Disney grandniece backs Meryl Streep on Walt's racism and sexism

[boston bean]

Abigail Disney, grandniece of Walt, has backed up Meryl Streep following the actor's recent comments about Walt Disney where she referred to him as a "gender bigot" and a member of an antisemitic lobbying organisation.

Disney took to Facebook to say she "loved" the actor's remarks, as she had "mixed feelings" about her great-uncle. "You really need to be as honest as possible about those feelings, or else you are going to lead yourself into many a blind alley in life," she said. "Anti-Semite? Check. Misogynist? OF COURSE!! Racist? C'mon he made a film (Jungle Book) about how you should stay 'with your own kind' at the height of the fight over segregation! As if the 'King of the Jungle' number wasn't proof enough!! How much more information do you need?"

She then went on to admit that "he was hella good at making films and his work has made billions of people happy. There's no denying it."

Streep made her comments during an awards presentation to Emma Thompson, who starred in Saving Mr Banks, the story of how Walt Disney persuaded PL Travers to let him adapt her book Mary Poppins into a film. Abigail Disney also spoke out against the film, calling it "a misplaced attempt at hagiography."

http://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/jan/16/abigail-disney-meryl-streep-racism-sexism

[FSogol]

1. Isn't there a certain problem with holding people of the past to

modern day sensibilities however right those sensibilities are? The 30s and 40s were a very racist time in this country and the world. Not sure the attitudes of Walt Disney differed much from FDR who is accused of the same things from time to time.

[cali]

6. sure, but Disney was a racist in an age when plenty of people were fighting it

yes, historical anachronism is problematic, but excusing raging bigotry as something that was common, is way too facile. One really has to look closely at each instance..

[FSogol]

9. “Our greatest natural resource is the minds of our children.” - Walt Disney

I have a hard time seeing someone who says something like this as some kind of monster.

[2naSalit]

20. I have always

had a problem with the way he used that "natural resource" to plant the seeds of his f'd up beliefs for the future... which it appears we are now seeing the resulting monster of a society from which we now suffer.

If you view any of his movies with a critical eye you will recognize the format has a particular vein through which flows some pretty wrong-headed concepts that play out in the worst examples of our society.

He was such a nice and amicable monster and created such pleasant images of misogyny, racism and the necessity of conformity.

[FSogol]

21. You're describing Ronald Reagan, not Walt Disney. n/t

[2naSalit]

24. Not in my recollection of

what I have seen of Disney. Perhaps Ronnie Raygun fits the description too.

[Nye Bevan]

25. I admit that "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" was horrifically heightist,

treating the vertically-challenged as figures of fun. Then "Dopey" of course mocked the mentally challenged, "Sleepy" took a dig at sleep disorders, "Sneezy" made fun of allergies, and "Bashful" mocked shyness.

That movie should be banned, and the master copies wiped.

[Niceguy1]

43. lol

Some one at some point made a parody of the pc crowd with Disney movies

[Nye Bevan]

15. Not so much "excusing it" as pointing out that this kind of attitude was not at all uncommon

in people with Disney's background in that era.

[Bluenorthwest]

8. But Walt worked through the 50's and iinto the 60's

He created his biggest projects long after FDR was dead. It would be more accurate in film terms to compare him to his contemporary Gregory Peck, who produced 'To Kill A Mockingbird' while Walt.....didn't. Or to any of the other major studios who by the later years were starting to address such issues in cinema.

[FSogol]

14. If you are going to make a list of filmmakers who didn't adapt Harper Lee's novel

it is going to be a pretty big list.

[DirkGently]

26. When is it too late to tell the truth?

People rage when the Confederate flag is raised, despite the fact it was never intended to be be a symbol of slavery specifically. But that one thing is very significant, and we give no quarter for antiquated values.

People aren't all one thing. But when someone or something becomes part of our historical narrative, we continue to try to put it in the most truthful context. Or, we should.

So, if we have a movie coming out painting Walt Disney as the avuncular purveyor of cartoons the giant Disney corporation consistently pretends he was, why shouldn't we also remember that he was also a twisted fascist who hated women?

The other side of the coin is the Disney made some great pop art, and the company he founded has made and done other worthy things.

People are not all one thing, and historical context matters, but that doesn't mean everyone gets a free whitewashing either.

[Nye Bevan]

32. Yep, as another example, Helen Thomas did great things, but was also a horrific anti-Semite,

who trotted out the worst kind of anti-Semitic slurs that would have made Goebbels nod approvingly.

