The Four Color Media Monitor

A writer at the Federalist last month raised the troubling issue of the new, social justice-themed Disney now turning out animated cartoons serving as far-left propaganda, including some building on Critical Race Theory:

A recent production of Disney’s “The Proud Family” put forth yet another false narrative about our nation’s history — that only black slaves “built this nation” and that blacks today deserve reparations “for every moment we spend submerged in this systemic prejudice, racism, and white supremacy that America was founded with and still has not atoned for.” To illustrate this last point, the cartoon showcases a picture of a young black man with his palms turned up and the words “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot” written on them.

The cartoon features predominately black girls angrily denouncing the Founding Fathers and, at one point, shows the presidential images on Mount Rushmore being replaced with the likes of Harriett Tubman, Nat Turner, and Frederick Douglass — the “real” champions of freedom. Lincoln is deliberately snubbed as the girls proclaim, “we can only free ourselves … emancipation was not freedom.” No context, of course, is supplied for these outlandish charges, thus exposing the cartoon for the racist propaganda that it is.

Disney has certainly declined from the company that virtually every home was tuned in to watch in television’s formative years. In earlier times, Disney regularly featured wholesome, patriotic portrayals of America’s past that influenced generations of children. Recently, however, it has worked diligently to promote the leftist goal to “fundamentally change America.”

And their dismissal of previous CEO Bob Chapek, which saw the return of Bob Iger to the role, did little to change where they're going now, mainly because Iger sowed the seeds of this propaganda even before Chapek did. The article also notes:

Meanwhile, the cartoon’s promotion of Nat Turner — a murderer who slew his master and his wife while they were sleeping in their bed at night and ordered their infant child to be slaughtered in his crib — is a sad commentary of what passes today as acceptable viewing for children. Disney’s producers apparently didn’t know that Turner’s men decapitated the infant in its crib and threw its body into the fireplace. Nor that two other children were later beheaded. Nor that almost all of Turner’s victims were defenseless, unarmed women and children. And according to Disney, this is the man who should be depicted on Mount Rushmore?

That is as sick as it's depressing. As though it weren't bad enough Harvey Milk was sugarcoated and lionized, now Disney's sugarcoating a man from the 19th century who committed acts of barbarism against defenseless women and children? Truly awful.

Animated propaganda like the above isn't the only problem Disney's got. Another writer for the Federalist complained against sequel-mania, which includes plans for yet another Toy Story sequel, and what's argued could make an important case for comicdom too:

To be fair, making sequels and creating sprawling franchises with multiple installments has proven to be an incredibly lucrative business model for Disney. After all, they’ve already been doing it for decades. And if every sequel were of the same caliber “The Empire Strikes Back” or “Terminator 2: Judgment Day,” there would likely not be an issue.

But with ideologically charged and uninspired writing, Disney is degrading their films’ artistic integrity and nullifying the cultural utility of once beloved stories by never allowing them to experience an organic end. The hero’s journey is irrelevant if he is never allowed to return home.

This is something to consider when it comes to Marvel and DC's classic serial fictions - they've been going on and on without any kind of ending in sight for decades, and a valid argument could be made at this point it would've been better if they'd drawn to a close in the early 2000s, or if they were to continue, their pamphlet format had been changed to something more along the lines of paperback graphic novels, which could be published on the basis of just a few every year for any and all superheroes and other characters who could be cast in a solo adventure. But greed and ideology trumped everything, and we've been seeing the results ever since, in many different - and often horrific - forms. On the topic of Toy Story, the following query is asked:

How can there be anything left for anthropomorphic toys to learn about themselves? “Toy Story” came out almost 30 years ago and already spawned three cinematic sequels; several animated shorts; and two separate, unrelated spin-off franchises about Buzz Lightyear’s self-contained adventures. What could a fifth movie add to the story?

A similar argument, again, could be made about the Big Two's comics, and even some smaller publishers' offerings. Why not allow Bruce Banner, for example, to finally be cured of his Hulk alter ego? And also Ben Grimm as the Thing? In fact, how about Rogue finding the ability to properly control her siphoning power? That's something to ponder. As I've said before, Marvel and DC's products have gone on too long without any real ending, and it's cost them artistically, played them out, reduced them to a joke, and left them vulnerable to wokeness over the past 2 decades. The time's come to wrap them up, definitely in their current pamphlet format.

Labels: animation, golden calf of LGBT, history, misogyny and racism, politics, violence