From Conservative to «Woke»: The Truth About Disney Politics

Scene from Disney's The Seven Wise Dwarfs Posted by Alami

Disney's remake of Snow White isn't coming out until next year, and this is already causing controversy. Leading actress Rachel Zegler said she didn't like the original, called the prince a stalker and promised a feminist twist. The Seven Dwarfs are now «magical creatures» of varying heights.

Conservatives have woken up, warning that brands that go this route tend to go bust, and Disney's growing political correctness contrasts with the image of its founder Walt, a genius who helped define American patriotism during World War II and was an outspoken anti-communist. Conservatives once revered the business as the embodiment of traditional values. Walt was so adept at realizing and promoting the American dream that even Emperor Hirohito insisted that he be buried with a Mickey Mouse watch.

But the historical truth is more nuanced. The Disney Empire was a product of time and place, and as the world changed, so did its politics.

Walt Disney was born in the heart of America, Chicago, at the dawn of the American Century, in 1901. His father was a socialist. Walt, a hard-working, avid boy with a passion for cartoons, moved to Hollywood and co-wrote the animated short Steamboat Willie in 1928.

Its star, Mickey Mouse, inhabited the whimsical world of a modernist aesthetic that rejected painterly realism in favor of surreal imagery that evoked emotion. In «Plane Crazy», Mickey, while courting Minnie, builds a plane out of a sausage dog and flies it into the udder of a cow, which squirts steamed milk. It was later used as a modest corporate mascot, but modern critics saw in this mischievous rodent a symbol of the little man, the cartoon Chaplin.

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was released in 1937. Photo: Alamy

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), Disney's first animated film, was hailed as a triumph of depth, color and realistic movement, creating the illusion of a dream come true. Hitler liked it. Disney, who the Nazis believed was German, imported European fairy tales filled with Jungian archetypes of masculine and feminine ideals. There is a long scene dedicated to housework, which Snow White enjoys too much.

It is important to note that she is “snow white” not because of the color of her skin, but because of her moral purity; a girl who prays before going to bed. This movie could be watched as a primer on how to be a good Christian, even though Walt himself rarely went to church. British censors found the Evil Queen so diabolically terrifying that they insisted that children only watch the film if accompanied by an adult.

Snow White used mass production methods similar to how Henry Ford created cars. Walt tripled his staff, ran the factory 24 hours a day, created two million animation cells, but only used 250,000. He didn't do it for profit and felt he paid his animators well. So when workers walked out in 1941 demanding a union, the boss was furious and blamed the strike on communist infiltration. Having previously voted for Franklin Roosevelt, his politics were at a turning point.

Fantasia and Pinocchio failed at the box office, leaving the studio in serious debt. However, the outbreak of World War II made him a spokesman for the American way. Walt, who served as a Red Cross ambulance driver during the Great War, was a patriot but hesitant to promote propaganda; he considered himself an apolitical artist. However, he went on a goodwill tour of South America to fight German influence, his creations appeared on posters, badges and war bonds, and his artists churned out war-themed films and cartoon insignia for free use by units.

Some of Disney's informational films were technical and didn't hold up to repeat viewing, such as the thrilling classic «Four Methods of Flush Riveting.» Others were humorous. The most famous film (it won an Oscar) is the 1943 film The Fuhrer's Face, starring Donald Duck as a citizen of the Third Reich, in which Hitler is mindlessly worshiped and, in a throwback to the abstract art of early Mickey, everything is shaped like a swastika. , right down to trees and windmills. The film does not deal with anti-Semitism or the invasion of Poland; his idea is that if the Nazis win, they'll send you to a factory where you'll work twice as long for little pay (not unlike what Walt was accused of). Fortunately, it's all a dream. The duck wakes up in America and hugs the Statue of Liberty.

By this point in history, the Nazis had broken with Disney. In their review of Fantasia, they said Walt had appropriated Germanic culture and turned it into kitsch, accusing him of what left-wing critics like to call «cultural imperialism.»

After the war, Walt became an outspoken enemy of Marxism, testifying at Red subversion hearings and informing the FBI. The studio sacrificed quality to create cheaper but more successful cartoons (1950s Cinderella was a hit) and moved into live-action films, television and theme parks. Left-wing commentators derided Disneyland as a white, middle-class gated community espousing Victorian values, and yet when socialist bloc leader Nikita Khrushchev visited California in 1959, he was furious when he was told he couldn't come. -What are you hiding there? he asked. Rockets?

Disney's propaganda film «The Face of the Fuhrer» won an Oscar. Photo: Alamy

Although Walt's films are considered reactionary, they promote the environment and the message that hunting is cruel (as any child traumatized by watching Bambi would agree). His cunning Robin Hood stole from the rich to give to the poor. And in Mary Poppins, his last triumph before his death in 1966, he told us it was better to feed the birds than to put money in the bank. The film centers on a broken family that needs to be reunited. Yes, Mr. Banks must give up his capitalist job to spend time with his children, but Mrs. Banks, the suffragette, must also give up her radical campaign. For Walt, the private sphere, not social activism, was king. Every home should be a fairytale castle.

Yet there is tension in American conservatism, as evidenced by the fate of his company. Conservatives want to preserve a certain way of life, but they also advocate economic freedom, which is shaking the culture. Although modern Disney remains committed to family, the family structure has changed since 1937; little girls want to be more than just princesses; and the globalized entertainment market encourages multiculturalism.

For the company to continue making Walt-style cartoons in the 21st century would be unrealistic, and while its recent shift to the left has been encouraged by employees demanding more diversity, Disney may have woken up not despite being a successful business, but because it is a successful business.

Disney's live-action remake of The Little Mermaid starring Halle Bailey. Photo: PA Media

The company's recent game remakes have received negative reactions from audiences. The Little Mermaid was rebooted with a black lead (you'd think that would be uncontroversial), and Mulan was filmed in a Chinese province where Uyghur Muslims are persecuted. What deserves more scholarly analysis, however, is the evolution of Walt's cult of virtue into the company's two remaining moral commandments: «be yourself» and «girls are tough.» The template was set by 2013's Frozen, a fun, tongue-in-cheek film that subverts fairytale logic. Prince Charming turns out to be a gold digger. The Snow Queen, whose touch turns everything to ice, is a girl with an amazing disability/superpower who learns to overcome her fear and be herself. «Let it go!» she sings, an anthem claimed by the gay community.

Old Disney was instructive. The new Disney expands the possibilities. It is a reflection on the ethics of the entertainment industry, as well as the world we live in, where concepts such as purity, obedience, conscience and prudence have fallen out of favor. I also can't remember the last time I heard someone whistling while working.

Additional reading:

Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination by Neal Gubler (Vintage, 2006 )
Hollywood Plains: Animation, Critical Theory, and the Avant-Garde by Esther Leslie (Verso, 2002)
Disney Culture by John Wills (Rutgers University Press, 2017)