Kingdom of the Mouse

There was once a TV show that would pretend take characters from history and bring them together for a conversation that could never have happened. If I remember correctly one episode was Karl Marx having tea with Queen Victoria.  My friend Harrison says the show was Meeting Of Minds but I'm not so sure. I can always do some research on that later.

I'm wondering what might have happened if Walt Disney and Jack Kerouac met on the streets of Orlando Florida. It's not out of the realm of impossibility, Jack Kerouac lived the last years of his life there and this overlapped with when Disney started to  buy up all swampland and pastures south of Orlando.

The succeed of the Disney empire was changing America. When the Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev came on a state visit to the United States he wanted to go to Disneyland (and was told no).  Disneyland was the jewel in the crown but Walt Disney was dissatisfied with it. It was only 300 acres in size and was rapidly being ringed with cheap hotels and tawdry spin-off attractions. Disney dared to dream big as his corporation bought over 30,000 acres in Florida and his legal staff then had the land exempt from local, county and state laws. Disneyworld in Florida is almost it's own sovereign state much like an Indian Reservation, only more so.

Jack Kerouac is often called the father of the beat generation, a title he never cared for. The Beat Generation or the Beats are mostly misunderstood. The "beats" was not a musical reference but came from when Kerouac said "I'm beaten down to my socks". The Beats represented those who have been beaten down and excluded from the American Dream.  They questioned if the reward was worth the price. In a whole other direction the Beats were also changing America.

Jack Kerouac and his colleagues persistently presented another America, a place that would never show up on the Mickey Mouse Club or in a Disney family movie. One of the best ways to blunt a dangerous idea is to lampoon it and trivialize it. The Beat was transformed into the beatnik -that scruffy, lazy, bongo playing, not too bright, overly idealistic young adult with no common sense. The beatnik was personified in the character of Maynard G Krebs and another generation of college graduates were given the wise advise to get into plastics -or maybe mainframe computers.

Even Jack Kerouac's most popular novel, On The Road, would get co-opted by the big corporate interests and turned into the TV show, Route 66. Except on Route 66 life is rarely a struggle. The two heroes are  clean, neat and polite. They drive a Corvette and they never have any trouble finding a temporary job so they can earn some gas money and continue their adventure seeing the rest of America.  Kerouac never saw a penny in royalties and maybe out of principal would have refused the money.

What would have Disney said?  Walt Disney was the example of how far a boy from a meager background can go. He also saw and capitalized on how America was transforming from a nation of manufacturing actual physical products to an economy of selling dreams.  Entertainment was always a commodity but Disney's vision was a quantum leap forward with a complete horizontal monopoly on the presentation and a complete vertical monopoly on the production of entertainment. It has been called the Empire of the Mouse which sounds funny until you hear some of the stories of how lawyers employed by the magic kingdom protect its interests. One thing that has impressed me is how Disney lawyers have convinced Congress to twice extent copyright protection.  Mickey Mouse and all his friends will probably never be allowed to go into public domain and if you try to use any of their images in art or parody -beware you will be sued.

So back to my original thought what would Disney and Kerouac talk about if they met on the streets of Orlando Florida in 1964? Both men loved America though Disney was a hardened anti-Communist as a big portion of Kerouac's friends were Communists. Both men were known to go through bouts of depression and heavy drinking. Would Kerouac bring up the benefits of Zen Buddhism? Would Disney justify all of his actions with a copy of Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations?  

In 1964 Kennedy was already assassinated, the Viet Nam War was escalating and Disney had only another two years before he died of lung cancer. The first anti-war protests were yet to happen and Jack Kerouac had less than five years to live.  Hippies and the counter culture had just started to take center stage in the public consciousness (ironically they loved Kerouac but he didn't like them).

Maybe it's fair to say each man appeals to a different time in a person's life. We go through childhood watching Mickey Mouse but we come of age while reading books like Big Sur.  

If Disney and Kerouac could see the world today what would they think?