Martin Luther King vs. Walt Disney: Beloved Community in the Age of Entertainment
Joran Oppelt
The leader in team alignment. Visual consultant, master facilitator, executive coach, international speaker, author
When Walt Disney World opened in Orlando, Florida on October 1, 1971 -- five years after Walt’s untimely death -- the energy in the air was electric. Animated characters had come to life, Main Street bustled, the monorail zipped overhead through the atrium of the resort hotel, and Cinderella’s Castle towered over the land and its guests. Walt’s original plans even included an “Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow,” a liveable city intended to serve as an incubator for living systems and innovations in technology. This city would be a “living blueprint of the future” and a community in a perpetual “state of becoming.”
According to legend, it is on this day that Roy O. Disney (Walt’s brother) held a press conference to celebrate the occasion. A reporter asked Roy how he was feeling on what must have been such a “bittersweet” day.
Roy was confused. He asked the reporter, “What do you mean? Look at all the smiling faces. This is a day of celebration and revelry. How could today be bittersweet?”
“Well,” the reporter answered, “I understand that it’s sweet because the park is finally open, but isn’t it a shame that Walt isn’t here to see it.”
Roy thought for a moment. He said, “I understand that it’s your job to tell this story and to write and report about what you see here. But if you were a visionary or an innovator, as my brother was, you would understand -- Walt did see this. He saw it first. That’s why you get to see it today.”
On August 28, 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered a speech during the “March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom” at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. In it, he described a dream. A very famous and specific vision of the future. He saw it clearly.
He was able to see black, brown, beige and white kids playing together. He saw black and brown people liberated from segregation and oppression. He saw a light being shown on the fear and hatred and it being eradicated from the face of the Earth. He saw us reaching the mountaintop together and even provided tools for when the journey became difficult. And because he was able to see it and articulate it, it enables us to see it. To feel what that future world would be like.
Today, on the 89th anniversary of his birth, I can’t help but think about the world he described as a kind of Disney Land -- a theme park of the mind, a retreat from reality. I can’t help but think of it as a sprawling and idyllic state of mind, nestled in the swampland of the southern American consciousness.
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