Tempests in Teapots — The Desperation for Controversy in Disney Theme Parks
Correlation is not causation. Say it again, with me.
In 2021 journalists for the popular Bay Area news site SFGate reviewed the newly revamped Snow White ride at Disneyland, now called Snow White’s Enchanted Wish.
They generally praised the ride updates while grousing a bit about the loss of the “scary” in an attraction that was formerly called Snow White’s Scary Adventures. (Abigail feels much the same way about this ride.) Towards the end of the article they dropped a brief bit that, we are sure, they knew would get them some attention.
“The new ride includes a more comprehensive storyline — but that’s also the problem. The new grand finale of Snow White’s Enchanted Wish is the moment when the Prince finds Snow White asleep under the Evil Queen’s spell and gives her “true love’s kiss” to release her from the enchantment. A kiss he gives to her without her consent, while she’s asleep, which cannot possibly be true love if only one person knows it’s happening.
Haven’t we already agreed that consent in early Disney movies is a major issue? That teaching kids that kissing, when it hasn’t been established if both parties are willing to engage, is not OK? It’s hard to understand why the Disneyland of 2021 would choose to add a scene with such old fashioned ideas of what a man is allowed to do to a woman, especially given the company’s current emphasis on removing problematic scenes from rides like Jungle Cruise and Splash Mountain. Why not re-imagine an ending in keeping with the spirit of the movie and Snow White’s place in the Disney canon, but that avoids this problem?” — Julie Tremaine, Katie Dowd in SFGate.com
While we at AA headquarters are all for discussions of consent and, particularly, for using stories to spawn those discussions, this was a little artless and, as sure as Winter follows Autumn, conservative news outlets and commentors on conservative social media went crazy.
“Snow White’s Enchanted Wish Faces Backlash” — MickeyBlog.com
“Cancel Culture Targets Snow White at Disneyland” — Fox News
“We are so screwed. I don’t know where these jackaloons come up with this stuff.” — Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) on the SFGate article.
“It’s this sort of bullshit that irritates the hell out of me. No one is complaining about this. If you are, you need to re-evaluate what’s important.” — Twitter
“Sexual predators have not been influenced by Snow White.” — Emiliana Silvestri, Good Morning Britain
It was everywhere for weeks. Seven sentences (all of them a little Dopey) in a much longer review that was generally positive about the ride caused a vehement internet conflagration, not just of Disney fans, but political pundits who wanted to score points with constituents, peers and, most importantly, financial backers.
A review that ends with the rarely quoted line:
“Still, with the twinkling lights all around and the gorgeous special effects, that final scene is beautifully executed — as long as you’re watching it as a fairy tale, not a life lesson.” — Julie Tremaine, Katie Dowd in SFGate.com
Modern media is no stranger to taking things out of context, but the context here is that THEY LIKED THE RIDE! Was the consent comment a little silly? Probably. There’s a useful discussion to be had, but it does feel deliberately and unhelpfully inflammatory given the alternative of Snow White spending the rest of her life in a coma. But no one- at least no one that the AA research department has discovered — who have been critical of the SFGate reporting, have said anything positive about the new Snow White attraction. The criticism of the criticism ignored the fact that it was a positive review of the thing it was reviewing. (That was fun to write.) The need to whip up a dust storm of anger outweighed reading what the piece actually said, which was, that Snow White’s Enchanted Wish is “magical.”
This next story has a few different starting points. Alternately, a couple and their child went to a meet-n-greet at Walt Disney World’s Magic Kingdom hoping to have their child’s picture taken with Tinker Bell and were told that Tink’s appearance at that spot had been cancelled; or it started with a report from one of the most inaccurate and clickbait-y Disney news sites (I won’t link it, suffice to say that if you are about to click on a Disney link that starts with the words “insidethe…,” don’t!) that bore the headline, “Disney Park Takes Action: Tinker Bell Indefinitely Suspended Following Controversial Incident.”
