Cinema Cemetery

Walt Disney Was…Complicated

Disclaimer:

The following is my own opinion and not the opinion of any studios I have worked for in the past or will work for in the future. All specific information comes courtesy of publicly accessible articles, please see the bibliography for more information. In this article I discuss topics that may be difficult for some readers, additionally, please bear in mind that this is not intended for younger audiences.

Hey there fellow Disney fans, consider this an intervention!

Hi there Disney haters, consider this an intervention!

Fact is, both camps have great points as to why Disney is the best/worst studio/corporation to ever exist. 

As someone STILL obsessed with the vast majority of Disney Animation movies, Pixar movies, and the Disney Parks...I could easily identify myself as a huge fan of the world’s most powerful mouse! Yet, the man behind the myth and the company he helped create are complicated and occasionally kind of sketchy, despite their carefully crafted charming veneer.

In this article I’m going to dig into both good AND bad aspects of Walt Disney as a person but I want to make it crystal clear that this all comes from a place of love and inspiration. I think it’s important for people to understand the drawbacks alongside the positives in all situations and that having a clear view of problematic elements doesn’t necessarily need to spoil the entire experience of loving a myth or media. So, that’s where I stand.

To start off with, we’re going to talk about the PERSON Walt Disney because he’s kind of become a mythic figure in popular culture over the years and I think it’s easy to see the ripples his personality makes in culture at large once the positive and negative aspects of his personality are placed in the proper context. I’m not going to mention some of the more ridiculous or widely disproven myths about the man or the company and instead focus on factors that I know to be grounded in truth and could substantiate using multiple respected sources.

Walt Disney’s moral ambiguity

To begin with, Walter Elias Disney was a questionable artist.

“Early on in his career, in 1922, Walt Disney was sacked from being a cartoonist. The truth of the matter was that Disney was terrible at drawing. Disney even had great difficulty in drawing his most famous character, Mickey Mouse. According to Channel 4’s Secret Lives documentary, he had to be shown by animator, Fred Moore, how to draw a simple side portrait of the famous mouse. In an exhibition entitled ‘The Art of Walt Disney’ many paintings were drawn by (company) artists. Yet Disney had no scruples about signing his name to work done by these people. Disney won 26 Academy Awards. All of these accruing prizes began to foster a growing sense of resentment towards Walt Disney constantly taking credit for other people’s work. Some of Disney’s awards were for films that he had little or no input into.” (1)

Now, a lot of this can be written off as branding...but that doesn’t erase the fact that Walt Disney’s legacy was built off the work of many others who never really got the attention they deserved.

“...he couldn't sign his name in the fancy script that is the company logo ...” (2)

And if that’s not a fitting metaphor for his reputation as an artist being corporate spin alone then I don’t know what is! Adding to this queasy co-opting of others’ work,

“Animators in Disney’s world were exclusively male. Disney, according to former workers, maintained that women were inferior to men and only used them to painstakingly colour and ink the individual stills. Only men were allowed to hold the position of animators in Walt’s world.” (1)

Despite this it IS important to balance this fact with the truth that,

“Disney did on rare occasions hire women as artists or designers.” (2)

Now it would be easy to pass this behavior off as being a so called product of its time...but if sexism really were the hard-line across the board rule at that time then progress would never have been eventually made. Making excuses for someone by saying they were a product of their time is, at best, simply calling them weak willed and close-minded. Yet this pales in comparison to the claims of racist behavior.

“In the 1940s, Disney’s fellow right-wingers convinced him to join an organization dedicated to ridding Hollywood of commies: the Orwellian-sounding Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals. Many of its members were known anti-Semites—so much so that Louis B. Mayer and Jack Warner, both anti-communists themselves, refused to join. Disney had no such qualms. He also approved a pair of cartoons, Three Little Pigs and The Opry House, that poked fun at Jewish stereotypes—the former by disguising the Big Bad Wolf as a hook-nosed peddler and the latter by having Mickey dress and dance like a (Jewish stereotype).

