For a couple of weeks now, I’ve been planning a long post examining what Disney’s mission and methodology need to be in 21st Century America. Walt’s creation faces an important challenge and a difficult one, and I would hope that the people responsible for guiding a company whose role in shaping U.S. culture has been both successful and beneficent as well as profitable are up to the task. They had better be, for the sake of the culture, not merely stockholders.
I was well on the way to devising a post I felt would be perceptive and provocative when I saw the video above. That stopped me cold. I wasn’t exactly optimistic about Disney, which has been a major positive influence in my own life, being able to safely navigate around the cultural icebergs in the roiling societal seas ahead before I watched the thing, but now I am as confused as I am depressed.
The classic starting point for ethical analysis is “What’s going on here?” In this case, it is more appropriate to ask, “What THE HELL is going on here?”
I’m open to suggestions.
Ethics Alarms 
Once you stop expecting it to make sense, it’ll make perfect sense.
This blows right past that like it was painted on a fence!
There was a scene in the animated version of Mulan where some men dressed as women to sneak into a palace.
The piocture clearly shows that this was not done in homage to that scene.
The answer is that corporate America is now run by woke, relatively young managers. The woman who considered Bud Light “fratty” is not an outlier. All these companies are trying to amass virtue signaling points so they get some sort of high rating from Human Rights Watch or some outfit. These are not missteps.
Or the CEI, as the case may be.
Yes, I think whoever it is that does those rankings has suspended Budweiser’s CEI ranking because they didn’t stand up for Mulvaney, choosing to abandon (sort of) the sinking ship.
Disney evidently is totally in thrall to the progressives/woke folks. They’re still picking fights with Florida and DeSantis.
I sure hope it is good tasting KoolAid.
They think they can force a new worldwide culture on the entire population of the world from the top down by force. It’s impossible, stupid and dangerous.
I agree with Other Bill.
I fear what we are witnessing are the death throes of the grand experiment initiated by our founding fathers so many years ago.
Multiple generations have been conditioned from birth that white men are homophobic, misogynist racists. They habitually oppress Atypical Sexual Preference People (ASPP), women, and People of Color (POC). We are taught that POCs, women, and ASPPs have been held down by white males and can’t succeed at anything without government intervention.
Our universities and schools have abandoned teaching students how to think and substituted critical thinking education with indoctrination and propaganda to assure students learn what to think. This subversion is amplified by the media, big tech, and the entertainment industry to further condition the populous that the progressive view of culture is the only acceptable alternative. These institutions have succeeded in transforming our culture to embrace progressive principles. To dilute the impact of the existing culture progressives wanted to change they encouraged unrestrictive immigration to our country by non-European people.
This indoctrination is impossible to reverse with one president or one congress. Culture is probably one of the most difficult things to change in a people. To do it bloodlessly it must occur evolutionally over multiple generations to do it quickly involves much turmoil and strife via a revolutionary process or some other cataclysmic event. Regardless of the outcome of the elections next year, I believe things will get worse as the progressives will push harder than ever to have their view of the way the world should function prevail.
Once the Boomers die out the evolutionary process progressives started in the early 20th century will be complete. I do not believe it is possible to get out of this mess without making things worse. I believe Borg’s quote in Star Trek is correct “Resistance is Futile.” That said I will still resist. I will resist because I have personal integrity and gratitude for everything America allowed me to become. I will speak my mind. I will mourn the death of the American Experiment and Dream. If it comes down to it, I will choose Hemlock over Kool-Aid. I will refuse to be anything other than me.
The problem with trying to change culture by force is that it is impossible. Sure, if enough pressure is applied, you may be able to temporarily get people to pretend to agree with whatever nonsense is currently being demanded, but the compliance is fake and will disappear the instant the oppressive force is removed. It takes a lot of time and effort to apply the necessary force to obtain compliance, and the more oppressive force is applied the greater the resistance to such force grows. The government would be quite happy if everyone gave in and let the government break them down into interchangeable widgets, but that is a pipe dream. Since the government can only provide blanket propaganda and focus on a limited number of issues at a time, the current issues will be replaced over time by others and all the fake compliance will disappear. It will become apparent once the oppressive force is removed that no actual cultural change occurred, except possibly in the opposite direction that was intended.
It is a lot easier to get people to pretend to accept something than it is to get them to actually accept it. Things are no where near as bad as they seem.
At Disney World this past March, we were utterly charmed by little girls in Princess dresses getting photo ops in a little section of the store. It was adorable.
This is not.
This is speculation, but since Disney is so tied into the entertainment media is it possible that Disney has just ‘Jumped the Shark’? Writing this one handed afterbreaking arm and surgery so please excuse any errors. Also why I haven’t been on as much. A few power outages didn’t help.
