Transcription
So unless you’ve been living under a rock on Mars with your eyes closed and your fingers in your ears, you probably already know that from 1989 through 1999, Disney’s animation output is considered the Renaissance. After a lackluster period often called the Dark Ages, Walt Disney Animation Studios got their act together and started creating feature films that were critical and commercial successes again.
We generally name eras after the fact once we have better perspective of what it actually accomplished or how good or bad it was. Maybe it’s premature to give the new Disney live action movies a name since Disney has not, but I feel like I need to anyway – otherwise it’s going to sound very clumsy and we just can’t have that.
Superficially, the only thing these movies have in common is that they're part of an internal initiative to resurrect old Disney properties. The recent Disney live action movies are mostly remakes, but they are also prequels or sequels or a bit of both depending on the movie. Pete's Dragon is a live action remake of another mostly live action movie, and The Lion King is hardly live action at all. So we can’t just call them the “Disney live action remakes” because some don't fit that criteria for one reason or another.
If we have to call the good Disney movies from the late 80s and 90s the Renaissance and the bad Disney movies from earlier the Dark Age, then I have decided all on my own and with no input from anyone else to call this swath of movies late-stage Disney. The Late Stage Disney live action remakes, sequels and prequels do not technically have an official series name, but are very much part of the same marketing initiative. We’ll make it a hashtag. Who can stop me?
So, besides the superficial, what do these movies have in common? Well. The late-stage Disney movies contain deeply disingenuous themes and a pale imitation of post-modernism that only jokingly mocks its own canon and deconstructs not to criticize but to defend itself from criticism of its own place in late stage capitalism.
[PART 1: Late Stage Capitalism]
Late-stage capitalism, or late capitalism for kind of short, is a stage in which capital becomes so dominant that everything is commodified. Commodification is the transformation of goods, services and ideas into objects of trade. That sounds super basic, but in late-stage capitalism, everything is up for commodification, including things that need not be commodified, like, say, water and people.
An oversimplification of the stages of capitalism – meaning private ownership of the means of production -- is that from around 1700 to 1870, we had a “free competition capitalism” stage in which we saw explosive growth of industrial capital in domestic markets. 1870 through the beginning of World War II was a “monopoly capitalism” stage characterized by neo-imperialism and exploitation of colonies. Late-stage capitalism is where we are today, post-World War II, characterized by growing multinational corporations and mass consumption. This simplification, however, ignores the fact that exploitation of other countries by more powerful countries still happens, and “monopoly” capitalism is still rearing its head.
Disney, for example, due to recent purchases of Marvel, Lucasfilm, 20th Century Fox and Hulu, now owns significantly more of the market share than the number two and three competitors. Market share represents the percentage of an industry, or a market's total sales, that is earned by a particular company over a specified time period. Market share is calculated by taking the company's sales over the period and dividing it by the total sales of the industry over the same period. This metric is used to give a general idea of the size of a company in relation to its market and its competitors. Disney's recent acquisitions and aggressive moves in the theater industry have given it an approximate 40% of the market share. Detractors would say this is not technically a “monopoly,” but this percentage does give Disney significantly more power in its various endeavors than its competitors.
Capitalists defend this as a fair outcome of “competition” in the market, but capitalism inevitably moves toward either monopoly or growth that allows mega-corporations to have greater and greater control over our lives. Late-stage capitalism is also called that because capitalism is not sustainable forever and it’s only a matter of time before humanity is forced into creating a different economic system. Capitalism, through mass media, gives us the impression that there can't be anything but the current economic stage in which we live. Capitalism reinforces itself through media, through consumption, through everything in our daily lives. It hypnotizes us into thinking this is the only way. But if past is prologue, capitalism can't last. Before capitalism, there was feudalism; before feudalism, economics were held together through slavery; before that, there was something else, and so forth.
