Berkley Center

The most uncomfortable event during my study abroad occurred at the end of an otherwise perfect day in Europa Park, a theme park containing different neighborhoods dedicated to European countries. My friend and I spent hours walking through the gorgeous streets of “Mykonos,” fjord rafting through “Scandinavia,” and touring the magnificent architecture of “Italy.” Thrilled by the beautiful scenery of each country, we wandered into the last neighborhood, “Adventure Land,” and joined a line of people waiting for a boat ride that was the sole attraction present. During the wait, I noticed the figure of a person moving back and forth on a bar stretched across the lake; it was a mannequin of a black man, wearing a mask and hanging from a basket with a stuffed monkey on top. As the line rounded a corner, we came face-to-face with another mannequin of a black man, bearing a grotesque smile and dressed in clothes that resembled a quilt more than they did traditional clothes from any culture. He was positioned in front of thick bags that contained foodstuff for sale.

This was the first time during the hours we had spent in European neighborhoods that we saw any human mannequins. They were caricatures clothed in ambiguous prints who were meant to represent the entire continent of Africa, also known as “Adventure Land.” After boarding a boat, or a plank of wood with benches, we wound through a web of boardwalks containing mannequins of black children adorned with colorful prints in front of straw shacks. They were all barefoot on dirt floors and wore identical distorted smiles. The set had diverse props related to commerce such as bunches of dried fish, decorated clay bowls, and a fruit market. Throughout the ride, obscure animal noises and drum beats set the tone for a “jungle” experience. Just in case one didn’t realize where one was meant to be, a boat entitled “African Queen” glided back and forth as a reminder.

We had stumbled upon the colonial quarter of Europa Park. In deciding to create a space that represented most of Europe, the designers of the park thought it would be ingenious to add a miniature portion that was to embody a continent where Europe had forced its influence and its regimes for centuries. Indistinguishable black mannequins displaying an assortment of prints were therefore meant to represent the hundreds of cultures in the second largest continent. The set was reminiscent of the common European trope of Africa as poor, primitive, and only useful for its resources.

While the other neighborhoods of Europa Park emphasized art, architecture, and cuisines in order to form a comprehensive picture of each country, Adventure Land was nothing more than an inaccurate and racist caricature of an entire continent. I walked out of all of the other neighborhoods with the sentiment of awe and appreciation for catching a small glimpse of the best parts of Europe throughout history, but this was clearly not the objective that the designers had in mind when creating Adventure Land. 

What left me most amazed was the reactions of everybody else who participated in the ride. White parents laughed and pointed out the mannequins a few feet from our boat as their children, their expressions marked by wonder, peered into the faces of child mannequins that were clearly arranged to display such vastly different lifestyles from theirs. All around us were French and German families who seemed delighted by a scene that cast the two continents as polar opposites in development and wealth.

This persistent ignorance on the French part explained itself in the following weeks when I learned that it is illegal for the French government to measure statistics based on ethnicity, religion, or linguistic groups. Thus, necessary conversations about race and the treatment of minorities are avoided in France. The problems that minority groups face are virtually invisible to everybody else. It takes massive public demonstrations, like the 2005 French riots, to awaken people to the discontent of their fellow citizens. Judging by the fact that I have not found one article on the internet about the monstrosity that is Adventure Land, despite the 44.3 million visits that Europa Park has received in the last seven years, this apathy is probably present in other European countries. If Europa Park can be treated as a memorial of European pride, then Europe is failing to have vital conversations about centuries of racism.