Roll up for bit parts in a local fairytale
DISNEYLAND? Here? Oh my, oh my, oh my, as Pooh would say. Actually this is not good news for Pooh, because I do not doubt that the Obscene Articles Tribunal will swiftly veto any attempt to import a character surnamed Bare, especially if he does not wear trousers.
Still it is a thought to set the mind racing. That certainly seems to be the effect it had on David (Shanghai) Tang Wing-cheung, who leapt into print recently to denounce the proposal. Getting his opposition to the Lantau Disneyland in early, Mr Tang said scarce land and resources would be better used on something 'uniquely Hong Kong'.
Here is an interesting question indeed. What is uniquely Hong Kong? We cannot, after all, build a theme park around cage hostels, student suicides, dysfunctional airports, the Legco voting arrangements, parking spaces once worth $2 million, 20th-century buildings with 18th-century sewage systems, the Rugby Sevens or the Small House Policy.
The Hong Kong Jockey Club has some claims to being unique, but that is a theme park already.
Mr Tang, it turned out, was using Hong Kong in the broad sense. 'We should use our resources on something which has more of a Chinese flavour,' he said. He then went on to make a rather ill-judged reference, I thought, to the possibility of building 'some fifth-rate theme park that is supposed to be like Disneyland in Los Angeles'.
Now this is unfair to the Disney organisation. I have visited three of the existing cultural Chernobyls and I do not doubt that for a man of Mr Tang's refined tastes they are hotbeds of vulgarity. But theme parks are supposed to be vulgar. Fifth-rate they are not. And the Disneylands are not just 'supposed to be' like the one in Los Angeles. They are like the one in Los Angeles. Considering the varying ages of the parks the product is remarkably predictable.
There are some differences. Everything seems a bit smaller in Tokyo; in Paris you can get decent food and - ahem - wine. But the Disney organisation is nothing if not consistent.
It is of course true that the resulting experience is quintessentially American. But there is nothing wrong with that. If Mr Tang wishes to man the barricades against cultural migration, should he not have done so before his compatriots put a Chinese restaurant on every street corner in the developed world? Perhaps, in a spirit of mutual accommodation and respect, the new Disneyland could include some compromises with Mr Tang's desire for something distinctively local.
Those of us who have already strolled down several versions of 'Main Street USA' could be welcomed to 'Main Street PRC', in which we could dodge child beggars, pimps, prostitutes, illegal money-changers, antique bicycles and policemen in baggy uniforms with a nifty line in on-the-spot fines. That ride where you zoom down a steep slope into a bath could be renamed the Hong Kong Property Market.
Away with Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs ! We do not have snow, white is not an auspicious colour, and it is politically incorrect to put disparaging labels on the vertically challenged. Let us instead have something local and topical, like Turgid Tung and the 14 Fatcats.
Anson Chan Fang On-sang should be free from her other commitments in time to play the Cheshire Cat, and instead of Donald Duck we can have Donald (Christmas) Turkey. We can adjust some of the movies to suit local sensibilities. In the last scene of Bambi, for example, the entire cast will be served up in a Mongkok restaurant. When the future Lion King is told his country is impoverished under the rule of his wicked uncle, he will not go home, but get a job teaching in an American university.
There will be an additional scene in Lady And The Tramp, in which Lady discovers her new husband also has three wives in Shenzhen.
Cinderella needs a few tweaks. We seem to have a good supply of potential Ugly Sisters who would be happy to persecute the domestic help, but I would find the ending more congenial if these ladies were all turned into pumpkins.
Then there is Pinocchio, a part, surely, for Senior Assistant Police Commissioner Dick Lee Ming-kwai. Mr Lee may have been justified playing Beethoven to drown out handover demonstrators last year. But he was surely risking an embarrassing nose event when he said afterwards that the music was provided for the entertainment of his troops.
