The World's Fair was the precursor to theme parks like

Host: The night sky above the abandoned fairgrounds was heavy with memory — rusted lights, the skeletons of pavilions, a faint metallic wind whispering through empty steel arches. The place once pulsed with color, with ambition — now it was a ghost of optimism, swallowed by time. Weeds climbed the old fences, and in the distance, a Ferris wheel stood motionless, its silhouette black against the bruised horizon.

Jack and Jeeny stood near what used to be the main plaza, where fountains once danced and music once promised a brighter world. Now, the only sound was the slow crack of rust and the distant hum of the highway — civilization still moving, but perhaps, as Sufjan Stevens warned, not forward.

Jeeny: “Sufjan Stevens once said, ‘The World’s Fair was the precursor to theme parks like Disneyworld, and the really sort of cheap, superficial promotional architecture that you see everywhere in the U.S. I think there’s a danger when you start creating a civilisation that isn’t meant to last.’”

Jack: (glancing around) “He’s not wrong. This place was supposed to be a monument to progress. Now it’s just progress’s corpse.”

Host: His voice echoed, carried by the hollow structures, bouncing between steel and silence. A torn banner flapped overhead, its faded letters spelling out a word that once meant everything: FUTURE.

Jeeny: “That’s the irony, isn’t it? We built entire worlds for a season — then left them to rot. We called it innovation, but maybe it was just spectacle.”

Jack: “Spectacle sells. Depth doesn’t. People don’t want permanence anymore, Jeeny — they want distraction.”

Jeeny: “But distraction is decay disguised as delight. You can’t build a civilization on it. It’s like painting a sunset on a crumbling wall.”

Host: The wind rose, whistling through the broken structures like breath escaping a dying body.

Jack: “Still, I can’t blame them. People crave wonder, even if it’s temporary. Maybe the world’s fair and Disneyland aren’t about permanence — maybe they’re about escape.”

Jeeny: “Escape from what? The responsibility of meaning? The burden of time? We’ve turned imagination into a consumer product, Jack. That’s not creation — that’s sedation.”

Host: Her words hit like slow thunder — not loud, but lingering. Jack kicked at a fragment of tile beneath his boot, revealing beneath the dust the faint mosaic of a globe, fractured but recognizable.

Jack: “You sound like you want everything to last forever. But maybe impermanence is honesty. Maybe it’s better to build things that fade — it reminds us we’re mortal.”

Jeeny: “Mortality is one thing. Superficiality is another. There’s a difference between something dying naturally and something being built to die.”

Jack: “So you think the world’s losing its craftsmanship — its care?”

Jeeny: “Not just craftsmanship — its conscience. Once, we built cathedrals meant to outlive us. Now, we build malls that collapse within decades. What does that say about what we worship?”

Host: The moonlight pooled in the cracked fountain nearby, the stagnant water reflecting distorted stars. The scene itself seemed to answer her — beauty, once bold, now brittle.

Jack: “Maybe it says we’ve evolved. The medievals built for eternity because they feared God. We build for the moment because we fear boredom.”

Jeeny: (quietly) “And yet both are kinds of faith — one eternal, one fleeting. The question is, which one leaves the world better?”

Host: A long silence followed. The wind shifted, carrying the faint echo of a distant train, the sound of a civilization still racing forward without looking back.

Jack: “You know, Sufjan has a point — this kind of architecture, this kind of culture — it’s promotional. It’s built to convince, not to endure. The world’s fair sold dreams. Disney sells nostalgia. Both sell illusion.”

Jeeny: “And illusion is addictive. Once you teach people to love replicas, they stop yearning for the real. That’s the danger — we replace permanence with performance.”

Jack: “But isn’t performance part of life? Theatricality, invention — isn’t that what makes us human? To keep dreaming, even if it’s fragile?”

Jeeny: “Dreams are human, yes. But when every dream is packaged and monetized, it stops being sacred. The fairgrounds became theme parks, and the theme parks became the blueprint for our cities — all surface, no soul.”

Host: The ferris wheel groaned, a slow metallic sigh. Somewhere, a single light flickered and died.

Jack: “You’re describing entropy dressed as entertainment.”

Jeeny: “Exactly. And we keep applauding it. We forget that art and architecture used to tell stories meant to outlive us. Now we build to distract the living, not to inspire the unborn.”

Host: Her voice trembled slightly, though not from anger — from mourning. She looked up at the sky, where the spire of a decaying pavilion still pointed toward the stars, stubbornly, beautifully, uselessly.

Jack: “Maybe that’s why the ruins are beautiful. They remind us of what sincerity used to look like.”

Jeeny: “Yes. Because ruins are truth. They don’t pretend anymore. They’ve stopped advertising.”

Host: The silence deepened again, and in it there was a strange, aching peace — as if the ghosts of the past fairs, the laughter and the lights, had finally exhaled.

Jack: “You know, sometimes I think civilization itself is just one long exhibition — a world’s fair that forgot to close.”

Jeeny: (smiling sadly) “And yet, here we are — wandering through it, still trying to find meaning among the booths.”

Jack: “Do you think we ever will?”

Jeeny: “Only when we start building for permanence again — not just in architecture, but in values. When we stop asking what amazes, and start asking what endures.”

Host: The camera moved slowly upward, rising above the fairgrounds — the rusted towers, the broken fountains, the skeletal wheel reaching into the night. From above, it looked almost beautiful — like an ancient ruin rediscovered, a reminder of humanity’s endless desire to impress itself.

The wind carried Jeeny’s last words, fragile but fierce:

Jeeny: “If we keep making beauty disposable, Jack, then our civilization won’t crumble — it will evaporate.”

Host: The lights of the distant city shimmered faintly beyond the horizon, endless and restless. And as the scene faded, Sufjan Stevens’s words echoed through the void — not as condemnation, but as elegy:

that a world built on spectacle
will always hunger for substance,
that every glittering fair becomes a graveyard of wonder,
and that a civilization which forgets to build for tomorrow
will wake one day to find
that it has built nothing
that lasts.