A few days after the re -election of Donald Trump is confirmed, at the end of November last year, the magazine Newsweek published an article Illustrated with the shoe of the new president of the United States about to trample a terrified Mickey Mouse. The holder, Disney has a problem with Trumpsynthesized the distressing situation to which the latest presidential elections could have focused on The Walt Disney Company. The relationship of the mouse house with the Republican party has been, so to speak, improvable. As in general it has always been between Trump and the Hollywood industry, because the tycoon considers it a salvapallas of the Democratic Party.
The latter explains, for example, that one of the many rocambolesque measures that Trump has taken as the presidency has been assumed to be appointed “Ambassadors” In Hollywood: related celebrities that would try to use their influence to modify the bad image that the president usually has in those circles. Or something like this: Beyond the appointment appeal to Mel Gibson, Sylvester Stallone and Jon Voight, it is not known very well what exactly his modus operandi will be, although Trump’s concern seems to run into a reason for weight.
In Captain America: Brave New Worldproduced by Marvel (Disney subsidiary), the new president of the US becomes a red hulk that endangers citizens. It is difficult not to see a link with Donald Trump there, as it is also to think that his re -election has nothing to do with a recent change in the Disney+Catalog. In the middle of this week the labels that introduced classics such as Dumbo or Peter Pan warning of the racism they were chasing were severely trimmed: Now it is only read that “this content is presented as originally created, and can contain negative stereotypes or representations.” In addition, Disney has erased its corporate page Stories Matter (Consultable at Archive.org) where he talked about the “effort” that the company was doing to, as “narrators”, “defend consciously, determined and tirelessly the spectrum of voices and perspectives of our world.” It explained why the warnings had been introduced and some examples of such content, such as the “racist cartoon” of the American asioles in The Aristogatos.
They are the same signs of when Disney+ went on the market in 2019, and therefore eliminate the wide update that they had experienced a year later (still maintained in places like Spain): “This content includes negative representations or inappropriate treatment of people or cultures. These stereotypes were incorrect then and they are now, ”we read then. “Instead of eliminating this content, we want to recognize its harmful impact, learn and encourage the talk of it to create a more inclusive future among all. Disney undertakes to create stories with inspiring issues that reflect the rich diversity of human experience worldwide. ”
Apparently Disney no longer commits anything, in what aims to be a gesture of goodwill towards Donald Trump that goes beyond the shadow of that great stomp on his head.
Disney and progressive neoliberalism
Trump’s first days have been a hurricane. We can make clear from this the militant support of the elites of Silicon Valley —zuckerberg, Bezos, obviously Elon Musk – and Trump’s determination to end those of Dei. That is, diversity, equity and inclusion policies, which by giving us cinema usually fly over the production of Disney from the usual impetus Woke. The one that would have led to the introduction of diverse profiles in the casts of Star Wars or Marvel, or those remakes that because of the skin color of the protagonist –The Little Mermaidthe imminent remake of Snow White– They gain the hostility of conservatives.
Large technology companies, once prone to a Pinkwashing Very related to Disney’s films, they have not seen any problem in disdaining and allying with Trump, in a striking position change with respect to the first mandate of the Republican (2017-2021). Perhaps this change is explained since, in their day, the elites considered Trump a passing experience, or without sufficient power within the government framework. This feeling would have facilitated that, given the succession of episodes such as Metoo or Strengthening of the Black Lives Matter after the death of George Floyd, these elites showed an affable attachment, when not enthusiastic, to the dei.
Just the expansion of Disclaimers In Disney+ in October 2020 it is inseparable from the shock that caused what happened with Floyd in American society, with the mouse house wanting to correspond in some way to the historical moment. It seemed to receive such problematic images as the crows of Dumbo or the native Americans of Peter Panalthough not so much to bring back a film like South Song (1946 film that has never wanted to recover in streaming, by its bold racism). Being a cosmetic measure, he implied ascription to the DEI and, in particular, to the program of the Democratic Party.
Still far from the extremes to which Silicon Valley has reached, in Disney a turn is perceived since before Trump won the last elections. It has been through small gestures as the edition of the Disclaimersand nevertheless very eloquent gestures. After a season away from X, in recent months Disney had wanted to buy advertising spaces from Elon Musk. While Bob Iger, CEO of the company, has stopped supporting the campaign of the Democratic party financially after having done it regularly in previous elections. This is even more curious, if possible, when we realize that the favorite to happen to Iger next year, Dana Walden, is an intimate friend of Kamala Harris.