Nothing wrong with "warts and all" portrayals of historical figures.

[Nye Bevan]

2. Yep. And George Washington and Thomas Jefferson owned hundreds of slaves.

Henry Ford was a raging anti-Semite. Harry Truman expressed some horrible anti-Semitic viewpoints. John F Kennedy cheated on Jackie with scores of women during their marriage. And Robert Byrd held the rank of Exalted Cyclops in the KKK.

It is a very frequent occurrence that people who are heroes in one respect are highly flawed in one or more others, especially when this is reflective of the time they lived in.

[FSogol]

3. One day they'll say of us: "They said they cared about the environment, but they drove around

in cars burning fossil fuels. Why didn't they care?"

[cali]

7. oh c'mon. and Hitler brought Germany's economy back!

[Nye Bevan]

12. My post was about people who are generally known for their positive achievements,

but had significant character flaws, especially when measured by contemporary standards.

I am not sure that most people would put Adolf Hitler into that category.

[cali]

29. so, rabid bigotry on the scale of Henry Ford's is somehow balanced out by "positive achievements"?

Interesting way of looking at it.

I don't think comparing Jefferson owning slaves to Henry Ford's bigotry is either accurate or informative in any way.

[Nye Bevan]

36. I think rightly or wrongly, most people have generally positive views of Ford and Jefferson.

Probably if more people focused on Ford's rabid anti-Semitism, or the fact that Jefferson owned hundreds of slaves, never freed any of them, and raped at least one of them, opinion would be more divided.

[Bluenorthwest]

11. Even if we take that as truth, the subject of the OP is not simply the man Walt Disney

but the fact that a current film about him does not present him honestly as a flawed person. It's about the manufacture of a false image to gloss over those views, an action which robs the culture of history. If these views were in fact mere reflections of the time and not of the people, then a film which fails to communicate both the time and the people is a double failure.

[Nye Bevan]

17. Movies that pay more attention to the positive side of people and gloss over their flaws

or do not address them at all, are not at all uncommon. The ironic thing here is that with the reaction to this movie more people than before will probably become aware of these views that Disney held.

[geek tragedy]

31. for once, the attempt to rewrite history backfired. Disney was a rightwing asshole

even by the standards of his time.

[joeybee12]

4. All that really matters is the over-rated ham Meryl got the nomination Emma was robbed of!

[Scuba]

5. Hagiography: the biographies of saints and ecclesiastical leaders

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hagiography


Reading DU has once again made the vast universe of my ignorance a tiny bit smaller.

I thought "Saving Mr. Banks" sucked, but that's me.

[Zorra]

10. Time to flush the cycle of superstition, bigotry, and hatred down into the cesspool of of history.

Being a product of your time does not excuse hate. It's like saying, "yes, I killed her, because I did not understand that killing black lesbians was wrong".

All the bigots and haters of the past were wrong. End of story.

Let's all examine ourselves carefully, and work to recognize and eliminate any of the institutionalized hate crap that may still exist within our own consciousness, that we may be unaware of. It's generally an ongoing, lifetime process.

None of us are perfect, but that's not an excuse for not trying to be better, if we are at least conscious enough to desire to be kinder individuals.

[Nye Bevan]

22. I don't think anyone's "excusing" it.

Everyone agrees that Robert Byrd was wrong to hold a high office in the KKK, to take another example, but we can understand the strong social pressure on Southern whites of that era to do such a thing.

[Zorra]

37. Is social pressure a valid excuse for doing something unethical?

"But we didn't know" is generally a bullshit justification people use for nasty hate beliefs and support for their own nasty actions that they really know are wrong, but they just need to continue doing for some type of reward. Like economic, ego, or power reward.

I understand that morality and ethics are relative; a sociopath may see no harm in murdering someone else for a cigarette. So we have established general ethical guidelines for our behavior in order to be able to function as social unit. These guideline do not appear to me to include justifying harming others because of individual beliefs based in superstition, hate, bigotry, or for personal reward.

I'm sure all the slave holding founding fathers knew slavery was a monstrous evil, but they did not free their slaves because they needed slaves to profit so they could continue their lifestyle. So they developed bogus justifications in order to hide from themselves the fact that they were just being weak hypocritical punks who did not practice what they preached. I'm sure all those Nazis who murdered the Jews, etc, up close and personal really knew that what they were doing was wrong, but they continued to do so because they received some type of reward for it.

