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At Last: Hate Voice Mail!

I was on campus today (U.W.), it's Sunday, and I picked up one of the papers. Are you a bunch of Communists, or what? Are you student-led? I hope not. I hope that's not the attitude most students have. But it's most unfortunate that you are indoctrinating them if you are not (students). I can't believe the garbage and lies that I read in your paper. You totally misrepresent.
I don't know who's controlling you. But you are too young, if in fact you are young, to know what's really going on in the world. I'm sorry that you have the views that you do.

Anonymous voice mail message

Dissin' Disney Doggerel

Every parent knows two things: that by the turn of the century McDonald's, Coke and the Disney Company will own the world, and that every child will have watched poor Simba's father get trampled to death 650,000 times.
In the days of Cinderella and Pinnochio, how could the Disney people have envisioned children watching their films over and over again in a single day? Of course, the old classics contain undertones of classism, racism and other negative side-effects of a melded society, just like classic literature like Uncle Remus, the Tar Baby and Huckleberry Finn. Until now this is how those films were regarded since they were released into theatres so infrequently. I like to think Walt Disney, the dreamer and maker of magic, would have thought more of our children than the current line up of Disney executives, who know full well what is going into our living rooms and hence into our young childrens' minds. Since the release of that visual doggerel, Down and Out in Beverly Hills, Disney has forgotten its roots. Its full-length cartoons (feature animations, cartoons, it's the same thing) are filled with an abberational mix of tripe and violence which are pumped into our childrens' minds and imaginations.
The Little Mermaid is a foxy adolescent fish who bats her eyelashes and wiggles because she can't speak. Ursela becomes so fearsome in the climactic scene that my kids were too frightened to watch, which was good because she's stabbed to death by a ship in the end. The climactic scenes in Aladdin, The Return of Japhar, and Beauty and the Beast get the same reaction from them.
Just turn off the T.V. you say? That's too easy. We did that. Try turning off McDonald's Happy Meal toys, or Burger King's toys, or any toy aisle in any department store, or the back of a cereal box, or the toys at a friend's house or the Disney Store at the mall. One recent Disney release is the most positive cartoon, er, full length animation ever to hit the screens, which is probably why it didn't get the press bombardment the other releases did. The Goofy Movie actually had real conflict between a teen-aged son and his father (perhaps someday Disney will think to include both parents in its movies). The conflict didn't involve stabbings, tramplings, backstabbing or familial homicide, and the two worked out their differences by (gasp) talking to each other.
Thank you for your incisive words regarding Disney (Issue 17 Aug/Sept '95). Perhaps if enough people feel the same way, we can make that marketing behemoth understand that Mickey Mouse doesn't need to be on our underwear, that their protagonists can be articulate, their villains not so violent and their climaxes not so graphic.

Mike Stock
Troy, Michigan



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Contents on this page were published in the December/January, 1996 edition of the Washington Free Press.
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