Late-stage capitalism has also become the kind of go-to catchphrase for explaining absurdities related to capital, like Budweiser spending $5 million to advertise how it donated only $100,000 to clean water, or how Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has enough money to theoretically buy every homeless American a house and still have $19.2 billion left over. He definitely will not be doing that. Late-stage capitalism is the end result of capitalism: the final consolidation of power through capital. Late-stage capitalism as a term is also used to describe the bottomless abyss of creative bankruptcy mixed with paradoxical customer loyalty from emerging mega-corporations like Apple or Disney. Disney owns us as customers and can give us any old thing, and so long as it’s Disney, the lines to buy it or see it will wrap around the corner.
Enter: late-stage Disney. A series of live action movies that bank on us having heard of the license or product before in order to see it and, regardless of quality, will almost certainly earn a profit, which will allow Disney to buy more properties and even more of the market share. Disney owns that Simpson’s reference from a couple minutes ago, please don’t Content ID me, Disney. This will continue until they become the mega-corporation that previously only existed in science fiction but was predicted by economists for the better part of a century. And what are we sacrificing ourselves unto the altar of capitalism for? What is so precious that we are enabling monopolies? A bunch of movies that run the gamut of very bad, mostly bad, forgettable, passable, and Aladdin.
I can’t blame the rise of Disney and late-stage capitalism on these live action movies, of course. Disney is a symptom more than a driving force. This is systemic. Also, even if it were not, Disney's Marvel Cinematic Universe and Star Wars movies are bigger earners. Late Stage live action Disney is simply a better example of late-stage capitalism and a better vision of what life is going to be like unless we can change the world for the better and not the worse following the end of this economic system. You know, bad and flavorless and dehumanizing.
[Part 2: I Blame Tim Burton]
Like most things in life, this is Tim Burton’s fault. In 2010, Timmy Scissorhands released the live action remake of Alice in Wonderland, a tired slog of an adventure through Burton’s now empty imagination. It was around this time that we all collectively began to realize that Burton was nowhere as subversive as we once thought. His earlier films mocked yuppie culture and pretentious upper-class whites, but with no real interest in examining the systems that supported said culture. In Pee-Wee's Big Adventure and Beetlejuice, the victims of upper-class whites were simply mildly less well-to-do whites, their positions in life widely unquestioned, and the damage they do to other characters being the products of personality quirks rather than systemic disparity. Authority figures are just as often endearing as they are dangerous, perhaps more so. Burton's Alice has some of its own trappings. Put a pin in that, we will return to it.
Later that year, Disney released The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, extremely loosely based on the only scene from Fantasia that everyone remembers. There had been Disney live action remakes before, but they were few and far between. Burton's Wonderland spawned not only a sequel but a big push for a series of unrelated but brand-connected movies at least once a year and eventually multiple times a year. This became late-stage Disney, a recycling of old properties rather than risking their stake in the market share with new ideas.
Nearly every late stage Disney movie deconstructs previous Disney canon, Disney mythos, or even Walt Disney himself and the corporation he founded. Unfortunately for anyone expecting honest introspection and genuine deconstruction of some of Disney’s most egregious actions or failures, the late stage Disney movies instead only playfully mock its own shortcomings, becoming less of a critique of itself and more like a roast: a humorous recognition of shortcomings with the goal of praising rather than critiquing. This sneaks into animated Disney pictures, too. But we see this more consistently in regurgitated live action late stage Disney. Did I expect Disney to genuinely critique itself? No. It is not in the interest of capitalists to sincerely criticize capitalism or other hierarchical structures that support capitalism. I’m not surprised; I’m only explaining what Disney is doing and why.
[PART 3: What Is Disney Doing and Why?]
Disney is “deconstructing” and “modernizing” its mythos by taking the safest possible political position, presenting it as “woke,” and deflecting criticism about its role in both the economic and cultural landscapes. It's a charm offensive in the era of growing interest in socialism among young people and growing knowledge of what mega-corporations are actually selling us. Late Stage Disney is fake wokeness, a flimsy attempt at recuperation of radical politics by capitalism.