We’re going to have to put this into words.
What part of the idea that “male humans can become fairy godmothers’ apprentices and wear dresses and help people shop for dresses” is a problem? Is it that it blurs the use of fashion to signal gender? Is it that children may find male humans in dresses off-putting, regardless of whether or not they’ve been socialized to have that reaction? Is it that male humans can’t be trusted to be safe by default? All of the above?
Pointing to something and calling it a problem won’t help people understand why you think it’s a problem, and therefore why they might want to do something differently.
On that note, anyone who would like a free course on how to be taken seriously in political/ideological disagreements, please let me know. It’s in the beta stages and feedback is greatly appreciated!
I can’t wait to see the answers to this one, EC, but I’ll kick it off: it walks head on into a “fairy” joke, and indeed begs for it.
(I have many more substantive answers, but for now, I’ll leave it to the commentariat.)
I bet parents zero problem with a male telling children he’s a fairy godmother’s apprentice for the day. Did you notice he was wearing a dress, talking in a falsetto, had a mustache, and had on more makeup then a clown? I’m assuming for lots of parents, that was the problem. I’m not sure why we’re pretending it was the words he said that caused an issue.
I object to the forced one sided political participation being thrown at everyone, everywhere, all the time.
I don’t care what adults do so long as I am not required to participate. Screw whichever consenting adult you want, love whichever consenting adult you want, dress up like a pink panda and pretend you’re an alien from the next galaxy over with all the consenting adults you want. As long as I am not involved, it’s none of my business and I don’t care what people do. Once you start forcing participation on other people, now you have made it other people’s business.
Reality exists, and no one gets to force me to pretend it doesn’t. That is a man dressed up like a woman and invading the reality of little kids with the expectation that they will all play along, all their parents will play along, and that expectation comes with an implied threat that anyone who objects to this warping of reality will meet with unpleasant consequences. It is forced political confrontation. It’s passive aggressive narcissism weaponized against random individuals in situations where small children will be present and people are not present with the purpose of such confrontations.
Once you turn everything into a political issue it’s a political issue all the time, everywhere, for everyone. If gender self expression is a political issue, it’s always a political issue, everywhere, all the time, for everyone. There is no more individual decisions, it’s a war. This is why the politicization of everything is a bad idea.
“Reality exists, and no one gets to force me to pretend it doesn’t.” That’s a key point there for me. Right alongside the notion that I have enough of a challenge keeping my feet in the floodwaters of this movement. This is indicative of two other factors, both unnerving: that Disney the juggernaut is taking up arms in the particular battle, and that it is first aiming to sweep my children along, hoping to bring me with it. In view of the, er, troubles it’s been having with the state of Florida, this just feels like the company is doubling down. They’re with the Trans folks, and anyone who doesn’t like it can lump it. And it doesn’t really matter, because they’re coming for your kids, not you.
Add the final touch of parents expecting Disney to be a relatively safe space for your children to play, an expensive one at that, and then to violate that trust with political grandstanding out of the blue is a gross betrayal of the expectations people paid for, as well as what the company itself once stood for.
In my second comment on this post, I acknowledge the problem of potentially breaking the verisimilitude of a European fairytale-style dress shop. This comment will be responding only to the specific points you raise regarding “politics” and “pretending”.
In and of itself, this isn’t a political scene. This is a person wearing clothes and doing a job. If we respond to everything as if it is political, then the people trying to make everything a political issue win. Everyone feels forced to choose a faction instead of acting as individuals and treating each other as individuals.
The only “playing along and participating in pretending” I see in the clip is associated with the idea that magic fairy godmothers exist. The human introduces himself as Nick, an apprentice of a fairy godmother. He has makeup, a mustache, and a dress. If he were pretending not to be a man, he would not have a mustache or use a man’s name. As it stands, he’s presenting as a man wearing makeup and a dress, and does not appear to be asking anyone to pretend otherwise, although I can understand the situation may needlessly confuse young children on how to refer to or regard him.
Rather than the situation being a political confrontation, I hypothesize that the human simply got the job at the dress shop and the uniform requires makeup and a dress because it’s a fairy godmother dress shop. It might have made more sense for Disney to either allow men to dress in masculine fashions, or just have only women work in the dress shop, which seems typical and intuitive.
