Oh, honey… any Queen could tell you that Disney is Bad Actually. (Whether Disney is more a Jafar or an Ursula is up to you.)
Which is why it’s so entertaining watching an otherwise gormless toady like ‘Ol Pudding Fingers bite the hand that feeds him over literally nothing at all…
Pass the popcorn, will you? No one ever said our overlords at the feudal House of Mouse couldn’t put on a good show!
I think a thing that confuses me with this post (as with the last one), is that it feels like you’re responding to specific things you have read or heard, but it’s not entirely clear who you’re referring to.
e.g.:
> …left-leaning individuals – supporters of LGBTQ+ rights, often calling themselves “socialists,” – indiscriminately rallied behind Disney, viewing it as a champion fighting against DeSantis' anti-gay legislation.
> It’s easy to see why people who are generally inclined to support the rights of minority groups in what is ultimately an oppressive capitalist state might jump to such a conclusion.
Maybe it’s just that I don’t use Twitter (and I also barely follow political content on YouTube or Twitch), but, like… who? Who are these “left-leaning individuals… often calling themselves ‘socialists’” of whom you speak?
On the one hand, I can see that rhetorical impetus of not naming names (and therefore not being “drama content”). But on the other hand, the precise phrasing is somehow both broad and specific enough that it feels like casting shade anyone and everyone because of the Forer effect.
I feel like… from a rhetorical perspective, this ends up being kind of the worst of both options, which is to say the rhetoric might be more effective if you either did name names or omitted the shade-casting bit entirely.
Of course… when it comes to naming names, it’s not just the risk of “drama” but rather the risk of narrowing the scope of your critique to specific individuals (i.e. minor internet media personalities) who people might legitimately not care about, so I would tend suggest omitting the shade entirely, unless any given person you’re criticizing is a significant public figure with actual power in the real world.
Anyway, sorry for getting a bit in the weeds, here. It’s just this particular rhetorical strategy that I find frustrating (and, more to the point, distracting).
(And, to be clear, I guess, this is sort of the “aftertaste” for me, given that it’s been like half a day since I initially read and responded to this post, and this is something that stuck with me.)
Understandable. I do try to avoid the naming of names generally as my point isn't to zoom in on some person's behavior (though sometimes it is unavoidable). But there is also a trend:
Without pointing fingers at individuals, it can be demonstrated this is a trend. I neglected to say this in the article but despite Disney's recent PR maneuvers, they haven't exactly been super good on this specific issue, either. My qualm is less about either of these two entities position on this issue, and more that Disney has been allowed to appear as a champion of people's rights, fighting the establishment when it absolutely is not.
If *even the NYT* can recognize superficial pandering, then I don’t think calling attention to homonationalism and pinkwashing is really as contrarian as you seem to think it is, at least anymore.
Anyway I guess we can go home, now, everyone! We’ve finally solved Capitalism!
It's not "even the NYT gets it," though; it's the superficial pandering version of superficial pandering. But yeah, at least people are "getting it." My concern is people need to hear an explanation from communists (through whom it can lead back to Marx) rather than the NYT.
I don’t particularly care what the corporate media has to say, so I’ll focus on the WSWS article. After reading this morning and again just now, it’s not clear to me how it differs from your perspective.
White Boots’ statement:
“Disney is in far too deep with the Communist Party of China and has lost any moral authority to tell you what to do.”
…is, to be clear, literally true.
Disney is close to the Chinese government *because of its material interests in China*, both its two theme parks there and its ability to commercially release movies there.
You are a Marxist-Leninist, and WSWS is Trotskyist (to be fair, the most contrarian Communist tendency lol), so I don’t see why you should have much love for China’s Dengist ideology or even, for that matter, the Maoist ideology that preceded it.
I say this because Deng Xiaoping is why Disney has a relationship with the Chinese government to begin with. One might as well rephrase the quote as:
“The Communist Party of China is in far too deep with Disney and has lost any moral authority to tell you what to do.”
Though, in all fairness, this isn’t where Florida’s lead pro-grooming activist is coming from. Rather, it’s clear he’s just jealous.
Disney didn’t just send the Floridian government an angry missive; it turned off the money spigot, both halting its political bribes—oops, I mean campaign donations—and (not discussed in the article) canceling its plans to expand its corporate offices in the state (since reactionary culture war makes it hard to recruit top talent).
The Disney commentary is all things considered quite late in an article mostly about HB-1557, and it constitutes a minority of the article’s overall content. And the article is from over fourteen months ago, a month before the repealing of the Reedy Creek Improvement Act. So when the article was written, nobody had come for Disney’s sovereignty, making the article of somewhat dubious relevance here.
(Apologies for stilted grammar. I’m writing this on my phone.)
As an aside, are you familiar with _Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom_?
No, I'll check it out though. Thank you for the rec
Oh, honey… any Queen could tell you that Disney is Bad Actually. (Whether Disney is more a Jafar or an Ursula is up to you.)
Which is why it’s so entertaining watching an otherwise gormless toady like ‘Ol Pudding Fingers bite the hand that feeds him over literally nothing at all…
Pass the popcorn, will you? No one ever said our overlords at the feudal House of Mouse couldn’t put on a good show!
with any luck they will destroy each other
(sadly there is probably not enough luck for this)
Alas, more likely both sides will benefit from this little song-and-dance number. Mommy and daddy are fighting again!
too true
I think a thing that confuses me with this post (as with the last one), is that it feels like you’re responding to specific things you have read or heard, but it’s not entirely clear who you’re referring to.
e.g.:
> …left-leaning individuals – supporters of LGBTQ+ rights, often calling themselves “socialists,” – indiscriminately rallied behind Disney, viewing it as a champion fighting against DeSantis' anti-gay legislation.
