The French Way (26 page)

Euro Disney was on the brink of bankruptcy during the winter of 1993-94. A rescue package negotiated in March 1994, which included givebacks by both the WDC and the banks, and a huge investment of a Saudi prince, began the turn around. But losses continued, reaching $1.5 billion. Only in the summer of 1995, in its third year of operation, did the park's operations turn a profit.
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But the heavy debt would continue to weigh against the resort's finances while its annual attendance stabilized around twelve million.

Years later a successor to Fitzpatrick as president would admit that the park was initially larger than it should have been and that it had
assumed too much debt.
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In harsher language a British analyst alluding to the 1994 restructuring concluded, “Pride, conceit, greed, and over-ambition lie at the heart of Euro Disney's downfall.”
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Too much was spent, for example, in hiring six famous architects to design six different theme hotels. Costs spiraled out of control and in the end the park struggled with a crushing financial burden of billions of dollars in loans. By trying to avoid the mistakes made in Tokyo, Eisner, in this view, had gone too far in constructing a vast, expensive, highly leveraged complex whose profits went mainly to the WDC.

An alternative, but not convincing, explanation for the problems of the Magic Kingdom argues that it was Disney's fault for refusing to adapt to France and to Europe. Disney planners decided that what Europeans wanted was an American theme park, not some hybrid Europeanized Disneyland, so they rebuilt Florida's Disneyworld on the River Marne. Michael Eisner announced that he intended to make his Paris park “every bit as American as Tokyo Disneyland and our domestic parks—meaning fast food instead of smoky bistros, Coca-Cola and lemonade in preference to wine, animated movies rather than film noir.”
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Main Street USA, according to Eisner, was to be purely American, just as Frontierland captured the American West and Big Thunder Mountain recalled the Gold Rush. Or, as Shanny Peer has observed, “Disney concentrated more efforts on commodifying Americana in France than on Frenchifying the Disney experience….”
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A French spokesperson for the resort explained, “We are bringing a naive, simple view of America reflecting the idea of America that Europeans have.”
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What concessions did Disney management make to Europeans in its Magic Kingdom? There were many, but all were minor and did little to “Europeanize” the site. Planners added one French restaurant, adopted French as one of the two official languages, and modeled Sleeping Beauty's castle after illustrations from
Les tres riches Heures du duc de Berry
and the chateaux of the Loire. They also made a few of the attractions appear European. For example, the Visionarium, which featured a circular movie screen, did not show the
American Journeys
film as it did in Florida and California but presented a panorama of European sites like the Hofburg in Vienna and used European actors like Gerard Depardieu and Jeremy Irons as narrators. And once the park opened, or shortly thereafter, most of the Americans went home, including its first president, Robert Fitzpatrick, who was replaced by a Frenchman, Philippe Bourguignon.
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Eventually the resort also abandoned its ban on alcoholic beverages. Disney went further in trying to win the natives' approval. After the financial restructuring of 1994 Eisner renamed the reborn park “Disneyland Paris,” in order, he explained, to identify it with “Walt's original creation and with one of the most romantic and exciting cities in the world.”
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But the park remained a fantasized version of America.
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The entrance to the Magic Kingdom was through Main Street, evocative of small-town America, and the park was divided into categories like Adventureland and Fantasyland that had been imported from Disney World in Orlando. “Cast members”—that is, all employees who had contact with “guests”—had to speak English, while many of the park's signs and the announcements of the Disney railroad were in English (the other “official language”). Hotels like the Sequoia Lodge and the Hotel Cheyenne catered to European fantasies about the Far West. The food served in most of the park's restaurants, like The Gibson Girl Ice Cream Parlor, was American, while the music and the costumes of the “cast members” all served up an imaginary construction of America in the 1890s. The Auberge de Cendrillon served true French cuisine like
pate de foie gras
on toasted brioche, but a guest could also order hamburgers and fish fingers. Few Europeans would confuse Sleeping Beauty's castle with a Loire chateau; it was pure Disney. Yet it is difficult to dispute this strategy. Europeans wanted to eat American food like barbecued ribs and hot dogs. As Eisner commented, “the French don't want us to come over and do crepes.”
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An early survey of 30,000 European families had shown the way. “Almost all of them,” according to Fitzpatrick, “wanted Disney to be the same as in the United States. The Mickey that we will come to see shall not be half Schtroumpf and
half Asterix.”
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What the French wanted was an American theme park; Eisner and his fellow planners were right.
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Imposing America rather than adapting to France was not the principal reasons for the park's initial stumble—even if it contributed. The problem was one of poor business decision making.

