Rolling Over in His Grave — Walt Disney and Modern Attitudes
The American people are at their most politically and culturally polarized since the Civil War. Whether the country can survive the forces tearing us apart in anything other than name is, at this point, questionable. We are so incredibly angry that we are looking anywhere we can to make our case to "the other side" in the fruitless hope that "they" will finally come to their senses.
Oddly, both sides of the argument will often reach for the same historical figures to use as ciphers for their argument: George Orwell, Winston Churchill and Walt Disney.
The number of times I've heard "Walt Disney would be rolling over in his grave if he saw... " is beyond my desire to count. Was he a conservative, folksy, common sense guy, or a progressive futurist? Was he a classical formalist or a radical pop artist? Was he the middle-of-the-road-corporate-icon Mickey Mouse of the late twentieth century, or the manic-agent-of-chaos Mickey Mouse of the 1920s?
Walt seems to serve as a template for whatever our beliefs are.
"All Walt wanted to do is make wholesome entertainment for children and their parents."
"Walt just wanted to spread magic to the world, but especially America."
"Walt exemplifies traditional American values!"
Really? What makes you think that?
Let's take a look at the evidence of what the man actually said and did and see if we can tease out a little of what he might've thought.
Things Walt Disney would've hated
#1. Alcohol in his parks.
When Walt Disney first proposed an amusement park to his wife Lillian, her response was, “Why would you want to get involved with an amusement park? They’re so dirty and not fun at all for grown-ups. Why would you want to get involved in a business like that?”
“That’s exactly my point. Mine isn’t going to be that way. Mine’s going to be a place that’s clean, where the whole family can do things together.” (Sam Gennaway, The Disneyland Story (2014) p 14.)
When interviewed later:
“Disneyland really began,” Walt once said, “when my two daughters were very young. Saturday was always Daddy’s Day, and I would take them to the merry-go-round and sit on a bench eating peanuts while they rode. And sitting there, alone, I felt there should be something built, some kind of family park where parents and children could have fun together.” (Randy Bright, Disneyland: Inside Story (1987), p 33.)
Assuming that Disney was being genuine about his motivations, I can think of one element of an amusement park experience that parents and children ought not do together. Let's let Walt spell it out:
“No liquor, no beer, nothing. Because that brings in a rowdy element. That brings people that we don’t want and I feel they don’t need it. I feel when I go down to the park I don’t need a drink.” — Walt Disney to the Saturday Evening Post, 1956.
Walt was no teetotaler. He was known to have a Scotch Mist at the end of most every day. Abstinence is not a philosophy he lived by, but he was very clear about one thing: he didn't want no booze at Disneyland.
Times and mores have, of course, changed and it is a more permissive century than the one Walt grew up in, but is it so terrible to have just one place where a parent can take their kids without having to deal with things like this?
‘Drunk’ woman jumps off Disney World ride and starts screaming at other visitors
#2. Sequels.
“I’m a born experimenter. To this day, I don’t believe in sequels. I can’t follow popular cycles, I have to move on to new things. There are many new worlds to conquer. As a matter of fact, people have been asking us to make sequels ever since Mickey Mouse first became a star.
“Right now we’re not thinking about making another Mary Poppins, we never will. Perhaps there’ll be other ventures with equal critical and financial success. But we know we cannot hit a home run with the bases loaded every time we go into play. We also know the only way we can even get to first base is by constantly going back and continuing to swing.” - Walt Disney, letter to shareholders, 1966.
After the success of Disney's classic short The Three Little Pigs (1933), Walt was convinced to try to capitalize on his success with several follow-up shorts featuring the Pigs and Big Bad Wolf. When the subsequent shorts failed to move the needle critically or financially, Walt is purported to have said, "You can't top pigs with pigs."
But did he never do it again after that? For the most part, no. There is Son of Flubber, the 1963 sequel to The Absent Minded Professor (1961) which was something that Walt only entertained because of a number of Flubber-gags left unused from the first film. By the time the film actually went into production, though, it's arguable that Walt was paying much attention to his studio's output anyway: his head was entirely in Florida by that point.
After Walt's death, though, the floodgates opened.
Financially, at least for a while, sequels and remakes were cash cows. Poorly done, direct-to-video fare like The Return of Jafar (1996) and The Little Mermaid II: Return to the Sea (2000) were cheap releases easy to move into the financial black; and later, big budget, theatrical films like The Jungle Book (2016) and Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (2006) were bringing in over a billion dollars regularly. Notably, the highest earning animated films the company ever made (not adjusted for inflation) are the 2019 CGI remake of The Lion King and Frozen 2 (2019); so it's hard to argue that films like that aren't good for the bottom line.
