Book-It 'o14! Book #10
May. 22nd, 2014 06:09 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alivemagdoleneThe Fifty Books Challenge, year five! (2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, and 2013) This was a library request.
Title: Cast Member Confidential: A Disneyfied Memoir by Chris Mitchell
Details: Copyright 2010, HarperCollins Publishers
Synopsis (By Way of Back Cover): "This is the story that Disney would never tell you.
What do you do when everything in your life falls apart? If you're Chris Mitchell, you run away from home--all the way to Disney World, a place where no one ever dies--and employees, known as Cast Members, aren't allowed to frown. Mitchell shares the behind-the-scenes story of his year in the Mouse's army. From his own personal Disneyfication, to what really happens in the hidden tunnels beneath the Magic Kingdom and what not to eat at the Mousketeria, it was a year filled with more adventure--and surprises--than he could ever have "imagineered."
Funny and moving, Mitchell tracks his ascent through the backstage social hierarchy in which princesses rule, and his escapades in the "Ghetto" where Cast Members live and anything goes. Along the way, he unmasks the misfits and drop-outs, lifers and nomads who leave their demons at the stage door as they preserve the magic that draws millions to this famed fantasyland--the same magic that Mitchell seeks and ultimately finds in the last place he ever expected. "
Why I Wanted to Read It: I'm an animation fan and the skeevier side of Disney as a company has a perverse way of entertaining me. Also, I love backstories and having read DisneyWar and gotten a greater sense of the cult mentality of the company, including their theme parks.
This was one of the few "there-are-deeply-messed-up-things-about-Disney-and-I-am-going-to-share-them-with-you" books that my library system had.
How I Liked It: The book sounded promising: a bit of the personal sure, but really more of the behind-the-scenes journalistic approach, albeit from a memoir bent.
My first warning sign came by way of a disclaimer in the preface:
So it's going to be much more memoir than exposé, but I can deal with that.
The unfortunate thing is that this memoir relies on an extremely unlikeable main character, a smarter-than-thou skater who finds his way to Disney via a disenchantment with his life. Within a six months span, he discovers his mother has terminal cancer (but the family is keeping it from him, save for his dick-of-a-doctor brother), he's being fired from his job as "the editor of a wildly successful skate magazine" for a picture that offended no less than the Christian Coalition (accompanying an interview with skater Nick Elliot is a photograph of him wall riding a tombstone in a Florida cemetery), and his girlfriend dumps him for one of his best friends. Despite being almost thirty and not, say, eight, he decides to flee, to pack up his life and move across the country to a place that he heard was the happiest, no less than Disney World.
Whereas the most popular memoirists generally play up themselves as relateable everypeople with varying degrees of fool (depending on the genre), stuck in a crazy situation and generally looking to us, the reader who's with them on this journey, with a "Can you believe this?" expression, Mitchell does the exact opposite.
He bestows upon his character with the best comebacks, the most bravery, the best moral compass (when he unironically cites Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged as what had "set me on my path of self-reliance as a professional skater," you'd be struggling to keep a straight face were it not for the fact you're so bored with him at that point in the book), down to the best looks (everyone ELSE can see he'd make a perfect Aladdin, why does that ball-buster of a Disney executive not think so and cast him as the obscure Clopin from The Hunchback of Notre Dame and when he stands up to her professional decision as a casting director, "Who did this woman think she was, standing there, giving me an ultimatum?", pg 175). Anyone who doubts his talent as a photographer is clearly a jealous buffoon out to ruin him.
