Monday Morning Music Ministry

4-4-22

In one of my former lives – not that I believe in reincarnation; I mean I have had several and varied careers – I was a writer of Walt Disney comics. Numerous treatments and scripts for Mickey, Donald, Uncle Scrooge, and the rest of the gang.

When I was hired, I was given a “story bible” – note the small-b – which instructed artists and writers how to handle the characters. My essential requirement was to “write like Carl Barks and Floyd Gottfredson.” These were the men most responsible for the Donald and Mickey, respectively, we knew from comic books and strips. These men were heroes; as a fan and scholar I already knew them personally; and of course it was a dream assignment. (Carl had even created the Uncle Scrooge character.)

I have copped a few awards and plaques through the years, and they are on my office wall, but they are arranged around my framed membership certificate from the Mickey Mouse Club, 1955. Dearer to me. “Ricky Marshall,” printed in red, around which those trivialities orbit.

I was, in childhood years and in grownup-childhood years, Mickey’s pal. Uncle Walt’s pal, really; of course I went to the theme parks and collected toys and went to the Disney movies. To kids in America for almost a century now, Mickey has been part of our DNA, in our blood.

Suddenly we are diagnosed with a blood infection, however.

The dissolution of the Magic Kingdom’s magic, the betrayal of Uncle Walt’s vision and ethos, have not been precipitous, but recently have accelerated with a vengeance. At the parks and in cartoons and movies, the words “Ladies” and “Gentlemen” and “Boys” and Girls” literally will be proscribed. A Princess is an endangered species because girls who might not dream of being princesses must not be offended nor have such awful visions planted in their hearts.

Mickey and Tinkerbell have been dethroned as Disney spokespeople; “Goofy” would be more appropriate; I hereby nominate him. Or Cruella.

Today, I would refuse to work for the transformed Disney, this counterfeit colossus. I knew a delightful lady, Virginia Davis, who as a little girl was a neighbor of the unknown Walter Disney in Kansas City. When the ambitious cartoonist dreamed up a concept of a live-action girl in an animated world, which became the silent cartoon series Alice in Cartoonland, Ginni played the role. And when the series became a success, Disney moved to Hollywood to produce more, and the Davis family followed. Decades later, when I invited her, out of retirement in Boise, Idaho, to comics conventions here and in Europe, she recalled uncountable stories of Walt… who, several years after Alice, created Mickey Mouse!

Ginni Davis remained friends with Walt’s widow Lillian. Even 25 years ago, I was told, Lillian was very unhappy with what the Disney “brand” had become; and she thought Walt would not have recognized, or liked, it either. And that was before the studio’s PC-pledges, this week, to sanitize its vocabulary and to make a corporate commitment (as per the Disney website) to design half of the studio’s characters to “come from underrepresented groups.”

Disney’s President of General Entertainment Content Karey Burke confirmed the policy. Despite her title, she claimed in a Zoom call to employees that she was shocked to realize that there were only a “handful” of “queer” lead characters in Disney productions. Odd, since she proudly said that she has two “queer” children herself. Technically, one “gay” and one “pansexual,” a category whose meaning eludes me (as do a couple of the letters in “LGBTQIA+”).

The spark that ignited this latest bit of lunacy was the Florida legislature’s law to prohibit the discussion of topics like transgenderism – including counseling and invitations to role-play – to students from kindergarten to second grade. The governor signed the bill; the growing “woke” elements of the nation’s “virtuous” elites erupted in protest; and Walt Disney World in Orlando – the sprawling megalopolis that enjoys tax and regulatory privileges from the state – went public with its dissent, and initiated political threats.

“Underrepresented,” for those of you who have not been following the map, navigating this new Fantasyland, does not mean creating characters with disabilities, or are Amish or Orthodox or Pentecostal, or albinos, or kids with developmental challenges, or birth defects, or cerebral palsy or Down Syndrome. No conjoined twins, sightless, nor (literal) dwarfs. No, the vast Disney “universe” will be populated 50 per cent by characters representing the minuscule portion of the population with rare sexual attributes like gender dysphagia. Pandering, that is, to a different audience in a particular demographic pool.

Disney’s declaration of war on traditional culture and America’s spiritual and social heritage is a pop-culture version of Russia’s brutal visit to Ukraine. American childhood is the innocent, unsuspecting landscape. This not only represents a serious matter; it is a serious matter.

Speaking of wars, they can be lost, or won. Any of us can go broke or lose a job, but we get a new job, we recover. Couples split up, and get back together… or don’t, but we find new loves eventually. Friends move away; we make new friends. Someone might betray us, and it hurts; but time heals the wound, or we forgive; usually we forget. In awful situations, we get sick, and recover, or cope. Wounded soldiers manage and, increasingly, are supported by those who love and appreciate them. Pets die; we get new pets. Life is a wheel.

But there is one thing that cannot be restored, or repaired, and certainly not redeemed when violated or lost. That is the innocence of a child.

“Kids grow up too fast,” we often hear, and that seems true, but I address more than that. As life has become too loud, too rude, too new, too strange, and, yes, too fast for adults… it surely has for children. Do technology and new media rob children of imagination… or maybe encourage imagination? I suspect it will take generations for that judgment.

But I am not inviting us to think about imagination. I am talking about innocence.

Aspects of sex and sexuality ought to be the domain of parents within the family setting. Similarly, matters of morality. Values. Standards. But teachers, teachers’ unions, liberal politicians and judges, the “entertainment” industry, and the talking animals and prancing fairies at Disney theme parks – they mostly agree that parents are the last people who should inculcate knowledge and wisdom to their children.

Maybe, next, they will propose that parents can be the responsible parties for reading, writing, and arithmetic, since those disciplines are no longer the priorities of schools.

Train children in the way they should grow, and when they are old they will not turn from it (Proverbs 22:6).

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