Example: In Burton's Alice in Wonderland, Alice is faced with a system in which choices are made for her and she needs to marry a man. And then she goes to Wonderland where a different system has also made a choice for her. A literal prophecy in Wonderland that puts her in great danger and a deeply uncomfortable social expectation in the normal world. The fact that the system that forces her to take on the Red Queen gives her some armor and a sword doesn't mean she has more choices, only a different choice. It's the most superficial reading of what “feminism” is that has been put to screen in recent years.
Beauty and the Beast has a scene in which Belle is teaching a young girl how to read. A townsperson, the living embodiment of the patriarchy, finger-wags at her, even though women's literacy was not uncommon during the time period of the film. Late Stage Beauty and the Beast is perhaps even less “woke” than the animated film because it portrays the ignorant and dangerous townspeople as merely misunderstood and under a spell. This is a gross mischaracterization. The original showed how “othering” and a charismatic leader can lead to dehumanization and violence. Claiming the small, mean-spirited, easily-led townspeople are only misunderstood is a terrible reading of the room in 2017, the year this was released.
Essentially, Alice in Wonderland, Beauty and the Beast, and other late stage Disney products contain the “safe” version of feminism – first-wave feminism, paraphrased by men as “Well, women shouldn't be…property, I guess. They can vote – sometimes.” A feminism that is only as “woke” as the 1920s. Late Stage Disney won't tackle socialist feminism, the recognition that patriarchy and capitalism are interconnected and that unequal hierarchies feed or are supported by other unequal hierarchies. Again, it's not in the interest of capitalists to sincerely criticize hierarchical structures that support capitalism.
By giving Belle a scene in which a caricature of a misogynist condemns her for knowing how to read, Disney can pretend that it's deconstructing its previous, more passive women protagonists from the 1930s through the 1950s, while actually only advocating for a feminism that was popular prior to the 1930s. Its politics are not even contemporaneous with the era in which it's allegedly deconstructing. Similarly, Late Stage Beauty and the Beast allegedly featured the first “openly gay” Disney character, and you can no doubt sense those scare quotes around “openly” because all that happened was Le Fou danced with a man for two seconds. Le Fou's “gay moment” is so not gay that the scene wasn't even censored in Russia or China, two huge socially conservative markets for Disney. Beauty and the Beast made Disney an extra $14 million from Russian audiences and $85 million from Chinese audiences. Beauty and the Beast is not “woke” for having a character who is never even confirmed as gay in 2017. Two men dancing together in a film from 2017 is not progressive. Here is a short film of two men dancing together from 1895. Disney capitalized on the minor uproar about its alleged “wokeness” and received a lot of free press for its film. That's it. Disney's defense from criticism that it historically and contemporaneously reinforces status quo gender roles and status quo heteronormativity was to have a movie with gender politics that conform to the feminism of one hundred years ago and sexuality that was depicted in the late 19th century.
[PART 4: The Friendly Millionaires and Billionaires]
The most notable pro-capitalism message that flows through late-stage Disney is that of the friendly millionaire. Capitalists love telling us that there is a difference between capitalism and greed, but capitalism is a system that explicitly rewards greed and does not reward much of anything else. Disparity between the rich and poor under capitalism is not a bug; it's the system functioning as it was designed to. That's not cynicism; that's just literally what a hierarchical system does. And it's actually getting worse over time. The idea that capitalism, the economic system that dominates the world, makes us all rich or even content and able to pay the bills is a fairy tale worthy of Disney.
Speaking of which, let's get back to those friendly millionaires and billionaires. Mary Poppins Returns is the story of a family facing sudden economic hardship. The bank is not helping them; they're gonna lose the house, and the children are understandably distraught. Mary Poppins sings a series of songs about the joys of being happy, Jack the Cockney lamplighter dances the blues away, and that is, apparently, the best advice available to privileged people with brief economic concerns that will eventually be handled with minimal trouble.
