The Perfect American, by Richard Hubert Smith
“Disneyfied.” From the neutering of once-wild Manhattan at the hands of Rudy Giuliani to the plastic malls of the Middle East, it’s become such a handy, damning, succinct term; shorthand for the most pernicious parts of American culture: repugnant, banal, with an artificially scented gift shop attached.
Philip Glass’ The Perfect American – his bio-opera of Walt Disney, which premiered in Madrid at the start of 2013 – is anything but a Disneyfication. Peter Stephen Jungk’s book portrays the head of the most successful animation studio of all time as a ruthless, racist Republican despot. I wondered, watching it at The Coliseum in London, how it might translate to the now iconic Disney-funded Gehry-designed arts centre in Los Angeles. It is, of course, where it belongs. From the use of three circles, projected as a graphic motif to represent Mickey Mouse (at one dramatic moment becoming fast-breeding cancer cells that will take the animator’s life), to Andy Warhol demanding to meet Walt because he believes himself and Disney to be one and the same, this is an often sublime, if also simplistic exploration of American pop culture and its associated industry. Flattering it is not. Fun it certainly is.
This is no Einstein on the Beach. It’s a lavish, melodramatic cartoon rather than an epic esoteric meditation. The music is as relaxed, warm and as modest as Glass gets – more akin to his movie scores than the minimalist earworms of his most celebrated and ambitious scores. At just over two hours, the production feels curiously short, as if squeezed into a multiplex-pleasing format. And with the story wrangled into a fairly straightforward narrative format (Disney, dying, is haunted by the demons that brought him greatness, and that may wipe his empire away after he’s gone), it lacks the layers of intrigue that it might have had if handled in a more glacial, abstract way. But what there is, is good indeed.
There’s no Disney. None at all. Never in a million years will the Disney estate let Mickey, Donald et al appear in this context, and their absence is peculiar. It’s the Dumbo in the room
There are, unsurprisingly, issues in terms of how literal the Disney story can be portrayed. The design of The Perfect American is gorgeous – from the swinging overhead machinery that unfolds screen after translucent screen while spinning around vintage Hollywood projectors on cranes, to scratched and dust-flecked celluloid images reminiscent of vintage Odeon matinees and Ed Ruscha, there’s a lot to love here. But there’s no Disney. None at all. Never in a million years will the Disney estate let Mickey, Donald et al appear in this context, and their absence is peculiar. It’s the Dumbo in the room, if you will, because of course if they were here, they’d be overwhelming. Nothing here could compete. Instead, there are preliminary sketches brought to life as huge projections, a squad of faintly sinister bunny rabbits as visual shorthand for the studio’s menagerie of anthropomorphised animals, and a Disney-esque florid typeface used to identify each scene. One is reminded of all those not-quite-Kentucky Fried Chicken fast food outlets across our high streets.
The Perfect American isn’t about Disney’s legacy, per se. Rather, it’s a story about a man who became a paradigm of banal, corporate machinism, taking the credit for everything but producing nothing himself: precisely what Warhol (himself a notorious Reagan-loving Republican) italicised and turned into a kind of luxury brand. Disney may have been a despot, but he put his signature to a body of work as influential, and more famous, than Warhol’s. He was the ultimate 20th century and American artist. His lack of involvement in the physical creation of the product is moot – it was the scale of the ideas that count. When Disney is damned by a former employee as just a “moderately successful CEO”, it’s a hollow insult. Just as the sole interesting aspect of Damian Hirst’s art is how it plays with the art market and its saleability, so Disney’s real art was the creation of a business empire. By putting his name to anything, he turned it into gold. And ultimately, that’s what makes The Perfect American as thrilling as it is: Glass could have scored a show about any amount of unpleasant 20th century American business tycoons, but it wouldn’t have had any of the resonance or glamour that this does. By producing The Perfect American, Disney (and his philosophy) is essentially vindicated.
This is a show full of pleasure. The libretto might be simple, but with its lightness of touch, it makes for the perfect entertainment. It might be seen, in many ways, as a companion piece to this year’s big cinematic kitsch-fest, Behind the Candelabra, which takes its foot off the accelerator with material that could otherwise become overwhelming. With The Perfect American, an opera that involves a grandstanding malfunctioning Abraham Lincoln robot, it’s the appearance of Warhol that gets the biggest audience reaction. Now, if only Glass would turn his attention to telling the story of the other all-American pop culture factory of the 20th century. Wouldn’t that be an evening? C
The Perfect American is at ENO, London until Friday 28th June 2013