They Shall Beat Their Swords into…..Mickey Mouse

In the same 100 year old brick barracks where US soldiers anxiously waited to be shipped out to the Somme, Omaha Beach and the Mekong Delta, kids now watch Mickey Mouse dancing with Minnie and can sing along with Mary Poppins and the chimney sweeps. 

Walt Disney Family MuseumSan Francisco’s Walt Disney Family Museum overlooks the military parade grounds of the Presido, a 1500-acre military base founded in 1776.  It became a national park in 1989, when it and hundreds of US bases were closed at the end of the Cold War. 

Disney’s daughter lived in San Francisco and had stored much of her family memorabilia in the base’s many unused buildings.  Her $110 million gift funded a challenging historical retrofit, earthquake work and a creative multimedia 40,000 square foot museum and theater, which opened in 2009.

I finally made it there this past weekend, for the 50^th birthday party of a friend who is also a museum docent.  We toured the museum, toasted our friend, and he led us in a sing along screening of Mary Poppins; my friend’s invitation said, “I and the movie were both ‘released’ in 1964.”

I grew up on Walt Disney, watching the Mickey Mouse Club on my black and white TV, Snow White and Bambi.  I took my kids to Disneyland in the 90’s.  Our early VCR purchases included Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast, which we watched many, many times.  My kids are both artists and imaginative and I appreciate that Disney employed many artists and celebrated creativity, play and simple happiness.  Although Disneyland was not, for me, its self-declared “Happiest Place on Earth,” I do generally approve of children being encouraged to play, be happy, and imagine. 

But there is something about Walt Disney and his legacy that bothers me.

The recent movie Saving Mr. Banks pairs the obvious stereotypes: stiff reserved British P. L. Travers, author of the Mary Poppins books, meets casual pushy Walt Disney who wants the movie rights.  I was on Travers’ side from the start.  I liked her pride and her convictions.  Walt seemed so very American – pushy, over informal, self-centered.

It also bothers her, and me, that he wanted to change Travers’ story, make it sillier and musical and animated.  He changed and messed up Winnie the Pooh and Peter Pan the same way.  We Americans do tend to take other culture’s treasures and, well, Disnify them- it’s become a verb.

Meryl Streep this week, while giving Emma Thompson an award for her portrayal of P. L. Travers, and praising her performance, slammed Disney, calling him a racist and sexist. She said he supported an anti-Semitic industry lobby, refused to hire women artists, and perpetuated horrendous racial and gender stereotypes. 

It’s hard to argue with that.  “Someday my prince will come” was a pretty normative message to little girls when I was growing up.  While Snow White sang it beautifully, it took a lot of work for my generation to stop the waiting and dreaming and just go out looking ourselves.  And 40 years later, in the 90’s, my daughter deserved more than a mermaid who sold her soul and her voice to get a man.  Even in the 50’s I cringed at the racist Indians in Peter Pan, but I know I internalized Disney’s stereotypes of southerners and blacks.

And the money!  Disneyland costs over $125 for a one day ticket, adults or kids, without parking, food.  And all that merchandising.  The company, with its films and its parks around the world, ownership of ABC, etc. is now the largest media conglomerate in the world.  Last year its revenue went up 32% to $1.5 billion.  Sure, the Disney family was forced out years ago, and we live in a big corporate world, but until his death in 1966, Walt was as much a business man, big studio boss, and developer as he was an artist and lover of children.  It’s a big business.

So very American – pushy, self centered, imperialist, racist, sexist, corporate.

But I can’t stay mad at Disney for long.  Even knowing all this annoying stuff about him, I also know what I feel when I hear a lot of the songs. “I love to laugh!” sings Ed Wynn as he floats to the ceiling.  My birthday friend, whose partner had just died a couple weeks before his party after a long painful illness, he yelled out in the theater as this scene began, “I love this song.  And Scott did too!” 

FantasiaAt the museum I was reminded of Disney’s work with Stravinsky on Fantasia and that amazing celebration of fantasy and magic.  Fantasy and magic are good things.

I heard interviews with some of the many artists who were happy to work at Disney (and he did hire women artists after a while; the Disney Museum has an upcoming show on Mary Blair who did much of the work on Peter Pan and It’s a Small World.) I watched those incredible rooftop chimney sweep dancers. It’s hard to stay mad at someone who supported so many artists and dancers and musicians.

Sad and stiff P. L. Travers, who turns out to have had a pretty miserable childhood and many disappointments, slowly starts tapping her feet to the music.  She is able to convince Disney’s team to see that it is the stiff sad father whom Mary Poppins comes to save, not the children, as they thought.  She sees that, like Mr. Banks, she too was living in a cage of expectation and fear.  And Walt gently tells her about his own sad childhood, and says that their job, as storytellers, is to bring hope.  And hope comes, like Mary Poppins’ new wind from the east.

Thanks, Walt.

Copyright 2014 Deborah Streeter