But they are the very antithesis of what Walt Disney wanted.
And, by the way, if you do adjust for inflation, the Walt Disney Company's biggest earning animated film is... Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937).
#3. EPCOT
If you're waiting for me to specify which specific piece of EPCOT Walt would've hated, you're going to be disappointed.
Walt would've hated ALL of the EPCOT that was built.
Disney was a passionate and driven individual known for his willingness to do whatever it took to get an idea turned into a reality; but after that idea or project finally crossed the finish line, Walt got bored.
"Walt instinctively resists doing the same thing twice. He likes to try something fresh." - Roy Disney (Neal Gabler, Walt Disney - The Triumph of the American Imagination (2006) p 608.)
"He would get stagnant if he didn't do new things." - Lillian Disney interviewed by Richard Hubler, April 6, 1968 (Walt Disney Archives)
By 1933, when Walt had started to work on his first feature film, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Walt Disney had begun handing much of the responsibilities for the two successful animated shorts series more and more to his trusted animators.
If you’re interested, here’s a take from the wonderful Walt Disney Family Museum about that transition:
By the time of the studio's post-war features, Disney was becoming burnt-out on animation altogether and had begun to transition much of the responsibility, again, to his staff. His frustration with the time and expense of animation often resulted in a repeated pledge to stop working in the form; a pledge, luckily, he never stuck to. By the time he was deep into working on the Disneyland project, he had become difficult to track down to make decisions on the animated features, often slowing production to a crawl.
Post-Disneyland, he got obsessed with building a ski resort in the Sequoia National Forest (which fell through). And post-Mineral King Ski Resort, Walt Disney became obsessed with urban design and began buying up large swaths of land in central Florida to try an experiment in progressive modern living: the “Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow” - EPCOT.
The project started with the tentative name of The Florida Project and, later, Disney World, but make no mistake, Walt was not interested in making another theme park. He was bored of that.
"I was always so proud of my dad (Roy O. Disney). Walt wanted to build this futuristic city called Epcot where people were going to live. My dad didn't know how that made us any money. He argued with Walt that we needed to build a Magic Kingdom and some hotels first to get money to afford to build Walt's Epcot." - Roy E. Disney interviewed by Jim Korkis, April 20, 2016 (https://www.mouseplanet.com/11376/The_Roy_E_Disney_Interview)
EPCOT was going to, in many ways, be the culmination of all of the ideas Walt Disney had picked up over his half century. It would combine what he'd discovered about transportation and sociology and the cross-pollination of the skills of artists, architects, inventors and builders.
It might damn well have saved the world.
"He wanted to try improving the environment, the urban setting. He was full of ideas about what that place would be like. EPCOT would not be just a park, but an urban experiment where you could try to improve the way people live, creating alternatives to our frantic, automobile existence." - Buzz Price (Sam Gennaway, Walt Disney and the Promise of Progress City (2014) p 130.)
EPCOT was no theme park. It was a place for people to live which was trying to subvert the struggles of modern cities through innovation: a model for other cities, a place where new ideas could be showcased, a sane way for us to live together.
It had a long way to go, but the broad concepts were already laid out.
On Walt Disney's hospital bed, where he died, he used the grids in the ceiling, drawing with his finger in the air, to help describe his Progress City to anyone there who would listen.
It was not this:
Walt Disney’s greatest dream was not a theme park.
#4. Phones
In the Disneyland of Walt's day the outside world stayed out.
He may later have evidenced surprise at how quickly the urban blight of Anaheim rose up around his new theme park, but he must've had some idea of what was coming because he found a way to exclude everything outside the Park.
To accomplish this, Walt hired landscaper Bill Evans and his brother Jack to find a way to isolate the park from the world.
"Trees alone won't do that. It takes about 100 feet of dense trees to block sound, but you can do that with 20 feet of earth. Then we garnish the berm with all the landscaping we can afford, and in this way we exclude the twentieth century." - Bill Evans (Sam Gennaway, The Disneyland Story (2014) p 40.)
This method of isolation became the model for almost every theme park - including those of the Disney Company - constructed from that point forward.
And it didn't stop there.
In the early years of Disneyland's operation, the park was not open seven days a week. Outside the gates, a short walk from the Disneyland Hotel, were some picnic tables and a few other small amenities just on the edge of the parking lot.
In order to appease guests in the area who wanted a little Disneyland magic even when it was closed, a small newsstand with some gifts, park maps and newspapers opened right at the edge of the turnstiles. At some point during the Tomorrowland redesign of 1959, the track for the soon to be introduced Disneyland Alweg Monorail caused a slight shift in the entrance plaza so that the newsstand was now straddling being inside and outside of the park.
