As many of my Facebook friends know, I am currently enrolled in a History course titled History through Disney. This course aims to explore normal historically elements and events through the lens of the Disney Corporation. We also talk about the influence Walt Disney and his media empire may have had – and may still have – on society. Oh, it should be stated that I have a distinct distaste of early twentieth century Disney so I was not in this class to explore my love for the man and his work; I enrolled in the class to garner a better understanding of the damaging effects it all caused. But then my whole mission got derailed.
The class started to HUMANIZE Walt Disney. And what’s worse is that I started to relate to the man on a personal level. Don’t get me wrong, we‘ve touched on some of the controversy that surrounds Walt but at the end of the day the man was still human. Pause. I feel as though I should explain why I had such a sharp disdain for him.
Okay, throughout Walt Disney’s creative career, he helped idealize what we can call “traditional American values” (TAV). The problem is that the small town, socially conservative values that the Disney Corporation sought to define and immortalize were being questioned during the 1960’s, when the great counter culture movement began to emerge. The Disney Corporation did little if nothing to expand their own view of TAV and thus were, arguably, a passive partner in the oppression of the groups represented in counter-culture. In short, dude and his company were Team Systematic Oppression.
However, Walt Disney (much to my shock) probably wasn’t just a cold hearted bastard with no respect for different world views. The man moved all around the Midwest during his childhood. He had very little consistency save for consistent hardships he faced because of his father. A significant thing that I learned about Disneyworld is that the park was designed after the small town of Marceline, Missouri. What makes this fact significant is that out of Walt’s 65 years of life, he only lived in Marceline for like four of them. And yet he designed what is arguably his most important landmark after it. He idolized that small town and made it an integral part of him. He latched on to these four short years and based most of his entire schema on it.
Walt didn’t have a ton of stability in his childhood and he sought such stability in adulthood. He wanted to protect his ideal America and he wanted to preserve his memories. He just wanted to create what he thought was absolute good. What I am saying is this: he is human. We make a huge deal about rumors of anti-Semitism, sexism, and racism but at the end of the day, Walt Disney was a man searching for stability. This course just started but I can already tell that this will be the greatest lesson I will learn throughout the next 15 weeks of class.