"We didn't know" or "the devil made us do it" are feeble excuses for unethical behavior.

I don't really know anything, but I personally believe that some type of reward is the basis of motivation for all human action. I may be wrong, but there is a whole lot of evidence that points to this as probable.

[Nye Bevan]

38. No, it is not a valid excuse. And the guy in my avatar never used any excuses,

refusing to have anything to do with owning slaves, even though many of his contemporaries did. And that's why he's my avatar.

[Zorra]

39. Yeh, John got it right, with regard to slavery, for sure. And the rest of that crew knew he got it

right as well.

[Nye Bevan]

40. He and Abigail were well ahead of their time.

Women's rights

Adams was an advocate of married women's property rights and more opportunities for women, particularly in the field of education. Women, she believed, should not submit to laws not made in their interest, nor should they be content with the simple role of being companions to their husbands. They should educate themselves and thus be recognized for their intellectual capabilities, so they could guide and influence the lives of their children and husbands. She is known for her March, 1776 letter to John and the Continental Congress, requesting that they, "...remember the ladies, and be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the Husbands. Remember all Men would be tyrants if they could. If particular care and attention is not paid to the Ladies we are determined to foment a Rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any Laws in which we have no voice, or Representation."[2]

Slavery

Along with her husband, Adams believed that slavery was evil and a threat to the American democratic experiment. A letter written by her on March 31, 1776, explained that she doubted most of the Virginians had such "passion for Liberty" as they claimed they did, since they "deprive[d] their fellow Creatures" of freedom.[2]
A notable incident regarding this happened in Philadelphia in 1791, where a free black youth came to her house asking to be taught how to write. Subsequently, she placed the boy in a local evening school, though not without objections from a neighbor. Adams responded that he was "a Freeman as much as any of the young Men and merely because his Face is Black, is he to be denied instruction? How is he to be qualified to procure a livelihood? … I have not thought it any disgrace to my self to take him into my parlor and teach him both to read and write."

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Abigail_Adams&mobileaction=toggle_view_desktop

[hughee99]

13. If Walt Disney were a "figure of awe" like Margaret Thatcher, he might have

received better treatment after his death. Serves him right.

[Omaha Steve]

16. From trivia winners and stock holders

K&R!

Marta and I still have the Mickey gold paper weight we won in a national Disney trivia contest in the 80's.

OS

[Beaverhausen]

18. Did Meryl Streep applaud for Woody Allen's special honor?

[FSogol]

19. Maybe 1%er Abigal Disney should turn her monthly Disney check over to charity.

She enjoys her lifestyle due to Walt's scribblings.

[sufrommich]

23. Abigail Disney uses her money for just causes. Look her up. nt

[FSogol]

27. Thanks. BTW, she was 6 when Walt died. n/t

[MattSh]

28. Or maybe it's about publicity...

A not so well known relative attacking a very well known personality?

Hey, she might be correct. Or maybe it's a publicity stunt. Or both.

[countryjake]

33. Have you ever seen any of the documentaries she's worked on?

And, she actually has disavowed some of the profits that come with her family name, or at least put them to good use...look into the Ahava Co.

[FSogol]

34. Nope, but I'll check them out. n/t

[geek tragedy]

30. why even dispute that Walt Disney was a sexist?

The vast majority of men back in the day were gender bigots.

Anti-semitism and racism--also not unusual for white guys back then.

It's not disputed he was a glaring, rightwing asshole even by his own day's stanards.

Good for Abigail for stating the truth.

[hunter]

35. My mom worked in Hollywood and didn't like Disney at all.

Disney's attitudes are not something we can dismiss as "of the time."

Disney, the man, was already well behind the curve of progress in civil rights during the 'fifties. His behavior during the McCarthy era was despicable.

Disney was a prick like Ronald Reagan, but slightly more talented as an artist.

His "vision" of the future was fascist.

Among his artists there were various undergrounds... some progressive, others not.

[Fumesucker]

41. There's a reason Disney the corporation has long been called Mouseshwitz in the trade

Alternative name being Duckau.

[Starry Messenger]

42. I'm surprised this is controversial.

I thought the fact that Disney was an asshole was pretty well-established.

http://cla.calpoly.edu/legacies/rsimon/rsimonsite/Hum410/DisneyHUAC.htm