Commentary: Disney Has It All

by Elyse Apel

 

Gone are the days when parents could turn on the Disney Channel or a Disney movie and walk away. A new 50-minute documentary called Walt’s Disenchanted Kingdom exposes the radical agenda pushed by Disney to indoctrinate America’s children.

“Once upon a time, if it was a Disney movie, you knew it was going to be safe for children,” Media Research Center founder and President L. Brent Bozell III states at the beginning of this revealing documentary.

Produced by the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, a group that monitors cultural issues, the documentary features prominent figures like Dr. Ben Carson, former U.S. secretary of housing and urban development; Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council; and others.

“Our culture is in crisis, and what is driving much of it is a callous disregard for the innocence of children,” the Catholic League said in a statement upon the movie’s release. “Too many activists, celebrities and educators are bent on indoctrinating young boys and girls with some very sick ideas. Regrettably, Disney is one of the most guilty players.”

The documentary, which premiered on Jan. 23, chronicles Disney’s transition from being a family network to focusing on activism and crusading its woke agenda.

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“Its forays into social and sexual engineering must be enough to make Walt Disney turn over in his grave,” the Catholic League statement continued.

Political commentator Mercedes Schlapp says in the documentary that Disney is “where children’s TV shows, movies, and characters are served with a side of sexuality and gender ideology. It’s a place that puts a political agenda on a pedestal and renders parents powerless.”

Walt’s Disenchanted Kingdom explains how the largest asset-management companies have pressured Disney into becoming a cultural leader that isn’t just anti-parent but is also anti-family. “They see the nuclear family as a threat to them,” said Bozell.

This cultural evolution is all done under the guise of “inclusion.” Various current and former Disney employees are highlighted throughout the documentary in speaking out against the changing environment at Disney. They explain that this move toward inclusion has led to the exclusion of Christian and conservative points of view. Nonconformists are tossed out of Disney, all while the company claims that it is becoming more inclusive and diverse.

Over the past few years, Disney has not been overt in expressing its woke goals. But Latoya Raveneau, producer and writer of children’s cartoons and programming for Disney, said last year that “our leadership over there has been so welcoming to my not-at-all-secret gay agenda.”

There is hypocrisy in Disney’s wokeness, though. In an attempt to crack the Chinese market, Disney appeases Chinese censors by cutting many of the controversial scenes that they have no problem broadcasting to the American public and American children.

“Disney repeatedly critiques alleged injustice here in the United States, without saying a peep about actual human rights atrocities abroad. To the contrary, actually lying prostrate in front of their Chinese overlords,” said Vivek Ramaswamy, author of Woke, Inc.: Inside Corporate America’s Social Justice Scam.

Disney has also removed audience favorites like DumboPeter PanThe Aristocats, and Swiss Family Robinson from Disney+, its streaming platform, for being “offensive.”

But Disney hasn’t been unaffected by its move to the left. According to a survey released by Statista, Disney Channel had almost 2 million average viewers in the United States in 2014. Since then, viewership has declined dramatically, bottoming out in 2021 with an average of just 233,000 viewers that year.

This decline likely won’t stop anytime soon. From just March 2021 to May 2022, the approval rating for Disney dropped from 77 percent to 33 percent as headlines filled the news with reports about the company’s radical positions.

Over that same time, Disney’s poster-child movies with prominent LGBTQ scenes or characters, like Lightyear and Strange World, bombed at the box office, demonstrating that America does not want Disney’s woke agenda.

Yet, it doesn’t seem that Disney has gotten the message. It continues to promote and normalize LGBTQ sexuality and gender dysphoria. In August, it even released a streaming show called Little Demon about a teenage girl who is the Antichrist and a child of Satan.

All of this and more is discussed in this must-watch documentary. Just days after its premiere, Walt’s Disenchanted Kingdom was restricted on YouTube.

“We did our movie … largely because we wanted to alert the public to Disney films that are inappropriate for children, and for the company’s decision to subvert parental rights. Perversely, YouTube slapped an age restriction on our movie, saying, ‘[I]t may not be appropriate for viewers under 18,’” Catholic League president Bill Donohue said.

YouTube refused an appeal by the Catholic League to remove this restriction.

Walt’s Disenchanted Kingdom is available for rent on Amazon Prime Video for $1.99 or can be watched for free on the Catholic League website or YouTube channel.

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Elyse Apel is the Social Media Coordinator for The American Spectator. She is a rising junior at Hillsdale College who is majoring in politics and minoring in journalism and classics. In her free time, she freelances for local newspapers, travels with her husband, and enjoys taking long walks exploring Hillsdale.
Photo “Walt Disney World Magic Kingdom” by Wally Gobetz CC2.0-ND-NC

 

 

 

 


Appeared at and reprinted from The American Spectator

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