Narcissism, or at least vanity, is indeed one of a few possible motivations for people who get into acting and performance. Sometimes it’s about the craft, sometimes it’s about entertaining people, sometimes it’s about the attention, and sometimes it’s a combination of the above. Someone responding to the motivation of idealization might want to appear in a context as something in particular regardless of whether their presence or presentation are appropriate for the context. Someone responding to the motivation of boldness might want to surprise, confuse, or shock people by defying expectations. I concur that wearing any sort of nonconforming fashion in a professional capacity is likely to have some level of vanity going on, although I’d have to think about it more to define where vanity recognizably turns into narcissism. Narcissism to me indicates an inability to consider the perspectives or ethical worth of other people without reference to oneself.
Does that make sense?
I disagree he’s not pretending to be a woman. It’s possible but very unlikely that his natural voice sounds so falsetto and feminine. It certainly feels like a drag performance–very stereotypically feminine behavior, like that Mulvaney clown.
When the state takes up a cause, the people represented by that cause cease to be individuals. They become symbols of the state. The state took up the transgender cause and turned all the transgender people into symbols of the state. This comes with both large pros and large cons for transgender individuals. The pros include having the backing of all the major power sources for your cause. The cons include having the anger of those opposing the state directed at you as a symbol of the state. That is just reality.
I didn’t allow the state to take up the transgender cause, the transgender community did. No one consulted my opinion on the subject, but the transgender activist groups DID have the option of denouncing the state for interfering in their movement. To the best of my knowledge, none of them did so. They embraced their new power backing and celebrated the new power they were granted to bully the rest of society. They picked up the new and improved megaphone they were handed by the state and used it to blast their propaganda as loudly as possible at as many people as possible.
When you agree to be a symbol of the state, you don’t get to pretend that you aren’t a symbol of the state when it suits you. You get the rewards, but you also get the consequences. Part of those consequences is being hated by the people who are being harmed by the state, particularly when they are being harmed in your name.
I don’t care why this individual is doing what he is doing. His personal reasons are irrelevant.
“What part of the idea that “male humans can become fairy godmothers’ apprentices and wear dresses and help people shop for dresses” is a problem?”
Ideas aren’t problems. But you seem to be completely ignoring, or perhaps unaware of, the context and expectations. Disneyland was designed to allow children to experience their fantasies, in accordance with dreams, fairy tales and literature. That is what parents who pay exorbitant prices pay for, and since the Fifties, Disney has delivered on that promise—making dreams come true, making fantasies seem like a reality for a couple of magical hours or days. Disneyland and DisneyWorld don’t exist to fulfill the fantasies of cross-dressers, gender-confused men, or other mini-minorities at the expense of disillusioning and disappointing or confusing the vast majority of children who visit there. It’s mission is to fulfill childen’s fantasies, for adults as well as children. The dress store was based on Cinderella. She was a girl who magically became a princess. That’s the fantasy Disney is selling and has promised. The guy in the beard is a bait and switch, a betrayal. It’s not the fantasy, or if it is, it’s a fantasy of a tiny few. In the end, it is terrible and incompetent casting. The kids want to see their imagination’s picture of what it would be like to be Cinderella, and that is Disney’s obligation: make it so. Instead, someone is indulging their political and social agenda at the expense of the vast majority of children who go to the park.
That IS a problem. Sure, you can cast a midget as Sir Lancelot in Camelot, or a hideously deformed woman as “Annie”—nothing wrong with the “idea,’ if you have no expectations to meet, no mission to live up to, no stakeholders, no traditions to uphold. But Disney does—it is a brand, a philosophy, and a tradition in itself. The stunt at the dress shop is indefensible, just as it would be indefensible for Disney to have slum shacks and bordellos on its idealized Main Street that introduces families to the park. Yeah, real Main Streets had ugly parts and people, but Disney promises golden nostalgia along with the happy fantasies.
I don’t know how you could miss that. Tunnel vision? Unfamiliarity with the context? It’s not even a fertile ground to play Devil’s Advocate. I have to assume you have never been to the parks, and are unfamiliar with the Disney culture. When I finally got to Disneyland as an adult, I was amazed at the careful attention to preserving the fantasy. Tom Sawyer’s Island and the keelboats were staffed with big brawny guys. The attendants at the Peter Pan Pirate Boat ride looked like credible pirates. The shopkeepers on mains street were credibly turn of the century types. That’s paying attention to the details of the fantasies, and that’s what I had been told that Disneyland would do for my entire life up to that point. And it delivered. Snow White was a pretty woman in a costume who looked like the character in the movie. There’s nothing wrong with the “idea” of casting a 50 year-old obese black male midget as Snow White—but doing it is just incompetent, irresponsible and unfair to the children who have every reason to expect something else.
