Exhibits: Stargazers

Stargazer's Planetarium - Men in White Theatre - Back to Index

Stargazer's Planetarium - The Real Thing Equals the Real Truth


Unlike the adjacent Dragon Hall Bookstore, which sports a Pterodactyl logo right out of the currently popular Dragonology books; the saddled baby triceratops from Dinotopia, also at the entrance to the Main Hall; or the Men in White Theatre logos obvious and cheesy parody of Men in Black, The Stargazer's Planetarium sports a real planetarium projector system to mark its entrance. Whereas these and many other visual references (e.g., the Loch Ness sculpture floating in the pond outside) invite suspension of disbelief and a fun-loving spirit that camouflages the museum's deeper agenda, the planetarium and the old school projector at its entrance trade on the integrity and legitimacy that comes with authenticity. Like the occasional dinosaur skeletons, walls of fossils, finches, and frogs, which remind us of natural history museums and zoos, this artifact and the traditional planetarium behind it are seemingly credible, scientific, and reminiscent of school field trips.

Awesome, Awe, and Omnipotent

Inside, the auditorium and its show look and feel like the common introduction to outer space that we so often experience at planetariums, but the usual aim of growing our appreciation of the awesome scope of the cosmos here becomes a basic argument and testament to the 'handiwork of the Lord'. Much like other rooms such as the Wonders of Creation, this presentation seeks to create a sense of awe and wonder as a compelling argument that only an omnipotent and omniscient God could have created the universe. Overall, this approach, which is repeated throughout the museum, makes for a highly predictable experience that you might wish to skip as you make your way to the Slot Canyon (a.k.a., rabbit hole) or more memorable Men in White Theatre across the Main Hall.

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Men In White Theatre - A Special Effects Blockbuster


Much like the experience of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, where the audience flings rice and squirts water, or an amusement park surround-sound race car simulation with shaking seats, The Men in White Theater offers squirting & shaking seats among its fun-filled surprises. On the surface this interactive movie experience is upbeat, cheeky, and playful, with appealing narrators who often take on the personas of Bill & Ted from Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure. Fun for the whole family, perhaps, but there is a deeper agenda here within this lighthearted candy coating.




The Men in White show is a stand-alone experience whose packaging parallels the rest of the museum. As with the other media presentations, chaperones introduce this show with remarks such as "prepare for some fun, prepare for some solid answers, prepare to believe... We'll learn some facts that are very different from your school days... " This use of "solid answers" and "facts" is quite common, and cause for concern, as there is little to nothing that is in fact solid, objective, uncontroversial, or broadly & incontestably accepted as factual. Like the remainder of the museum, this is a persuasive presentation, built to move the heart with emotional appeal and shape the mind with carefully crafted stories. The point here is that the language here and elsewhere is one of assumed factual statement standing in for creed and belief.

Complete with Tinkerbelle and all manner of bells and whistles, this movie is wonderful eye candy, but it also raises big questions as Wendy, a troubled and searching teen mannequin who sits in front of the screen before a camp fire asks "Does anybody even know I'm here? Is there any meaning? Did God create all this, or did we just invent God?" Just as Peter Pan invites kids of all ages into a fantasyland filled with adventure, where kids enjoy power as they foil evil adults (i.e., Captain Hook and his crew), Tinkerbelle invites Wendy (and the entire audience by extension) to join Bill and Ted for an answer-filled adventure. The laughs, playful special effects, and light-hearted banter of Bill and Ted make it so very easy to suspend disbelief and simply go along for the ride. Says "Bill", "And Wendy, God invented the whole enchilada", before going on to poke fun at education and formal schooling using the caricatured teacher, Mr. Snodgrass, a bumbling "Know-it-all" who conjures up our worst memories of school and teachers. Through a Welcome Back Kotter classroom scene "Bill and Ted" bash education and science at once by befuddling Mr. Snodgrass. Interestingly, this presentation manages to position its charismatic narrators as experts who debunk science and formal knowledge more generally even as they maintain a "cool" student status that speaks to Wendy - think Spicolli from Fast Times At Ridgemont High and Mr. Hand in one.

This trumps the scientific perspective, makes the fundamentalist Christian perspective a no-brainer; and speaks to all audiences from child to adult, all at once. It is a rhetorical masterpiece, to be sure, and packaged so as to seduce the critical mind through the use of jokes, the staged duping of pompous wind bag experts & teachers, eye-popping pyrotechnic effects, and gorgeous cinematography shot and produced with cutting edge technologies (by human hands and clever minds) under the guise of God's wonder - after all, shots so beautiful, and scenes so complex, must have been created by God. As students of persuasion, we must give a hats off to the Mighty Oz who created this fun-filled sideshow before moving on to the main event of the Museum's exhibitions.

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