Coney Island of the Mind. We’re still obsessed with the spectacles that defined Coney Island seventy years ago.

There
is now serious talk of redeveloping Coney — and
perhaps the possibility of its renaissance is one
reason we are currently interested in revisiting the
enormous spectacles of those bygone days.

But maybe our interest has something instead to do
with the way this kind of theme park entertainment
has developed over the past half century, with the
advent of parks like Disney World and Universal
Studios, and with new, massively themed attractions
opening in Las Vegas every year. Today, our theme
parks give us a happy world. Human beings (if you
don’t count those dressed up as Cinderella and
Mickey Mouse) are not on exhibit — the creatures on
our rides are animatronic, and the performers are
possessed of skills like juggling or tap dancing. Our
notion of spectacle has changed — not just from the
“real” sightseeing of the urban flaneur to the
“hyperreal” entertainments discussed by critics like
Umberto Eco and Ada Louise Huxtable, but also in
the kind of fake worlds our amusement parks
present. Transgressive attractions — from the freak
show to the tunnel of love (designed for stolen
kisses) — have been replaced by wholesome
“entertainment for the whole family,” at least in the
world of immersive, American attractions like theme
parks and Vegas. Feed