Not your father’s Disney
Not Walt’s, either.
Chris Rufo reports:
In the wake of Florida’s Parental Rights in Education legislation, which prevents public schools from promoting gender ideology in kindergarten through third grade but which critics call the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, Disney executives organized an all-hands meeting, called the “Reimagine Tomorrow Conversation Series,” and pledged to mobilize the entire corporation in service of the “LGBTQIA+ community.” Executives recruited the company’s most intersectional employees, including a “black, queer, and trans person,” a “bi-romantic asexual,” and “the mother [of] one transgender child and one pansexual child,” and announced ambitious new initiatives—seeking to change everything from gender pronouns at the company’s theme parks to the sexual orientation of background characters in the company’s films.
In a featured presentation at the meeting, executive producer Latoya Raveneau laid out Disney’s ideology in blunt terms. She said her team was implementing a “not-at-all-secret gay agenda” and regularly “adding queerness” to children’s programming. Another speaker, production coordinator Allen Martsch, said his team has created a “tracker” to ensure that they are creating enough “canonical [see * NOTE below] trans characters, canonical asexual characters, [and] canonical bisexual characters.” Corporate president Karey Burke said she supported having “many, many, many LGBTQIA characters in our stories” and reaffirmed the company’s pledge to make at least 50 percent of its on-screen characters sexual and racial minorities.
Remember when these movements were supposedly about non-discrimination? That’s all that was wanted.
And I suppose if you define “discrimination” as refusing to incorporate the teaching of information about homosexuality and trangenderism to five-year-olds in the public school system, then they are still “anti-discrimination.” Talk about slippery slopes.
I wonder whether parents will still take their kids to Disney movies (or rent them, or stream them, or however it works these days) if Disney keeps adopting this sort of agenda for its children’s fare.
Oh, and by the way, it goes without saying – although these days it needs to be said – that the Florida bill doesn’t stop any parents from teaching their own children about whatever gay and transgender issues they wish to cover. It simply keeps the topic out of public school instruction for the youngest of children. That shouldn’t be the least bit controversial, but of course it is to today’s relentless activists.
[* NOTE: “Canonical” definition:
1 : of, relating to, or forming a canon canonical scriptures
2 : conforming to a general rule or acceptable procedure : orthodox His proposals were generally accepted as canonical.
3 : of or relating to a clergyman who is a canon
4 : reduced to the canonical form a canonical matrix
This seems to be a currently favored new use of an old word, lending a sort of pseudo-intellectual and official (canonical?) flavor to more simple utterances. The left is rife with this sort of phrase du jour word use.]
I’ll respect Chapek if he takes what he’s learned about his subordinates and flushes out the sewer. Not holdin’ my breath. Where is Disney’s board? Or are they an assemblage of the pedo-adjacent and the world’s terminal weasels as well?
I wonder how the new product will go over with Disney’s huge Chinese audience.
I took the use of the word ‘canonical’ here to refer to characters in franchises that are part of the main trunk of the franchise content. Canon vs. non-canon: see Star Wars, etc.
A gay Florida kindergarten teacher is upset because he thinks the Parental Rights in Education bill will prevent his discussing his weekend plans with his boyfriend in class: “That’s what we do as educators, we build relationships with our kids. And in order to build relationships you talk about your home life, you talk about what you do on the weekends, that’s building community. It scares me that I am not going to be able to have these conversations with my children because they’re going to ask me what I did on the weekend. I don’t have to hide that my partner and I went paddle boarding this weekend. Because then they ask, what does partner mean, Mr. Bernaert? And I am worried can I tell them what it means. . . .”
https://legalinsurrection.com/2022/03/florida-kindergarten-teacher-upset-because-he-thinks-he-cant-talk-about-his-love-life-with-students/
I don’t remember any of my teachers at any grade level (let alone kindergarten!) discussing their private lives in class. When did this policy change?
This is only secondarily about support for the LGBTQIA ‘community’. Its primary purpose is to fundamentally advance the Left’s Marxist ideological agenda by getting to the children as early as possible.
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin:
“Give me four years to teach the children and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted.”
“Destroy the family, you destroy the country.”
“Give me just one generation of youth, and I’ll transform the whole world.”
“The issue is never the issue. The issue is always the revolution.”
David Horowitz quoting a saying used by members of the sixties far-left activist group Students for a Democratic Society (SDS):
It boggles the mind that Democrats are hanging the fall campaign, in part, on their insistence on teaching adult sexuality topics to small children. They lost Virginia because parents were outraged about what was going on in schools. If they lose the whole nation, or most of it, over this issue, that’s fine with me, but it seems like a crazy political strategy.
