Excuse Me, But Your Theme Park Is Actually a Motif Park

Limited edition silk screens from Dave Eggers

I just had a tour of your newly renovated theme park. I hate to be that guy, but I just want to mention that, while you refer to your destination as a theme park, it would be more accurate to describe it as a motif park.

See, a theme is the central subject your experience is about, like lost love, patriotism in wartime, or the allure of social status. What you have is a cluster of motifs, distinct features of your work that attempt to develop a theme.

I say “attempt” because the imagery here is unhinged. On the map we have a castle, a geodesic dome, a haunted house, and a Chinese pavilion with a dragon poking out of it. What thematic concept, in the abstract, are you going for? Amusement? Yes, but what about amusement are you saying?

Most great themes are about conflict. For example, while the title of your park, Cedar Coppice, evokes the arboreal, the attractions are more manmade. So maybe your theme is Man versus Nature. Then one of your motifs would be that thirty-foot-tall plexiglass treehouse. Or there’s Man versus Machine, exemplified by rides like The Tungsten Titan.

There’s plenty to explore in the theme of Free Will versus Determinism. Am I able to prevent myself from puking on the Hurl Cannon? Or am I destined to puke on the Hurl Cannon? But this question is never fully developed. The events just happen.

Another reason your themes are unclear is that your endless motifs are all over the place, depending on which area of this park you’re in:

• Mushroom butterfly garden
• Abandoned jungle expedition
• Europe as a place to eat
• Pioneer nostalgia
• Section with licensed IP won in a contract bid
• Lumberjack imagery
• Space rocket imagery
• Greek imagery plus volcanic imagery
• Snow imagery despite it being eighty-seven degrees out

I haven’t even mentioned the absence of consistently employed symbolism. What are we to make of the smaller-sized Eiffel Tower at the entrance? Aside from the park itself, what is your mascot a symbol of? Even the signs that read BATHROOMS THIS WAY are vague and misplaced. You can’t have a roller coaster be a symbol for a sea serpent in one setting and a Greek god’s chariot in another. It’s jarring from a literary standpoint.

These are motifs, not themes. I cannot abide by a theme park without a cohesive theme that uses more than twelve unrelated motifs to convey about fifty different moods, all of which coalesce in a gift shop.

Your implied thesis, or implied worldview, is a cynical one: An attendee such as myself will spend an inordinate amount of money to stand in line for forty-five minutes before letting you strap me into a cart on a track for one minute, then repeat that hero’s journey throughout the day, only to then buy a token of my having been amused by your attractions.

But perhaps I’m simply mad because I didn’t pay extra for the fast pass, and I have to stand in line analyzing your park’s literary devices. See, that’s Man versus Self, which is a theme.

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