Disney Must Scratch My Itch Or Else, He Huffed At The Keyboard

Photo by Blurz, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

One can do little but shake their head sometimes when reading certain things. In this case, an op-ed about Disney becoming too “woke” which contains such insight as “Immersion should not be sacrificed on the altar of political correctness and appeasing the Twitter mob.” Such is the language deployed by the author to get changes of which he does not approved sacrificed on the altar of his own invested fandom, capped with the usual “people like me feel more and more excluded by Disney’s decisions.”

With all due respect to to the op-ed writer (I know nothing of the man, and will keep all comments exclusively to this article and not he himself), what is headlined and search engine optimized as a rant against the nebulous buzzword of “wokeness” is really just an excise in coalitional fandom mixed with some base level self-importance into a potent All About Me potable. This isn’t social commentary; it’s fandom with a byline.

A normal person might engage in conversations about liking or disliking something; the fan who has become fully immersed, however, goes to a different place. They are invested. They have sacrificed. They have emotions and memories and expectations involved. They don’t just like the object of their fandom; they think they are now a part of it. Fandom of this type can be for sports teams, music acts, movie stars, just about anything one can obsess over and spend time and money on. Increasingly, where politics end and fandom of politics starts is a line that you need a decoder ring and a black light to find. Our friend the op-ed writer has set up shop in this very environment.

We know this because he tells us so:

My family and I have been loyal Disney customers for decades. We vacation at Disney World every year. We take a Disney cruise every year or two. Consequently, we spend way too much money in Orlando.

Investment. Sacrifice both of time and finances. Emotions. Memories. My word, what a burden it is to be a fan. Oh, and here comes the expectations:

Unfortunately, I am strongly rethinking our commitment to Disney and, thus, Orlando. The more Disney moves away from the values and vision of Walt Disney, the less Disney World means to me. Disney is forgetting that guest immersion is at the core of its business model. When I stand in Galaxy’s Edge or Fantasyland, I know I am in a theme park but through immersion and my willingness to set the real world aside, something magical happens.

That spell is broken when the immersive experience is shattered by the real world. And boy, has Disney been breaking the immersion.

You’d think someone spending so much time and money on his fandom of Disney he could just adjust his all-powerful “willingness” setting to be a smidge more tolerant of change but apparently not. And what grievous form did this plague of wokeness take to assault the sensibilities of this Disney super fan?

Recently, Disney announced that cast members are now permitted to display tattoos, wear inclusive uniforms and display inclusive haircuts. Disney did all of this in the name of allowing cast members to express themselves.

The problem is, I’m not traveling across the country and paying thousands of dollars to watch someone I do not know express themselves. I am there for the immersion and the fantasy, not the reality of a stranger’s self-expression. I do not begrudge these people their individuality and I wish them well in their personal lives, but I do not get to express my individuality at my place of business.

What’s next, is Disney going to end the rule barring on stage cellphone use by cast members as an infringement on self-expression.

My dude…did you read that paragraph back to yourself? Preferably out loud? “I am there for the immersion and the fantasy, not the reality of a stranger’s self-expression” has got to be one of the least self-aware lines put into print lately. Your fandom has you paying, by your ranting admission, thousands of dollars and travelling across the country so one of the largest entertainment companies in the world can milk your hard earned dollars from you via your “immersion and fantasy” but where you draw the line is minor changes that would be barely noticed by most functioning adults. Your immersion and fantasy apparently also extends to lewd acts, since the strawman that you humped half to death to conclude your thought there certainly was cringy to watch.

Of course, just othering some cast members at the House of Mouse won’t get you an op-ed, so our intrepid defender of all things him broadens his scope to include the hot nomenclature of the day: Wokeism.

More broadly, like many corporations, Disney has been politicizing its business. Full disclosure: I am a Christian and a conservative Republican, so the people who run Disney and I do not see eye to eye.

Glad we cleared up priors and affiliations there. Having opened up with a rant othering those people trying to eek out a living providing a service to you because of their tattoos and haircuts totally didn’t give any indication. At all. Total shock there. But he isn’t worried about how those folks look because he is a Christian, or a conservative Republican. No, his “full disclosure” is meant to proudly plant his credentials flag, and then let you blame what comes next on those labels, not on him being Judgey McJudger on his fellow but different members of mankind.

Disney is not righteous at all, and deserve scorn and criticism for a great many things. You want to go crusading on how the House of Mouse has been morally bankrupt in their dealings with China while that country continues to ethnically cleanse millions, then lets go and crack some mouse-eared heads over it with righteous indignation.

But all that pales in comparison to fandom’s demand that the Pirates of the Caribbean never change a character, or Jungle Cruise not “taking the woke scalpel” to Trader Sam, or…you know what, it’s pointless to list it cause Jackass McGee here gives the whole game away himself:

Whether Disney caved to political pressure or really thought the alterations were necessary is irrelevant.

Of course, because it’s all about the author and his fandom. His immersion and fantasy into Disney, which he has poured years, time, and thousands of dollars into while convincing himself that entitles him to Disney seeing him as anything other than a stat on the daily income metrics. But he slaps “wokeness” as the reason because then he can get some editor, who is probably laughing themselves goofy at the huge numbers the piece will do at the author’s expense, to run it with all the right key words for it to trend. Because after all, this is about immersion and fantasy for him. That’s the life of a devoted, die-hard, coalitional fandom who needs Disney far more than Disney needs him. Right down to deluding himself into think there are more folks like him than there are.

Know how we know that? If there were, Disney would be catering to them.

“Disney World is going to lose us as customers if it continues down this path,” the author delcares.

I call BS. You care too much. You are too invested. You have more than just your time, money, and memories wrapped up in Disney; you’ve made it so much a part of your identity you think they have to adjust to you. And from all available evidence you have way too much pride to every really walk away from Disney, since that would be the ultimate surrender of your fragile, pliable ego. You’d miss Disney, and Disney wouldn’t miss you at all. That you won’t do, that realization you can not handle, because you clearly do not know how to adult without your immersion and fantasy that your opinion matters outside your own head.

You are a fan. No amount of wokeness is going to change it. You can be angry about it. You can rage about it in an op-ed that is going to get you mocked forever more now that it’s out. But you better accept it.

After all, “When we do fantasy, we must not lose sight of reality.”

So said Walt Disney.