Disney’s cartoons could be racially insensitive as well. In Mickey’s Mellerdrammer, the iconic mouse appears in blackface. The original version of Fantasia featured a half-donkey, half-black centaurette servant named Sunflower; in the pop-up book, she eats a watermelon. And the full-length film Song of the South was controversial even in its own time; upon its release the NAACP said it “perpetuate[d] a dangerously glorified picture of slavery.” While casting the movie, Disney himself used the term “pickaninny,” and during a story meeting for Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs he “referred to the dwarfs piling on top of each other as a ‘(n-word) pile,’” according to Neal Gabler’s exhaustively researched 2006 biography Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination.” (4)

YIKES. 

Once again, you could easily hand-wave a lot of this away with “he was a product of his time” and be correct...but does that really make it OK? Does that fact that many people in the past were terrible to people of color absolve Walt Disney’s actions? I think not.

On a more banal note, Disney was just plain difficult to work with.

“Anyone who disagreed with Disney over even what were trivial matters ran the risk of losing their job. It has been noted that Disney fired a producer who had been in his employ for over two decades when the producer disagreed with Disney’s choice of a film location.” (1)

“He has also been described as an arrogant businessman, a self-made tycoon and a person with a large ego.“ (2)

This level of micromanaging became part of the DNA of his company’s culture, rippling through the various sub-companies that make up the Disney conglomerate.

For example:

“It took almost 60 years, but, as of this year, employees at Walt Disney’s two U.S. theme parks can finally show up at work with a stylish beard or goatee (but only if they are “neat, polished, and professional,” according to the official memo). However, at Disneyland in the 50s and 60s, even guests with facial hair, not to mention longhaired hippies, were turned away, as they were told they unfortunately failed to meet the standards of Disneyland’s dress code. … The company eventually relented on this policy, though, and allowed all … patrons to enjoy “The Happiest Place on Earth.” Now, the peculiar double standard: Think of any picture of Walt Disney that you have ever seen. What exists in almost all of them? A mustache.” (3)

Corporate micromanaging and alleged bullying may have occurred behind closed doors, but

“Walt's TV image was that of the perfect father or uncle. The public seems to have forgotten that the studio produced hard-hitting war propaganda that taught us to hate our enemies during WWII and that there was a nasty strike at the cartoon factory in 1941.” (2)

More on that particular strike later, in the meantime, let's talk about something a bit less politically charged. Nazis.

“In the 1930s, Disney attended meetings of a pro-Nazi organization, the German American Bund.” (3)

Despite firm claims that Walt did not at all sympathize with the Nazi party (which I am personally inclined to believe)

“...he did in fact meet with Fascists including Germany's most celebrated filmmaker, Leni Reifenstahl, when she visited Hollywood in 1938. Her L.A. visit was protested by people with strong anti-Nazi feelings and several studio heads decided not to meet with her. Walt's main motivation to meet her may have been to find a way to recover money owed his firm by his German film distributor... Since the brothers were capitalists, I suspect any positive feelings they might have had about Hitler were replaced by hatred for the SOB that was robbing them of their share of their films' income in Germany. Their anti-German sentiment is quite obvious in their WWII propaganda films.” (2)

Put simply, despite how much Disney may have hated the Nazis; his love of capitalism often seemed to supersede his morals.

“According to Riefenstahl, Disney “told her he admired her work” but was worried about damaging his reputation “if it became known that he was considering hiring her.” (4)

No, I don’t think Walt was a Nazi sympathizer necessarily, but he was most certainly a bootlicker.

“...he and other studio heads were called to testify before Congress in 1947 about Communist infiltration in the film industry. Walt's statements were sincere but somewhat naive. I doubt that he read a great deal about politics. A knowledgeable person might not have said, "I believe he is a Communist... I looked into his record and I found that No. 1, that he had no religion and No. 2, that he had spent considerable time at the Moscow Arts Theater studying art direction or something." He was then asked, "Any others Mr. Disney?" and he replied, "Well, I think Sorrell is sure tied up with them. If he isn't a Communist, he sure should be one." A few minutes later he said, "In my opinion they are Communists. No one has any way of proving those things." I do not believe his reasons for calling people Communists would hold up in a court of law, yet his public testimony did damage the careers of several people. His testimony was quoted in a successful campaign by conservatives to put Tempo, an animation studio in New York run by two of the four people Walt identified as Communists, out of business in the early 1950s.” (2)

It’s funny. Most the people Walt threw under the bus were involved in the previously mentioned animation strike.

