In late August 2015, Banksy opened Dismaland , a theme park/art exhibition in an abandoned lido in the town of Weston in Somerset County, England. Funded by the enigmatic artist, Dismaland was promoted as a “family theme park unsuitable for children” and attracted an impressive audience of 150,000 people in its thirty-six days of existence.

The typical traits of the paradeisos reappear in Dismaland. The Tropicana lido, where the park/exhibition took place, is a 1,200 sq. ft. complex surrounded by a concrete wall which separates it from the adjoining beach and is equipped with a swimming pool that was the largest in open air in Europe when the lido opened to the public in 1938. Intended as Disney’s Magic Kingdom without the childish charm—that is, without the capitalist magic (6.13))—Dismaland’s central monument is a run-down version of the castle that identifies all of Disney’s amusement parks worldwide. Right in front of this ruin we find an eerily deformed statue of the Little Mermaid that mimics the distortion of the water of the surrounding pool; on its shallow part there is a stranded Irish anti-riot tank that doubles as a fountain, from which side protrudes a plastic slide. In Banksy’s hands, one of the central elements of Eden/paradeisos—the fountain from which all the waters of the world flow (6.2, 6.3, 6.7, 6.9)—becomes a monument that combines police repression with a playground game. If Dismaland points towards any type abundance, it is of violence and decadence; a sign of the times.

On account of its dark humor and sarcasm, Dismaland is the place in which we can clearly appreciate how the Eden/paradeisos transforms itself into a locus terribilis. What Banksy presents us, in all its depressing glory, is the very ruins of capitalism. Within the park no employee (dressed in security fluorescent vests with mouse ears) ever smiles and all have been explicitly trained to serve visitors in the most offhand and discourteous way possible. The sideshows are as dismal as can be: a caricaturist that draws portraits from behind; a carrousel in which one of the horses is replaced by a butcher sitting on a box labeled “lasagna;” a balloon stand that sells only one model that reads “I am an imbecile” in cartoon letters; a sculpture of a lady sitting on a bench being attacked by a crowd of seagulls, another of an orca jumping through a hoop from a toilet to an inflatable pool; a bumper car ride in which the only car is driven by a grim reaper; a coin operated dolphin kiddie ride trapped in a fisher’s net; an oil themed mini-golf game named “mini-gulf” in which the ball gets lost from the beginning; a charred ice-cream truck; a pocket money loan kiosk so kids can borrow money for the day’s rides, at an interest rate. Innocence is an inconceivable luxury in Dismaland.

One of the pieces that attracted more interest was a coin operated boat ride named Dream Boat, in which people could help a refugee boat dock to safety; however, aside from a lighthouse island, there was no other shore for them to arrive to. Within the ruined castle lies the main exhibition: there’s a realistic model of a town projects after a riot; a tree-sized atomic mushroom from which top dangles a rope ladder; and Banksy’s most recent piece at the time, a life-size sculpture of Cinderella’s pumpkin carriage overturned, the wooden wheels and spokes broken, the horses lying twisted and upside down as the blue princess hangs limp from the window, around her a swarm of paparazzi shoots pictures of the scene. There’s no need to mention the referent. The only thing missing by the real life princess were the two birds carefully tying the bow of Cinderella’s dress, as if they wanted to make her presentable for their photographers/stalkers.

Dismaland doesn’t need an entrance to the underworld, within its bounds, without realizing it, we have become a little bit more aware of the hell in which we live. 

---