Disney?

[June Scarlet]

I'm afraid to ask, but it's been starting to bother me. What exactly is wrong with Disney? I only ever see people vaguely reference that something is wrong with it, usually while naming the one thing they like and support from there. But never, once, have I seen someone spell out what is the problem with them.

Originally brought up in Discord, but quickly told it was better suited for Discussions and Debates, so here we are.

[Kat]

I'm going to start with the one issue about Disney that's close to my heart - the making of Raya and the Last Dragon.

Disney announces that they are (finally) making an animated film based on Southeast Asian lore and culture. The star actress is Kelly Marie Tran, who is of Southeast Asian heritage. So Disney allows Southeast Asians to get hype about a movie that puts them in the spotlight - THEM. This particular neck of Asia.

Unfortunately, this was in the middle of the brunt of the pandemic, which meant that either most cinemas were either closed, or most people would rather not go to a cinema. The next best thing is to stick this movie onto a streaming service for people to watch safely at home, and as it happens, Disney+ is already a thing.

Oh wait.

Most of Southeast Asia still can't access Disney+. To this day, the Philippines in particular can't subscribe to Disney+. And it has been a year since Raya was released. It even got nominated for an Oscar. So, Disney created a Southeast Asian movie, but shuts out a good chunk of the world's Southeast Asian population from seeing it. But that's not all.

1. Instead of choosing a particular country or culture, Raya takes place instead in a fantasy world that mishmashes various Southeast Asian cultures and lore and disregards the fact that each country is very different from the next. The way Disney treats these cultures is very inconsistent - why the focus and tribute for Encanto that was absent from Raya?

2. Instead of casting many Southeast Asian actors, the bulk of the cast is made up of East Asians. Even if a number of East Asians do in fact live here, we are not the same. And the most numerous Southeast Asian group in America is the Filipinos - yet not a single Filipino VA in the main or supporting cast.

3. Disney marketed this movie to us, knowing full well that we can't even access Disney+ AND that Disney Channel has finally been pulled off air. (I can't remember which came first, the demise of Disney Channel or Raya's release, but anyway.)

4. Disney still relied on not very nice stereotypes. Exhibit A: the village with a lot of thieves. Not a very nice way to present us to the world.

tl;dr Disney profited from our culture, didn't do it right, and wouldn't even give us full access to the first Disney movie that was supposed to spotlight Southeast Asia.

[Liou]

The main issues I hear about while casually browsing and scrolling:

- their expansion and growth towards near-monopoly.

I see it best through this infographic (not linking the actual site because it's some... loan company? :'D I'm not verifying this entire thing but the visual at least helps to provide a sense of scale)

A single distributer controlling so many sources of information is an alarming tendency and increasingly drowns out more independent sources.

- live action adaptations of old classics perceived as cash grabs and blamed for a disappointing lack of more original new content.

- disappointing "first openly gay Disney characters" blamed for queerbaiting. Disappointment in what Disney could be able to do in terms of representation if they dared, especially considering the momentous influence they have over children through hours and hours of content.

- I heard about this longer ago, but also recall a thing about animators being pressured to develop a Disney-like style in order to increase their chances of employment, which is a tendency that would discourage originality and novelty.

[downrightdude]

They cancelled The Owl House, a fantastic cartoon, after two seasons because it didn't "fit with their brand".

[Moni]

disney is just a big corporation doing what big corporations do and becoming a gigantic behemoth thanks to our malfunctioning system, and it should probably be broken up, but i don't have any special antipathy for it or anything; there is nothing special that disney does that isn't an indictment of our system of crony capitalism and our failure to do anything about the powes of money and corporations (who are the *real* welfare queens lmao) have over our electoral systems and lives. yeah gigantic corporate unification sucks for a bunch of reasons.

thankfully, disney's business model is to make your childhood dreams and then sell them to you. honestly it's not even the most damaging media company in the united states, let alone the entire world; there are much worse actors out there.

[Thorn]

I like a lot of Disney properties, as do many people here. But yeah, as several people have indicated above, there are a lot of issues within the company. It's not so much that people don't want to support those who work hard on Disney shows (and movies, etc), but more that they feel gross about supporting Disney as a company.

I used to work for the Disney Store, and yeah. The performative allyship is a big nasty thing that always grated. Of all the issues, that's the one that resonates most for me personally. We had rainbow Mickey Mouse pins...that we could only wear during Pride month. Every couple of months there was a new 'first' queer Disney character. With the majority of us working at my store being queer ourselves, it got pretty tiring!

[downrightdude]

May 20, 2022 9:06:00 GMT -5 Kat said:

Instead of choosing a particular country or culture, Raya takes place instead in a fantasy world that mishmashes various Southeast Asian cultures and lore and disregards the fact that each country is very different from the next. The way Disney treats these cultures is very inconsistent - why the focus and tribute for Encanto that was absent from Raya?

I feel the same way about Elena of Avalor.

The character's Latina and lives in the fictional kingdom of Avalor, which seems to borrow different cultural references from Mexico, Central America and South America. It makes it hard to determine where Avalor would be if se tin a real-life location.

Yet for Mira, Royal Detective, Jalpur is solely inspired by India.

[Breakingchains]

One thing people have noted is when Disney buys a brand, how that brand visibly and abruptly goes pear-shaped in any number of ways. Many people (including the cast) were very upset with the direction Star Wars took.

And I haven't been personally invested in Marvel since I was about nine, but a lot of hardcore Marvel fans have pointed out that the movies became less risky, increasingly formulaic, and more and more dedicated to fast-talking punchlines, selling merch, and ticking boxes after the Disney buyout. Apparently the actors aren't allowed to know the context of their lines, because they might leak things, so they just read the lines like robots. They certainly aren't allowed to present their own insight on their characters or push back on scenes they find don't ring true. Everything down to even the most basic domestic background gets greenscreened in, because the video editors aren't unionized but the practical effects people are, so it's cheaper to just do everything digitally no matter how it affects the end product. There are also rumors that the scripts are produced months in advance by a boardroom, and the writers/directors are there as an afterthought with minimal actual creative control. Which makes sense to me because if you look at that She-Hulk design going around, I haven't seen a character that obviously created by committee in a long long time. It sounds like it's generally an absolute mess.

What really bothers me on a personal level, though, is how Disney has lobbied very hard for some absolutely terrible laws. The most recent example was Florida's so-called "don't say gay" bill, which Disney funded quite heavily, but even well before that I was upset with them for their manipulation of copyright law in their favor.

[Geo 🇺🇦 🌻]

So somewhat playing devils advocate here, but I’m not dismissing Disney’s major flaws, I agree with what everyone has said.

Disney was basically doing the same thing every large media company was doing. So if Disney didn’t buy LucasFilm or the Marvel properties, it would have most likely been snapped up by WarnerMedia (now Warner Bros. Discovery), Comcast/NBCUniversal, ViacomCBS, or Fox Entertainment/20th Century Fox.

I feel like those companies wouldn’t have done any better. They also like to region block movies. They certainly do like to profit off of other cultures, and haven’t been vocal against discriminatory laws and likely donated to politicians that came up with those laws. And then of course there’s Fox… (although Fox’s entertainment stuff ended up under Disney ironically)

So yeah, Disney doesn’t have a monopoly here. These are definitely issues caused by having an oligopoly.

I think the difference is Disney presents itself as kid friendly and thus kids are taught the wrong things about a certain culture or being hurt by political decisions and thus, their actions are amplified to be worse.