Speaking of that strike, let’s back up a little and talk about it. After years of terrible pay, long hours, and no bonuses among other complaints, the workers at Disney Studios reached a tipping point.

”Finally, the workers for Disney had enough of his poor behaviour and went on strike in 1941. Disney took the matter highly personally. His large ego, coupled with stress-induced paranoia meant he came to believe that no one could willingly strike against him. Instead he imagined that communists were behind the strike.

After the pickets had gone on for over six weeks, Disney turned to the mob to end the strike. Despite using these scare tactics the strikers resolve remained steadfast.

Roy Disney, Walt’s wise brother, stepped in. Recognising that his brother was now a liability, Roy sent Walt off on a trip to Latin America. With Roy in charge the strike was quickly over and the Disney corporation agreed to virtually all of the striker’s demands.” (1)

I personally see Walt, not as malicious or evil necessarily, but as self-absorbed and obsessive.

“It appears he didn't understand how others felt about being underpaid and not getting the expected bonuses after the initial success of Snow White at the box office. He certainly didn't agree with these ideas and other labor issues that were raised before the strike.

Disney's handling of the strike at his studio in 1941 suggest he lacked the complex skills needed to successfully negotiate a timely resolution of a major labor conflict. It appears his anger and hatred of those who opposed him probably prevented him from reaching an acceptable compromise. Resolution came after others stepped in and he left the country.” (2)

Well. That was exhausting.  

I didn’t even touch on the more ridiculous claims some tin-foil-hat types love to spout about the man, because honestly, I want to keep this on the rails as much as possible. 

Despite all that, I still consider Walt Disney to be one of my heroes...just with a few major caveats. We owe it to ourselves to be honest about our heroes, and

“With all of the above flaws one wonders how Disney ever became a successful company. The reasons are manifold. Walt Disney had a talent for getting the best out of his workers. A taskmaster, he had high expectations but more importantly he had a vision with which to adhere to. He knew in which direction he wanted to take his company.

However, without Roy, the Disney brand would have collapsed. Roy intervened to save the day on several occasions when bankruptcy threatened to destroy the company. He also stepped in when Disney suffered a mental breakdown during the worker’s strike. Without his brother, who had a keen business mind and an empathetic nature, Walt’s dream would never have happened.” (1)

Speaking of Roy Disney, you should totally click here to see our video about the man. It’s a fascinating story!

Walt Disney’s contributions

A personality is a complex thing and it’s possible for someone to be a villainous fool to one person in their life and an affirming, supportive influence to another. As described by one of his peers:

"Walt was a genius, Walt was a friend, Walt was generous and Walt was a tough son-of-a-bitch. He was all that at once." (2)

“...even though Disney seems to have uttered some racially insensitive remarks, associated with anti-Semites, and met a Nazi or two, he doesn’t seem to have been a racist, bigot, or fascist himself. As Gabler—Disney’s most objective biographer and the first reporter to gain unrestricted access to the Disney archives—has written, “there is no evidence whatsoever in the extensive Disney Archives of any (explicit) anti-Semitic remarks or actions by Walt,” and while he did use “a variety of crude terms for blacks … there didn’t seem to be any malice in these words, just obtuseness.” Disney hired a Jewish left-wing screenwriter, Maurice Rapf, to draft a screenplay of Song of the South, and he later approached several African-American luminaries—actor Paul Robeson, actress Hattie McDaniel, NAACP secretary Walter White, Howard University scholar Alvin Locke—for input on the film.

