Any Disney fans here?

Anoona said:
Very rare that I like Disney. Some of their movies are cool, I appreciate the message that Inside Out tried to communicate for example. But overall, the vast majority of their work I’m kind of annoyed at the way they handle certain things.

Anoona said:


There’s a lot of things I’m annoyed by, and generally, Disney movies and shows are consistently plagued by the same problems that leave a bad taste in my mouth. There are individual crictisms I could give various movies but I’ll just identify three common trends I’ve noticed across their body of work here.

First, most of the time Disney tends to gravitate to very frustrating black and white, good and evil conflicts, which is just not how the world works. Even for children, I think it’d be better to present more human conflicts because there are too many people, even adults, who can’t think outside of a black and white worldview, and it creates a problem when that sort of mentality is so prevalent and nobody can step outside of their own head and understand that you can’t box everything into easy simple categorizations of good and evil. The viewing experience itself just feels more flat because I struggle to be interested in such bland pure good or pure evil characters and sometimes just cringe.

If the characters weren’t already boring enough in their over-simplified black and white dichotomies, I’ve also noticed Disney characters tend to be recycled anyway on top of that, reinforcing my boredom with them, with personalities being copy pasted onto different bodies. It’s sort of crazy to watch some of these characters and understand that they’ve literally done absolutely nothing but change either the animation or the actor from a different movie. And sometimes they don’t even change the animation much, with same face syndrome being a persistent theme in Disney animations.

Though it is often seen in their movies, I have especially noticed something to be prominent in Disney channel tv shows. Disney for some reason has the cruelest sense of humor. Watching their shows I find I am continually disturbed as I watch people making sarcastic to straight up undeniably abusive comments (primarily on physical appearance or racial stereotypes or being nerdy in some way) or even physically harming each other, followed by canned laughter. And these sorts of jokes make up the majority of the show’s comedy. It’s sort of awful to watch over and over again harmful stereotypes and abuse be reinforced and promoted and treated so lightly. And it goes from awful to disturbing when you understand that the target audience is children.

These are just some of the common threads I’ve noticed. It might seem excessively critical but humans are imitative beings and I have watched many children and even full grown adults very often mimic the terrible ideas and behaviors treated so lightly by Disney to significantly harmful effect. So I have a sort of cynical, critical relationship with Disney.

Anoona said:


They may not understand it at first but inevitably they will. When I was a kid, I know I never got irritated or confused looking at a more complex movie, I just didn’t quite process the movies quite at as much and later on I understood fully. I was still capable of loving the movie. It’s just a thing where Disney is especially flat to a point of detriment. And people proceed to never grow out of that way of thinking. They’re never challenged to see something different. And a little bit of my own perspective comes in with that too where I think children can be a whole lot smarter than people give them credit for if they challenged them to think more and didn’t underestimate them and give them purely material that would be deemed simple enough for their age. I’d say that it’s a good thing to confuse them a little if it makes them think. If you treat a child like a child they’re gonna think like one. After all, that’s all that was ever asked of them.

As for the sorts of jokes and behaviors treated lightly by Disney, even worse for that problem is just the fact that it’s not even okay in the context of the show. It’s totally mean and abusive and borderline racist at times but it’s easy to look over it when they play these laugh tracks and such. I wouldn’t even say most of these things jokingly to a friend or a family member, and the way they’re said in these shows is not meant humourously, the characters are legitimately just being cruel and the humor purely comes from the laugh track that follows. In that context, that’s probably where to me I guess the slapstick physical harm humor started to feel less slapstick, because the more subtle verbal abuse was already being handled in such a poor way. Anyway, my mentality, if it’s not even acceptable in the show as humor, then it’s really not acceptable as a model for children. It’s really just about their particular way of handling it where it comes across as being a weird distorted reality where totally non-humorous, legitimate abuse is funny and that’s the whole show. And I have witnessed full grown adults mimic these behaviors. I don’t have much faith in people to understand the difference when I see this >u>

Nobody’s gonna watch a horror movie or play a shooter video game and imitate that, it’s not human nature, you need to already be mentally unstable in the first place, and the distinction between fantasy and reality is pretty clear. But with Disney it’s much easier to imitate it and not understand what’s wrong about it when it’s essentially just portraying everyday human interaction. Because it’s so easily glossed over by everyone, it’s normalized, and then people THINK they’re joking but in reality they’re abusing, because the characters they imitate, despite being some of the most disgustingly abusive characters I’ve ever seen, are ultimately treated as good and their attacks as lightheartedly comical. It’s just a much more subtle beast, that blends with reality a little too closely.

Anoona said:


No, no, I understand that. I’m a psychology nerd. I’ve studied child development and memory, when I refer to my old memories, I am also taking into account that I straight up could not think in a more complex way at that time. But Disney isn’t just that young of an age group watching, generally people grow up beyond that age range with Disney, and at some point it starts to be too simple. Disney doesn’t need to be that simple, there’s really only things to lose by presenting such a simplistic dichotomy. If they made it more interesting and nuanced, all that would change is that it would be a more psychologically productive and interesting experience for people in the later age group and the younger age group would remain happy with it despite not understanding everything.

I agree with that, they’re definitely lazy, they’re definitely cliche, they’re definitely stereotypes. I criticize that too. But in particular, what stood out to me upon noticing it was just the cruel, toxic nature of it all, that’s what disturbed me. It’s one thing to be poor quality, it’s another to straight up present abuse as funny and unserious to children.