DISCLAIMER: It was a very sad day when I learned that science fiction author Michael Chrichton passed away a few years ago. He filled my high school years with wonder and fantasy. And while I poke a little fun at some of his stories in this post, I mean no disrespect to him or his work.
What terrible thing happened in Michael Chrichton’s childhood to make him hate amusement parks? One park or another feature as the “real” bad guy of at least 3 of his stories (4 if you count The Lost World as separate fromJurassic Park). It’s like he thinks that the worst evils of the world are manifest in those parks.
Recently, Jenna and I watched Chrichton’s first volley against amusement parks: Westworld. In that movie, rich people attend a theme park designed to look and feel just like the old west, medieval times, or Roman times. In the theme park, they interact with (and kill or have sex with) robots designed to look and act human. One of the robots, played by Yul Brynner (yes, THAT Yul Brynner—from The King and I) is a gunslinger who is constantly after one of the primary guests. Of course, he is programmed to always lose … at least until some kind of computer virus glitches all of the machines and they turn against the park’s guests. Then Brynner’s character becomes dangerous and goes on a long, protracted hunt after the main character.
Futureworld, the Chrichton-less sequel to Westworld, continued on the same theme, though borrowed a bit from Asimov’s I, Robot at the same time. And, while it did feature some of the theme park ideas in it, it focused more behind the scenes, so the fun of the parks was lost.
Of course, you can’t talk about Chrichton and theme parks without talking about Jurassic Park. That is probably the epitome of a theme park run amok. I still think of the Weird Al song about that book/movie:
Jurassic Park is frightening in the dark
All the animals are running wild!
Someone shut the fence off in the rain.
Now they scare me and alarm me,
‘Cause they sure don’t act like Barney,
And I’m not sure I’ll get home again.
Oh no!
Lost World, the infinitely inferior Jurassic Park sequel, also focused on the theme park idea, though to a lesser extent. The movie pushed it much further than the book did, with InGen trying to bring the animals to the mainland for some kind of zoo, which ended in one of the lamest sequences in Hollywood history: the T-Rex loose in San Diego, except he doesn’t do much except eat a dog. LAME!
Chrichton’s last volley against theme parks came in a book that, at first glance, seems a bit out of place in this list: Timeline. In that book, a mega-corporation discovered a way to essentially fax yourself back in time (no, I’m not kidding). What would they plan for this exciting new technology? Why, build a time-based theme park of course! The theme park idea was so shoehorned into the story that it was completely excised for the film version. And, quite frankly, the film benefited from its removal.
So my question is, what did theme parks do the Chrichton to make him so adamantly opposed to them. Did Mickey Mouse bite him as a child? Did he see the characters unmasking and lost all sense of wonder? What?
Actually, I think that he returned to the theme park idea so often because he was able to use it to magnify the problems of society. In Westworld, the uber-rich do whatever they please. They have sex, they kill, they brawl, whatever with no consequences—all for $1,000 a day (which was a lot more back in the ’70s). They lower themselves to the lowest possible levels human beings can achieve.
The Jurassic Park stories aren’t much better. In those stories, man plays God to the amusement, once again, to the uber-rich. The move corrected this problem by making Hammond, the park’s owner, a kindly old soul who just wants to bring real wonder to children around the globe, but the book’s version of Hammond is much harsher. He is a prick, to say the least, and plans on charging an arm and a leg for anyone to have the chance to glimpse his creations. He shows no respect for what he has made and thinks he can control nature. In the end of the book, he is eaten by dung-eating rodent-like dinosaurs and no one really seems to care.
Timeline is a bit different than the others. It is all about highlighting real history against the legends and ideas that have built up over time. In one memorable sequence of the book, the evil corporate leader is watching some video of George Washington crossing he Potomac. The leader is upset that Washington—THE ACTUAL GEORGE WASHINGTON—is not perched out on the bow of his boat, sword drawn, ready to face the enemy. Instead, Washington is huddled in the back of the boat under a blanket, trying in vain to keep warm against the freezing temperatures. In another part of the book, a college student sent back in time watches 2 knights fight and is shocked at how agile they are in their armor, because no one could possibly be that mobile wearing close to 100 lbs of steal, right?
And that is the genius of Chrichton’s war against theme parks. He uses them to illustrate modern humanity’s ignorance, decadence, and greed. Theme parks are all about enlarging one aspect of life or another, so they work perfectly for Chrichton’s purposes. And they once again remind us of the value of popular culture as a mirror in which we can see ourselves laid bare.
Now, who wants to go to Disneyland?