Addendum: I have stayed at the “Hawaian Village” and “Animal Kingdom” in Disney World. When we were at the former, which was designed to give guests the feeling that they were actually in a Hawaii resort, almost all of the hotel clerks and staff were Asians or islanders. The hotel had Hawaii and Pacific scents pumped into the air; it was by a man-made lagoon; everyone was in traditional dress. “Animal Kingdom” was set up to make guests feel like they were in Africa. The staff was entirely black; most spoke a native African language; they also were in native dress.
Later I visited both Hawaii and Africa, and you know, the resorts really weren’t much like the real thing at all, but the illusion worked for someone like me who had nothing to compare it to. The idea was making the illusion seem real. That’s what Disney has been trying to do, and has done successfully and delightfully for 80 years.
I have visited Disneyland and Disneyworld; I just don’t carry the same assumptions about who is allowed to associate with canon characters.
What you say about fulfilling people’s expectations about certain settings makes sense. We do need to be mindful of where those expectations come from in the first place, though, so we don’t create unnecessarily restrictive preconceptions for people.
When the setting is from history or classic fiction, those expectations exist already, and for good reason. Most humans in hundreds of years of history never saw anyone who challenged their idea of how a normal human could look. As long as people treat each other as people, I don’t believe it’s important that every cast in every setting have an improbable range of appearances and personalities, especially if you’re going for historical immersion. (That said, if you’re writing an ensemble cast the improbable range is part of what makes it interesting. Tropes Are Tools.)
It’s perfectly valid to keep aspects of a setting authentic, or at least lend the atmosphere some verisimilitude while curating some aspects to make it more pleasant than the reality otherwise might be. Fairytales (usually) don’t have men wearing dresses, so fair enough.
That does raise the question of what constitutes “pleasant” for people. If a human child of non-European heritage enters a clothing shop based on a European (version of a) fairytale, and all the employees are of European descent, does the child appreciate the dedication to the setting, or are they disappointed that they don’t see anyone who shares their own heritage? Or do they even care either way?
I suppose the correct approach does depend on whether the park’s conceit is that each setting is its own universe with its own native inhabitants who are unaware of the other settings, or if there is free travel between settings so that people can freely live and work in whichever one they want. (Just so long as the kids understand which version it is, inasmuch as they can.) How does that sound?
Good! Excellent response. One question: Do you really think drawing a line at representing the female fairy godmother from the classic animated film (or Rogers and Hammerstein musical or TV specials) as a cross-dressing man with facial hair in an attraction aimed at little girls requires “unnecessarily restrictive preconceptions for people”?
Good question. I’m ambivalent about that. It’s easy to say that people should not have preconceptions of areas of competence. It’s trickier when that area of competence entails making people feel comfortable and at ease. (Empathy mindset tends to make definitions fuzzier, and that includes things like “objective merit.”)
In most cases I’d say that people should make a habit of learning to be comfortable and at ease with a wider variety of people, but I am far less inclined to extend that principle to the context of little girls shopping for clothing. Or, for that matter, children in family situations that call for magical intervention.
For some occupations, like “fairy godmother,” I’d say that being immediately and universally recognized as safe and trustworthy is a requirement that other competencies can’t substitute for. Eventually I hope that people will have fewer reasons to be wary, but for the foreseeable future some boundaries are beneficial. I will caution people not to forget why those boundaries are there, lest people start carrying them around everywhere and hitting each other with them. If my local barber has mustache and wears makeup and a dress, I’m won’t see that as an indication he’s somehow an objectively bad person.
“That does raise the question of what constitutes “pleasant” for people. If a human child of non-European heritage enters a clothing shop based on a European (version of a) fairytale, and all the employees are of European descent, does the child appreciate the dedication to the setting, or are they disappointed that they don’t see anyone who shares their own heritage? Or do they even care either way?”
I would venture to guess that a child doesn’t even notice that other people don’t “look like them” (what does that even mean? Redheads don’t see many people who look like them. Abnormally short or tall or skinny or fat or beautiful or ugly people don’t see many people who look like them) unless they’ve been carefully taught to look for specific differences and associate negative feelings with those differences.
But I’d be willing to be convinced otherwise.
I admit my instinct reaction to this is negative: semi-consciously I do not like/find attractive people who confuse me with mixed signals about their gender, especially when the signals point so strongly in opposite directions (frilly pink and pale blue dress with a beard/mustache, say).
At the same time, I do think it’s close-minded of me to think and react that way. Rationally, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with Disney putting a person like this in front of children and perhaps helping decrease the value that they place in traditional markers of gender. Is it so bad if the next generation lets men wear dresses and women grow beards?
Generally speaking, women cannot grow beards without significant, usually permanent, medically (unnecessary) induced changes to their bodies. I see no reason to encourage that.
