The moral ambiguity of the Walt Disney Company

MissUtilis

Disney. The world-famous animation studio and purveyor of family entertainment, known for portraying the Disney brand as moral, upstanding, and rich with tradition.

But of course the Walt Disney Company is amoral and not quite upstanding. Large corporations in general are like this, but with Disney it's especially known because of the contrast with the "we're your friends, trust us" image.

How do you deal with the doublethink?

MissUtilis

Also: The Disney Channel is gross, but you knew this

Salix Babylonika

basically the only Disney property I like is Gravity Falls.

in any case, I don't think the people who buy into the "Disney as the ultimate friendly company" image and the people who know that it's a ludicrously amoral, artistically bankrupt enterprise are the same people.

Imipolex G

I deal with the doublethink by condemning Disney and all it stands for

MissUtilis

Disney properties I have varying degrees of fondness for:

• One Hundred and One Dalmatians
• The Lion King
• Toy Story
  
• Pepper Ann
• Lilo & Stitch
• Gravity Falls
• Wreck-It Ralph
• Star Wars
• The Marvel Cinematic Universe
• The Golden Girls
  

MissUtilis

(of course One Hundred and One Dalmatians is like most of their things an adaptation and not something they wholly created, but still - and Star Wars and the MCU were acquired)

MissUtilis

relatedly Disney's purchase of Star Wars solidified Bob Iger's Disney as pants-shittingly powerful

MissUtilis

also I remembered to add Toy Story to that list even though the god damn wage-fixing conspiracy came from Pixar

MissUtilis

also in truth I envy Disney's brandiosity greatly, but not as much as I used to

MissUtilis

they're kind of like Voldemort

MissUtilis

i envy Disney's ability to make their overpayment, but obtainment of Marvel and their purchase of Star Wars seem like magical things and not the march of capitalism

(nerds don't realize though that the matter of a conglomerate buying Marvel was when, not if; Lucasfilm being sold when it was legit came out of nowhere though)

Salix Babylonika

Nobody, at least on the fan level, was excited about Disney buying Marvel

or Lucasfilm. 

I don't understand where you get the idea that people were from.

MissUtilis

Magic Jane said:

Nobody, at least on the fan level, was excited about Disney buying Marvel

or Lucasfilm. 

I don't understand where you get the idea that people were from.

What I'm saying is the Disney Mind Control that inflicts the showbiz press seems to have gotten me too.

MissUtilis

Also, at the time the Disney purchase of Marvel was seen as baffling because most of the "important" characters were locked up with others

It's weird to see that in hindsight

MissUtilis

the fractured licensing rights are probably why nobody tried to outbid Disney for Marvel

that and it being 2009

Salix Babylonika

Miss Utilis said:

Magic Jane said:

Nobody, at least on the fan level, was excited about Disney buying Marvel

or Lucasfilm. 

I don't understand where you get the idea that people were from.

What I'm saying is the Disney Mind Control that inflicts the showbiz press seems to have gotten me too.

You can easily just not think of Disney as a Magic Mystery Company of Joy and Wizardment, though.

Instead think of them as a gargantuan mass of stitched-together corpses and zombie funny animals. Because that is what they are.

MissUtilis

Corpses?

Like I get the zombie funny animal thing (and honestly it's kind of amusing imagining House of Mouse!Mickey and pals shambling forward hunched over and panting) but corpses? Are we talking, like, having recordings of Walt supplying Mickey's voice in "Get a Horse!"?

Salix Babylonika

Dead properties that no one would care about anymore if the company itself wasn't so intent on pushing them.

Imipolex G

Disney sucks, d00d. get over it

MissUtilis

I admit, I like that One Hundred and One Dalmatians is still out there (even if it's been pushed aside in recent years because the Princess machine) and resent somewhat that some of my favorite, non-Disney-owned things aren't like that *coughRockyandBullwinklecoughYogiBearandFriends*

MissUtilis

but knowing Classic Media/DreamWorks Animation and Warner Bros., it might be for the best that that's not the case

MissUtilis

Imipolex G said:

Disney sucks, d00d. get over it

i know but i don't know if i can completely escape their tentacles :<

Imipolex G

you are weak to their Disney Mind Tricks

MissUtilis

Also, while I'm on it, the fact that Disney still owns ABC and ESPN is bizarre

ESPN is their ATM, yeah, but it's not very "Disney" and they transparently don't care for ABC at all (ironic, considering that Iger came to Disney when they purchased Capital Cities/ABC). They must have some ulterior motive for continuing to hold onto it...