I never ran into the word “canonical” until I started running into MIT-trained programmers. They mostly used it as a fancy word for definition 2:
2. conforming to a general rule or acceptable procedure : orthodox
“A gay Florida kindergarten teacher is upset… It scares me that I am not going to be able to have these conversations with my children…” [my emphasis]
There’s a freudian slip for you. You see, he’s in charge of what ‘his children’ are taught, not the children’s parents, many of whom stand in the way of the “greater good”. Because… the deplorables and irredeemables must not be allowed to foul the souls of their offspring with their ‘hate’…
We’ve been a Disney family since our first trip when daughters were 8 and 10. It was truly magical for them and we have gone back every 2 years. Despite both going to college in Florida they both wanted a week at WDW for graduation. As Annual Pass holders we’ve already been 5 times since moving to Florida.
It is so sad to me to see a company whose main product is happiness and an escape from reality go down so quickly. Chapek. with apparently advice from Iger, has given into the woke mob. These left activists are truly evil and destroy everything they penetrate.
From the Disney blogs I see about 60% are against this change, but the 40% for it are displaying the typical nastiness we’ve come to expect. Meanwhile Universal is silent and letting Disney dig their hole.
I know many here hate Disney, so go ahead and slam me.
huxley @ 7:33pm,
I guess you didn’t hang out with any Catholics.
Two weeks ago I visited a nice used bookstore downtown run by an obviously gay guy. While I was there a friend of his was explaining to him the bill as “Don’t say gay.”
The two shared the hilarity of imagining a scene in which a group of Democrats went up to DeSantis and chanted, “Gay, gay, gay, gay…” and so on.
I thought of telling them that the bill didn’t say, “Don’t Say Gay,” but I wasn’t up to a political confrontation that afternoon and I wasn’t booked as well as I like to wade into such a controversy.
Phillip Sells is on the right track. “Canonical” was used as early as the 1920s by Holmes fans, referring to Doyle’s “canon”. Since then, it has been used for other series fiction. I’ve always assumed it meant those by the original author, not a later one. E.g., L Frank Baum rather than Ruth Plumly Thompson (whose Oz books stank.)
I guess you didn’t hang out with any Catholics.
Rufus T. Firefly:
Only when I went to mass and parochial school. I knew there was a canon; however, I don’t recall hearing the word “canonical.”
I did learn — and mostly forget — the word “kerygmatic” from religion class, which I found quite mysterious. It seemed to be a dodge allowing one to understand the New Testament as something beyond straightforward stories and teachings:
____________________________
“Kerygmatic” is sometimes used to express the message of Jesus’ whole ministry, as[ “a proclamation addressed not to the theoretical reason, but to the hearer as a self”; as opposed to the didactic use of Scripture that seeks understanding in the light of what is taught.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerygma
physicsguy,
We lived in Orlando and never once took our kids to a Disney Park, but we were season pass holders at Universal and Sea World. We did go to the Disney grounds often. Our kids spent MANY an hour at the huge Lego store and we loved eating at the Frontier Lodge and other places. We weren’t against Disney (it’s an amazing place!), but we had so much fun at the other two parks we just didn’t have room for a third park pass.
It is very difficult to comprehend why Disney wants to wade into these waters. It may be that they have no choice. Like so many corporations, their employees (at least some) are dragging them into this.
In the big entertainment media franchise sense the term “canonical” is used to decribe story elements that are considered part of the grander narrative/shared fictional universe/canon. Disney owns the media franchises of Star Wars and The Marvel Cinimatic Universe (MCU). So there’s all this content that’s created for those franchises: movies, streaming shows, comic books, video games, ect. For a variety of reasons, a character or story that happens in one of those ancillary media sources may not be considered part of the larger franchise. For example there might be some character that appears in a Star Wars video game that might not be considered part of the greater Star Wars story line, thus the character is “non canonical”.
huxley,
I meant my statement tongue in cheek, but your reply made me laugh!
For what it’s worth, this is the definition Google spat back when I typed “Canonical.” (I think it’s from the Oxford English Dictionary.)
I second Phillip Sells on “canonical”. Fan fiction or expanded universe additions to a franchise are examples of what might not be “canon”. Sometimes you have what-if episodes that aren’t canon. On the Simpsons the Halloween episodes were not canon (characters would die for example). Haven’t watched in a long time.
Allen Martsch is saying that the minority and LGBTQIA+ characters will be officially part of the official storyline whatever franchise it is, as far as Disney is concerned. It won’t be like the old days where they might have a flamboyant or effeminate character and people can read in what they want; the characters will be clearly labeled as such.
What a hill for the democrats to die on! DeSantis rules and Disney will fail spectacularly, IMO!
