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Gather around, folx! We're going to talk about racism in Disney. Specifically, we're going to talk about how we reconcile when a media company does both really great diversity stuff but also shitty stuff at the same time.
During World War II, Walt Disney was given money from the US government to go to Central & South America to promote the Good Neighbor policy.
The goal of Walt Disney's tour of Central & South America was to gather material for a series of films that would explore Latin American culture. These films were meant to promote good relations between Anglo & Latinx cultures.
What most people don't know is, Disney didn't just go to Mexico, take video of dancing ladies, then come back. He reached out extensively to pioneering Latinx cartoonists to request their help w/ the project.
Walt Disney's Good Neighbor project was a government-sanctioned political operation. It also produced films that are still beloved by several generations of Latinx Disney fans, to the point where some Mexican fighter planes use one of Disney's characters as their mascot.
This project is racist. It paints these Anglo creators as benevolently bringing Latinx culture to the larger world. That's patronizing nonsense. We can accept that's racist. But we have to *also* accept the importance these films have for the groups they represent.
Song of the South is a profoundly racist film. We can't really disagree on this. It just is. But at the same time, Walt Disney fought tooth & nail to ensure a special Oscar went to its lead star for his work. These facts can concurrently exist.
My point is, people are complex, & companies infinitely more so. We could dismiss Walt Disney as a pure racist that never cared about anyone. We could also dismiss his racism b/c of the good he did. Neither perspective would do us any good.
It's important to talk about how a white man, a man that was clearly racist but thought he was only benevolently so, still produced works that have great cultural value to groups normally ignored by Hollywood media of the time & even still today.
For some of us, loving the works that reached our demographics means divorcing the product from its creator. For others, it means ignoring the product entirely. And I can't really say either approach is better than the other, can I?
But what creates a problem for companies like Disney is that these aren't historical choices. We aren't just discussing some racist films from the 1940s. We're talking about films whose characters remain in popular culture due to theme parks & merchandising.
Walt Disney once said “Disneyland will never be completed. It will continue to grow as long as there is imagination left in the world.”
It's not just Disneyland that will never be complete. No Disney film is ever complete, either, b/c their existence is expanded upon by theme parks & merchandise but also new cartoons, new materials.
Sometimes, we can use this extended life to take what was problematic & make it less so. That's what happened with Panchito & Jose. Panchito's first introduction has him shooting guns into the air while howling. He doesn't do that much now.
But sometimes, well, we just can't. Sometimes there isn't a way to take what was problematic & make it less so. There's really no way to, for example, recover the crows from Dumbo at this point.
And sometimes, some work becomes so symbolic of a company's ineptitude that we just can't let its life continue in other media. That's where we are w/ Song of the South & Splash Mountain.
Do I have a neat & tidy answer here? No. Not at all, b/c this shit is complex, & there are no neat answers. Any approach we take is problematic. Erasure of history is bad. Dismissal of bigotry is bad. Taking beloved characters from marginalized groups is bad.
We have to accept that a company as old as Disney, w/ content that permeates pop culture, can never satisfy everyone when it comes to making good choices about problematic material that continues to live in pop culture. But they can *try* to lessen harmful impact.
What Disney *really* has to do is take these works that impacted black, Asian, Latinx, & indigenous folx & put their future into the hands of representatives from those groups & let *them* decide how to move forward.
When we let white folx take this material, they don't get nuance. I'm reminded of how a bunch of white people tried to pull Speedy Gonzalez cartoons until several Latinx groups went "no, fuck off, we love him, how dare you."
How Disney is handling Splash Mountain is perfect. By giving that ride & it's re-interpretation to a Black woman, that is how we move forward in this messy world. B/c how that ride & those stories continue to live should *only* belong to Black folx.
Maybe you, a person outside these groups, doesn't like change is happening. That sucks. Deal w/ it.
But maybe you're a decent, progressive person that really loves Disney & does understand the problematic elements but thinks it's easier to sweep this under the rug than confront it. And to *those* people I say - this isn't about you.
These stories, characters, they exist. They are out in the world. We can't handwave them away. But we can re-shape some of them. And there's really no other way to handle a media company w/ as complex a history as Disney.
When Pirates of the Carribean was being originally built, Walt Disney actually asked the Imagineers if they were sure the auction scene was appropriate. They said it was. So he let them proceed.
It turns out Pirates of the Caribbean is *not* appropriate. That auction scene is horrendous. Walt Disney defaulted to trusting his Imagineers to know when a line was crossed. Time passed & that line was recognized. Why wouldn't he have wanted it to be fixed?
In what universe does anyone actually believe Walt Disney cared more about static artistic integrity than the ability to delight children & families around the world?
Whatever Walt Disney's faults were, he wanted everyone, of any age, sex, race, *anyone* to be inspired by his films & his parks. And I firmly believe that means, if he saw the changes today to make things more inclusive, he'd be all for it.
But even if Walt Disney *wasn't* ok w/ these changes, ultimately that does not matter. He wanted his company to outlive him, to expand beyond him. And if that means pushing back on places he messed up, well, that's what they've got to do.
TLDR The legacy of racism in Walt Disney's films & accompanying content is messy. But we have to live w/ that messy, & unpack it, & reclaim it, or else we lose so much to simplistic bullshit.
