The history of the Disney company is so fucking fascinating and complicated that I could spend the rest of my life studying it.
I hate the company. I love the media. I want it to burn. I was profoundly shaped as a person by some of the art its workers have produced. It's evil. It's beautiful. It's an eldritch horrorterror personified as a charismatic mouse. It's a nightmarish example of capitalist hell. It destroys as much as it creates. It's a flaming trainwreck. I can't look away.
It's the goddamn Elephant's Foot of media studies.
It’s honestly fits perfectly with who Walt ultimately was. A brilliantly intelligent manipulator terrified of the inevitability of loss yet incapable of costing himself as he lashed out at his friends and workers over basic workers rights, driven to obsession over a theoretical town where he was basically a pleasant Uncle dictator who could determine the lives of his citizens right down to what appliances they use.
#Disney ruined copyright law#because Walt never really died#He’s in the genetics of the company#And that is far worse than being a frozen head in an urban legend
You. You get it.
#hot take#i think we just need to find other media#i didnt grow up with disney and i dont feel like i missed anything
Look, you can do what you want, but Disney as a company has wormed its way into everything, and as someone whose JOB is researching and analyzing media, Disney is incredibly important. Evil in many ways, but important. Disney studies are so wrapped up in the history of American film and television that you just straight-up cannot study the field without studying Disney.
Hell, even if you're studying more broadly than just American media. The cross-pollination of Disney and anime is massive. Osamu Tezuka, the Father of Manga, was famously inspired by Disney movies in his own art, to the point where it's discussed on his Wikipedia page.
That's not even getting into the fact that the company buys up everything it can get its hands on, the fact that the theme parks are deeply wrapped up in the economies and politics of the cities they're in, and the fact that Disney is a big enough entity to be a major political force in the USA. Hell, American copyright law is so twisted up in Disney's bullshit that you can't separate them. You HAVE TO talk about Disney if you're talking about US copyright law.
"Just find other media" is such a holier-than-thou response to a post that's about the field of media studies. YOU don't have to be invested in anything you don't want to be, but to respond "just find other media" on a post about my field of work is...quite irritating, actually.
This is my field. I don't need to "just find other media." I am quite familiar with plenty of other media, thank you.
