Let me repeat that title for you, so you can soak it in: Disneyland and the Johnny Depp Robot: Audio-Animatronics and the Quest for New Illusions.

"Humanity, as history informs us, changes very slowly in character and basic interests. People need play as much as they need toil. They never cease to be fascinated by their own powers and passions, their base or noble emotions, their faiths and struggles and triumphs against handicap -- all things that make them laugh and weep and comfort one another in love and sacrifice out of the deeps of their being." -Walt Disney, 1956

The Eleventh thing is, in fact, the mechanically animated figure of Captain Jack Sparrow, made in Johnny Depp's image and added to the Pirates of the Caribbean in Disneyland last year. It is the most recent progression in the audio-animatronic movement, first seen in the Enchanted Tiki Room.

At what point does a society create robotic effigies of its most popular celebrities, dressed as pirates, to be displayed in dimly lit, musical venues? Oh, I don’t know, probably some point in 2006. Is this automation of celebrity a good thing, or is it the mark of an imminent cultural implosion? Will piston-driven facsimiles of Johnny Depp march into freedom and overthrow us all? Probably not.

It’s just a matter of entertainment, really.

I refer to the addition at Disneyland in Anaheim, California, of Captain Jack Sparrow. Capt. Sparrow resides in the Pirates of the Caribbean, a dark-ride hiding in the caverns beneath New Orleans Square. Pirates is the last attraction that Walt Disney himself was involved with designing; it is a famously intricate and immersive affair of singing and sinning pirates in various states of drunkenness. Raping and pillaging is implied. Homes are burning; cannons are firing. These fictionalized hedonists fill us with a sense of wonder with their careless life attitudes and endless pursuit of booty. They have an insatiable thirst for it and inevitably, we want to leap from our little floating rafts and join them in the revelry.

But why is Johnny Depp standing right there, dressed in nautical rags with a crown in his head? It’s a strange thing, this recent resurgence of pirate popularity which has been crowned with a robo-Depp as its jewel. Let us start broadly and go from there...

I: Why Disneyland?
II: Why Pirates?
III: Why Captain Jack Sparrow?

Sources:
Re-Imagineering
Jim Hill Media
The Disney Blog
Disneyland on Wikipedia
PotC on Wikipedia
Tiki Room on Wikipedia
PotC fansite
Marling, ed., Karal Ann (1997). Designing Disney's Theme Parks: The Architecture of Reassurance.
Bright, Randy (1987). Disneyland: Inside Story.

-Andy Orin

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Posted at Feb 17/2007 12:56PM:
Cori: Hi Andy, this is certainly an interesting eleventh thing, but you need to make it clear what questions and connections you are going to explore.