According to Gabler, “most of what we hear about Disney as a racist or anti-Semite was circulated by animators who had struck in 1941.” When one of them, David Swift, left Disney Studios for Columbia Pictures that year, he complained that Walt’s last words to him had been “it’s where you belong, with those Jews.” But (then) Swift returned multiple times, first in 1945 and then in the 1960s to write and direct Pollyanna and The Parent Trap, and he later admitted that he “owed everything” to Disney. Walt seemed fond of Swift, too, reportedly telling him “there is still a candle burning in the window if you ever want to come back,” according to Gabler. And Walt “never, either publicly or privately, made disparaging remarks about blacks or asserted white superiority,” again according to Gabler...” (4)

It doesn’t have to be a yes or no, cancelled or perfect, kind of a verdict. For more of a personal experience here’s a quote from one of my heroes, Abigail Disney, about Walt.

“...if you are going to have mixed feelings about a family member (and we all do) take it from me, you really need to be as honest as possible about those feelings, or else you are going to lead yourself into many a blind alley in life!! ... Anti-Semite? Check. Misogynist? OF COURSE!! Racist? C'mon he made a film (Jungle Book) about how you should stay 'with your own kind' at the height of the fight over segregation! As if the 'King of the Jungle' number wasn't proof enough!! How much more information do you need? But damn, he was hella good at making films and his work has made billions of people happy. There's no denying it. So there ya go. Mixed feelings up the wazoo.” (6)

“I know he was a man of his times and I can forgive him, but Saving Mr Banks was a brazen attempt by the company to make a saint out of the man. A devil he was not. Nor an angel.” (6)

By today’s standards, Walt Disney’s flaws seem almost unbearable. I certainly wish that he had been a voice for the marginalized, stood up for workers rights, and allowed some of his artists to share in the spotlight. Yet, it’s impossible for me to paint him as a fiend when the much of his work features women with agency, advocates both for science and the wonder of the unknown, and extols the simple beauty of family....all brought forth with focused pathos and realized with incredible beauty.

There is no good story without relatable stakes and Walt Disney’s life was no different. He grew up in a difficult home, estranged from his brothers (except Roy), and with an abusive Father. Roy and Walt fought hard to escape in order to build their own lives and they succeeded against all odds! Once again, for more of this story check out our video on Roy Disney.

Yet what should have been a fairytale ending became a devastating footnote.

“In the early 1940s, Walt Disney bought a home for his parents. "He had the studio guys come over and fix the furnace, but when his mom and dad moved in, the furnace leaked and his mother died," ... "The housekeeper came in the next morning and pulled his mother and father out on the front lawn. His father was sick and went to the hospital, but his mother died."

...Disney never spoke about his mother's death, nor did anyone at the time.

"He never spoke about that time because he personally felt responsible because he had become so successful that he said, 'Let me buy you a house.' It’s every kid's dream to buy their parents a house and just through a strange freak of nature -- through no fault of his own -- the studio workers didn’t know what they were doing," … he was really haunted by that. That idea that he really contributed to his mom’s death was really tragic."” (5)

Why is it so easy for art-school grads with a chip on their shoulder to utterly eviscerate the man when he was by no means the biggest villain in cinema history. Heck he wouldn’t have even made the top 10.

“Why do some of us need to believe that a figure like Walt Disney was a saint? Why do the rest of us need to believe that he was a dastardly, irredeemable creep? Why isn’t the truth about Disney good enough? It’s certainly much more interesting than either of these reductive caricatures—as the truth usually is.” (4)

“So why do we still have such a bipolar relationship with Walt? I suppose both impulses—to build him up and to knock him down—make a certain kind of sense. Instinctively, many of us want to trust the man who, perhaps more than any other, shaped us as children, and who will go on to shape our children and our children’s children. Because we welcomed him into our lives when we were innocent, we’d prefer to think that Walt Disney was as innocent as we were—that his motives were always pure, his intentions were always good, and that he always had our best interests at heart.” (4)

There’s a moment in every child’s life when they see their parents, their authority figures, or their idols for what they really are...flawed. It’s crushing to throw what was lawful good into the chaotic realm of moral ambiguity.

The company’s offerings to society

Walt Disney the person died a mystery, Walt Disney the brand became that of mythic societal impact. We know well the man whose myth was built and projected out into the world...but the complicated person who was...was largely lost to time, only fragments still remain for people to try to piece together like an archaeologist at a dig site.