Men wearing dresses? That’s just a gender construct. Lots of men from the Pacific Islands wear skirts, and no one looks twice. Maybe some people look twice.
But you can’t divorce this man from the movement he’s representing, and indeed, shoving in the face of paying guests. A movement that constantly demeans white men for being white men, yearns for a society where group identity trumps individual accomplishment, and is usually closely associated with Marxism and all its wonders.
I don’t think anyone can look at how he’s dressed, where he is, who he’s associating with, and see it as harmless.
I don’t think I would react well to anyone who said, “I’m here to shop you around” to my child.
“What is Disney doing?”
Giving Sam Brinton a new job?
What is Disney doing? Destroying all traces of the old brand. Why is Disney doing it? I can’t answer for certain, but it is most likely a combination of a few things.
This process is actually been going on for quite a while, we just noticed this particular example of Disney’s behavior because it is both obvious and extreme
When I was a kid, Disney was a venerable company that produced funny shorts involving classic characters, sometimes magical and just sometimes silly live action fare, and every so often re-released the original trio of timeless princess movies, only two of which I actually saw, Sleeping Beauty was apparently off cycle vis-a-vis my age, and by the time it was re-released and I was old enough to get anything out of it, I was too old for that sort of thing. I was 26 when I actually saw that movie when it came to TV, and I wasn’t all that impressed, because the characters were bland and boring. I read the Disney encyclopedia when I was in school, took one trip to Disney World when I was about eight or nine (lots of animatronics and lots of lots of waiting in line), watch The wonderful World of Disney Sunday night until it was discontinued, and even went to the Black cauldron when it came out in 1982. The impression I got was that Disney was a venerable old company that had been a high achiever once but was now mostly content to rest on its laurels and offer a vision of America as a more optimistic generation had seen it once.
That all changed in about 1988 with the release of The Little Mermaid and Disney’s attempt to be once more a “now” thing rather than mostly hope and memories. I was now more or less an adult, so I really didn’t care one way or the other, but I thought it was kind of cool for Disney to pick up interpreting classical fairy tales again. Soon thereafter, however Disney became not just an empire, but a huge empire seeking huge profits, which everyone rather quickly came to accept. Disney already had a number of very valuable properties, intellectual and otherwise, now it capitalized and expanded on almost all of them. Syndicated cartoons, all kinds of merchandise tie-ins, and one movie after another, mostly endless permutations on one idea: “girls rule!” It was perfect in the center-left year of the woman nineties. Disney had been a treat when I was a kid, now it was something you couldn’t avoid seeing every time you turned around. What was more, did it previously followed the values of this nation, now it was going to be on the cutting edge and even set the values itself. It also got bigger and bigger and gobbled up many other intellectual properties, including Star Wars and Indiana Jones.
The thing is, it’s leadership got so full of itself and so determined to be further out ahead on the latest values than anyone else that it went too far. Now what do we get? Parks where announcers can’t even say “ladies and gentlemen,” animated movies that shove the LGBT agenda in our faces, live action movies by Kathleen Kennedy, whose single idea of innovation is “what if we replace this character with a woman?” and all of it for grossly inflated prices that are putting the parks far beyond the reach of ordinary families, especially in this economy.
As a conservative single man, the entire empire has pretty much nothing to offer me at this point. I gave up on Star Wars before the third movie of the last trilogy hit theaters because it seemed too interested in trashing the original characters in favor of Daisy Ridley’s Rey, a Mary Sue if ever there was one. I’ll probably go to this last Indiana Jones movie just to finish out the series that I started watching when I was not even a teenager, but I’ve read through the plot and it is nothing all that impressive. I have concluded that a big part of what gave Indiana Jones his appeal was his connection with the sacred and the biblical, and when you take that away, his stories are no longer unique. Even if I had a family, though, I would really think twice about what I exposed my children to from Disney. If I had daughters, they would grow up understanding that you have to work for what you want, that no Prince Charming is going to come along and sweep you away, and that sometimes people are just not going to think you’re that awesome. If I had children of either gender, they would learn about different kinds of gender issues and different kinds of sexual behavior from their parents and people actually versed in healthcare, not from cartoons drawn by people with one agenda and one agenda only. And I’ll be damned if I’m going to spend twice or three times what I would spend on any other vacation just to put more money into the pockets of a company that treats me with contempt. Family vacation will consist of affordable jaunts to rural PA and the Jersey shore, and if they don’t like it, we can stay home and they can lend a hand with getting some necessary repairs done, so I don’t have to pay a contractor to improve the home where their ungrateful selves reside by day, and work on their summer reading lists (it’s called summer reading list, not week before school begins reading list) by night.
