The Theme Park
“Never let truth get in the way of a good story.”
— Mark Twain (aka Samuel Clemens)
American Humorist, ca. 1900
The immersion into Fauxtopia begins in the parking lot, over the Suspension of Disbelief Bridge and through the fog that blurs the line between reality and the park. Stroll under the Plot Line Station and you are in Setting Square at the beginning of Story Street. The spine of any faux reality is based on the story it creates, so here is where you start your visit.
Ultimately Story Street ends at the Temple of Dolos and Apate, the Greek god and goddess of trickery and deceit respectively. This temple is a fun house where things end up being quite different than expected. However, each time a guest “gets it” –and understands Fauxtopia– fireworks erupt and the light bulb atop the temple glows with realization.
“A lie told a thousand times becomes the truth.”
— Joseph Goebbels
Chief Propagandist, Nazi Party, ca. 1935
To the west of Story Street, through the Camouflage Forest, is Perceived Reality –a land themed to one’s own subjective view of the world. How we understand what is real and what is true comes down to how we individually receive sensory messages. Is seeing really believing? Are your beliefs reality?
Persuasive Fauxbricators of the past, very often came to great power creating “realities” for nations and congregations. In this land you can explore those two perceived realities.
“Societies have always been shaped more by the nature of the media by which men communicate then by the content of the communication.”
— Marshall McLuhan
Canadian Philosopher and Graphic Designer
The Medium is the Massage: An Inventory of Effects(1967)
Situated in the north side of the park, Simulated Reality is a perfect place to spend the afternoon (or a lifetime) during your visit to Fauxtopia. This land is ruled by Empress Vera Similitude, who offers guests a variety of portals in which to experience this reality. Stages, screens, monitors, mirrors and painted images are entry ways into new worlds. These portals are the theme for this area of the park, because they have become such a vital role in communication. So much so, that they often eclipse the message itself –is it Facebook we have a problem with? Or what someone is posting on Facebook? Or both?
“Less is a bore.”
— Robert Venturi
Post-modern Architect
Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture, 1966
Every theme park throughout the world is itself a hyper-reality, because they bring “the fantastic”, “the imagined”, “the oversized” and “the exotic” to life, into actual reality. Hyper-reality has been defined as “a copy without an original” –meaning something that is created, that supersedes in aesthetics and cultural perception, from the thing it is based on. For example, our local Disneyland’s Main Street U.S.A. is a recreational area inside its theme park based on “the small Midwest town’s main thoroughfare”, but it is heavily romanticized with little authenticity –and yet, guests often have a much more emotional attachment to this illusionary, fabricated place, then to the real world.
In this postmodern reality, artifice is what is true and celebrated –where architecture defies boring boxes with gridded windows, and instead transforms buildings into structures that take the shape of ducks and hats. Here, these hyper-real environments tell stories and have character. Hyper Reality animates inanimate objects. It allows the impossible to be possible. It cleans up history by simplifying it to make it more palatable, which then in turn, creates nostalgia. And it is often a nostalgia for a time or place that never really existed.
