Oh, is that too unhinged for you? Let me slap some hinges on:
I don't like Disney because they're not Christian anymore.
Not enough? Let me keep going.
The creator of Ariel is named Glen Keane. He designed and animated her. He's a Disney legend. He is a born-again Christian and often talks about how he was inspired to animate the iconic reaching-out-of-the-grotto movement in Part of Your World because it felt just like, to him, seeing others who had faith in God walking in a beautiful world of light and being unable to reach it himself, but wanting desperately to have what they had and be part of that world of light.
Sounds like his story about how he converted from Catholicism to Christianity because he noticed how much different and happier fellow animator Ron Husband was, sitting in Disney property reading the Bible while eating his lunch. Ron Husband, the award-winning animator trained by two of the Nine Old Men to become a legend at Disney himself, who animated characters like Jafar, Gaston, Joshua Sweet, Pumbaa, and many more from The Rescuers to Fantasia 2000. Ron Husband, who directed and animated a short film called "The Small One," at Disney, which is specifically about the Biblical Nativity and the Christian (real) meaning of Christmas. You can still find it on Disney+.
It's that guy that shared his faith with Glen Keane, who went on to animate not only Ariel, but Tarzan, John Silver, Pocahontas, Tod, Vixey, Aladdin, Georgette, Raigan, Goofy, Scrooge McDuck, Elliott from Pete's Dragon, all three main characters in The Rescuers, Rapunzel, and the Beast.
He readily explains that he begged to be given the Beast's transformation sequence to animate at the end of the film, even though he'd already done great work designing the character and animating other sequences, because the idea of "rebirth" inspired him, being a new Christian.
He had trouble with it until, again, he let his faith inspire him, and realized that this scene, where a loveless monster is transformed by sacrificial love into a new man, is exactly like 2 Corinthians 5:17: "Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come." Which is the Bible verse he wrote out, frame by frame, in the rough animation hand-drawn for that sequence, as the Beast transforms and the curse is broken.
Then Glen Keane has said this, openly, in previous interviews: “I don’t know that there’s ever been an illustration more clear as to what really can take place in a person’s life spiritually than this animated character transforming from an animal [bad] to a prince [good]." And much more.
He went on to create, design, and animate Rapunzel (and was going to direct, if he hadn't gotten sick) and came up with the idea of her healing magic coming from a sun drop out of the verse: James 1:17 "Every good and perfect thing comes from above, from the Father of Lights."
Not "hinged" enough for you? Let's go back to Ariel, the one who started his major success.
He had help. Ariel was also animated by Mark Henn. A born-again Christian, who still tours the world at conferences and gatherings of Christian artists to inspire them and encourage them specifically in how to make art that reflects well on the God of the Bible.
If you know anything about Disney, and you somehow missed Glen Keane (impossible) then you'll at least know Mark Henn. He started out animating Vixey and Mickey Mouse himself, and then went on to animate not only Ariel, but just about every Renaissance-era Princess--Jasmine, Belle, Mulan, Pocahontas, Tinker Belle, Tiana, Giselle. And that's just scratching the surface. He's most well-known for creating and animating Simba. You know, the son of a king who has to learn to stop living for himself and start leading sacrificially? (Oh, and he also directed and animated the short film "John Henry.")
It was Mark Henn, in the story room for Frozen (he still works for Disney,) who came up with the movie's main theme: love is putting someone else's needs before yours. That's a Christian philosophy. That is sourced straight from the Bible. And it's the first time any Disney character has said such a Biblical thing straight-up: Olaf, who Mark Henn helped to design and became the animator for.
Still talking about Ariel, though. She's voiced by Jodi Benson, a literal born-again Christian housewife and homeschool mom. Who will gladly tell anyone that getting to voice Ariel all these years is specifically "a gift from God, it's His plan, His timing." Ariel. The mermaid drawn by a Christian, animated by a Christian, and voiced by a Christian, who learns and teaches Christian lessons.
Not done. Got some more hingeing for you.
Let's talk about Mulan. Everyone's favorite for being "a woman who can fight like a man" 😂 even though that's the exact opposite of what her movie teaches. It's not being like a man, and being like a woman, that saves the day. I'll save that argument for another post.
Point is, Mulan was co-directed by a Christian, another Disney pillar named Tony Bancroft, who had already worked on Beauty and the Beast, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Aladdin, and The Rescuers Down Under. He helped steer the ship, specifically so that Mulan would NOT log to war because she "always dreamed of being a soldier." He made sure it had more to do with a self-sacrificial love for her family; she didn't want to leave it, she wanted to protect it and please it.
His brother, Tom Bancroft, is also a Christian, and an award-winning author and animator with an even longer list of character-animating and designing credits. They left Disney in the early 2000s specifically because they felt a "shift" where their Christian views weren't being supported or well-received by the producers, anymore. But without them you don't get to have Mushu, Mulan, Pumbaa, ir many others. Those movies might've still been made, but they wouldn't be the same movies you fell in love with as a kid.
That's right. The choices made in some of Disney's most iconic scenes were made not just because of Christian values, but because of actual Christians. They made Disney what it is. People like Glen Keane and Ron Husband and Mark Henn are not drops in the giant corporate bucket. They made the most meaningful parts of Disney.
Of course there are hundreds of other people, people who do not claim Christ, who worked on the same movies. But just try telling me which values won out? Which ones are more accurately reflected in the stories that are so wildly successful? Is it the Christian values? Yes.
And I could mention more. Several more. Several more who are still in Disney today, or were recently; I could talk about Jeremy Spears or Konrad Lightner and go on and on.
But let's talk more about this Christian reasoning you were missing out on in the post above, eh? Let me fill in those blanks I left for you, now that you've so kindly pointed them out.
If (because) the God of the Bible exists, and created us, and He specifically created us using words to make something out of nothing, and He controls the order of events and works everything out for His glory, that makes Him:
A storyteller. The first storyteller. The best storyteller. The inventor of stories and storytelling. Reality is His narrative. We are His characters. He wrote Himself in to save us from the conflict. He already wrote the ending, and we're all hurtling toward it.
The story is about Him. It's about Who He is. Everything, from the life cycle of a caterpillar (which He created) to the pattern of the seasons (which He designed) was carefully set in place to make a main point--He is loving and in charge, we rejected that love and Lordship so we deserve wrath and die, but He sacrificed Himself to give us new life and transform us.
Birth - Spring, hatching caterpillar.
Corrupt Life - Summer, caterpillars crawling.
Death - Autumn-to-Winter, caterpillar's in the cocoon.
He invented storytelling, and He told the best one there is. We're made in His image. The best stories we can tell are the ones that mimic or directly point back to His story, the one that's about Him, and our relationship to Him.
Disney's best stories were ones that did that. They were stories about faith in something you can't see, self-sacrificial love, and good triumphing over the evil that clearly exists in the world.
And it's thanks to the people who 1) recognized how to make a good story, regardless of whether or not they believed in God, and 2) most powerfully, the animators and designers and actresses and actors who were willing to do their work with excellence--because of their faith in God. They couldn't separate their love of the craft from their love of the God who invented it. And they stood up and made choices even if they might've been controversial in pre-production. Thank you, to all of them, or else we wouldn't have the Disney that we loved all this time.
Nowadays Disney doesn't do those things. And they suck.
I don't like that Disney isn't Christian anymore.
My whole post hinges on that. Better?
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