Part of this insanity is the result of people in these companies pushing for more DEI based initiatives and actions (the old squeaky wheel get the grease—I see this in the small company where I work). However, huge part of it is response to outside pressure, from actors like BlackRock who are using ESG (effectively threats of devaluation by assigning lower scores) to compel DEI actions—they’re not shy about it:
Wow! There it is! When did MBAs become high priests? Hutzpah up the wazoo! The truly think they are masters of the universe.
Wait until they get in front of the real Master of the universe. All that hutzpah will pour out their wazoos and fill their britches.
I like Governor Ivey’s approach in responding to such blatant foolishness:
I will choose others druinking Hemlock over me drinking Kool-Aid.
Is this Fairy Godmother’s Apprentice a very recent addition?
If so…what is Disney doing? It’s trolling Ron DeSantis and the Drag Queen issue.
They can’t put men in dresses at DisneyWorld so the company is going to make sure Woke California (aka the C.S.S.R) does the deed in an effort to make sure they get in another potshot at Florida.
If he is supposed to be an apprentice, why not dress him in a tuxedo or something?
I think the pendulum will have to swing on this.
I think EC’s question in a vacuum is actually a really good one. If Mrs. Doubtfire was playing a character at Disney 20 years ago, I think the character would have raised more brows on account of it being a Fox property than the wardrobe and affectations. The problem is all the associated baggage that has come with the new progressive narrative than the individual characters themselves, and the downhill effects. Frankly, 20 years ago, there wasn’t an apparently socially contagious phenomenon that resulted in not-insignificant numbers of kids chemically (if not physically) castrating themselves.
But the current situation is what the current situation is. The question that I think I have isn’t necessarily “is the current operational management woke” necessarily, these are contentious issues and my disagreement isn’t dispositive. Woke people can make woke arguments.
But an objective issue is “is this proper fiduciary management?”
Part of the reason that the Bud Light boycott is actually having an effect is because conservative leaning people actually drank Bud Light and their withheld business was actually meaningful. “Get woke, go broke” is only a thing if the people disagreeing with woke ideation actually supported you in the first place. We can all think of a couple of companies where it doesn’t matter how woke they get, because they know their audience.
Disney’s audience is kids. Young kids, not 30 year old developmentally arrested adults. And their parents. Parents that have kids tend to be more conservative. I wonder if Disney’s management in an attempt to project their values is alienating half of America on the trans issue. If, like I suspect, they’ve incorrectly gauged their audience, this has got to be hurting their brand. Particularly in Florida, where Ron Desantis is very popular. I wonder if we ever see a shareholder revolt. Shareholders are definitely more conservative than the average person, but they’re generally willing to hand-wave a lot so long as the dividends flow.
That’s it. I give up for the morning. Coffee. Directly into my veins.
You are right, but when it swings, it will be too late for Disney to regain the trust and good will it has forfeited.
Yup
And this is a problem. Progressives like to capture already established environments and use the power of the brand involved to push culture from the top down, destroying the environment during the process. It’s why gatekeeping is not only good but also necessary and important.
It’s when the letter (or email now) arrives that says “due to (yadah yadah) there will be no dividend check this month,” or those checks shrink significantly that shareholders start getting annoyed.
I wonder. With pricing going the way it is, bringing a family is nearly out of the question, contrasted with a pair of 20-30 year old DINKs. I can almost imagine Disney deciding it would be easier to cater to woke, affluent adults than to continue making quality, uplifting movies that kids will enjoy. Kids are a fickle lot, and progressives are predictable as hell.
Not to mention, as the employee base swings towards people who are eschewing the child-bearing lifestyle themselves, it only stands as reasonable that they would want to cater to folks like them. Younger adults have been trained to be woke, hire woke people, get woke movies. Most kids today and in recent generations have had most the imagination, innocence, and wonder scraped out of them by the education, media, and online marketplaces they spend all their time anyway.
Plus, kids don’t have money.
“If Mrs. Doubtfire was playing a character at Disney 20 years ago, I think the character would have raised more brows on account of it being a Fox property than the wardrobe and affectations. ”
And, yet, some people are using “Mrs. Doubtfire” as an example of a “trans-promoting” or “Drag Queen-promoting” film even when it’s not.
Williams’ character was not a man that believed he was a woman, but a man who posed as a woman in order to get access to his kids outside of visitation rights after a divorce.
Sally Field was upset because her husband undermined her authority at home and made it hard for her not to be the Bad Guy with the kids. So he dressed as a woman, gained her trust and, once the kids figured out the secret, enlisted them in keeping it…thus undermining their mother’s authority and making her the Bad Guy.