Still, the locals did not troop to see Mickey as expected. Instead of the anticipated 50 percent of the gate, the French provided only 40 percent on average. In 1998, when receipts were up, 38 percent of the visitors were French. And the locals, at least in the eyes of American tourists, earned a reputation for violating rules, especially for failing to stand in line. In fact, French visitors used the park differently than Americans. For example, instead of staying multiple nights, they tended to spend a single overnight. They also used travel agents to schedule their trip, but Disney refused to work with such intermediaries. And they were shocked by the high initial entrance fees (which included the rides): $41 for adults and $27 for children. As a result, the majority of those wandering through the Magic Kingdom were not French.

Once observers could actually view the new Disney creation, the intellectual debate sharpened with attacks from across the political spectrum. Alain Finkielkraut wrote that it was “a terrifying step toward world homogenization.” A rightist pamphleteer, Jean Cau, scorned the site as “a horror made of cardboard, plastic and appalling colors, a construction of hardened chewing gum and idiotic folklore taken straight out of comic books written for obese Americans.”
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To some, national identity was at risk by letting Americans impose their form of imagination and creativity on French children. After visiting the resort one scholar labeled it the “slaughterhouse of dreams” and called it “a canker in Europe, in the heart of the Ile-de-France.”
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From the New Right Alain de Benoist described the Magic Kingdom as the dream world of Americans—tranquil, soulless, infantile, commercialized, and homogenized.
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Le Monde
described the park as a “slice of the American dream”: it evoked images of abundance and antiseptic happiness that were “a long way from the real America.”
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Others scoffed
at Euro Disney for its aesthetics, its cultural theft, its sanitized artificiality, its sweet sentimentality, its passive form of fun, its visual rather than literary character, its “hyperreality,” its commercialism, and its pretense that entertainment was “culture.”
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One of the more infamous comments came from Jacques Julliard, who expressed hope that a fire might destroy the park.
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But the most notorious denunciation came from the theatrical director Ariane Mnouchkine, who called the park “a cultural Chernobyl.” Fitzpatrick said he nearly fell off his chair when he heard Mnouchine's barb because she had accepted his invitation to visit the California resort where she had posed with Mickey Mouse. As for lowering cultural standards, Fitzpatrick responded sarcastically, “Diversion is also a form of culture. The French know it well. Have they forgotten?”
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Jack Lang, the incumbent minister of culture whose disdain for American culture we encountered in chapter 2, said he was too busy to attend the park's opening and regretted that the park afforded so little room for attractions from Europe. Yet the minister softened his snub by expressing his admiration for the technical capacity of Disney and admitting he had found his visit to Disneyworld in Florida “quite fascinating.”
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The American press mocked the French for their anxieties and their carping. The
New York Times
carried articles like “Defy Disney, the Unmitigated Gaul” or “Only the Elite Scorn Mickey's Debut” while one review, drawing on the story of Snow White, referred to a France “Where All the Dwarfs are Grumpy.”
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But the grumps did not monopolize the discussion: the Magic Kingdom had its defenders, including some familiar anti-anti-Americans. Michel Serres, the philosopher, chastised the critics by arguing, “It is not America that is invading us. It is us who adore it, who adopt its fashions and above all its words.” Jean-Francois Revel added, “If French culture can be squashed by Mickey Mouse or more exactly by simply moving Mickey geographically, it would have to be disturbingly fragile.”
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Revel pointed out that culture circulates, and in this
case California was simply repackaging for European such European stories as Cinderella and Pinocchio. Andre Glucksmann chided the “aristocratic disdain” of critics for “popular pleasures”: “The fact that Mickey and Minnie manage to draw against them the holy alliance of right-thinking progressives and conservatives ought to bring them the Oscar for humor.”
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One writer, after visiting the park, thought Euro Disney—like hell—was also “paved with soft caramel,” yet he admitted that he enjoyed his day, wearing Mickey Mouse ears, eating popcorn, and going on rides.
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Weekly magazines agreed. “Who's Afraid of Mickey Mouse ?” was how
L'Express
greeted the park's opening.
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Le Point
concurred, “Culture: Let's not fear America.”
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The critics soon grew silent, the media mellowed, and by 1993-94 the press sounded rather positive. “Disney is fashionable among us,”
Le Monde
reported.
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Defenders reminded the arrogant elite of St. Germain des Pres that the park was just fun for the family. “American culture swings,” according to a contributor to
L'Express;
“Merleau-Ponty has a certain value, I'm convinced, but, tomorrow, I am going to Disneyland.”
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Disney's spokespeople also counterattacked by portraying themselves as victims of mean-spirited snobs.
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The fact that Euro Disney sparked a debate rather than a monologue indicates the faltering hold of the anti-Americans over the intellectual community.

