It is infallible. With each major Disney release in theaters and streaming, product judgments emerge in discussion groups and social networks based on concepts produced by the cultural struggle between conservatives and progressives. In recent years, the version that the company has adhered to the ideological agenda of the American left, and that this affects its contents, has gained popularity, leading the more politically engaged audience to always favor this lens when analyzing a new animation or series. There are verifiable and admitted truths in this theory, but also exaggerations. Much of what circulates, especially with regard to the company’s intention with a given work, is nothing more than a personal reading of the person who analyzes it. Legitimate, but subjective and not always well-founded.
This is one of the largest entertainment companies in the world, valued at approximately US$ 11 billion and with about thousand employees spread across the globe, the Walt Disney Company is a giant that generates a lot of profit, not only with the box office of its films, but mainly with what is sold from them: toys, clothes, school supplies, tickets for theme parks and a multitude of other derivatives.
This basic reminder about the nature of the organization sounds unnecessary to some, but it cannot be ignored in an analysis that intends to be judicious about the company’s real interest in promote some kind of indoctrination of their consumers. Obviously, its leaders are endowed with ideological, philosophical and political preferences that inevitably affect their decisions, but in the case of a multinational whose financial results matter to many around the world, the profit factor cannot be ignored in the equation. That said, it is convenient to start from what the multinational says about itself, through its spokespersons and documents.
Diversity, equality and inclusion
Disney exhibits onits institutional websiteand in several initiatives its support for the promotion of diversity, equity and inclusion, concepts adopted in a very broad format. For the company, they involve, for example, more consensual issues, such as the inclusion of people with disabilities, respect for the cultures of other countries and the fight against racial discrimination, while at the same time entering into thorny issues, such as extreme versions of the fight against “white privilege” and others that are especially controversial for a company that deals with children, such as promoting gender identity and campaigns against transphobia. In the case of ethnicity, the company publishes a “diversity table”, with the ethnic percentage of its total employees, including managers and executives.
There is also something unusual for Latin American standards, like the fact that they put support for military veterans in that same category. In fact, on the page dedicated to diversity, equality and inclusion actions within its institutional website, the funding of entities supporting “war heroes”, a category dear to North American conservatives, is exposed along with the photo that shows the employees of Disney at a gay parade, which apparently tries to emphasize how comprehensive the concept of diversity they work with is.
One of the most recent and relevant examples of how Disney embraced the defense of this concept , at least as a corporate and marketing policy, was the launch of the program Reimagine Tomorrow (Reimagine o Amanhã, in Portuguese), in September 2021. According to Disney itself, the goal is to “amplify underrepresented voices and untold stories.”
In an interview with the company’s institutional website to celebrate the launch of the program, the senior vice president and chief from Disney’s Diversity division,LatondraNewton, said: “Through phenomenal business growth and concerted efforts to reflect the world we live in, we are a different company than we were h
The declaration and the program launch itselfwas seen by many as a nod to progressive US elites, who were critical of the company’s supposedly conservative past and who often accused the company of “resisting” their agendas.
Prior to launch, Christopher Rufo, City editor Journal, even published an article entitled “Disney, the most progressive place on earth”, in which it exposes what would be the content of internal company documents, aimed at employees and related toReimagine Tomorrow. In one of the excerpts exposed by Rufo, the text says that the United States “has a tradition of transphobia and systemic racism” and that white employees need to “work on their feelings of guilt and shame to understand what is behind them and what needs to be done”. be solved.”
The company’s support for the organization of events dedicated to the LGBT public is also known and has recently migrated from merely financial support to specific groups to the status of host. In 2018, Disney promoted the first gay parade inside one of its theme parks. It was in the Paris complex, in Europe, under the title ofDisneyland Paris Pride. The pandemic prevented the same from being repeated in the years of 2021 and , but the edition of 2022 has already been confirmed for the day 11 of June. In May 2021, the company also launched a line of products aimed at “LGBTQ+ pride”, including clothing with prints of its children’s characters in the colors of the gay flag.
Between western progressivism and Chinese money
As stated above, based only on the company’s corporate policy seems to have enough evidence about the majority worldview in the company and its tendency – or even militancy – to be progressive. However, between this fact and the conclusion that his films promote the same progressivism as the primers for employees, there are variables and evidence that do not make the answer as obvious as it seems.