MissUtilis

(an ulterior motive besides "they can't find anyone to dump it onto")

Section42L

Magic Jane said:

Nobody, at least on the fan level, was excited about Disney buying Marvel

or Lucasfilm. 

I don't understand where you get the idea that people were from.

I can't say what fans thought about Disney buying Marvel, but they were at least somewhat excited about Disney buying Lucasfilm.

That was only because that meant that George Lucas was out of the picture, though, not because of Disney itself.

MissUtilis

from what I can gather, people were upset about Disney buying Marvel because they were afraid that Disney would kiddify their mature adult Marvel comics

One-Winged Eagle

Their image means nothing. Their purchases mean nothing.

What's the next movie going to be, and what is it about?

MissUtilis

To be honest, maybe this is in reaction to being hypnotized by them, but I really want Disney to be served a slice of humble pie at some point. I don't know if it will happen as long as Iger is in charge, but still...and I don't know what anti-hostile takeover defenses they have in place for the next time somebody comes calling. Roy Disney and Steve Jobs are dead, we don't know how much longer Isaac "Gunslinger" Perlmutter's gonna be around...

Calica

disney gets bought out by......wait, how many companies are even bigger than disney now

MissUtilis

"Now" isn't when they're getting their slice of humble pie. They might get it when their stock price tumbles considerably. They've only got one class of stock, too, so they'd be even more vulnerable!

As for companies that are bigger than Disney now: Apple and Google, though I don't think either of them want to buy it (or as investment writers would call it, make a content play)

Calica

disney is #61 on the fortune 500, so sixty i guess

Calica

how is hewlett-packard #17

Salix Babylonika

"make a content play" I'm gonna hurl

Calica

disney gets acquired by google.  or, for some reason, by kroger

MissUtilis

Calica said:

how is hewlett-packard #17

the same dark magic that has kept the company solvent in the first place

Magic Jane said:

"make a content play" I'm gonna hurl

but how else are they supposed to control some of the great content out there

Calica

maybe they should learn to be content with what they have

Salix Babylonika

can we talk about "consuming content" 

b/c we all know that reading a book, listening to an album, watching a youtube video that is 8 seconds long, and playing a video game to completion are all the same thing

MissUtilis

Magic Jane said:

can we talk about "consuming content" 

b/c we all know that reading a book, listening to an album, watching a youtube video that is 8 seconds long, and playing a video game to completion are all the same thing

I think this is the sort of logic that drove mergers like Time-Warner and Viacom-Paramount

amusingly now that "media convergence" is actually happening (albeit not in the "they're all the same thing" way), the notion of a far-flung, diverse media conglomerate is pretty well dead and buried

Big Media was a decade or two too early to it, but them not abiding by it now might be for the best...

Salix Babylonika

I ever owned a company (god forbid) I would want it to be small, focused, and niche.

Big enough to stay afloat of course, but I have no desire for ludicrous amounts of wealth. I would just want to be able to pay my employees a fair wage and live comfortably myself.

MissUtilis

I'd like that too...but of course I also fantasize about shit like buying Time Warner and owning it outright...fuck the stock market

Salix Babylonika

My fantasies tend to involve either fireballs or raising the dead.

MissUtilis

My mind is like a sitcom where I am the star and fucking boss.

And Bob Iger does shit like buy Fox and shut down Fox News and replace failed Fox shows with reruns of 101 Dalmatians: The Series. But sometimes I feel like I'm violating Disney by turning it into a frivolous company that tosses the Fox network around like it's a rag doll.

MissUtilis

And I'm terrified to toss ABC around like a rag doll!

MissUtilis

being a fucktard again