Reply #9: Please remember that the Disney Corporation and Walt Disney [View All]

[RaleighNCDUer]

are two very different critters.

Everything that has gone wrong with Disney has been since Walt Disney died.

IIRC, Walt Disney proudly kept his dishonorable discharge papers framed on his office wall. He was a complicated man, and not at all a freeper freak.

Yeah, I remember when the police were called to Disneyland when the Yippies staged a takeover. But Disney was also one of the first companies to offer benefits to partners of gay employees (do I recall correctly that the corporation rescinded those benefits in the past few years?).

I sometimes wonder if those in charge today ever watch any of the old movies. They don't seem to know what they are about. There were the cute, furry animals, OK, but also some of the most terrifying scenes a kid could see - the pursuit of the wicked queen by the vengeful dwarfs in Snow White, the fight between the Tramp and the rat in Lady and the Tramp, the forest fire in Bambi - all of them guaranteed to bring a 4 year old to tears. Disney very skillfully juxtaposed calm with terror, beauty with horror, blending the good and evil to emphasize that the divisions between them were amorphous and that the world could be a terribly dangerous place.

The problem is, Disney was an artist, and art cannot be corporatized. Even the more recent animations, Beauty and the Beast, Little Mermaid, et al, which were hailed for saving Disney had something calculated about them in a way the pre-70s films did not - playing to PC, keep everybody happy, don't be scary.

Certainly, the Disney Corporation deserves all the disapprobation we can muster, but their vileness stands out particularly in contrast to what Disney once was. I suggest that what we see is a close parallel to what has happened to America in general over the past 40 years.