Disney has been taking precautions, because, before which Trump’s return to the White House could imply. And he has taken them not as a company honestly concerned about social justice, but as a company and period. This sudden closeness to the Trumpist environment comes from a common sense that also appeals to the Democratic Party (today in frank crisis) and that Dylan Riley calls in New Left Review “Progressive neoliberalism.” It is an anti -discriminatory paradigm that dates from the early 1970s and was even established by a Republican president, Richard Nixon.
A paradigm that has not stopped showing deficiencies in recent years. Not only for the ultra -rightist offensive, but for its same genealogy. Which is mere facade, the relief of social justice through exclusively of the individual and the market. That the Democratic Party can applaud through labels and remakes Inclusive while it is not raised, or for a second, stop supporting the genocidal policies of Benjamín Netanyahu in Israel.
It all started in Florida
Disney furrowed the wave of progressive neoliberalism, basically since it was constituted. The conservative convictions of Walt Disney, its founder, are well known, but these were mostly deactivated with their death in the late 60s and the management sincere’s very interested executive diligents in how the spirits of society were advancing (and in how they could look more skillfully with them). The ghost Woke It is nothing more than an evolution of this interest, the meticulous study of the new market segmentations, and there was a point where it seemed profitable enough for Disney to challenge the censorship of foreign markets with homophobic laws. Case of Eternals either West Side Story.
Also from Lightyearbut that little lesbian kiss leads us to noisy nuances when reading the enmity that Disney and Trump share (and that Disney would like to appease). That kiss was reinstated to Lightyear After having been eliminated from the first montages of the Pixar film, within the framework of the largest public relations crisis that the mouse house has crossed in recent years. It happened in March 2022, when Several Pixar employees assured that the Disney directive had systematically cast back the attempts to introduce LGTBIQ+ elements into their films. He did not catch new, because Bob Chapek was in front of Bob as CEO, and the suspicions of his homophobic behavior had a certain journey.
Maybe unfairly? Before getting to power in 2020 happening to IIFER – who less than two years later had to resume the position for the painful management of Chapek – the executive Joel Hopkins He claimed that since his departure from the closet he had seen his chances of ascending in the company frozen, and demanded Disney for discrimination. Also before, finalizing the purchase of Fox in 2019 and the consequent closure of its Bluesky animation study, Disney canceled the production of Nimona Despite being almost completed. Nimonawhich finally saw the light in Netflix four years later, it would have been the first animated film with clear LGTBIQ+ theme of Disney.
But that should not interest, nor did Chapek interested in Everyone talks about Jamie (Another project inherited from Fox) will tell in Disney+ his story of a teenager gay dreamed of being Drag Queen: That’s why he sold the movie to Amazon and premiered in his catalog. In short, there were enough reasons to doubt Disney’s commitment to sexual diversity. But the rupture point definitely came with the so -called Don’t Say Gay law. His promulgation in the state of Florida coincided precisely with the claims of Pixar’s animators.
Thus we meet the key to the progressive pleites of Disney to the Republicans, once the political affinities reveal their true fur and turn out to be … that of business. Disney has very important business in Florida, governed for years by the great Republican man after Trump and even today his possible successor: Ron Desantis. In Florida are Walt Disney World Resort, and thousands and thousands of Disney jobs, so that the company has historically benefited from tax exemptions, put in danger following the aforementioned law Don’t Say Gay.
This regulation, advanced Trump’s current crusade against LGTBIQ+rights, prevents from mid -2022 that Florida’s schools deal with sexual and gender orientation issues, and veto aid to students and teachers away from the heteronorm. It is a law that should be uncomfortable for Disney and that, however, did not prevent the company from continuing to make donations to Republicans while processing it. When this was discovered, there were naturally wide manifestations against Disney’s headquarters. And, naturally, subsequent compensation: Chapek was dismissed, the kiss of Lightyear Retrieved to make the usual cry, and Disney slowed donations to politicians of any spectrum in Florida, triggering the anger of Desantis.
Desantis and Disney have been engaged since then in litigation for the fiscal situation of the Mouse House in Florida, which seemed have normalized In March 2024. Now that the Republican Party has more power that Florida is still a good way to trample Mickey Mouse, and it will not be very difficult. After all, the political lukewar Homophobic law “It would be counterproductive”. So counterproductive, in short, how to oppose Trump now.
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