Some reporting by several other websites tried, desperately, to connect the event to a two-year-old New York Times article about Disney’s political struggle with the state of Florida and which featured information about their Stories Matter group: an internal organization that works to promote wider diversity in the stories the company tells as well as to review older stories that might need disclaimers given modern sensibilities.
In that article a Stories Matter representative mentioned, as an example of the kind of thing that they might potentially review, Tinker Bell in the context of maybe having unrealistic body issues — she looks at herself in a mirror and doesn’t like what she sees, for example.
Then someone posted this seeming bombshell and The Street ran with it:
At that point, the internet was off to the races.
“Disney Removed ‘Problematic’ Tinker Bell From Meet And Greets: What’s Next” — Times Now Digital
“Tinkerbell is cancelled now… Woke destroys everything. No wonder mental health is declining.” — Twitter“Disney World has quietly axed one of its classic characters from doing meet-and-greets at the park, which is a move that comes after the character was flagged internally for its controversial portrayal in films.” — The Street
“In yet another woke Disney disaster, fan favorite character Tinkerbell has been cut from meet and greets at the park.” — Fox News Radio
“When you teach them (children) that Tinker Bell cannot be allowed in public view because Tinker Bell is some sort of exploitative vision of women, well, you’re creating a society of victims.” — Ben Shapiro
Most troubling were the sheer volume of news sites that, without saying what they wanted the reader to believe directly, simply put “Tinker Bell removed from Meet-N-Greet” next to something about the Stories Matter review, hoping that readers will draw their own, preferably furious, conclusions.
So let’s unpack what actually happened.
Stories Matter is a valuable group who consult with a lot of outside organizations (African American Film Critics Association, GLAAD Media Institute, and the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media, etc…) to make sure that diverse groups of people are heard. They do not remove content — movies like Song of the South were pulled at a much higher level than that of this group — they try to provide context and a path forward. To quote thier site:
“As part of our ongoing commitment to diversity and inclusion, we are in the process of reviewing our library and adding advisories to content that includes negative depictions or mistreatment of people or cultures. Rather than removing this content, we see an opportunity to spark conversation and open dialogue on history that affects us all.”
Their job is to review things like Tinker Bell’s body issues and decide if a warning needs to be slapped onto copies of Peter Pan. There is no indication whatsoever that a Stories Matter investigation of Tinker Bell produced any action at all.
So then, why was Tink removed from the meet-n-greet, you may ask?
Good question. And the answer is, she wasn’t.
When we trace the story back a little further, the origin seems to be from the, generally solid, Walt Disney World News Today site. They were actually poking a bit of fun at Disney World by pointing out that “Signs for a Tinker Bell meet and greet have been removed from Town Square Theater, years after the character stopped meeting guests there.”
In other words, Tink had been missing from that spot for a VERY long time; since the park had closed for the COVID pandemic, in fact — almost a year before the New York Times article had been written.
She does have meet-n-greets at the California parks, and appears in several shows and attractions; so if they were trying to cancel her, they have done a pretty bad job.
So what about that post by the Disney Rep? That’s pretty damning, right?
It would be if it were actually posted by anyone at Disney. A good rule of thumb is that if the name of the character is spelled wrong, especially a character as prominent as Tinker Bell (which the “rep” spelled as “Tinkerbell”), it’s probably not actually a post from someone at Disney. Disney claimed that no one at their company ever said it. There is no record of any official statement to this effect coming from them. No one can point, even, to who the supposed “rep” said it to.
It’s fabricated by someone who thinks that they’re clever.
So let’s review… Not only was the removal of Tinker Bell from the parks unrelated to anything that Stories Matter or The Walt Disney Company had decided, but she wasn’t even removed from the parks!
But boy did people get mad about it.
We at Abigail’s Army headquarters are strong union supporters. We hope that those of you enjoying holidays and weekends are too, because labor unions are why you get to enjoy those things. So we were particularly happy to hear that the costumed performers at Disneyland recently voted to unionize under Actors’ Equity Association. These are the people that do the gruelling job of putting on the Mickey Mouse and Winnie the Pooh costumes, in the often extrodinary heat, and allowing our kids to manipulate their bodies. The main issues that served as complaints to spur the unionization effort were centered around health care and injury treatment.
