Disney Has Been Poisoning Men And Women For Decades

THEORY: The stories told by Walt Disney from very early on through to today, are poisoning the way both men and women see themselves, their responsibilities (or the lack of responsibilities), the way we interact, and deal with the consequences for our actions.

PROPOSITION: Through story telling, Disney has slowly been manipulating and brainwashing their audiences toward their own internal, some would say radical, notions of where the future needs to go. Audiences were once very aware of the affects of story telling on the collective nature of a society and would fight against any narrative that had a destructive influence. For many reasons, the push back against these types of themes have significantly dwindled through the years.

CONDITIONING: Some of the very first shows on the Disney channel started to directly corrupt the way children respect or listen to their parents, with a special emphasis on down playing the competency and importance of fathers. This constant narrative in all of the Disney shows depicted parents as ignorant and incompetent. It taught children that not only should they NOT listen to or respect their parents, but that they should also ignore any adult or person in power. This was emphasized by casting the majority of each show's villains with men in positions that would historically be associated with respect and power. In each case, the kids were nearly always right, the adults were always wrong, and the moral of the story was always passed from child to child, and never from adult to child. This first phase of indoctrination worked to create a break from children listening to anyone in classical authority positions to make them open to influence from others from within their peer circle. Worse, the consequences for actions were never expressed within the story and glorified making irresponsible decisions.

DISNEY PRINCESS MENTALITY: These concepts were extended as increasing numbers of movies began to focus around Disney Princesses. Much the same way boys see themselves as Captain America or Spiderman when they go see a super hero movie, girls saw themselves taking on the role of princess. In a super hero movie, the hero is fighting an evil power and success or failure impacts everyone. The Princess movies now use a major 'bad guy' to mask the real message of female dominance, irresponsibility and male incompetence.

EXAMPLE- MOANA: In Moana, a demi-god named Maui stole a magic stone and cast the world into darkness. The young princess Moana must ignore her father's experience and sail across the great ocean to return the magic stone.

The story starts by focusing on this young girl ignoring her fathers knowledge and wisdom about the extreme difficulties of open ocean sailing. The story clearly illustrates how lethal and unforgiving the ocean can be by nearly killing Moana and telling the tale of the death of the last person to attempt this. Without any additional training, in a fit of rage, Moana sails out onto the ocean without facing any consequences for not taking the time to plan significantly for this mission.

Moana then finds Maui an extremely strong (he pulled up all islands in the sea) demi-god with thousands of years of experience fighting monsters (ripped the leg off of a 50ft tall monster) and helping people (created coconut trees). Moana easily shows up Maui at every turn to show that a small girl is much more capable than the most successful man at everything.

The story ends with a big dual between a Lava Monster vs Moana and Maui. We see that strength, speed and endurance ('the male') is overcome by love and the power of understanding yourself ('the female').

HYPOTHESIS: All of these stories are creating conflict between men and women by purposefully making men look bad, women look good and destroying the trust for anyone that might have the wisdom or experience to contradict these ideas. These stories have shaped the worst personality and political qualities that we have seen within people from 15-35 who have been most influenced by the Disney engine as the Disney channel became widely available in the late 90's and early 00's.

NARRATIVE: I have been seeing this trend with-in the entertainment industry for years, but I have seen little written about this or talked about the negative impact that specifically Disney is having on society. We are seeing this happen increasingly in some of our most beloved franchises. Star Wars has become unwatchable with the now open feminist movement and open mocking and abuse of men. As a society, we need to become more aware of the stories that are being told and more mindful of the ramifications. 100 years ago, the only time anyone took for stories were from attending church. These stories, nearly always, focused around how we can live and interact better to have a better world. When people abused the positions of power from within religion wars and bad things happened. Now nearly all religions are looked on with scorn. The time has come for us to hold the entertainment industry accountable in the same way.