PA Cat,
I do recall teachers sharing aspects of their personal lives with my classes, even in Kindergarten. I also remember us children being fascinated that they had lives outside of the classroom and hanging on every word. For example, my kindergarten teacher had to leave mid-year due to her being very pregnant. And my first grade teacher was married to a gentleman who worked in administration in our school district. If he was at our school and we spotted him it was like seeing a celebrity. I think he even came to my class once to speak with my teacher (his wife) and that was very exciting!
I had married and single teachers in elementary school. At least one teacher was a lesbian* and a few others likely were gay (I think our Principal was a gay man). We kids would ask about what they did on weekends (single and married) and they would share details; went to a movie, went on a hike, went to a restaurant… The single teachers, hetero or not, would never share anything even close to sexual. They may say they went to a movie with a friend, or some such thing.
When I look back on this, it was the summer(s) of love era and many of them were in their early 20s. They were certainly doing more than “going to movies with friends,” but they made their personal lives sound very wholesome. Even some of the hetero singles were living with a partner out of wedlock, but no need for any of that to be discussed. Also, they all insisted on a wall of respect. We kids would try to pry and they would answer one or two basic, wholesome questions if asked respectfully and not during formal teaching time, but when we asked anything remotely personal (and we did) they all would chastise us and tell us to focus on the lesson.
It didn’t seem like a hardship to protect our innocence and it’s difficult to understand what they may have gained from discussing their love lives with 5 year olds. Also, the entire culture seemed to think it important that children “know their place,” and not pester grown-ups about their personal lives.
*She was the gym teacher for the lower grades. Likely 80+% of female gym teachers are lesbians, so my experience was probably typical. Most of the upper classmen (Junior High age) seemed to have figured it out and I think all the parents knew, but I never heard anyone saw a peep about it to her or the administration. I think it was a “don’t ask, don’t tell” attitude.
This, https://murderpedia.org/male.B/b/brisbon-henry.htm
happened to a beautiful, wonderful, young 25 year old 5th grade teacher at my Elementary school when I was 10 years old. Like most of my classmates it was likely the first time I heard the word “rape.”
I don’t recall any of the teachers or administration using any word but “murder” when mentioning the crime and discussion was limited to one school assembly, except for those who had had just finished the school year in her class. I think they had a separate conversation(s) with the administration.
I learned the word “rape” and other details of the abominable crime from a grapevine fed by the older children in the school. I also remember overhearing my older sister discussing the crime with my mother. I remember registering the words of however a “rape” was described to me by whatever 12 or 13 year old was spreading the gossip, but I know I had no concept of what it could actually mean.
All the adults in the community worked to shelter us young children from this horror.
I think Philip Sells, Eeyore, and Nonapod are on the right track. But my experiences parallel huxley’s.
When I took a lot of college physics courses I encountered these lectures with “Canonical this, blah, blah, Maxwell’s equations, canonical that, blah, blah …” What the f__? Now I went to a Catholic high school where I heard about “the canon” but never canonical anything.
______
We’ve been a Disney family since our first trip when daughters were 8 and 10. It was truly magical for them and we have gone back every 2 years. — physicsguy
I see you’ve got the lingo down. Couldn’t resist. The only time I’ve been to WDW Orlando was a big family group trip including a Disney cruise. I must say it was great.
______
Not your father’s Disney
Not Walt’s, either.
But it is Abigail Disney’s Disney. This was a little more interesting than I was expecting.
From March 2, 2022:
It may be that they have no choice. Like so many corporations, their employees (at least some) are dragging them into this.
They have a choice. They can tell their employees that company policy starts with the board and if they cannot reconcile themselves to that, they should take their services elsewhere. And they can start on that road by firing the two pedo-adjacent dames whose self-indicting words have been circulating. Both of these women are in gatekeeper positions, btw, so unloading them will have salutary ripple effects.
Art Deco,
I agree. They do have a choice. What I meant was they almost certainly have a great many employees who will drag the company name into the dispute no matter what approach Disney takes.
Just as there are teachers working in grades 3 and younger in Florida who said they will not stop talking to their children even if it means losing their jobs, there are many at Disney (including some very high up, obviously) who will not keep silent on this topic, regardless of any policy Disney puts in place.
Most all companies I have worked for required Executives and other employees to sign contracts that stated we would not discuss political (and other) topics as a representative of the company. We had to keep our personal and professional lives separate in any public stances. If not, termination. And, those contracts stated that if we were asked any question by media we were to direct them to corporate communications or marketing. These Disney executives definitely have similar contracts.
But they will not shut up.
What happens if Disney makes good on the contract and fires them? What happened when Stormy Daniels violated her NDA with DJT? No repercussions and even more publicity for their cause.
Even if Disney’s corporate heart is in the right place (and I doubt it is) they are in an impossible situation.
