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Have you read this week's epistle from Jules?

Episode 176

And Walt Only Thought he was Building an Entrance

Lisa Torte occasionally gets to lose herself in her teaching. Granted, the underlying concepts of structuralism and postmodernism are beyond most of her high school students, and when she uses the phrase "the hermeneutics of hermeneutics," it never wrests a collective chuckle from the group the way it did when her old college professor used it, but her high school students do like talking about Walt Disney World, because not only have most of them been there, most of them have been there more often than they've been to church. The phenomenon of simulacrum and simulation that is embodied at the WDW temple, therefore, is all the more profound because its pull is on the faithful.

     "There is no real main street that the Magic Kingdom Main Street is emulating," Lisa is saying. "It is not an attempt to recreate a real thing. It does not try to simulate reality, because there is no Main Street in reality." She turns to the blackboard and writes on it the word simulacrum. "It is, instead, a simulacrum: in pomo terms, a recreation of something that has never actually existed."

     "That doesn't make any sense," one of her students says, which is a good sign because it means that so far they are paying attention.

     Of course, Invoice O'Connor is always paying attention, and as Lisa's eyes pass by his she feels the pain in the pit of her stomach that she has come to associate with Invoice, debate, Veil of Ignorance and life in general.

     "It does and it doesn't," Lisa says. "The Disney Main Street is made up of images and concepts that are real, in one way or the other, even if their reality is only wish-fulfillment. Putting them all together is the creation of the simulacrum. Another way of putting it is that it is an idealization, the ideal American Main Street, a Main Street that never existed except in our imaginations. No Main Street was ever this clean or this pretty or this happy and industrious at the same time, although the concept of such a Main Street, or even the memory of one, may exist as such in our minds. There once really were old ice cream parlors and pharmacies and movie theaters and milliners, and there really was a Main Street in the middle of every town. There still is. Main streets were what towns were originally built around in the first place. But these realities were at the time exactly what they were; they were not signifiers. They were devoid of secondary meaning. A pharmacy was a pharmacy, and inside there was a pharmacist and pharmaceuticals. When it comes time to build the simulacrum, we assemble the secondary meanings under the guise of the primary meanings."

     "So," Tara Petskin volunteers, "the simulacrum is the secondary meanings pretending to be the primary meanings."

     "Yes," Lisa agrees. "You could say that."

     "And the secondary meanings are things like childhood memories," Tara continues.

     "Even more than just memories. Childhood feelings. The warmth and safety you felt as a child walking down Main Street. Maybe a parent was holding your hand. The stores were all a little more magical than their reality. A millinery shop would be slightly mysterious."

     "What's a millinery shop?" someone asks.

     "Women's hats, you idiot," someone else replies.

     "So how am I supposed to know that. I don't buy a lot of women's hats. I'm not, like, gay, you know."

     Lisa raises her eyes to the ceiling. She doesn't know whether she thinks it more distasteful that the word gay is often used as a pejorative -- That's gay -- meaning that's bad, or when the concept of gay is portrayed as inherently bad. She has tried, at least, to expunge the former usage from her debate team's language, with minimal result. "Let's try not to break out into civil war over it," she says, not bothering to address it now. "The point is, Disney World takes all the secondary meanings, the warmth and safety and magic and mystery, and puts those together to create its Main Street. It doesn't look like a real Main Street, it looks like our imaginary Main Street. Everyone's imaginary Main Street. And if any further proof were needed that we're talking about a simulacrum, most of the storefronts are false. On the Disney Main Street, the pharmacy is really a souvenir shop. The milliner sells baseball caps with Mickey Mouse ears on them to eight-year-olds. Only the ice cream parlor is still pretty much an ice cream parlor."

     "And if they were selling pharmaceuticals and millinery, it would be a simulation and not a simulacrum," Invoice completes the concept for her.

     "Exactly." Lisa sits on the edge of her desk. "In the original Disneyland, the original Main Street was both simulation and simulacrum. It was false-fronted imaginary Main Street but with real businesses inside. The barber shop and the butcher were in fact a barber shop and a butcher's. But that didn't last long. First of all, you didn't go to Disneyland to get a haircut or to pick up some pork chops. But more important, what was going on inside the buildings didn't matter. It was the simulacrum of the outside that mattered. So it doesn't take long before the souvenirs take over the interiors. It's the walking along Main Street and the feeling of recaptured youth as you enter and leave the Magic Kingdom that counts. At least for the adults, all of whom want to be kids again. As for the kids, they still are kids, and to them, it's the magic of good old days that they never knew. Of course, at this point, Main Street is the paradigmatic Main Street of Walt Disney's turn of the century, and by that we mean the last century. For everyone who goes there now, there is yet another level of remove that has to be deconstructed, because we don't have even secondhand knowledge of this original Main Street anymore. Lots of time has passed, and a number of generations, and this version of Main Street circa 1910 has become the classic. Why not circa 1860 or circa 1955? 1955 is as distant to the people in this room as 1910 when it comes to downtown America."

     The class bell rings and there is a general exhalation as the need to think is replaced by the need to move.

     "No homework tonight," Lisa says.

     There are a few Yays! scattered from around the room.

