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In fact, in their drive to achieve picture-perfect happiness, many residents were willing not only to forgo higher pay but also to exchange a few of the traditional rights of democratic citizenship for the security and insularity offered by Celebration. They opted for Disney's "benevolent dictatorship," as some phrased it, over the mess and imperfection of traditional government. Not only didn't it bother them that Disney's "Celebration Pattern Book" micromanaged the smallest details of their homes and town -- down to the color of the curtains and the size of political posters displayed in their windows -- but they also didn't mind that Disney controlled the governance structures in the town. Many residents were even happy to trade their privacy for free computers: The hardware was embedded with a "Zeus box" -- a device that monitored everything they did on their computers so that AT&T could study usage patterns.

The small-town America they sought to recover, it turns out, was lacking one key feature: small-town politics and its messy, often corrupt ways. Though clearly aware of this paradox, Frantz and Collins merely refer to it offhandedly. It feels like they're pointing out exotic fauna on the side of the road, rather than capturing the drama unfolding in front of them.

Ross, on the other hand, seems alternately outraged by the Celebrationites' disdain for electoral politics and seduced by their emphasis on community. He tiresomely bemoans Celebration's corporate underpinnings, but has little to say about the fact that every action in town is also scrutinized not only by the media and the so-called "porch police" (who enforced aesthetic regulations in town) but also by the aggressive "neighborliness" of the very people who had come looking for community. The focus on "community" that Ross finds so laudable encourages a kind of conformity that isn't always ideal.

Thankfully, both books note the near total absence of African-Americans in the town, although Disney made conscious efforts to recruit them. Perhaps African-Americans harbor neither the nostalgia for small-town life nor the nagging craving for community that drives so many Celebrationites.

Celebration, U.S.A. The Celebration Chronicles

Frantz and Collins are excellent reporters, and they do a great job of recounting the corporate history leading up to Celebration's development, but their portrait of the town itself never fully comes into focus. Their account, a seemingly endless series of Celebrationite cameos, lacks a sense of the whole. A starker, perhaps truer, picture of Celebration gets lost in the details of a dizzying number of personal histories and, all too often, trite truisms: "At times there seemed to be a make-believe quality, an artificiality to the whole enterprise." No kidding. The boundaries of Frantz and Collins' upper-middle-class life in Celebration -- an endless series of play dates, barbecues, coffee klatches and dinner parties -- also bounds the scope of their book. As part of the community, they share many of its ideals. As a result, they lack the perspective needed to write incisively about the place. Their book is closer to memoir than it should be.

The tension underlying the ideals of community becomes most apparent in the conflict that erupted over the school, the one story in town that bears on all the contradictory ideals and desires that Celebration represents. On one hand, Celebration School embodied the progressive idealism of Celebration's planners. Disney commissioned a high-tech facility with a progressive curriculum designed by Ivy League education theorists -- partly to burnish its image in the press and partly to attract baby boomers looking for high-quality public education for their children. On the other hand, the school became a hot-button issue that divided the community along ideological and social lines. When the parents realized that "progressive" schooling meant no grades, no books, little testing and multi-age classrooms, many demanded more traditional schooling with greater attention to college preparation.

And so, politics entered Disney's paradise. Cabals developed, organizations of parents for and against the school formed, e-mails started flying back and forth. Petitions were circulated, accusations were made and resignations were tendered. The result was almost a textbook purge, a bloodletting meant to reassert the unity of the tribe and its values.

Unfortunately, neither book seems to capture the full scope of the conflict and what it meant to the community. At first, all three writers were thrilled. Here, finally, was authentic, vibrant community life unfolding in front of their eyes -- direct democracy at work. Frantz and Collins' account reads like a series of community board transcripts. They take great pains to dutifully recount just about everyone's point of view, and they agree with almost everyone, seeing merit on all sides.

Ross, on the other hand, finds his cause célèbre in the struggle over the school, and he is eager to enter the fray. He is truly disheartened by the fact that Celebration's parents demanded traditional testing and college preparation, and seems utterly incapable of understanding why they might worry so much about their children's access to higher education (to professors, in fact, like himself). He interprets their rejection of the school's progressivism as an example of conservative economic interests riding roughshod over an idealistic curriculum and student-centered teaching methods. It doesn't occur to him that part of the concept of community that he finds so commendable includes the desire of most parents to provide security for their children. He is disappointed when the Celebrationites turn out to be as pragmatic as most other Americans -- and too "real" for his tastes.

Celebration, in fact, puts a sharply ironic twist on the aftermath of the Cold War: Like thousands of private communities just like it across the country, it turns out to be a place where Americans are forgoing electoral democracy and opting for a kind of corporate communism. The resident scribes note the details of this Kafkaesque atmosphere, but fail to take its full human measure. Frantz and Collins cleave too closely to everyday life, while Ross condemns Celebration for betraying its utopian promise. There is one thing, though, about Celebration that is perfect: It's a textbook example of the unique blend of starry-eyed idealism and bare-knuckle pragmatism that defines America and all of its -- perhaps unresolvable -- contradictions. But in that, isn't it like every other town in the nation?
salon.com | Sept. 9, 1999

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