Disney+ to double it’s prices.

[Thebestoftherest]

Disney was made for kids of all ages, just because clearspira doesn't know how to enjoy himself without making other people miserable or being a bigot doesn't mean everyone that way.

[Deledrius]

Part of the reason why no one watches Disney anymore with their kids is that they can go to a film called ''Buzz Lightyear'' based on a series of children's films and find a lesbian kiss in it.

I think you'll find that nearly every single Disney film all the way back to "Snow White" includes a kiss at the end of the film, if not more. Disney has never shied away from showing this simple kind of physical affection in their films, and only the most puritanical of people would view a kiss as sexual or inappropriate for children. A child raised in a loving environment would be exposed to kisses fairly regularly, I expect. If they're not, a blink-and-you'll-miss-it scene in "Buzz Lightyear" is probably not the biggest emotional issue in their lives.

Now, that is all glossing right over your real point: that the kiss is a "lesbian" kiss. This is where I must ask what makes a kiss a "lesbian" kiss. From the perspective of the children these concerns are always using as a backdrop, I suggest there is no explanation that doesn't include information or concepts that are beyond the age group being considered. After all, we as adults know that the kiss between Ariel and Eric at the end of "The Little Mermaid" is shorthand for a whole host of acts, culminating in Melody of "The Little Mermaid II". But of course, that's not how it is interpreted by children. "Enchanted" lampshades this quite heavily more than once. There is no need to elaborate on the "...and then...?" aspect; adults can fill in the blanks, and for children this is a simplistic-but-accepted happy ending to a tale. There are two distinct levels of understanding here, and the kiss is just a kiss for the audience being supposedly "protected".

That's going to be the end of it for children under a certain age, and those a bit older will usually see a more nuanced gradient of "romantic kiss" (or True Love's Kiss, as it's called in "Enchanted") that the prince and princess share versus the "platonic kiss" that Snow White gives the dwarves. Still, a kiss is just a kiss. Some are just more special than others. It doesn't imply anything else.

So the conclusion is that this is only a problem of values for the adults, not their kids. As safe and effective babysitter entertainment, there is no difference in the material being made now from back then.

a substantial amount of parents do not want their kids seeing that like it or not.

And yet Disney, a company that today exists to make money, has decided that the audience for more inclusive content is bigger than the audience that does not. They've been tacitly supportive for decades, but only recently have they begun to openly support LGBTQIA+ customers in the parks and films. As usual for a corporation, this should not be taken as a moral judgment but a monetary one. They see more money from this audience than the dwindling group that opposes it.

Disney as a "controversial" producer is nothing new. There have been decades of outrage and backlash against whatever could be levied against their films for as long as I can remember (and historically longer). This is not a new reason "no one watches Disney anymore" and in fact this hate-watching part of the audience appears to be roughly the same size as ever: a vocal minority.

These days, Disney has more to worry about from viewer apathy and market saturation than from their detractors.

65% of US households with a Disney Plus subscription do not have children. Just think about that for a moment. Just think of what the man formerly known as Walt Disney would have made of that. ''Mortified'' I reckon.

Walt might also be excited that he has a much larger market to sell his art to, especially a larger market with wallets (unlike children). He was big on family entertainment, not least because he realized that the more people he included in his target audience the larger his income. Roy is typically cited as the businessman of the two brothers, but while Walt was the artist he was also not wholly an impractical man. Including non-family households would be a boon to a company that already has a stranglehold on the family audience market.
As for his personal sentiments on the matter, no one is qualified to guess at that. Asking what someone (who has now been dead nearly as long as they were alive) would think of anything is a question without an answer and fraught with a million caveats and assumptions, and no way to ever verify whatever conclusions you could draw. It's possible to form a compelling argument based on what is known of him in either direction for this topic alone; it's not especially useful.

Even if he was indeed mortified, he could still be wrong.