But it is Abigail Disney’s Disney
If the businesses my forebears founded are any guide, two, three, or four generations might be influential in the operations of the company. There isn’t one person named ‘Disney’ on the board of directors as we speak. Abigail Disney is of the third generation. If she’s ever worked for the company, it was in a low-level position. Dame is 62 years old and not likely to engage in new departures more demanding than Elderhostel or cycling.
@ neo and Frederick: It’s also very common for people to argue specifically about whether a character’s sexual orientation or two characters’ sexual relationship is “canon.” I wouldn’t be surprised if Disney’s employees often discuss it among themselves, making it easy for that word to slip into real-world business discussions.
What happens if Disney makes good on the contract and fires them?
They lose their jobs, that’s what happens. There may be some nasty little magazine stories about Mr. Chapek. Big deal.
Disney is a publicly-traded company mostly (about 2/3) owned by financial institutions. It’s got sweet FA to do with anyone in the Disney family. I don’t doubt some of them own shares in it, but the thing about big corporations is that everybody just works there. The people on the Disney board are on a bunch of other boards, they’re there for a while and then they move on.
In the “YA” world (Young Adult fiction), “canon” means something the author/creator has confirmed about the story to be true, or something that can be confirmed by the book/movie/show itself. For instance, even though there’s nothing in the Harry Potter books about Dumbledor being gay, JKR announced herself some years ago, thus making it “canon.”
I’ve seen some people refer to theories (or hell, even just WISHES) about characters as “head canon.” So stuff they know isn’t true, but stuff that they pretend is in their head. Seriously, the amount of Harry & Draco gay fanfiction out there is…unnecessary.
Anyway, I think this crazy lady is attempting to speak the lingo of the crazy kids who come up with the gay/queer backstories for characters. She’s saying she’s gonna make queer characters “canon” (although she adultifies the word into canonical), probably to appeal to the small (albeit growing) percentage of teens that actually want that. How much support it’ll get from the parents who actually PAY for Disney+…that’s another story.
I’m hoping this blows up in their faces. But I live 2 miles away from WDW. I’ve seen the insane crowds lately. I’m not confident any meaningful percentage of people is gonna participate in a boycott anytime soon. I mean, Blues Clues had a damn Pride Parade for 2-3 year olds, ffs. I don’t think Nickelodeon has gone broke yet.
But Disney has been going down this road for some time, have they not? There are Disney cruises that are sold as Gay Cruises. There is at least one Gay Day that the Magic Kingdom puts on as well, and has for years – not so? So it should come as no surprise that this corrosive culture is entrenched.
As for corporate leadership…..Well, leaders choose their issues, and choose what legacies they want to be remembered for. The political support, the lobbying, the corporate culture, all of these initiatives begin as an aspiration. Any excuses to ask forbearance are not deserving of respect.
I wonder when conservative American culture is going to learn to react properly in situations where civility is being routinely demanded by uncivil people? There are responses to incivility that have much better long-term outcomes when it comes to shaping future behaviors. Not all of them are peaceful.
Art Deco,
You are probably correct about Abigail’s direct influence. But she has gotten press coverage of her complaints about Disney corp. on numerous occasions. I thought the timing of that IndieWire piece was interesting.
@NS:means something the author/creator has confirmed about the story to be true,
Unless the creators are doing it ironically, like happened with The Venture Brothers on one of the DVD commentaries.
I’m not confident any meaningful percentage of people is gonna participate in a boycott anytime soon.
The only boycott you need is the silent and unorganized one of people taking their business elsewhere.
I’ve never made any investments based on politics, but maybe now would be a good time to short Disney. Instapundit used to frequently say “get woke, go broke,” but who knows, maybe these big, leftist companies are too big to fail.
More and more often, I find myself too confused to predict how the country, the economy, or the stock market will react. We seem to have all fallen under mob rule, but often the mob is just loud, not large. Then it dies down, but a bit later there’s a new, noisy mob screaming some new pernicious nonsense. Is there a way for me to get rich by shorting sanity?
Mickey Mouse wears pants. Donald Duck does not. Why?
Le Clerc:
Perhaps this is the reason.
Disney got a whole lot of help from the CIA to buy their themepark land in Florida. How many of their child stars are over sexualized and/or end up a wreck? Seeing this newest move is no surprise to me. I have thought the enterprise was basically grooming kids for decades.
I guess I’m way way behind on this “canonical” business.
One of the things this demonstrates is that the folks hunting commies back in the days of the Red Scare really weren’t all that irrational. We’re seeing exactly what they were afraid of, namely people belonging to an ideological movement infiltrating non-ideological society and using their positions to advance an agenda antithetical to that non-ideological society.