Of course, the argument today is that heterosexual men do not pose as women in order to gain access to vulnerable women and children, but I digress…
So, why are they doing this? There are some possible answers going around the internet. I am not endorsing them, I just find it interesting.
Possibility A. Totalitarian Ambitions:
Disney is doing this because it is about perversion. The left wants the maximum amount of perversion, especially sexual perversion. The gay rights movement wasn’t about homosexuals being oppressed by the government, it was about pushing sexual perversion. This is why as soon as the gay marriage fight was won, the movement moved on to polygamy and now ‘transgenderism’ and pedophilia. Pushing sexual immorality destroys the community and society.
Why would you want to destroy community and society? (1) You want to take over. (2) The people you work for (intentionally or not) want to take over.
All of the leftist movements (postmodernism, intersectionality, etc) are rooted in Marxism. What Marxists want is to destroy all of western society. The best way to destroy society is through perversion and division.
All of these movements today seem to be pushed by these ‘New World Order’ organizations. ESG and DIE, for example are things pushed by organizations like the WEF. To succeed, they need to destroy all organizations in society that could stand against them.
(1) Communities
(2) Religion
(3) The family
All of the above need to be destroyed. Don’t the policies of the left seem intent on that?
Possibility B. Satan
The Temple of Satan actively supports:
maximum abortion rights
Every LGBTQIA+ agenda imaginable
illegal immigration
intesectionality
everything else the left currently supports
So, is the Temple of Satan just part of the Democratic Party, or is the current leftist belief Satanism? If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck…
But think about it, if you had a movie about a political party controlled by the Devil, could you do better than a lineup of Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, Jerry Nadler, Adam Schiff, and Dianne Feinstein?
My mom always told me, “consider the source,” when evaluating information and experiences.
Disney has been corrupt from the start. Fantasy can be good in proportion but creating synthetic seemingly all encompassing “worlds” for children doesn’t seem like it’s helped today’s kids be any happier or well adjusted. Perhaps (and I have no evidence for this idea) part of why our country is in this mess is because we have all been raised to believe that…
When you wish upon a star/Makes no difference who you are/Anything your heart desires/Will come to you.”
What a pile of nonsense. No wonder men in princess dresses greet people at the princess dress store. If it makes no difference who you are, then of course a dude can be a fairy princess.
Should anything your heart desires come to you? Heck no. Even Buddhists think this is a bad idea. Getting kids to believe there are no limits leads to kids believe the general realities of life (like men not being able to get pregnant) won’t or don’t apply to them.
And wishing upon a star. That’s some voodoo quasi- religious stuff that is probably as effective as chanting “Jai guru deva” in a song.
Let’s not forget Walt’s failed City of Tomorrow which was a prequel to the emerging technocracy we see today.
It also doesn’t help that Disney has been inserting creepy and sexual subliminal imagery into cartoons and films that has been documented from before the 1990’s.
Disney has been corrupted for decades if not from the beginning. Kids need healthy imagination scenarios that don’t lead them so far into fantasy that they can hardly manage reality.
Disney has simply sunk to it’s own level.
My extended family, a relatively large group of 25–45 year-olds, at family gatherings almost exclusively talk about either video games or Dungeons & Dragons. Much of their world (outside of work) revolves around make believe worlds.
Storytelling has existed for as long as history has been recorded. It is not abnormal or unhealthy to enjoy entertainment or fantasy. Storytelling is one way cultural messages are passed on from one generation to the next. It allows people to put themselves in other people’s shoes and understand alternative perspectives. It helps people make sense of things that don’t make sense to them if they can find a storyline that lays things out in an understandable way.
Currently, reality is depressing, chaotic, unpredictable and doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. I find it unsurprising that people are spending a lot of time engaging with fantasy. When the real world makes no sense, people start looking for answers in their imagination. People also hide from chaos and cultural disruption in places that are familiar and less chaotic.
Trying to imply that my point was that storytelling is bad is wildly inaccurate. Storytelling can be wonderful for so many reasons. But wise elders know that the best part of a story is how it can help you deal with actual life issues.
What I apparently wasn’t clear enough in saying, is that all encompassing fantasy can have toxic results. If you’re using Disney, Hollywood, video games, drugs, etc. to escape, you’re going to have a harder time dealing with life on its own terms. Stories need to prepare kids as well as entertain them. There are studies (yes I know studies can be silly) that point to a lack of empathy in kids who spend too much time in fantasy.
If life is too hard, try making it better rather than turning to maximum escape.
I watched my ENTIRE childhood neighborhood go up in flames 3 years ago by delusional fanatics and you better believe I didn’t want to face the world. I lost my business and my wife lost her job of 13 years due to Covid lockdowns. We had to escape the encroaching tyranny of Portland.