[RobbyB1982]

Walt made Fantasia which, aside from the Mickey sequence, was mostly meant to be sophisticated entertainment for adults akin to going to the symphony or opera, and he was always dissapointed it didn't find its audience.

"Cartoons are just for kids" (and comci books) is a mindset that only exists in the US, and mostly because after Walt's death, Disney floundered for two decades and in the meantime Hanna Barbera flooded televisions with cheap looking trash that, yes, was aimed at kids. But Flintstones was an adult show with jokes meant for adults aired in prime time. They even advertised cigarettes!

Walt wanted entertainment for all ages. He never thought animation was "just for kids".

And over in Japan and Europe, they never accepted that either and their comics markets are thriving and booming, selling millions every week, in all genres and ange ranges, instead of being completely niche.

[clearspira]

Part of the reason why no one watches Disney anymore with their kids is that they can go to a film called ''Buzz Lightyear'' based on a series of children's films and find a lesbian kiss in it.

I think you'll find that nearly every single Disney film all the way back to "Snow White" includes a kiss at the end of the film, if not more. Disney has never shied away from showing this simple kind of physical affection in their films, and only the most puritanical of people would view a kiss as sexual or inappropriate for children. A child raised in a loving environment would be exposed to kisses fairly regularly, I expect. If they're not, a blink-and-you'll-miss-it scene in "Buzz Lightyear" is probably not the biggest emotional issue in their lives.

Now, that is all glossing right over your real point: that the kiss is a "lesbian" kiss. This is where I must ask what makes a kiss a "lesbian" kiss. From the perspective of the children these concerns are always using as a backdrop, I suggest there is no explanation that doesn't include information or concepts that are beyond the age group being considered. After all, we as adults know that the kiss between Ariel and Eric at the end of "The Little Mermaid" is shorthand for a whole host of acts, culminating in Melody of "The Little Mermaid II". But of course, that's not how it is interpreted by children. "Enchanted" lampshades this quite heavily more than once. There is no need to elaborate on the "...and then...?" aspect; adults can fill in the blanks, and for children this is a simplistic-but-accepted happy ending to a tale. There are two distinct levels of understanding here, and the kiss is just a kiss for the audience being supposedly "protected".

That's going to be the end of it for children under a certain age, and those a bit older will usually see a more nuanced gradient of "romantic kiss" (or True Love's Kiss, as it's called in "Enchanted") that the prince and princess share versus the "platonic kiss" that Snow White gives the dwarves. Still, a kiss is just a kiss. Some are just more special than others. It doesn't imply anything else.

So the conclusion is that this is only a problem of values for the adults, not their kids. As safe and effective babysitter entertainment, there is no difference in the material being made now from back then.

a substantial amount of parents do not want their kids seeing that like it or not.

And yet Disney, a company that today exists to make money, has decided that the audience for more inclusive content is bigger than the audience that does not. They've been tacitly supportive for decades, but only recently have they begun to openly support LGBTQIA+ customers in the parks and films. As usual for a corporation, this should not be taken as a moral judgment but a monetary one. They see more money from this audience than the dwindling group that opposes it.

Disney as a "controversial" producer is nothing new. There have been decades of outrage and backlash against whatever could be levied against their films for as long as I can remember (and historically longer). This is not a new reason "no one watches Disney anymore" and in fact this hate-watching part of the audience appears to be roughly the same size as ever: a vocal minority.

These days, Disney has more to worry about from viewer apathy and market saturation than from their detractors.

65% of US households with a Disney Plus subscription do not have children. Just think about that for a moment. Just think of what the man formerly known as Walt Disney would have made of that. ''Mortified'' I reckon.

Walt might also be excited that he has a much larger market to sell his art to, especially a larger market with wallets (unlike children). He was big on family entertainment, not least because he realized that the more people he included in his target audience the larger his income. Roy is typically cited as the businessman of the two brothers, but while Walt was the artist he was also not wholly an impractical man. Including non-family households would be a boon to a company that already has a stranglehold on the family audience market.
As for his personal sentiments on the matter, no one is qualified to guess at that. Asking what someone (who has now been dead nearly as long as they were alive) would think of anything is a question without an answer and fraught with a million caveats and assumptions, and no way to ever verify whatever conclusions you could draw. It's possible to form a compelling argument based on what is known of him in either direction for this topic alone; it's not especially useful.