The other thing this demonstrates is that one of the sicknesses destroying pop culture is a refusal or inability to just move the ‘f on. It used to be that you’d watch a movie or TV show or listen to an album or read a book and love it and then…MOVE ON. I can remember back in the late 1980s when even Star Wars went away for several years. From about 1986 through 1991 there was no new Star Wars “product” out and, while it wasn’t forgotten, the franchise largely ceased to be relevant to pop culture.
And when something did stick around, it was at least because of new stuff being produced. Paperback novels kept Star Trek fandom going for over 15 years. But first the internet and now social media creates these perma-fandoms, like how 11 episodes of “Firefly” and one meh movie has still got people talking about rebooting the show 20 years later.
Mike
neo,
Yes. Having heard the scientist’s version ad nauseam, I was unaware of the writer’s/screen-writer’s version.
And I thought this was true even in the scientist’s version:
… lending a sort of pseudo-intellectual and official (canonical?) flavor to more simple utterances.
@MBunge:It used to be that you’d watch a movie or TV show or listen to an album or read a book and love it and then…MOVE ON.
Jacques Barzun wrote about this in “From Dawn to Decadence”. You should check it out. Born in France in 1907, died a Texan in 2012.
Now we have the story of a 4th yr Med student deliberately miss on take blood and jabbing him a second time because he said something about her pronoun choice. She posted this and bragged about it. Some Doc she will make. If I were the person she did this too I would be looking for a very good Lawyer.
@TommyJay: I don’t know why “canonical” is the particular word that was settled on in physics, but it’s just a technical term for a kind of coordinate system used to solve problems. It’s not just a word used to look smart. There’s nothing implied about it being “preferred” or “orthodox” or “standard”. You work in whatever system is easiest for what you are trying to do; “canonical” and “non-canonical” just tell you what kinds of variables to expect.
In physics, English words have to be repurposed to tag concepts which otherwise have no name. “Work” is a very good example; so is “color” as applied to quarks. I’m guessing we got “canonical” from German and it probably was suggestive to Germans in some way that may have been forgotten by now but could be rediscovered by reading really old papers in Zeitschrift fuer Physik.
MBunge,
So well said. The number of adult men I witness obsessing over comic book characters, TV characters… It’s just plain odd. I try to imagine my father in his 40s arguing with another man about an actor chosen to play Flash Gordon in the 32nd reboot of the franchise.
(vocabulary.com)
I should have made the association with Pachelbel’s Canon, but did not. Makes sense now.
@Rufus:In mathematics, the word is used to describe an equation reduced to its most basic form.
I could go with that if “basic” does not mean “simple”. Lots of problems are ferociously complex if approached canonically and very simple if not. For example if you are writing an equation that uses individual atoms it’s canonical–what’s more “basic” than x, y, and z coordinates for 10^23 atoms?–but it’s probably way harder to solve than something that uses pressure and temperature.
A cannon is a long, smooth bore.
Destroying Disney? Destroying kids? Destroying families? Destroying society?
Hey, why not…if it’s for the right—insane—“cause”…
Here’s another “cause” being pushed by those insane, power-crazed, wannabe authoritarians:
“Who Broke Climate Science?
“There is a complete disconnect between the reality of climate science and the authoritarian designs of many climate agitators.”—
https://claremontreviewofbooks.com/who-broke-climate-science/
Key phrase:
‘…”transformative” agenda…’
…And another…:
“…Judges Are Never Asked To Recuse Themselves Over Political Views”—
https://thefederalist.com/2022/03/29/former-clarence-thomas-clerk-judges-are-never-asked-to-recuse-themselves-over-political-views/
H/T Powerline blog (for both)
(AOC’s emoting again. ‘Nuff said….)
Key graf:
“If holding views about the 2020 election meant a justice couldn’t decide legal issues arising from it, then all nine would have to recuse themselves.”
+ Related:
https://legalinsurrection.com/2022/03/aoc-threatens-justice-clarence-thomas-with-impeachment/
H/T Instapundit.
“AOC Threatens Justice Clarence Thomas With Impeachment”—
File under: “…and the bleak will inherit the earth…?”
Back to the topic of the post, a round-up of reaction.
https://nypost.com/2022/03/30/disney-is-boasting-about-pushing-gender-theory-to-kids/
Karol Markowicz, who recently moved from NY to FL.
https://nypost.com/2022/03/30/florida-gop-threatens-to-take-disneys-privileges-away-over-dont-say-gay-opposition/
https://nypost.com/2022/03/29/desantis-rips-disney-for-criticizing-florida-dont-say-gay-law-calling-for-repeal/
Maybe they can get the Russians to moderate the negotiations.
https://nypost.com/2022/03/30/disney-executive-wants-more-lgbtqia-minority-character/
The Post stories mentioned an anonymous letter from non-woke Disney employees.