> It’s easy to see why people who are generally inclined to support the rights of minority groups in what is ultimately an oppressive capitalist state might jump to such a conclusion.
Maybe it’s just that I don’t use Twitter (and I also barely follow political content on YouTube or Twitch), but, like… who? Who are these “left-leaning individuals… often calling themselves ‘socialists’” of whom you speak?
On the one hand, I can see that rhetorical impetus of not naming names (and therefore not being “drama content”). But on the other hand, the precise phrasing is somehow both broad and specific enough that it feels like casting shade anyone and everyone because of the Forer effect.
I feel like… from a rhetorical perspective, this ends up being kind of the worst of both options, which is to say the rhetoric might be more effective if you either did name names or omitted the shade-casting bit entirely.
Of course… when it comes to naming names, it’s not just the risk of “drama” but rather the risk of narrowing the scope of your critique to specific individuals (i.e. minor internet media personalities) who people might legitimately not care about, so I would tend suggest omitting the shade entirely, unless any given person you’re criticizing is a significant public figure with actual power in the real world.
Anyway, sorry for getting a bit in the weeds, here. It’s just this particular rhetorical strategy that I find frustrating (and, more to the point, distracting).
(And, to be clear, I guess, this is sort of the “aftertaste” for me, given that it’s been like half a day since I initially read and responded to this post, and this is something that stuck with me.)
Understandable. I do try to avoid the naming of names generally as my point isn't to zoom in on some person's behavior (though sometimes it is unavoidable). But there is also a trend:
Starting with social media, one can see that a large faction of the liberal/leftist sentiment skews towards "thank you Disney" and "Disney is standing up to DeSantis!" https://twitter.com/search?q=disney%20lgbtq%20desantis&src=typed_query&f=live
There's also the actual media outlets, from the specifically pro-LGBTQ (https://www.thepinknews.com/2023/03/24/disney-ron-desantis-lgbtq-conference/) to the more generally progressive (https://www.theguardian.com/film/2023/apr/23/disney-v-desantis-diversity-lgbtq-history) to outlets that have been behind polling promoting the idea many Americans would prefer socialism (https://www.axios.com/2023/04/21/disney-desantis-prison) to ongoing coverage by socialist publications (in this example, pitting Disney against DeSantis as "good" and "bad" guys, even using a quote from DeSantis to allow him to associate Disney with the Chinese Communist Party and saying nothing about it https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2022/03/16/flor-m16.html).
Without pointing fingers at individuals, it can be demonstrated this is a trend. I neglected to say this in the article but despite Disney's recent PR maneuvers, they haven't exactly been super good on this specific issue, either. My qualm is less about either of these two entities position on this issue, and more that Disney has been allowed to appear as a champion of people's rights, fighting the establishment when it absolutely is not.
Even the NYT (itself a bastion of “woke” Capitalism) is starting to recognize that corporations are not your friends:
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/12/opinion/woke-capitalism-diversity-lgbt-companies-pride.html
If *even the NYT* can recognize superficial pandering, then I don’t think calling attention to homonationalism and pinkwashing is really as contrarian as you seem to think it is, at least anymore.
Anyway I guess we can go home, now, everyone! We’ve finally solved Capitalism!
https://www.instagram.com/reel/CuP3ASRNRHm
It's not "even the NYT gets it," though; it's the superficial pandering version of superficial pandering. But yeah, at least people are "getting it." My concern is people need to hear an explanation from communists (through whom it can lead back to Marx) rather than the NYT.
I don’t particularly care what the corporate media has to say, so I’ll focus on the WSWS article. After reading this morning and again just now, it’s not clear to me how it differs from your perspective.
White Boots’ statement:
“Disney is in far too deep with the Communist Party of China and has lost any moral authority to tell you what to do.”
…is, to be clear, literally true.
Disney is close to the Chinese government *because of its material interests in China*, both its two theme parks there and its ability to commercially release movies there.
You are a Marxist-Leninist, and WSWS is Trotskyist (to be fair, the most contrarian Communist tendency lol), so I don’t see why you should have much love for China’s Dengist ideology or even, for that matter, the Maoist ideology that preceded it.
I say this because Deng Xiaoping is why Disney has a relationship with the Chinese government to begin with. One might as well rephrase the quote as:
“The Communist Party of China is in far too deep with Disney and has lost any moral authority to tell you what to do.”
Though, in all fairness, this isn’t where Florida’s lead pro-grooming activist is coming from. Rather, it’s clear he’s just jealous.
Disney didn’t just send the Floridian government an angry missive; it turned off the money spigot, both halting its political bribes—oops, I mean campaign donations—and (not discussed in the article) canceling its plans to expand its corporate offices in the state (since reactionary culture war makes it hard to recruit top talent).
The Disney commentary is all things considered quite late in an article mostly about HB-1557, and it constitutes a minority of the article’s overall content. And the article is from over fourteen months ago, a month before the repealing of the Reedy Creek Improvement Act. So when the article was written, nobody had come for Disney’s sovereignty, making the article of somewhat dubious relevance here.
(Apologies for stilted grammar. I’m writing this on my phone.)