As far as actual "reveals" go (for which the bar was set fairly low, as the disclaimer perhaps unintentionally suggests, while Mitchell is eager to dial up the sleaze, he makes several mistakes that make you doubt the truth of his claims. For one, he parrots back several already debunked urban legends regarding Disney's "hidden messages" in movies. Several former Disney World employees have caught gaffes that suggest perhaps Mitchell is not as entrenched as he claims. He decorates his tales with frequent cast orgies (in costume, of course) in which he was just too mellow to take part, his cast members as largely delusional, perverted prima donnas always eagerly eyeing the casting ladder ala Lucy Ricardo, as thoroughly brainwashed as any cult members to Disney. Why all of these things could plausibly be true, Mitchell's other slip ups make his wild claims fairly specious. Particularly since in interviews he gives the year he worked for Disney as 2000 whereas several cultural references from various characters date past that; part of the "names/characteristics changed to protect the innocent"? With a cast member he no less than smuggles drugs across the border to Cuba in Disney stuffed animals and is offered a job doing so (in the end his friend's dishonesty in getting him to smuggle more causes him to abandon the idea). In the middle of his time with Disney, he's relentlessly courted by no less than Ariel (who only the hottest girls get to play, according to Mitchell) who for all her hotness/perfect girlfriend potential turns out to be just another character she was playing (she's angling to make the switch to Cruella DeVille and he finds her having rough sex with her "greeter" ((a kind of handler all face characters require to keep guests from getting out of hand)) in character as Cruella).
After catching his girlfriend cheating on him (and in character, no less), he returns home to find his roommate (who has a worship of boy bands) living out his previously-mentioned-but-dismissed-as-too-ridiculous-by-the-main-character dream of starting an all-gay boy band.
It's worth noting that the author, who never frankly stop asserting his heterosexuality and examining/exclaiming over the "gay" of Disney in which he believes surrounds him (even going so far to suggest that a deliberately gay hiring took place by Disney in the 1980s when they received bad press for their anti-gay policies), and yet honest, he's totally cool with it, because he is, man. Which is why when his roommate at their first meeting who by all other accounts is nice, friendly, clean, and "normal", casually reveals that he's gay, our hero has to get up and leave the room for a minute.
Back to our narrative of the cheated-on, crazy roommate'd hero. He finally quits Disney World after being reprimanded for attempting to save a guest's life (of course!) because the idea of something bad happening is "unmagical" and not conducive to the Disney experience. For some reason, Mitchell was harboring under the illusion (urban legend, likely) that no one dies at Disney World, which is kind of a metaphor for his ailing mother, and so having a guest die in front of him is a bit of an epiphany, especially when Disney has it declared by the press that the guest died on route to the hospital (rather than on Disney property). Only then does Mitchell decide to go home for Christmas to his dying mother.
If you take this as a complete work of not-that-well-researched fiction, maybe consider it a gonzo novel, maybe a kind of literary equivalent of Escape From Tomorrow, the book is more plausible. The only problem is that Mitchell is a horrible novelist. His characters are ridiculous caricatures, so one-dimensional as to be, yes, cartoons. His prose is ridiculous, one of the more egregious examples being his lustful depiction of his first siting of the woman who would become his girlfriend:
The book could (and has) been marketed on a number of genres: Disney expose, Disney World behind-the-scenes, gonzo memoir. And it manages to fail all of them. Dorothy Parker once said of Atlas Shrugged, the book by which the main character of this book lives and breathes and worships,
"This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force."
This is a book to be tossed aside with great force.
Notable: One of the first unintentionally hilarious moments takes place as early as the acknowledgements, which the author caps with
"My biggest thanks of all to Walt Disney, whose vision has meant so much to so many."
Title: Cast Member Confidential: A Disneyfied Memoir by Chris Mitchell
Details: Copyright 2010, HarperCollins Publishers
Synopsis (By Way of Back Cover): "This is the story that Disney would never tell you.
What do you do when everything in your life falls apart? If you're Chris Mitchell, you run away from home--all the way to Disney World, a place where no one ever dies--and employees, known as Cast Members, aren't allowed to frown. Mitchell shares the behind-the-scenes story of his year in the Mouse's army. From his own personal Disneyfication, to what really happens in the hidden tunnels beneath the Magic Kingdom and what not to eat at the Mousketeria, it was a year filled with more adventure--and surprises--than he could ever have "imagineered."
Funny and moving, Mitchell tracks his ascent through the backstage social hierarchy in which princesses rule, and his escapades in the "Ghetto" where Cast Members live and anything goes. Along the way, he unmasks the misfits and drop-outs, lifers and nomads who leave their demons at the stage door as they preserve the magic that draws millions to this famed fantasyland--the same magic that Mitchell seeks and ultimately finds in the last place he ever expected. "
Why I Wanted to Read It: I'm an animation fan and the skeevier side of Disney as a company has a perverse way of entertaining me. Also, I love backstories and having read DisneyWar and gotten a greater sense of the cult mentality of the company, including their theme parks.
