams come true and anything is possible, I'm thinking I've pretty much arrived at the heart of darkness.

But within the first few minutes we see a saxaphone quintet on a sidewalk that knocks out a tight as hell version of Sweet Georgia Brown that had me dancing with Mica on my shoulders. Then a band went by doing Deep Purple's Smoke on the Water, which is a marching band standard but in this context made me laugh. And then the parade came by with all sorts of dancers, and two-thirds of the guys looked totally gay, which made me remember how Disney stood up to a Christian-right boycott a few years ago. And I conceded to myself that Disney isn't all bad, even if they are ruthless capitalism in Mickey Mouse drag.

The "It's a Small World" ride, which was the subject of a dead-on parody in the Simpsons Episode where Lisa is tripping at Duff Gardens, was pretty much worth the dough in and of itself. We went twice. Unbelievably surreal. I held Twin B up so she could have a good view of the 10 pm fireworks display, and I've never seen her so transfixed. They met Cinderella, and to the girls it was like seeing God. By the time we walked out at 11:30, they'd clearly had the biggest day of their lives, and I was feeling like it was worth the money.

But we didn't buy one single piece of crap while we were there. We felt pretty good about that too.