Mary Poppins Returns does not portray the bank – a physical stand-in for the system of capitalism – as the antagonist. No. Only…some people…who work at the bank. The family is visited by two men – one kind and one unkind – who deliver the bad financial news. Then the family encounters a greedy millionaire and a friendly millionaire! The greedy millionaire wants all that money, but the friendly millionaire wins in the end and saves the family! This happens in Christopher Robin as well. Christopher has an antagonistic relationship with Winslow Jr. – the bad capitalist – but he is saved by Winslow Sr. – the good capitalist. The friendly millionaire. Capitalism isn't the problem, no sir. Only “greedy” capitalists, a few bad apples, not the system. Perish the thought! That is how movies like these frame capitalism: essentially good for everyone, and any issues within the system can be explained away by a handful of ne'er-do-wells. Mary Poppins Returns and Christopher Robin individualize hardship under capitalism.
One last time: It is not in the interest of capitalists to sincerely criticize capitalism. By framing capitalism this way, Disney skirts around the issue of capitalism itself being the problem. Don't think about it too hard, everyone! Just watch Dick Van Dyke dance on the table! Pay no attention to the capitalism behind the curtain! Watch him dance. WATCH HIM DANCE.
[PART 5: Dumbo? More like...Dum...f*** this movie]
So, earlier this year, the remake of Dumbo hit the theaters, courtesy of Tim Burton. Ah, we've come full…something, haven't we? Even Dumbo, a movie with clear references to Disneyland, is not an indictment of The Walt Disney Company, Walt Disney himself, or capitalism. The film's antagonist, V.A. Vandavere, is not so much a Disney stand-in as a “What if?” AUDIO 8 What if good ol' Uncle Walt had been replaced by this P.T. Barnum figure? Dumbo does not condemn Walt Disney. Dumbo replaces Walt Disney with a figure that does not resemble the mythological Walt Disney that the Disney Company has long sold us. This is not Burton lashing out against Disney. If it were, Disney would never release it, and it doesn't fit with Burton's politics.
Matthew Dessem of Slate wrote: “The answer is that we’re not meant to reconcile it as much as we’re meant to forgive it. The Vandevere subplot in Dumbo is not a sincere critique of the business practices of the Walt Disney Company—how could it be?—nor does it have anything much to say about art under capitalism, or even Tim Burton’s feelings about his once and future employer. The climactic sequence, in which the recently fired members of DeVito’s circus steal Dumbo and his mother from Vandevere, sort of works as a metaphor for Burton returning to Disney to rescue Frankenweenie and Jack Skellington, except that Burton didn’t steal them back: Disney paid him money to try to make the company more money from ideas it didn’t think it could make any money from back in the 1980s. The nudges and winks in Dumbo about Disney’s predatory practices are an invitation from filmmaker to audience to share a knowing chuckle over the essential soullessness of the entire enterprise.”
That's a good way to describe Disney's self-reflection. Not true deconstruction, but only a knowing chuckle. Because capitalism, the movie tells us, is not the problem. It's never the system. It's always…some individual. Everyone else within the system is good and pure. You know…like Walt Disney! I was joking about this being Tim Burton's fault, to be clear. This is systemic, not individual.
The aforementioned explosion of income inequality, repeated cycles of boom and bust, and capitalism’s disastrous contributions to climate change has led economists and political scientists to begin to seriously consider how a post-capitalist society would look and function. But it needs to happen sooner rather than later. Climate change is not going to give us a lot of time, and people currently living in extreme poverty don't have fifty years for capitalists to have a “come to Jesus” moment. Don't expect Disney to inspire people to fight capitalism either. They're not “woke,” and that word has lost all meaning anyway. I bet the new Lion King doubles down on the original's “watch out for those dirty poors” messaging.
[long, gagging sigh]