This was one of the few "there-are-deeply-messed-up-things-about-Disney-and-I-am-going-to-share-them-with-you" books that my library system had.
How I Liked It: The book sounded promising: a bit of the personal sure, but really more of the behind-the-scenes journalistic approach, albeit from a memoir bent.
My first warning sign came by way of a disclaimer in the preface:
“The people I met while I worked at the park were good people. Every one of them signed legal agreements with Disney promising not to talk about their behind-the-scenes experiences. Because I worked for a third-party subcontractor, I signed no such agreement. While I intend to hold nothing back in telling you my story, I have a responsibility to protect the identities of my otherwise innocent fellow Cast Members.
The people in this book are real, but I have changed their characteristics to mask their true identity from the Corporation. In some instances, I have combined characteristics of people I met and created composite characters. The events in this memoir really occurred. The incidents that happened to me, I describe as accurately as possible. Stories I've heard, I present as folklore. At Disney, as in every society, the legend and the lore passed down through oral storytelling are a vital part of the cultural experience, so I didn't leave that out. In certain instances, I have ascribed folkloric episodes to actual (or composite) persons for ease of storytelling. I didn't include the many rumors that I couldn't confirm to my satisfaction.”
So it's going to be much more memoir than exposé, but I can deal with that.
The unfortunate thing is that this memoir relies on an extremely unlikeable main character, a smarter-than-thou skater who finds his way to Disney via a disenchantment with his life. Within a six months span, he discovers his mother has terminal cancer (but the family is keeping it from him, save for his dick-of-a-doctor brother), he's being fired from his job as "the editor of a wildly successful skate magazine" for a picture that offended no less than the Christian Coalition (accompanying an interview with skater Nick Elliot is a photograph of him wall riding a tombstone in a Florida cemetery), and his girlfriend dumps him for one of his best friends. Despite being almost thirty and not, say, eight, he decides to flee, to pack up his life and move across the country to a place that he heard was the happiest, no less than Disney World.
Whereas the most popular memoirists generally play up themselves as relateable everypeople with varying degrees of fool (depending on the genre), stuck in a crazy situation and generally looking to us, the reader who's with them on this journey, with a "Can you believe this?" expression, Mitchell does the exact opposite.
He bestows upon his character with the best comebacks, the most bravery, the best moral compass (when he unironically cites Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged as what had "set me on my path of self-reliance as a professional skater," you'd be struggling to keep a straight face were it not for the fact you're so bored with him at that point in the book), down to the best looks (everyone ELSE can see he'd make a perfect Aladdin, why does that ball-buster of a Disney executive not think so and cast him as the obscure Clopin from The Hunchback of Notre Dame and when he stands up to her professional decision as a casting director, "Who did this woman think she was, standing there, giving me an ultimatum?", pg 175). Anyone who doubts his talent as a photographer is clearly a jealous buffoon out to ruin him.
As far as actual "reveals" go (for which the bar was set fairly low, as the disclaimer perhaps unintentionally suggests, while Mitchell is eager to dial up the sleaze, he makes several mistakes that make you doubt the truth of his claims. For one, he parrots back several already debunked urban legends regarding Disney's "hidden messages" in movies. Several former Disney World employees have caught gaffes that suggest perhaps Mitchell is not as entrenched as he claims. He decorates his tales with frequent cast orgies (in costume, of course) in which he was just too mellow to take part, his cast members as largely delusional, perverted prima donnas always eagerly eyeing the casting ladder ala Lucy Ricardo, as thoroughly brainwashed as any cult members to Disney. Why all of these things could plausibly be true, Mitchell's other slip ups make his wild claims fairly specious. Particularly since in interviews he gives the year he worked for Disney as 2000 whereas several cultural references from various characters date past that; part of the "names/characteristics changed to protect the innocent"? With a cast member he no less than smuggles drugs across the border to Cuba in Disney stuffed animals and is offered a job doing so (in the end his friend's dishonesty in getting him to smuggle more causes him to abandon the idea). In the middle of his time with Disney, he's relentlessly courted by no less than Ariel (who only the hottest girls get to play, according to Mitchell) who for all her hotness/perfect girlfriend potential turns out to be just another character she was playing (she's angling to make the switch to Cruella DeVille and he finds her having rough sex with her "greeter" ((a kind of handler all face characters require to keep guests from getting out of hand)) in character as Cruella).