If the French did not come in the numbers the WDC expected or wanted, they did keep the turnstiles moving. Once attendance stabilized, they arrived at a rate of between four and a half to five million customers per year. The younger generation, who had been raised on American mass culture including
Le Journal de Mickey
and Disney animated films, were strongly attracted to visiting the Magic Kingdom.
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Hotel occupancy reached near 90 percent while spending on merchandise and food climbed. And most visitors seemed pleased with their experience—apparently unimpressed with the warnings of the intelligentsia. Disney products were popular as well. The Disney Store on the Champs-Elysees, which opened in 1993, moved more merchandise than any of its counterparts worldwide. And the government lent its
blessing: six months after its opening Pierre Beregovoy, the socialist prime minister, awarded Michael Eisner the Legion of Honor. Even President Mitterrand relented. He had previously refused to come to the park, but Eisner used his political connections to persuade former U.S. president George H. W. Bush to invite him to dine there in 1994. Facing the press Bush noticed the somber expression of his dinner companion and said “Smile, come on, Francois, smile!” Photographs of the two cheerful presidents made the front page the next day and Eisner had his symbolic endorsement.
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By the end of the decade the Magic Kingdom appeared, at least in some respects, to be prospering. According to the Paris tourist office it had more visitors (12.6 million) than the Cathedral of Notre Dame (12 million), making it the most popular tourist site in the region. But attendance was still less than what was needed for profitability, and the price of the resort's stock remained pathetic. Nevertheless, Gilles Pellisson, the CEO in 1999, announced plans to build a second park devoted to the movie and broadcasting industry at the cost of 4.5 billion francs: Walt Disney Studios was scheduled to open in April 2002, the tenth anniversary of Euro Disney. Once again the socialist government, in this case the minister of economy and finance, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, welcomed the new site, relishing the investments and jobs.
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Once again, however, Disney overreached and once again its timing was unfortunate—terrorism was in the air. Two years after Walt Disney Studios opened, it attracted only two million visitors, less than half of what had been expected, and did nothing to improve the park's financial situation.
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Dragged down by debt and still struggling to become profitable, Euro Disney had to refinance a second time. Still it bragged it was the number one tourist destination in Europe. Mickey had arrived when the Tour de France finished the race at the resort in 1997.

The coming of the Magic Kingdom disrupted the French leisure industry. Parc Asterix was the hardest hit: attendance dropped to one million in 1992-93 and like Euro Disney refinancing was required. But the slump was brief and management, led by Olivier de Bosredon, refused
to surrender: they invested $10 million, introduced new attractions like “Nationale 7,” a miniature car ride on the old highway that took vacationers to the south—and spruced up the park. Bosredon likened the competition to the struggle between the Gauls and the Romans: “Asterix was a fighter against massive invasion, and so are we. The Romans insisted their soldiers not wear beards, much as Disney does. There are some interesting parallels.”
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By 1995 the park's managers were declaring victory: attendance had recovered to 1.5 million and so had profits. Two years later the gate reached 2 million and the park sold shares on the bourse. The marketing manager Nicolas Perrard declared the reason for victory was that Asterix was “a French theme park and not an American concept.” “Disney is based on fantasies, we are based on realities,” he added. “They are not based on national culture, but on fairy tales.”
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One might question, however, both the “reality” and the national character of Asterix. In fact, what accounted for Parc Asterix's “victory” was as much its cloning of Euro Disney as its exploitation of French history. It had drawn on the Americans for its design and advertising and it learned how to refurbish with new attractions like Le Grand Splatch, a water ride inspired by attractions at Marne-la Vallee. Like Disney it offered theme merchandise in its stores and built its own hotel. Perrard admitted that the staff that had opened Parc Asterix had had little understanding of theme parks, but “by watching Disney the company transformed the park from a passive form of entertainment almost like a public park, to a participatory operation. Thanks to Disney, our people now know what the product is.”
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Parc Asterix also went continental—teaming up with other European parks to coordinate marketing and investment. Bosredon was right when he predicted back in 1992 that French parks would benefit in the long run from the arrival of Disney.
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