What we DO have, is the company he left behind...and it has become MASSIVE. What’s easier than hitting a target? Hitting a MASSIVE target!

“An acquaintance that works in the public relations department at Disney says, ‘People lay in wait for us.’ The employee suggests that there are too many people who have nothing better to do with their lives than to study Disney films with the hopes of finding something that they can use to embarrass the company.” (2)

Given the nitpicky nature of the internet at large and the global saturation of all things Disney, I’m sure it can certainly feel like people are just waiting for the company to slip up. But I personally find that take a bit reductive of what may sometimes be well-intentioned or valid criticism.

Despite some bumps along the way, the company has a long history of reliably producing films the whole family can enjoy together. That’s kind of rare and it’s easy to see why people would build a sense of loyalty to what is essentially a disembodied brand as a result. This following affords Disney stability equally rare in the tumultuous entertainment industry.

“Major studios in Hollywood are said to be happy if 1 out of 8 or 10 films turns an impressive profit. Disney's track record was much better than that (at or close to a 100% success rate). He understood the value of having a carefully crafted script. He knew how to motivate his production team to create the best possible characters, sets, costumes, props, etc. He was also the visionary who put together the team that created Disneyland and Walt Disney World in Florida. He was a genius who produced exceptional family entertainment for most of his life.” (2)

But he didn’t just make great movies, he also pushed the technology and art of filmmaking to new heights...always pushing the envelope in that regard.

“Being on the cutting edge of technology became par for the course, as the company pushed the boundaries of animation. The next decades, including the Great Depression, saw Disney create the first color cartoons, as well as the first animated feature-length film, "Snow White and The Seven Dwarfs."”(7)

“Only by constantly innovating and pushing the boundaries of not just animation but also what Disney became as a business was the company able to go from a moderately successful animation studio to a complete entertainment experience – with theme parks, merchandising, cruise ships and so forth.

Walt Disney famously said, "if you can dream it, you can do it." The story of his ... company reminds us that once you dream it, you must continually re-dream and re-imagine it to succeed.” (7)

The company’s detriments to society

All that praise in mind, it’s safe to say that the Disney company has also had a cumulatively negative impact on the entertainment industry and culture at large. Back to Abigail Disney: 

“What my family's business has done is to dumb down and middle-ify and oversimplify (ok, ok DISNEYFY) so much, and while that has rightly and admirably brought a lot of pleasure--joy even-- to a lot of people who needed it given that life can be hard and pleasure hard to come by, it has also encouraged that most grim and American tendency to gloss over the untidy complexities of life, sometimes at great cost to the lived experiences of many others.” (6)

In doing so the Disney company has gone from a small traditional studio to a multi-corporation conglomerate which accounted for

“38% of the U.S. movie industry’s haul in 2019, according to data from Comscore. Disney’s closest competitor, Warner Bros., accounted for 13.8%” (11)

Not only is that completely unprecedented, but I would personally argue that it’s anti-competition. For scale

“In 2008, Disney accounted for only 10.5% of the U.S. box office.” (11)

I mean, the studio has such a tight grip on families across the globe that they single handedly signaled the decline of wide release traditional animation when they switched to computer animation. They’re so massive that every other studio rides in their wake, eager to either cash in on what Disney’s currently doing or working hard to hit one of the few markets that Disney doesn’t cater to. And that’s tough because Disney OWNS your interests no matter what your interests are.

Click here for a handy little chart of all the companies they own, it’s gigantic and terrifying. (12)

On top of that, they’ve also worked tirelessly to make sure future filmmakers don’t have the same opportunities that Walt and Roy did back when they started. What was the bread and butter of Disney Animation that propelled them into being permanent societal fixtures? Public Domain stories that the studio could adapt without paying a dime.

What did the company then turn around and do once their permanence had been solidified? Change copyright law so future generations couldn’t do the same thing.

“When the Copyright Act was first enacted in the United States, the copyright duration was only 14 years. Today Copyright duration can last over a century in some cases.  Why such a drastic change?  Some say it is all due to a cute little mouse named Mickey.” (8)

“In the Copyright Act of 1790, the 14-year term was renewable for one additional 14-year term, if the author was alive at the end of the first 14 years.” (8)

Seems pretty fair right?