Even if he was indeed mortified, he could still be wrong.

''So the conclusion is that this is only a problem of values for the adults, not their kids. As safe and effective babysitter entertainment, there is no difference in the material being made now from back then.''

You've just proved me right whether you meant to or not. Parents have the money, parents are bringing their kids to the cinema, parents are getting out the streaming subscriptions. The parents are the ones who matter when it comes to giving Disney money.

''And yet Disney, a company that today exists to make money, has decided that the audience for more inclusive content is bigger than the audience that does not.''

https://www.boxofficemojo.com/chart/top ... /?area=XWW Here is a list of the best selling films of all time. Do you notice something about that list? None of them are what I would term ''woke'' - that is, putting identity politics to the forefront as a selling point. That is NOT the same thing as having those things somewhere in the film. That means, ''these things are not our selling point.'' Its actually the reverse. There are guns, there is nudity, there are conventional relationships up the wazoo.

These inclusive movies you speak of are not making the big money. They just aren't. And these are not films from the mists of time either. Second and third place was made in the last five years.


''As for his personal sentiments on the matter, no one is qualified to guess at that.''

Except perhaps the man himself. Does this sound to you like someone who would be happy with this company's current output?

[Frustration]

I don't agree with that at all. Part of the reason why no one watches Disney anymore with their kids is that they can go to a film called ''Buzz Lightyear'' based on a series of children's films and find a lesbian kiss in it. Regardless of that you think about LGBT themes in movies, a substantial amount of parents do not want their kids seeing that like it or not.

Okay, let me rephrase that: Disney products have previously been known for being focus-grouped to death in order to be inoffensive and uncontroversial.

Lately advocates of various ideologies have started tilting Disney products towards what they consider to be acceptable messages, causing controversy, but true believers are willing to sacrifice mass appeal and profitability in order to be "on the right side of history", since they believe their future victory is inevitable.

(And people claim there's no such thing as a Culture War!)

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

Most marketing these days is politically conscious due to a generational transition and the proliferation of social media intertwining news, general media, and interwebz.

Another thing I guess is that the most commercially marketable material is derived from content made for kids, so of course there's going to be a lot of modernist attention to the media's influential role.

[hammerofglass]

Dismey+ also does just bizarre stuff. Like spending £100+ million on Willow, barely advertising it, only releasing it on streaming, and then when it didn't do well they removed it from the service after less than six months for a tax break. Not even a video release, just immediately memory holed it.

[Madner Kami]

Dismey+ also does just bizarre stuff. Like spending £100+ million on Willow, barely advertising it, only releasing it on streaming, and then when it didn't do well they removed it from the service after less than six months for a tax break. Not even a video release, just immediately memory holed it.

It was intended to be a tax-break from the get go, with the option of fishing for nostalgia bucks.

[clearspira]

It really doesn't help either that Disney doesn't seem to have a press secretary any more. Disney is celebrating its 100th anniversary and I have seen pretty much nothing celebrating Walt Disney the man. Why do I suspect he has been quietly cancelled? Not to mention Rachel Zeigler AKA Snow White is insane, talking about how hard it is ''to live inside her brain'' and accusing Prince Charming of being a stalker. There are some great videos out there as well showing her hypocrisy, where she says one thing and then does another. My fave is where is she says she grew up as a massive Disney fan... and then claims that she only saw Snow White once and was scared by it. Uh-huh.

These things are not going to get you the normie viewers AKA the people who have the majority of the money.

[Frustration]

A lot of corporations that are named after a founder have recently taken steps to distance themselves. In some cases like Papa John's (now Papa Johns) because the founder has embarrassed the company, but in many for no obvious reason.