It Came From the Fandom: Disnerland

Aaaaarrrrgggghhh, I didn't want to have to do this again so soon, but stress and a busy schedule hit me right in the inspiration and I wasn't able to get a proper post ready in time. So here, have some more fan stuff!

This time the spotlight is on “Disnerland,” a Tumblr blog that spoofs Disneyland, Walt Disney, and occasionally Walt Disney World in the most quirkily specific way. What it does is, it translates the names of theme parks, themed lands, attractions, and even the wording of Walt Disney quotes into what I can only call “Disnerland dialect.” It's not lolcat-speak. The spelling is always correct, and so, mostly, is the grammar, if you allow that certain words change their part of speech in the translation. For example, the word “world” is always rendered, in Disnerland, as “global.” As in “all the global.”

Most of the dialect consists of weird, but somehow logical, substitutions like that. “Family” becomes “house bunch.” Thoughts, ideas, and imagination are all referred to as “head stuff,” while dreams, even the aspirational kind, are “sleep stuff.” Money is “coin.” The founder himself has been transformed into “Wald Disner,” and his most famous creation is “Man Mice.” It's absurd, but the absurdity is methodical enough that you can pick it up quickly.

It's also dripping with affection for the thing it's parodying. Disney parodies are almost embarrassingly common, but finding one as adoring as this is extremely rare. No one who actually felt any hostility toward Disneyland would bother to create such a pervasive jargon for their snark. No one aims sincere mockery at Space Station X-1 or the Tomorrowland Art Corner or the entry plaque. (For one thing, before you can make fun of something you have to know about it, and only dedicated fans of Disneyland are instantly familiar with all those long-extinct attractions.) No one would go to such effort to erase the lettering from attraction poster after attraction poster, match the fonts, and replace it with the aforementioned jargon, unless they enjoyed spending that kind of time with those posters.

More to the point...Disnerland isn't actually saying anything negative, or even wry, about Walt Disney and the Disney theme parks. There are no jokes about Walt's supposed anti-Semitism, how expensive the parks are, or how unsuccessful California Adventure (“Disner's Cooltown Vacay”) was at first. It's just posters, quotes, and ads, run through the Disnerland dialect filter but otherwise unchanged.

But I've rambled enough. Why not click the link up top and see for yourself?

I would.