Life was too ugly to see anymore. I cried. I nearly screamed. My heart is still broken from all that.
Did I change my gender? Did I spend all my time online? Did I use booze to escape? Did I dream of being a Disney princess? No. I rebuilt the business I lost, moved to a calmer place, started making new goals, and dove into reality, with an eye on how I can make a difference, rather than sink into too much imagination and fantasy.
Storytelling has an important place in culture. But imagination without discernment and grounding in reality leads to people turning experiences into gods. This rarely turns out well.
I was actually responding to Junkmail, but I do understand your points and find them valid. It is one thing to take inspiration from stories or process novel experiences through them, and another to to try and bring them to life. I quite enjoy fantasy stories, but at the end of the day, there is still no such thing as magic.
As for escaping, there are healthy levels of escape and unhealthy levels. Sometimes a distraction is exactly what I need to give myself time to get my emotions back in check and keep an even keel. It is important not to rely to heavily on those distractions to the point that you lose track of what is important, or lose track of reality itself.
Yes. Not sure whether Null was pointing at me (SWIDT?) or you, but engaging in story-telling and fantasy is a healthy part of life, plays an important part in instilling values and culture, and serves as an escape from the drudgery of life.
But anything taken to the extreme is a negative. And there is far too much of that these days, likely only because it’s possible, because we’ve made life so easy.
I WAS talking to you. I also agree with you, except on one point I’m torn. Have we made life easy? Some things are definitely easier, but change brings new hardships to replace the old. I think the difficulties might have just migrated to new spots.
We’ve made life too easy physically for sure. Mentally/emotionally?
I’m of the opinion that just as we’re becoming fatter, less fit, and less physically capable (read a depressing statistic that today’s kids are about 30% less cardiovascularly capable than their parents were when they were children) than the generation that came before, we’re also starving ourselves of emotional exercise. We hide our children (and ourselves) from every difficult or even uncomfortable situation that we possibly can and then wonder why they have a panic attack when being asked to drive a car or speak in front of a group. How many hours of unsupervised play does the rising generation have under their belt vs baby boomers? They have never had to figure out how to handle difficult or uncomfortable situations without a referee.
Yes, there are things that are probably more difficult than in generations past, but I believe what we’re seeing these days is emotional feebleness.
I’m 50+ and I have a whole world created, although I think actually writing novels set in it is going to have to wait till retirement (7 years). However, because I write in fantasy, it makes the line between it and reality clearer. I’m also big into history, which makes the line between the two all the more necessary. Actually a lot of what I write is somewhat historically based. and it’s all the more important to know truth from fiction when that’s going on. But the thought is hey, wouldn’t it be great to at least temporarily move in a world where all kinds of fantastic stuff happens?
Corrupt? I don’t know about that, but Disney was certainly dealing in giving its guests and watchers fantastic stuff as well as reality (don’t forget, Disney also produced educational stuff like Saludos Amigos). Wishing on a star was simplistic song lyrics, BUT, it came from a movie in which the character who wished had to work very hard and go through some horrible experiences including almost sacrificing himself before his wish was granted. The original princess stuff was dazzling visuals and catchy songs, but also terribly formulaic and unintelligent storytelling, especially Sleeping Beauty, with a weak premise (an evil fairy curses an infant with death just because she wasn’t invited to a party?), guardians of a VIP not really up to the task (why not bring her back to the castle the day AFTER her 16th birthday when the curse is past?), and zero understanding of relationships (Aurora spends about 5 minutes with Philip and she’s leaning her head on his shoulder and ready to marry him? Despite the fact that they never even gave one another their names? For that matter, Philip’s been with her only about five minutes and he’s ready to renounce his kingdom for her?)
That said, that’s where parents come in, to explain to kids that it’s only a story and that real life doesn’t work like that. The thing is, Disney in the past didn’t try to overwhelm parents’ messages to their kids. Now they try to take the place of parents.
If it’s normal and healthy then there’s nothing wrong with this.
If it is not normal and not healthy, then until conservatives start fighting back economically and legally, this is the way for corporations to keep making money because as long as conservatives don’t fight the Disney stands to lose more money from those who want perverted men in close proximity to little girls than it stands to lose from conservatives who still believe healthy and balanced individuals require a lifetime of stable inputs.
You know, this might have worked as a sort of campy gag if they had a gruff bearded hairy legged guy with a wand and in a sort of tutu-like dress and army boots as the “apprentice fairy godmother”. Having an effeminate guy in a milkmaid’s dress just seems like drag queen light.
You’re right!