CL Eco

In the words of GOB Bluth "Oh, come on! You're going to tell the guy in $1,700 suit that he's not going to write about Eco when he grew up in Orlando, Florida? Come on!"

Okay, maybe that isn't quite as relatable as I was hoping, especially if you re not an Arrested Development fan. But anyways....

So, Eco. I found myself absolutely captivated by the entire article, as I am sure many of my classmates did as well. How could we not be? This is our day-to-day culture. We "get" it. Maybe it has something to do with everything we have learned thus far in class this semester, or maybe this particular article was not that hard to digest, but I was captivated. There were a few lines in particular that stood out to me, including "Disneyland tells us that technology can give us more reality that nature can" (pg 203). I found this to be particularly interesting because not only is this what Disney tells us, it is what our culture has told us to believe.

When I was a kid my family would come down to visit us here in Florida from Kentucky. We would drive down Highway 50 until we got to one of those road-side airboat rides. Awesome! We would pill into those rickety little boats and speed around the swamp, always on the look for alligators. My cousins from up north did not see gators except when they came to visit us down here. Ususally we would spot one or tow, and it was always a good time for the kids and adults alike. But not near as good of a time as the trip to Disney the next day. There wild (fake) animals we in abundance, and we could see almost in sort of exotic and/or imaginary animal we could imagine without the risk of a leak or turning over in the rickety old airboat somewhere in the middle of the swamp.

The parents liked this because we were guaranteed to be satisfied little kids. With the airboat ride we ran the risk of not seeing any actual, live gators. But at Disney we were GUARANTEED to see wildlife. The "adventure" was a sure thing, unlike the real adventure in the swamp. The real had been replaced by the fake, and we took the fake to become the "real experience"- verisimilitude. Technology was able to give us more reality- guaranteed reality- than nature could.

Of curse now as an adult I am thankful for both experiences with all my cousins. But the ones I will always remember more is all of us piled into one of those rickety old airboats flying across the Florida swamp, screaming with fear and delight whenever we came across a giant gator sunning on the shore.