“By 1831 it was changed to 28 years with a 14-year renewal and in 1909, copyright duration became 28 years with a 28-year renewal.” (8)

That still seems pretty fair, it lets you profit off of that which you create and then when you’re ridiculously old the next generation can take your characters and stories and reinterpret them in much the same way humanity has been doing since cave paintings.

“Enter Steamboat Willy, the first Mickey Mouse cartoon and the first animated short by Walt Disney in 1928.  Under the 1909 Copyright scheme, the Mickey Mouse character had copyright protection for 56 years (with the renewal), expiring in 1984. With the impending loss of copyright on it’s mascot, Disney is said to have begun (a) serious lobbying push for changes to the Copyright Act.” (8)

“Lawyers for the company began pouring millions of dollars into lobbying members of congress to extend the terms of the Copyright Act once more.” (10)

“In 1976, Congress authorized a major overhaul of the copyright system assuring Disney extended protection. Instead of the maximum of 56 years with extensions, individual authors were granted protection for their life plus an additional 50 years… . For works authored by corporations, the 1976 legislation also granted a retroactive extension for works published before the new system took effect. The maximum term for already-published works was lengthened from 56 years to 75 years...” (8)

“In 1997, Congress introduced the Copyright Term Extension Act. The new act proposed to extend copyright protections from 75 years to 95 years. Obviously Disney was in favour of the Act and did everything they could to ensure it passed. The company launched the Disney Political Action Committee and (contributed) to campaigns of politicians who would later vote on the bill. Records show that 19 of the 25 sponsors of the bill received money directly from Disney’s CEO Michael Eisner.

In 1998, the company was confronted by CNN about their aggressive lobbying tactics, to which Disney spokesperson Thomas J. Deegan responded curtly: “We regard our lobbying as proprietary to us. We don’t wish to talk about it.”

Their efforts paid off, as the Copyright Term Extension Act, which has since been nicknamed the Mickey Mouse Protection Act, passed unanimously in the House and the Senate with no public debate and no fanfare. Thus, Mickey’s protection was once again extended — this time giving the company complete ownership for another 20 years until 2023.” (10)

“On January 1, 2024, we'll see the expiration of the copyright for Steamboat Willie—and with it Disney's claim to the film's star, Mickey Mouse. The copyrights to Superman, Batman, Disney's Snow White, and early Looney Tunes characters will all fall into the public domain between 2031 and 2035.

The expiration of copyrights for characters like Mickey Mouse and Batman will raise tricky new legal questions. After 2024, Disney won't have any copyright protection for Mickey's original incarnation. But Disney will still own copyrights for later incarnations of the character—and it will also own Mickey-related trademarks.” (9)

I, for one, am thrilled by this.

Provided no funny business goes down (it probably will) and public domain is actually upheld this time, we’re going to see these characters undergo a renaissance, the likes of which my generation has never witnessed. If you think about it, it’s been several generations since public domain has even functioned on any level.

From here we could talk about how poorly Disney parks employees are treated/paid, we could go into detail about how Disney Robot Bob Igor is strip-mining Disney nostalgia for short term windfalls but certain future financial strife, or we could call it a day because this video is long enough.

For now though, I want to leave on a positive note. You see, after all that, good and bad...I’m still a Disney fan at heart. They’ve left such a positive net impact on my life that I can’t help but think of Walt as a problematic yet endearing uncle. Am I brainwashed, it’s possible, but I don’t think so. The company can be both a force for good and for evil.

The man was both troubling and inspirational.

So yes, my relationship with all things Disney is complicated, yet I refuse to be a blind penitent in the church of mouse. I swear allegiance to none but my dreams and choose to take inspiration from what I love about Disney while still calling it out when the company behaves badly...just as I expect those who love me to hold me accountable as I build my own studio.

I’ll end with a quote from Walt Disney.

“The best way to get started is to quit talking, and begin doing.”

This has been Cinema Cemetery, digging six feet deeper into film and culture.

-Alaina Smith