Pretty pathetic that they can’t put their names to their quite moving letter – but this is what conservatives in most corporations have to do to keep their jobs.
Unless you’re Jeremy at The Daily Wire.
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdueiXmPfww_2iQttbvfxTIcC7i-JOq5awsHNI2Q6XW46UT7Q/viewform
The link wants you to sign in to the website, but you can scroll through and read it without doing so.
It’s already been official for quite some time; but not it’s officially official:
Democratic Party insanity rules…
“Don’t judge Clarence Thomas for wife Virginia’s alleged ‘insurrection’ acts”—
https://nypost.com/2022/03/30/dont-judge-clarence-thomas-for-wifes-acts/
Disney got a whole lot of help from the CIA to buy their themepark land in Florida.
Why would they need help from the CIA to buy Florida real estate ca. 1964?
MBunge: “It used to be that you’d watch a movie or TV show or listen to an album or read a book and love it and then…MOVE ON.”
And if you did NOT like it:… MOVE ON, as well.
But nowadays, if a Leftist doesn’t like it, they want to destroy it or censor it.
SMH! Anti-American is the nicest adjective I have for them.
A bunch of people have correctly stated the contextual use of the term “canon” in this instance.
Here is the motivation – they want to write minority and LBGTQ characters into the franchise canon so they cannot be written back out later.
Imagine if part of Luke Skywalker’s origin story was that he just loved loved, loved the D. The reason his kiss with Leia was awkward is because HE LIKES BOYS!!!! There’d be no way to walk that back
Once a day I head on over to CNN.com to see how things are being reported there. This morning everything on the header is about Ukraine and Russia. More than half way down the scrolled page on the left side in very tiny font was “Right wing media accuse Disney of being woke.” Obviously, CNN doesn’t want its readers/viewers to know anything about the Rufo videos or TWDC statement on the Florida bill. Not surprising, the MSM has Disney’s back.
Going to Orlando next week to make a trip to Lakeland for the big airshow (flysnf.org), and then help daughter with her new house they just moved into last week. My SiL works for Universal, and always has the inside scoop on the WDW workings as he arranges passes etc for guests for Universal, and also for some days at WDW. He’s been quite critical of recent changes at WDW like the Genie+ system. While he likes how Universal sometimes tweaks WDW with tweets, etc, he also says a healthy WDW is good for Universal for the competition as it pushes Universal to be better. I’m really looking forward to what he says.
Other topic: Frederick explained it all well. About the only time I’ve used “canonical” is in relation to Lagrangian/Hamiltonian formulation and “canonical coordinates”. But then I’m an experimentalist, not a theorist… 😉
There was a post at Quillette by an (anonymous) Disney employee, where I made the following comment:
“A huge problem we have in America today is that too many institutions, and the people who run them, refuse to recognize any limitations on the scope of their legitimate authority.
Bob Chapek has every right to hold and to express his own political & philosophical opinions, as an individual. Due to his wealth and income, he already has probably 100X the political influence of the average American. Is it really fair for him to use the resources of Disney…which he does not own, and for the most part, did not create…and the thousands of people working for it…many of whom clearly disagree with him…to leverage these opinions still further?
And there is also, of course, the question of his fiduciary responsibility to shareholders.”
The post & discussion are well worth reading.
https://quillette.com/2022/03/29/disneys-institutional-capture/
David,
That article is quite good, and depressing. What the Imagineer is saying parallels what I experienced 10-12 years ago in academia: the complete takeover of an institution by a small group of very loud, obnoxious, and nasty activists, abetted by cowardice at the administrative level. As the article points out the increase in the DEI Disney staff of over 600% during the last 2 years is astounding. I fear the main fallout from Covid is going to be not so much the virus itself, but the opportunity the pandemic created for the radical left to takeover our culture and institutions. Some are saying there’s a big backlash coming, but I don’t see anyway to dislodge these evil people from their positions once they are there. Another few battles lost, and I fear the war is also soon to be lost.
My teachers never talked about their lives or themselves.
But that was a long time ago…
A teacher I had in fifth grade, in the course of showing us how to fill out a form with first and last name, wrote her full name on the board, Estelle Carlson. That was a big deal: I had never heard a teacher’s first name before.