Walt and his Imagineers decided that they would convert the building so that it could serve both park patrons as well as guests outside the gate by opening a window on both sides of the turnstiles.
The function of the newsstand was a variety of roles, including that of selling actual newspapers, but one rule was hard and fast for Walt Disney: no newspapers would be sold in the park. The rule was entirely symbolic, you could walk outside the gate, buy a paper and walk back in, but it was important to Walt that he did not facilitate the incursion of the modern outside world into his land of “yesterday, tomorrow and fantasy.”
So next time you whip out your phone to check a sports score while you’re in line for It’s a Small World (1966), know that Walt is shaking his head at you. He wouldn’t want to take your phone away from you, but he certainly wouldn’t want to do anything to encourage you to-
Aw, dammit!
So let’s go at this now. Not only does Genie+ FORCE you to use your phone, but it upends everything that Walt expressed about value and the customer experience.
“He wanted people to be able to enjoy everything in the Park. They had already paid to get in; he didn’t want them to have to pay to use the restrooms as well. He cared about the people coming to his Park, and he wanted them to be able to have a good time.” — Rolly Crump (Rolly Crump, It’s Kind of a Cute Story (2012) p 39.)
“And above everything, always give them full value for their money. If a boat ride is supposed to last 12 minutes and they only get 11 minutes and 30 seconds, they’ve a right to feel cheated. Thirty seconds shy, and they hate us for selling them short. Thirty seconds extra, and they feel they’ve gotten away with something. That’s the way we want them to feel. Contented., even smug.” — Walt Disney (Leonard Mosley, Disney’s World: A Biography (1990) p 224.)
Prior to the last twenty-five years, if you paid for a tour of Disneyland, it gave you no special privileges as far as waiting in line. Celebrities, with very few exceptions, paid the entrance fee just like every other guest and if there wasn’t a safety or security issue, they waited in line with you.
The idea of paying an extra fee just to get a status elevated beyond those who can not is an egregious betrayal of Disneyland’s core values as laid out by Walt.
Things Walt Disney Never Said a Damn Thing About Hating
So that’s a rundown of a few things that we can directly associate to statements by Walt Disney or people close to him and we can assume he would’ve been against them. Because, well, because he said so.
Now let’s look at this from the other side. What kind of values get stuck onto Walt that he never, as far as we know, mentioned?
Did Walt ever say anything negative about…
LGBTQIA+ people?
Teaching about slavery in schools? (In fact his almost obsessive love of Abraham Lincoln suggests exactly the opposite.)
A preclusion of all adult entertainment?
Did Walt say that his edict about Disneyland constantly being in a state of change meant everything except for…
Women slaves?
Headhunters?
Br’er Rabbit?
Now look, I’m not naive. If 123-year-old Walt were still around, would he embrace drag queens? Probably not; it would be confusing for him. But let’s consider a Walt Disney who was just coming into his own right now, in modern times: Walt who spent his time in Hollywood; Walt who was a registered Republican but married to a registered Democrat; Walt whose legendary key Imagineer, Bob Gurr, was gay; Walt who won “Man of the Year” from the Beverly Hills chapter of B’nai B’rith Jewish anti-defamation league; Walt who never set foot inside a house of organized religion after his childhood; Walt who laughed when he discovered the comical marijuana posters that Rolly Crump had been drawing to sell on the side. We can keep piling this stuff on for a long time.
Sure, Walt also was deeply anti-labor and testified to HUAC, which is a dark stain on the man’s reputation, but the point here is not that Walt Disney was some liberal icon, but that he was complex and that people’s attempts to simplify him and crush him into their ideology diminish the man.
Walt hated to be told what to do, by anyone, and to the likes of you and me, he certainly would not comply.
“You know how I am, boys … if someone tries to tell me to do something, I will do just the opposite, and if necessary I will close down this studio.” — Walt Disney (Neal Gabler, Walt Disney — The Triumph of the American Imagination (2006) p 357.)
The point of all this is not to suggest that Walt Disney’s likes and dislikes are some sort of scale by which all quality must be determined — I happen to like EPCOT, for example — but, instead, it is here to try and dissuade people from weaponizing a man who, like all of us, should be allowed his contradictions and complexities. Walt Disney was inspiring in many ways, but he was not a saint and, especially, he was not your saint. The continuous mythologizing of him is not helpful to his legacy, or our nation’s polarization.
Cut it out.
Abigail’s Army is a progressive Disney fan group. We can be reached at our website:
Or on Medium:
Or over on Facebook in the Abigail’s Army progressive Disney fans group.
Or on Mastodon at @AbigailsArmy@mastodon.social.
Or on Threads at https://www.threads.net/@abigailsarmymajor