     "The reason is that we got so distracted today. How did we get on the subject of Disney World?"

     No one responds as the students file out of the room.

     How do we get on the subject of anything? Lisa asks herself. She reaches across her desk and picks up her Narrative Isn't mug, and downs the last sip of water at the bottom.

     How do we get on the subject of anything?

Invoice Who?

     It is with thoughts like these that Lisa answers a summons to the office of the Right Reverend Monsignor Harold Lloyd. He has asked her to see him during her free fourth period. They had run into each other in the early morning rush of school bus arrivals and last minute attempts by a few hundred teenagers to get their day into some semblance of organization. Monsignor Lloyd had smiled warmly at Lisa from the semi-shelter of his open doorway, and she hadn't thought much of it at the time, but now as she is walking toward his office, she is beginning to be fearful. Seeing the principal, for Lisa, doesn't seem much different from seeing the principal for most of the students in the school. She is closer in age to them than to the middle-aged priest in the purple-lined surplice, and she still has the residual fear of the student that comes from being called into the seat of authority. The principal's office: the words have the same resonance as the warden's office, or the hole, or the stationhouse downtown, or whatever place bad things usually happen that you wish to have no part of.

     But when Lisa enters Monsignor Lloyd's inner sanctum he is smiling again, and it is a smile of warmth and welcome, and she cannot possibly imagine that it hides any sort of secret malice.

     "Lisa. Good. I'm glad you could come." He sweeps his right hand toward a tall straight-backed chair with plush purple cushioning on the bottom and back, indicating that she should sit down. Monsignor Lloyd is partial to purple.

     She smiles back at him. "Hello, Monsignor." Her voice is only marginally shaky.

     "I just wanted to briefly touch base with you," the priest says. "About the debate team."

     "About the debate team," she repeats. This doesn't sound good.

     "I know it's a lot of work for you, and I know that doing Policy Debate is a lot different from your background. Although I do hear that you're making some inroads in Nixon-Kennedy."

     "Lincoln-Douglas," she corrects him. Does he know something about Invoice? "We have one promising LDer," she continues tentatively.

     "Excellent. I'm all in favor of it. Forensics is a great activity. You can't expand it enough, as far as I'm concerned. Which is why I wanted to talk to you." He sits back in his chair, and there is a sudden sense of expansiveness as he prepares to get to the point of the meeting. "I have a surprise for you," he says.

     From the way he says it, by now even Lisa is sure that he is not about to fire her. "A surprise."

     He nods. "With the work that you're doing, and the idea that we might expand it into Nixon-Kennedy, I think you need an assistant."

     The words pull Lisa up in her chair. An assistant? Her own assistant? She herself was an assistant mere months ago.

     "Do you know Jeb? Jebrilla Dunadra?"

     She shakes her head. "I don't think so."

     "He just got here a couple of weeks ago. I think you'll really get on with him, and he has a debate background from college. When he heard we had debate at Veil, he was eager to pitch in and help out. I told him--"

     There is a knock on the door.

     "Yes?" the monsignor calls out.

     The door opens and a head pops in. "Monsignor?"

     "Jeb! Come in. Come in."

     And Jeb comes in. He is a little above average height, with dark, closely cropped hair and a neat little goatee. His eyes are so blue they seem to burn out of his face. He is wearing a Veil basketball tee shirt and sweatpants, and there is a little hint of perspiration on his bare, muscular arms.

     Lisa stares at him, enthralled. She has definitely not seen Jebrilla Dunadra before.

     "Jeb," the monsignor says, "this is Lisa Torte, our debate coach and one of our social studies teachers. Lisa, this is Jeb. Jebrilla Dunadra."

     Lisa stands and shakes hands.

     "It is a pleasure to meet you," Jeb says to her. He has a slight European accent.

     "Yeah," she replies, finding it impossible to move her tongue around anything less simplistic.

     "Jeb is originally from the south of France," Monsignor Lloyd says. "His parents moved over here when he was in high school. We were lucky to get him."

     "Very lucky," Lisa agrees.

     Monsignor Lloyd looks at his watch. "Fourth period's almost over," he says. "You two will have to be getting along. Anyhow, now you know each other. I'll leave it to you to work out the details of how you want to handle the team."

     "Great," Lisa says.

     "I have to get back to the gym," Jeb Dunadra says as the two of them leave the office. "Maybe we can get together after school?"

     "Yes," Lisa agrees. She looks down at his left hand to see if there is any hint of a wedding ring. Nothing. "We have a debate meeting. You can join us."

     "I look forward to it."

     "Great," Lisa says again as he smiles at her and walks off down the hallway.

     Great, she thinks to herself. Great, great, great, great, great.

Simulacrum spelled backwards is what?

Is there any narrative purpose for these occasional dives into pseudo-postmodernism?

Is Jeb Dunadra going to prove the love of Lisa Torte's life?

Is The Wedding Singer the best Adam Sandler will ever be from now until he enters the Hollywood Home for Aged Actors?

How many TVs were thrown out the window after watching West Wing pontificate on terrorism?



Elvis Costello will be whistling Dixie in our next brouhaha: "If this is the Supreme Court, where's Diana Ross?"

Go to the next episode due Oct 17, 2001.