Mrs. Carlson was known as an especially cool teacher. We moved to that town the summer before, and when the neighborhood kids found out I was going into fifth they all told me there was a good teacher I might be lucky enough to get. Kids know a lot more than some adults give them credit for!
physicsguy…”What the Imagineer is saying parallels what I experienced 10-12 years ago in academia: the complete takeover of an institution by a small group of very loud, obnoxious, and nasty activists, abetted by cowardice at the administrative level.”
re Institutional Capture, see this important piece at City Journal: “In the scope and rapidity of institutional embrace, nothing like it has transpired since the conversion of Constantine.”
https://www.city-journal.org/the-identity-cult-and-the-mass-conversion-of-our-institutions
Summarized and discussed at Isegoria:
https://www.isegoria.net/2022/03/between-them-they-control-the-commanding-heights-of-politics-and-culture/#comments
From the Quillette piece written by a Disney employee:
On March 2nd, Josh D’Amaro recorded the first company-wide communication on the matter—a video in which he spoke about “a space for all,” “inclusion for all,” “voices heard,” and the “need to talk freely.”
According to the employee, this was the very first official Disney commentary on the Florida legislation. Mr. D’Amaro is Chairman of Disney Parks, Experiences, and Products.
So Abigail Disney gets press coverage on March 2 and the same day Mr. D’Amaro gets the corporate ball rolling. Cause and effect or coordination, or coincidence?
My elementary school teachers were all nuns. Needless to say, no private life discussions. We did have one priest who was probably gay. He wrote children’s books and was a little strange. By sixth grade we knew who was gay (although no one used that term). My high school was Christian Brothers and we all knew not to be alone with one of them.
My wife was a second grade teacher when Kennedy was assassinated. The school was heavily Mexican-American and she had to explain to the kids what had happened.
Of course Disney’s “inclusion for all” and the “need to talk freely” do not extend to people holding traditional views. Their feelings and beliefs don’t matter.
What I find disturbing is in the last sentence where Karey Burke states that they were going to make at least 50% of on screen characters people of color and/or sexual minorities. My youngest daughter had the idea that half the people in the country are gay, this was based on all the gay characters she saw in the shows that she watched. She was shocked when I told her it was closer to 10%. By pushing so many gay and now trans characters children do get a skewed idea of life.
Will they still hold pride parades: lions, lionesses, and their [unPlanned] cubs? hakuna matata
Trans: state or process of divergence from normal. Gender: sex-correlated physical and mental attributes. The transgender spectrum is politically congruent (“=”), a democratic/dictatorial construct. Normalize, tolerate, or reject?
“Of course Disney’s “inclusion for all” and the “need to talk freely” do not extend to people holding traditional views. Their feelings and beliefs don’t matter.”
Kate, that’s been the state of affairs in academia for at least 15 years. Really distressing to see it take hold in the general public, and so fast.
JFM – a study by the CDC back during the Obama administration put the percentage of the population that was gay at under 2%.
Think of it as “reparations”.
The “YOU OWE US” attitude…with a vengeance.
Heck, just think of it as revenge…from people who believe that they deserve to be avenged after centuries of “persecution”…and who believe themselves to be living in a society where they can actually wreak it.
(And who says they’re wrong about that?)
But that 2% really loves drama! 😉
}}} Remember when these movements were supposedly about non-discrimination? That’s all that was wanted.
No, that was never the actual goal. That was the excuse.
The goal was the destruction of Western Civ.
No, that’s not hyperbole. This isn’t the whole cause, the whole reason, the whole issue — it’s just one hammerblow against the foundation.
The hammerblow was about taking a minority aspect of humanity and abusing, contorting, and conflating things to make those with that aspect appear vastly more common, far more significant, and to then force people to celebrate that aspect over all others. The result is confusion and dissatisfaction, as well as constant risk, of somehow “offending” this trivial minority.
That is a steady hammerblow to use, along with others, to attack and destroy this civilization.
Until enough people say “Fuck no, we’re not putting up with any more”, it will continue to strike.
}}} Normalize, tolerate, or reject?
None of the above. “Celebrate”.
OBloodyHell is correct.
In the 20th century Socialists and Communists began targeting America primarily because of Capitalism.
Then the Hippies started targeting everything that came before them because they were the most enlightened individuals to walk the Earth and how could their parents and grandparents possibly have been right? “Hey hey, ho ho, Western Civ has got to go.”
The grifters figured out there is a lot of money to be made in grievance. Jesse Jackon’s Operation Push, Southern Poverty Law Center, Amnesty International, Greenpeace and now BLM.
And in conjunction a great many institutions, professions, NGOs, GOs, PACs, areas of study, Unions, political parties, media outlets… were created that now employ millions in the U.S.
No wonder they hated Trump. If the U.S. economy was shown to thrive without them where would they go? Would they have to develop marketable skills?
OBloody:
I know it was the excuse. My comment was sarcasm. Sarcasm isn’t always easy to detect online, but that’s what it was.
