Fiction dioramas, a rant on theme park Efteling, and the Eidophusikon

It takes a while for this meandering text to end up at a criticism of the politics of the Dutch theme park Efteling. It was first published in 2019 on my research blog,The Appeal of the Unreal, which was dedicated to my initial phd subject, Dioramas.

Dioramas – realistic, but entirely artificial three-dimensional reconstructions of real or fictional environments – are an important part of the fairy tale themed Efteling. The park has inspired my practice for decades. See also this post.

What is a ‘dark ride’? Wikipedia: A dark ride or ghost train is an indoor amusement ride on which passengers aboard guided vehicles travel through specially lit scenes that typically contain animation, sound, music and special effects.

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Are prehistoric caves dioramas?

Since long, I consider media history to begin with Paleolithic decorated caves, such as the famous Lascaux and Chauvet caves in France. To me, those caves are multimedia installations rather than a collection of drawings, paintings and engravings. Some of these caves form a blueprint for controlled walk-through environments such as temples, cathedrals and theme park rides. They are augmented environments (or, as media historian Norman Klein would perhaps see them: scripted spaces).

People walked through them, and likely interacted with the space’s acoustics, and used light effects to enhance the images on the cave walls, perhaps bringing them to life, ‘animating’ them.

The first instance of the Diorama was a 19th century theatre show, conceived and marketed by Louis Daguerre. Monumental, semi-translucent paintings, realistic depictions of landscape or interiors, were ‘animated’ with light. By moving shutters, the scene would change from day to night, reveal a sea battle, or dissolve into the progression of a volcanic eruption. These immersive shows were ‘pre-cinema’, preceding the actual cinematic experience by half a century.

In many ways, Dioramas and prehistoric decorated caves are very similar. Dioramas are ‘vision machines’: they depict things that are not there. Although caves are very real, some of their designs do seem to simulate nature, and have an undeniably immersive effect – even on a ‘modern’ visitor such as myself. Especially the famous Lascaux Hall of the Bulls, surrounding the visitor with a stampede of wild animals, feels diorama-like: in the dark, these animals would certainly seem to become alive.

So, theatre decor, film set, elaborate altars, and the Efteling

Caves are natural architecture, and cave-like elements return throughout human-made architecture across ages and locations: the use of niches and recessions, the stalactites and stalagmites, entrance halls and dark ‘far ends’, the use of height. Perhaps most poignant is the notion that a physical space can function as a metaphorical space, which resonates through many symbolic architecture.

Dioramas are more than simulations, but they can also be metaphorical spaces, especially when they depict mythological, religious, supernatural imagery. Altars, especially the baroque altars, but also stage design, and theatre and movie sets have a diorama-like presence. Religious architecture plays tricks on our brains, confuses our sense of dimension, like dioramas do. A diorama suggests depth where there is none, or at least more depth than a space would be able to house.

Altars can be seen as symbolic dioramas, representing not elements from reality, but visualize a way to get closer to god, or gods, or the afterlife, or enlightenment, or redemption. But they were also used, at least some parts of altars would get meddled with while performing rituals. Dioramas are not interactive, they are not to be meddled with. The illusion breaks if one would enter, for example, a habitat diorama, or would want to step into one of Daguerre’s painted backdrops.

Decors and sets only really are dioramas when they are not in use. Once a play is being carried out on the stage, a set is part of a time based narrative. Actors interact with the decor, and the diorama is lost. When abandoned, a theatre decor is a fixed, frozen, lifeless environment and could very well be a diorama. That brings me to theme park Efteling, and its many – more or less life-like – depictions of fictional scenes.

Fiction dioramas: a rant on Efteling’s Droomvlucht

De Efteling is a fairy tale themed amusement park. According its website it has only one diorama: an elaborate and delightfully detailed miniature set of mountains and villages through which small trains travel. However, I would note that Efteling has a staggering amount of dioramas, most of which are brought to life using animatronics.

The oldest part of the park is the fairy tale forest, which was built around 1950, where visitors can look at sleeping beauty in her coffin through glass windows, her breathing simulated by an air pump. A bit further is a haunted castle (Spookslot), where every fifteen minutes a show takes place: Saint-Saëns’s ‘Danse Macabre’ accompanies a choreography with animatronic red-eyed bats, skeletons and dancing tombstones, and a clever mirror and lighting illusion of holographic ghosts dancing in a cellar.

I should probably explain why I’m talking about the Efteling theme park: in the Netherlands, it is an integral part of virtually everyone’s childhood. Amongst adults, the Efteling experience can be polarizing, with people appreciating its eery enchantment or rejecting its kitschiness. I consider myself a fan, although not without reservations.

The park’s special effects are often on a par with Hollywood productions, only less glamourous. Music is played throughout the park in an attempt to enhance the fairy-tale atmosphere, but to me, it rather sounds sickening. Then there is the outdated technology of some of the oldest park’s attractions, causing some of the animatronics to crossover from uncanny into horror, but unsurprisingly I consider those as part of the park’s charm. My childlike sense of wonder is replaced by a different version – rooted in culture criticism. All of these quirks by no means dampen my enthusiasm. Rather the opposite.

Although some of the park’s glitches and errors are nothing more than charming, more serious issues arise with the depiction of many of the classic fairy tales that have been part of the very beginnings of Efteling, which was developed in the early 1950s. The park clings to vision of its original designer, Anton Pieck (1895 – 1987) who was deeply inspired by 19th-century British Romanticism – a style and era notorious for it pictorial idealization of racism, colonialism, and sexism. Consequently, some of the dioramas represent extremely outdated ideas about gender equality or depict ethnic stereotypes.

