Ian Buruma on Theme Parks of Asia

RAN writes here: whether you agree with Ian Buruma or not, it is not a bad idea to read what he thinks of the themeparkification in Asian countries.

Ian Buruma, a Western scholar of Asian culture, points out that one of the cultural conundrums of contemporary China, Japan, Singapore, and other parts of East Asia is the craze for theme parks, an extraordinary proliferation of which are woven into the new commercial urban landscapes. "They are to East Asian capitalism what folk dancing festivals were to communism." They're all over Asia, and "are sometimes as quickly abandoned as they were built, or even before they were finished... What is curious is not just the insatiable taste for these fantasy places, but the fact that they often blur seamlessly into the 'real' urban landscape."

Buruma is primarily interested in figuring out the political relationship between the theme parks, as well as other replications and simulacra, and the ultimately similar communist and capitalist regimes of the region. "So why are Chinese officials prepared, or even eager, to tear down physical evidence of a real past and replace it with copies?" he wonders. "Why do they appear to be happier with virtual history? And what lies behind the ubiquitous taste for Western theme parks, for creating an ersatz version of aboard at home?"

Whether considering authoritarian Singapore, the dubious democracy of Japan, or the communist version of capitalism of China, Buruma believes "there is something inherently authoritarian about theme parks, and especially the men who create them. Every theme park is a controlled utopia, a miniature world where everything can be made to look perfect… [and] nothing is left to chance."

The theme parks, like globalized mega-malls, are themselves utopian models for the societies in which they're located, and which those societies are meant to increasingly resemble. As Buruma remarks, "Singapore, once likened to a Disneyland with the death penalty, is truly a place where nothing is left to chance." Everything is "subject to elaborate guidelines, more or less forecefully imposed." Among the uncertain political prospects of post-Maoist China, one of them, he suggests, is that the country, "as a continent-sized Singapore, will be the shining model of authoritarian capitalism, saluted by all illiberal regimes, corporate executives, and other PR men... the whole world as a gigantic theme park, where constant fun and games will make free thought redundant." (See Ian Buruma, "AsiaWorld," The New York Review, June 12, 2003.)