JFM:
I believe that’s the goal. A feature, not a bug – to change perceptions of how common something is in the population.
It’s the old, subsidize vs. tax rule.
If you want more of something, subsidize it. Less of something, tax it.
Corporations have been adding good paying, executive positions focused on division and segregation; DEI, diversity, equity and inclusion. Those executives do a study and find, Surprise! the company is in much worse shape than expected. So they put forth a plan to improve things. That plan involves giving their department more money. More positions are created and people are hired into those good paying jobs. Surprise! The more people devoted to finding DEI issues the more issues that are found. And on, and on.
DEI is being heavily subsidized and it’s not just financial, DEI departments have immense power within organizations. Even CEOs fear their findings. Augmenting their power is another form of subsidy.
DEI inevitably becomes the most powerful department in any organization it is introduced to.
Re: “Canonical”.
This usage, to refer to the sum-total “official backstory” of something — e.g., Star Trek canon, Star Wars canon, Superman canon — has been around for a fairly long while, not less than 30-40 years, though it may have been more nerdcore than it is becoming.
An author themself can violate canon intentionally, usually they will ack it when they do it, deciding in some way that they want to write a story outside the “normal canon”.
In many, a deliberate violation of canon to tell a story goes back quite a bit.
DC used to regularly publish “imaginary stories” (ar ar) as they termed them, back in the 60s (perhaps earlier) — stories which did not belong to, nor ascribe to, the official “canon” for a character or universe.
This is also where Marvel’s “What If” concept came from.
Nowadays the more common technique is to use the “Multiverse” notion to handwave it off.
You can also use time-travel as a causative macguffin, as they did for the “New” Star Trek movies, which used a time-travel event to trigger the “Kelvin” universe.
Disney’s bottom line will be hurt from their latest decisions. I grew up on Disney, loved their animation, but this latest move will have me turn away.
I worked for one of the first elected ‘Gay’ State Senators in the country and had transgender coworkers at other positions I held. There was no hate and anger from these individuals. They were bright, think Rick Grenell, and were easy to work and communicate with. There was humour, friendship and a dignity to all the LGBT people I knew.
The ‘woke activists’ behaviour is ugly, ignorant and tone deaf. These activists have been the most destructive to the individuals they think they are helping.
Another Disney problem, from Christopher Rufo. Where there are lots of kids, there are also sometimes predators, and Disney hasn’t always been forthright about dealing with problems.
https://www.city-journal.org/disneys-child-predator-problem
She was shocked when I told her it was closer to 10%.
Supposedly, even that is too high. The story was that some social scientist type looked at data and said ‘Well, 5% of men and 5% of women, that’s 10%, right?
I don’t know if the story is true, but the innumeracy part isn’t surprising.
JFM on March 31, 2022 at 12:30 pm
The articles I have seen suggest the number for gays is closer to 3% than 10%. I suspect there are issues with species survivability if the % get much larger than that. And the transgender % is reported as 0.6%. So maybe 10 million and 2 million people in the country for each group, respectively. [And I see Junior and sonny wayz also advanced the same idea sooner].
On the Disney trans side: does that mean that Minnie Mouse will now come out as believing she is a Duck? Or a cat, or whatever?
physicsguy on March 31, 2022 at 1:26 pm
“Really distressing to see it take hold in the general public, and so fast.” I am not so sure the general public is really on board, or can be cajoled and corralled the way a college’s employed faculty might be. Especially with the parent – child relationship being distorted. The relaxations of racial or homophobic prejudice were longer term in coming or recognized as a similar type of resistance that did not withstand the concept of same sex “love”. But the CRT stuff is Orwellian and over the top. Contrary to Tim Scott’s “America is not a racist country”. Affirmative action basically worked, but the leftists did not want to stop pushing. But glad to know you are now retired in FL and away from all of that type of illogical stress.
JHCorcoran on March 31, 2022 at 5:33 pm Great comment!! But … “These activists have been the most destructive to the individuals they think they are helping.” That depends if they are only intending to help themselves.
On the “fiduciary responsibility” and “bottom line” side of things – yeah, that would be the traditional view.
The crazy leftists want to pervert corporate responsibiity away from “shareholders” to include social justice, etc. and change it to “stakeholders”. Doesn’t matter if you own stock in the company, you are still a stakeholder, and since the majority of the population is a minority, oppressed women, and LBGTQ, then clearly the interests of “stakeholders” is to embrace activism on behalf of all these oppressed groups.
Not sure what Disney’s profit margin is, but losing maybe a tenth of their market could hurt.
See, also, the SEC attempts ongoing currently to make addressing “climate change” required to meet fiduciary responsibilities. If they manage to enact that rule and successfully navigate any legal challenges, they’ll extend that to social justice as well