Disney Gone Wild? (Response)
Prompt
This week we’ve read essays dealing with the changing nature of Disney films, pros and cons of standardized testing, gay marriage and a redefinition of family values, and prison parole reform. Pick one essay and discuss it, give your opinion, and tell us what you feel has influenced your opinon the most ( family, gender, culture, education…) Be as specific and convincing as possible.
Relevant bits of classmate’s post
… What I really think is that the author might just need to sit down and watch Snow White and Cinderella and go back to a time when he was a child and remember what if felt like the first time he got transported to a world full of hope and love and innocence. Maybe it will change his mind.
Response
Although an excellent idea, its not really possible to view these movies (or anything else) with child’s eyes. Growing up in this world it is (nearly) impossible to retain a youthful naivety and ignorance of the world. Most of our minds have become so corrupt as to see what we expect everywhere. For instance, the author of this article expects to see filth, for lack of a better term, in this film and thus “makes something out of nothing”.
In reality, and avoiding a conspiracy theory, it can be assumed that those who view this film and can see only prejudice, sexuality, or other morally unconscionable items is in fact the largest pervert, racist, bigot, etc. in the audience. One’s brain must be so trained to spot those sort of things, to think in those ways that they cannot shut down even for Disney films.
An example of this was one of my summer jobs as a waiter/busboy at a restaurant where my father had worked as the manager when he was my age. My father warned me that cleaning the women’s restroom was much worse than cleaning the men’s. When I first started working there, I was told to go empty the bathroom trash. I assumed this meant both bathrooms and unhesitatingly headed toward the women’s restroom. The manager stopped me, exclaimed surprise at my actions, and questioned my motives. I told him my intentions and that my father had cleaned these restrooms (for some reason I assumed that policy hadn’t changed). He replied that this isn’t the 80s and we’re not perverts anymore.
My question is thus, since when is changing the trash a perversion? Since when did our society become so messed up that men and women fear to enter the same restroom less someone have a weird fetish? Like the author, my manager (presumably perverse) saw what he expected to see.
Like the Tim McGraw song, “I miss back when”.