After catching his girlfriend cheating on him (and in character, no less), he returns home to find his roommate (who has a worship of boy bands) living out his previously-mentioned-but-dismissed-as-too-ridiculous-by-the-main-character dream of starting an all-gay boy band.
It's worth noting that the author, who never frankly stop asserting his heterosexuality and examining/exclaiming over the "gay" of Disney in which he believes surrounds him (even going so far to suggest that a deliberately gay hiring took place by Disney in the 1980s when they received bad press for their anti-gay policies), and yet honest, he's totally cool with it, because he is, man. Which is why when his roommate at their first meeting who by all other accounts is nice, friendly, clean, and "normal", casually reveals that he's gay, our hero has to get up and leave the room for a minute.
Back to our narrative of the cheated-on, crazy roommate'd hero. He finally quits Disney World after being reprimanded for attempting to save a guest's life (of course!) because the idea of something bad happening is "unmagical" and not conducive to the Disney experience. For some reason, Mitchell was harboring under the illusion (urban legend, likely) that no one dies at Disney World, which is kind of a metaphor for his ailing mother, and so having a guest die in front of him is a bit of an epiphany, especially when Disney has it declared by the press that the guest died on route to the hospital (rather than on Disney property). Only then does Mitchell decide to go home for Christmas to his dying mother.
If you take this as a complete work of not-that-well-researched fiction, maybe consider it a gonzo novel, maybe a kind of literary equivalent of Escape From Tomorrow, the book is more plausible. The only problem is that Mitchell is a horrible novelist. His characters are ridiculous caricatures, so one-dimensional as to be, yes, cartoons. His prose is ridiculous, one of the more egregious examples being his lustful depiction of his first siting of the woman who would become his girlfriend:
“She had eyes the color of fresh-cut grass and cheekbones like the high, carved peaks of the Matterhorn. Her flat stomach and well-defined feminine arms contrasted with the soft curve of her breasts like the petals of an orchid.” (pg 130)
The book could (and has) been marketed on a number of genres: Disney expose, Disney World behind-the-scenes, gonzo memoir. And it manages to fail all of them. Dorothy Parker once said of Atlas Shrugged, the book by which the main character of this book lives and breathes and worships,
"This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force."
This is a book to be tossed aside with great force.
Notable: One of the first unintentionally hilarious moments takes place as early as the acknowledgements, which the author caps with
"My biggest thanks of all to Walt Disney, whose vision has meant so much to so many."
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no subject
Date: 2014-05-27 12:26 am (UTC)That guest supposedly dying in the park and him being chewed out for trying to help sounds pretty damn false. Again, because of said friend, I know something of the immense amount of protocols they have for emergencies. They are trained to handle tough situations and would never not try to help someone who needs it.
The process to find face characters for the park is pretty horrible; especially for females. Don't go audition unless you're ready to have your confidence chewed out, I hear. But, I do know a guy who worked in food service in the park who ended being Aladdin for a while, so there are uh, fairy tale endings.
The author sounds atrocious, and I wouldn't be surprised if he made some artistic adjustments to his life story.
no subject
Date: 2014-05-27 01:47 am (UTC)The guy was an asshole through and through and I wouldn't put it past him as an author to use the death of a guest to try to make himself look good when in reality he probably had nothing whatsoever to do with it.
I've heard that (from reputable sources, I mean) and that it's pretty much like most casting, just with the added one-two-PUNCH of finding out the character you've loved since you were a kid Disney officially believes you look nothing like. In this book, he claims to have witnessed a woman who wanted to play Cinderella be told she needed at least a nose job, but... yeah.
I was really hoping the book would be more of this type of thing. (http://www.cracked.com/article_18511_6-true-stories-about-disneyland-they-dont-want-you-to-know.html).
"WHO THE FUCK WAS SINGING" never fails to make me laugh really hard.