When did I first start loving stories? As soon as I was old enough to act them out. When I was little, my sister and I played make-believe every day. We told stories for hours on end—sometimes with our dolls, sometimes wearing costumes and wielding props. These tales were filled with danger and excitement, and a bizarre amount of tragedy.
My sister and I enacted many a death scene. Our poor dolls suffered from all kinds of injuries—lost limbs, scarred faces. I went through a phase where my favorite doll was a constant invalid, usually from diseases I had read about in Victorian novels. (Scarlet fever was a favorite, for some reason!) My longsuffering grandmother often played the parts of villains from Disney movies, “kidnapping” my sister over and over so I could rescue her.
Yup, Disney movies. I was a kid in the nineties, during the height of the Disney Renaissance. I never grew out of it. Just a few weeks ago, I went to Disney World again. I can’t count how many times I’ve been to the various Disney theme parks. I did a report on Disneyland in the fifth grade, and I even tried to draw a guidebook, with reviews on all my favorite attractions.
Why? What’s so great about a commercialized theme park? And why do I love the Disney take on fairy tales, as sugary and simplistic as it is, when I enjoy darker stories just as much? I guess the best explanation comes from a phrase written on a plaque over the entrance to Disneyland. A phrase that as a kid, I read each time I entered the park, committing it to memory like some sort of prayer…
“Here you leave today and enter the world of yesterday, tomorrow, and fantasy.”
My love for Disneyland comes from my fascination with make-believe. Make-believe is about fairy tales, about fantasy and magic. It allows you to visit other times and places. It invites you to pretend to be someone else, a person who is both like and unlike you. In other words, make-believe is about stories. As a writer, I pretend to be my characters all the time, and try to imagine places I’ve never been. As a kid, I practiced that skill every day, by putting on a princess costume and waving around a plastic sword.
I still put on costumes sometimes. (More on that later!) I still watch cartoons. And I still go to Disneyland and watch the fireworks and sing along with hundreds of little girls while they pretend to be Queen Elsa, the newest Disney heroine— who is not searching for a prince*, and who is not powerless, but discovers a powerful magic inside herself.
The Frozen Singalong at Disney’s Hollywood Studios. (Apologies for the poor photo quality!)
Basically, I’m still a huge kid on the inside. In a way, that’s part of my job. (That’s my excuse, and I’m sticking to it!) And as for those girls who sang in the audience? I’m excited to see what kind of stories they will share with us someday.
*Unlike her sister Anna, interestingly enough. But the intricacies of the plot of Frozen are a topic for another blog post.