The problem with Droomvlucht

One of the park’s attractions is the immersive ‘dark ride’ Droomvlucht, which was build in 1993. Seated in a moving cart hanging from a rail, the visitor admires a number of dreamlike dioramas as they follow a sequence through what must be a very large building – which is almost entirely hidden from view on the terrain itself. It is important to note that the cart is not moving through the dioramas, but rather passes them by; the depictions are stages that are not entered.

The scenes are loosely based on the 13th century Merovingian story of Auberon, ‘the king of the fairies’, and an ‘elven-man of the forest’: cursed to remain forever the size of a three-year old, but of great physical beauty. Making various appearances in Arthurian legends, Oberon is most famously presented in William Shakespeare’s comedy ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’. Here, he is a trickster elven king, arguing with his wife, the elven queen Titania, over the custody of a child.

Droomvlucht (Dream Flight, hinting at Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream) presents Oberon as a red-haired, bearded dwarf in a green satin dress. In succession, the visitor travels through six ‘worlds’, ranging from floating castles to flower-strewn forests. There is no narrative, just a sequence of scenes that are meant to inspire some sort of awe. Here too, a sentimental musical score is added, with lots of harp and tingling sounds suggesting drama – that is never really delivered.

But that is not the worst part. What Efteling presents as an enchanting fairy-tale environment is in fact a segregated society. In this Oberon’s elven kingdom, women and girls are fairies, and men are trolls. In the dioramas, they almost do not mix: there are separate fairy (women) and troll (men) scenes. Oddly, the only men that appears to be an elf is the character Oberon itself – which is simply creepy. He is also by far the largest one: echoing the sexual dimorphism of a species such as gorillas.

Apart from that, all of the women/elves are very white: they have blond to light brown, reddish or pastel-coloured hair, and blue or green eyes. All of them are dressed in pale ballet-like dresses. None of them is engaged in a form of meaningful action: all they do is smile while sitting on branches or swings. Some of them wave a little, thanks to minimal animatronics.

Typically, the men – trolls, in Droomvlucht – are more active. Their animatronic programming has them playing, bathing, and even some risk-taking – for example using only one hand to hold on to a branch. The men are barely dressed, wearing mostly just loin cloths. They are tanned, compared to the elven girls; which is consistent with the idea that men work outside and get tanned in the sun, while women are confined to a life indoors.

At the start of the ride the visitor is greeted by a larger, young and fresh looking woman in a pond: the elven queen, Titania? In another, we are shown the elven king: an unattractive bearded figure, seated on a throne and surrounded by very young women-elves. There is no other male figure in sight. Has Oberon a harem? Are these his daughters? What is going on? What cult is this?

Curiously, there is a third kind of humanoid in the dioramas: a ‘race’ of green people with pointy ears. No idea how they fit in, but there they are. If this ride is meant to depict a form of utopia, I wonder what the park’s management considers a dystopia.

To me, at least, it seems that the message of these dioramas are not of the sort that I would want to promote in the 21st century. Although I do appreciate a certain traditionalism when it comes to fairy tales, sagas and myths – precisely because they say something about the times those stories have traveled through – this does not apply to Droomvlucht since it has no foundation in a traditional fairy tale.

To transform the ride into something more inclusive, both concerning gender and ethnicity, culture or skin colour, only minor changes need be made. For example: place the fairy king and queen together, as equals. Spray paint the fairies and trolls in various skin tones – or make them green and blue for all I care. Replace their eyes and hair with a more diverse range, and have both trolls and faires wear pants and boots and bows and arrows and dresses.

Additionally, what is the rationale for segregating the trolls from the fairies? Mix the trolls and the fairies in the dioramas: trolls can be female too, and fairies can be male. Since most of the diorama’s appeal lies in the meticulously decorated nature scenes and its unearthly lights and colors these are small changes, that nevertheless can conveying an important message. It’s really not that difficult.

Although one can argue that children won’t notice the cultural connotations of the “Droomverse”, the ride blatantly reaffirms outdated and damaging gender stereotypes. Of course, children, and perhaps a large portion of the adult audience will not actively notice the subtext, but as a cultural phenomenon, it is nevertheless part of an overall framing. Especially since Efteling welcomes over 5.000.000 visitors per year.

Below, a Dutch tv item, in which philosopher Daan F. Oostveen and journalist Michiel Lieuwma approach Droomvlucht through an ideological lens, after finding out it is extreme right wing populist Geert Wilders’ favourite Efteling ride. Their interesting and hilarious analysis includes hyperrealities and a desire for the impossible, but unfortunately does appear to ignore the sexism and ideal of a largely segregated society that I mention above.

Addendum

From the Efteling blog of June 2018.

To me it seems that if they can make changes for the benefit of the doves, you can make changes other actors in the Efteling, alive or animatronic, for the benefit of people, too.

Afterthought: The Eidophusikon

Wikipedia: The Eidophusikon (Greek: Ειδωφυσικον) was a piece of art, no longer extant, thought up by the English actor David Garrickand created by 18th-century French painter Philip James de Loutherbourg. It opened in Leicester Square in February 1781.

Described by the media of his day as “Moving Pictures, representing Phenomena of Nature”, the Eidophusikon can be considered an early form of movie making. The effect was achieved by mirrors and pulleys.