Marathon: Pernicious Parting Gifts (3 of 13)

I finally think I have somewhere to go with this one. I was reading a thread on Facebook that grew out of a bunch of ex-Eleven Names (Thomas, Cathleen) people talking about how, looking back, Disney movies were steeped in some pretty backward and scary thinking. The heroes, looking back, aren't so heroic and have been lionized in a way that obscures what they're doing.

The villains, more and more, start to look like they're the ones being wronged. The princesses have less and less control and are acting in ways that aren't so rebellious. And while I feel mad snarky (can I copyright that phrase?) watching the same people talk about "society" who criticize me listening to punk rock, I feel like..maybe Disney's the one getting the bum rap here.

Maybe we're putting too much on the back of something that's designed to give youngsters a primer on how to act in the culture we've created.

Also, I used the word youngsters. I'm proud of myself.

Then again, this kind of stuff is pernicious precisely because it comes under the radar and because it gets passed off as reasonable and normal. It's only by looking into it that we see what's going on under the surface. And it's that questioning that leads me to track three on the Marathon record, Some Lovely Parting Gifts, a song about all the lies taught as lessons to us, which lead to bad ways of thinking. All the things that taught us to think straight, of which Disney had to be one.




First, I'm not sure what I took from the Disney movies I saw as a child. I was influenced by other things also. I was influenced by books, video games and other movies, I think. So my learning doesn't stop with them. Im also unclear on the idea that kids took anything more from Disney than "other people say these things are good, so do good things," which is a lesson that's significantly larger than Disney.

That said, there's a good chance a number of early Disney movies are trojan horses bringing in other ideas with them that we don't recognize.

All of that says, those are still the tools that taught us to "think" straight. What did we win as a result of playing Disney's game?

And, is it fair or reasonable to ask Disney to create something that's meant to inspire people to do more when they're younger than 14? If, after you saw some Disney programming, did you as a child continue to absorb media? Books? Movies? Games? Did you fling yourself down that path as a result of seeing something there? I can only speak for myself, and while I don't remember Disney movies well, I know I watched a couple and I took a lot from them. Is it because I'm white, male and straight? Possibly? I don't know.

This begs the question: What did you (or I) do after we consumed Disney media? Did seeing Disney media lead you to consume more and more media until you learned things were not as pretty as they seemed? In other words: Did a Disney film or TV show foster a life-long love for things that have expanded your mind? Do they get credit for that? Do they deserve credit (for better or worse) for beyond that? Perhaps not, but that doesn't absolve them of the responsibilitiy to write something that's centered more carefully now. A lot of their now "classic" material was written sixty or seventy years ago so it's long since time to write different stories, more inclusive ones.

We grow, I think, when we're brought face to face with what came before and realized how far it is from what we believed. We change. We see more things. Those are the powerful moments in our lives, I think. It's only when we look into the mirror and realize, with horror the things that lurk behind what we took for granted that we grow.

We learn more sophisticated lessons as we get older. Life gets complicated and messy.

I don't want to say Disney is a necessary evil. But if it wasn't called Disney, it'd be called something else and be close enough to the same thing: Teaching kids the wrong right ways to go about living their lives.



In Some Lovely Parting Gifts, the focus is on the instruction of students and classrooms.

Disney is emblematic of the stains left on our psyches from childhood. They're a cheap tool to help kids make sense of the world around them. These tools leave impressions that looking at the Disney princesses reveal. We learn that the world is vast and frightening. In those moments of realization, we reach out for something. The song itself finds a kid running into a broom closet with words he's supposed memorize. I infer that to mean that he recognizes something is Very Wrong, but can't vocalize quite what it is yet.

Black mortarboard, a wooden ruler, and papers marked with A's The tools that taught me to think straight
In some schools, thinking the right way is done with carrots. In others, it's done with sticks. The A's, for thinking the same way as the teacher are the carrots. The wooden ruler (used in Catholic schools to beat pupils) are the sticks. Disney is a carrot. Cool things happen to people that do "good" actions.

We learn from Disney's instruction how to behave on a basic level. Some of these behavior patterns are unhealthy. Many of the lessons are suspect. But we get rewarded for them all the same. Our reward doesn't come in confetti falling and a game show host, but the rewards come all the same. Sometimes, it's getting into a conversation with someone that you have no affiliation with otherwise. It's a "oh, you watched Disney movies as a kid, too?"

Disney might be one of the grinning showmen in the center of Some Lovely Parting Gifts, the man who'se eyes we ought to watch. Are the eyes twinkling? If they are, do we even know what that means?


Remember when I talked about other things in the culture that surrounds us reinforcing what we've learned from Disney? Marathon has a line about that, too. Letters validate the tests numbers to see who'se the best.

To go pop culture on you: Twilight's a book series where the main character is being stalked by someone who is literally hundreds of years older than her and hangs around a high school. And this is romantic and not worthy of a restraining order and To Catch A Predator. Frankly, I view this is a particularly post-Disney story. If you want a story that justifies this kind of fantastical romance, look at Beauty and the Beast. The Beast is a semi-abusive misanthrope, to use Thomas' words.

The two stories share a basic premise: An innocent woman gets caught in the spell of a potential lover that while perhaps honestly loving her exhibits characteristics that have the potential for violent, non-proportionate response to "things that could make them angry."

Beast's behavior is being smoothed over by larger social forces calling it part of love. While the concern and desire to care for the partner may be authentic, the potential for spousal abuse remains and it's whitewashed.

We grow and we learn. In both cases, (whether it's the Facebook comment tree or Some Lovely Parting Gifts OR re-viewing Twilight or Disney) there's a bit of the horror of realization. I'm not sure I'm horrified. I just knew this before.

Strangely enough, I'm left with an appropriate pithy parting sentence: What's old is new.