Boycotting the Disney kingdom


By Allan R. Andrews, Editor,
Pacific Stars and Stripes, Tokyo, Japan.

First published July 20, 1997


I spent a day at Disneyland and didn't spot a single Southern Baptist boycotting the property.

Of course, my visit was to Tokyo Disneyland, and although there are an estimated 175 Southern Baptist missionaries in Japan, he nation is only one percent Christian so the chance of a Southern Baptist being at the park -- even without a boycott resolution -- is minuscule.

Nevertheless, according to Southern Baptists meeting in Dallas last month, the hundred or so dollars I spent entertaining my family constitutes a donation to anti-family decadence.

For those who haven't followed what one wag characterized as ``the Southern Baptists setting a mouse trap,'' delegates attending the Southern Baptists' convention in Dallas approved a resolution calling for a denominational boycott of Disney parks and of Disney stores.

During the week after the June vote, eye-witnesses in Orlando, Florida, home of DisneyWorld, reported signs outside the theme park that read, ``The new Disney makes us long for the old Disney,'' while reporters inside the park talked to Southern Baptists who disregarded the boycott because they'd already purchased tickets prior to the vote.

Two things should be kept in mind about this face-off between the owners of the Anaheim Mighty Ducks and America's largest Protestant denomination: First, the resolution passed in Dallas is non-binding; it merely urges members to restrain contributing to Disney's pocketbooks.

Second, Southern Baptist churches, unlike churches such as the Roman Catholic Church, generally act as independent units -- over 40,000 of them representing about 15 million church members -- rather than as a monolithic body. Most Baptists are more faithful in doctrine and behavior to their local church and pastor than to the wider national body.

Despite that independence, there's a likelihood most members sympathize with the boycott because it's aimed at Disney's willingness to extend health benefits to same-sex partners of its employees.

To add to the heat of the complaint, several weeks before the Dallas convention Ellen DeGeneres, star of the popular TV show, ``Ellen,'' publicly declared herself as well as her TV character to be lesbian. ``Ellen'' is a mainstay of the ABC entertainment network -- owned by Disney.

An irony of the Southern Baptist resolution is that it berates Disney's magic kingdom for extending its generous health benefits, something critics of the boycott say can hardly be deemed anti-family.

The Disney Corporation issued its own statement in the wake of the boycott resolution: ``We are proud that the Disney brand creates more family entertainment of every kind than anyone else in the world,'' the statement said. ``We plan to continue our leadership role and, in fact, we will increase production of family entertainment.''

It's possible the Southern Baptists have fired at the wrong detail in going after anti-family sentiments at Disney, Inc. The old Disney provides some potential anti-family tendencies of its own.

For one thing, observers point out that several Disney products, its animated films in particular, often lack families: Cinderella and Snow White come from broken homes, apparently. There is no queen in ``The Little Mermaid,'' no mother to Bess in ``Beauty and the Beast,'' no family for either Esmeralda or Quasimoto in ``The Hunchback of Notre Dame,'' no father for ``Dumbo.'' One argument suggests Disney sells romance rather than family values.

Similarly, some have noted a dark theme running through several Disney features. Bambi's mother is slain, as is Simba's father in ``The Lion King.''
The evil spirits that haunt the landscape in ``Fantasia'' during the playing of Mussorgsky's ``Night on Bald Mountain,'' represent another dark theme from Disney.

In addition, many women have taken offense at Disney's depiction of females. The buxom sensuality of Disney's ``Pocahontas,'' for example, belies the truth of a humble, teen-age Indian maiden.

Perhaps the most grievous of Disney's corporate evils, however, has nothing to do with the values it promotes in movies and TV.

Some believe the corporation exploits foreign labor while it pays its CEO, Michael Eisner, an astonishing $50 million-plus a year.

Fred Clark, managing editor of PRISM magazine, a social activist periodical published in Pennsylvania, has noted that a subsistence income in Haiti is 58 cents per day.

Yet, at several factories in that island nation that turn out clothing to be sold at Walt Disney Company outlets around the globe, workers are paid a paltry 22 cents per day, Clark claims.

Haitian workers are paid 7 cents to produce Disney T-shirts that sell for $10.97 at Wal-Mart, Clark notes. He calls the disparity between the corporate profit and what it puts out for foreign labor ``an abomination.''

Clark is beginning a campaign among Southern Baptists to hold Disney accountable for its sweatshop practices.

My growing conviction concerning the boycott issue has little to do with health benefits to same-sex partners, but Clark has convinced me it should be a long time before I treat my family to Disneyland again.

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Allan R. Andrews can be reached at allan.andrews@reporters.net