Suspiciously, after the pro-unionization vote, Disneyland cancelled two live shows in rapid succession: Club Pixar and Doctor Strange: Mysteries of the Mystic Arts, both at Disney California Adventure. Well, people certainly knew how to put two and two together and make it five.
“This closure (Dr. Strange) comes on the heels of Club Pixar’s early closure and the recent unionization of Disneyland Entertainment.” — LaughingPlace.com
“No specific reason was given for the closure, but this is the second entertainment offering to be cut in the wake of entertainment Cast Members unionizing at the resort, following the elimination of performers at Club Pixar.” — WDWNT.com
“The sudden end of the Doctor Strange show, combined with the removal of the DJ and dancers from the Club Pixar show — a limited-time offering that was part of Pixar Fest — has led some to theorize that the closures are linked to the fact that Disneyland character performers voted to unionize in May, joining their Florida counterparts, who had long been represented by a union.” — AllEars.com
Even someone we deeply respect and who has worked at Disneyland had fallen for this one:
Oh Jenny, you break our hearts! (Seriously, you’re the greatest. Have your people call Abigail’s people and we’ll set something up.)
We are tempted to have a discussion about which ideology these particular takes are part of. Anti-Union? Maybe. Pro-Union and anti-Disney? Maybe. But Abigail stepped in while we were collating her notes and told us that it was a dungeon quest which would surely be fraught with peril and that the likelihood of being eaten by a gelatinous cube along the way suggests that we save that particular line of discourse for another day.
Suffice to say the internet picked up on these news… inferences? And they were mad about it. (Just assume a *sic* all over the place on these.)
“Man, Disney and Unions are like water and oil, the hate is od real and its from Disney more often.” — Twitter
“Thanks entertainment for unionize great we’re losing everything now” — Twitter
“Just employees getting what they’ve asked for.” — Twitter
“I’m the opposite I go Disney is punishing these people for unionizing terrible.” — Facebook
““Amid cast member unionization” is incorrect. Perhaps “amid retaliation against cast member unionization” is what you were looking for?” — Facebook
“they did the same thing to the puppeteers there at Disney Junior. When they unionized they closed the show and rewrote it to not include them.” Facebook
“It’s interesting that as soon as the Entertainment Cast Members unionize, they announce the end of some major live entertainment offerings. WhAt A cOiNcIdEnCe!” — Threads
Very upset, borderline coherent, people making themselves heard!
So here’s the problem with that narrative. First, Disney themselves said that the Club Pixar show was cancelled due to “evaluating guest feedback.” The show was terrible. People were expecting another Mad Tea Party-style event more geared for adults like what had been in that space before. Instead they got a hokey and unengaging kid dance-a-long show.
Second, these were not the first unexpected removals of entertainment at the Disneyland Resort, the last bastion of music at The Golden Horseshoe in Disneyland, the piano players, were cancelled a few months ago — long before the Union vote. This leads us to suspect that Disney is just making cuts to live entertainment in general.
Finally, and this is a good one, THE DOCTOR STRANGE SHOW PERFORMERS WERE ALREADY IN A UNION! Yep, nothing at all changed for this particular show as any backstage crew would’ve been in IATSE and any on-stage performers in the American Guild of Variety Artists which — wait for it — has represented all stage performers at Disneyland for years. Which means… yes, the Club Pixar performers would’ve been unionized already as well!
In fact, we found a piece in the Orange County Register about Disney looking for “union actors to perform in Marvel superhero live action shows” and which later mentions Doctor Strange by name.
Also, in case we didn’t mention it, that Doctor Strange show was also awful.
=======================================
So there you are, straight from Abigail’s blood-soaked yellow writing pad, three examples of dust devils being whipped up into tornadoes when people start trying to find Disneyland controversy where very little exists.
Let’s take the Abigail’s Army Media Sanitization Pledge, shall we?
We will always consider the source.
We will always consider the site.
Correlation is not causation.
Bigots suck.
Goodnight from Abigail, friends.
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
