Just Say No to Disney and Hollywood
In America, there are a dangerous group of people who claim they are liberal and progressive when they are not, they claim to help the working class but instead mock them, they have an empty promise of diversity and inclusion, and seek to own everything and destroy its integrity and essence only for pander and profit. They turn children into consuming and competitive monsters at a time of significant learning, imagining, and development of personality not realizing they're the victims of a cult akin to creationism, fascism, and Scientology combined. When they become adults they cannot think critically about the world around them, when they are told that someone like Walt Disney, Donald Trump, Woody Alen, Butch Hartman, or Seth Mc Farlane has hurt artist and derived others into a lie of power they are quick to burn the evidence rather than read it. This is the landscape that Hollywood built; a landscape that is a dream on the surface but in the end kills cultures and writers rather than embraces them and Disney is apart of that culture.
The story of how Hollywood hurts the integrity and essence of an author can not only be seen in the film Saving Mr.Banks. It can also be revealed in the life of both Theodore and Helen Gissel who like Mrs.Traverse and myself as artists and writers feared the bowdlerization of their works and the lack of oversite would lead to a greedy and destructive culture of consumption and competition. After the Second World War, Dr.Seuss wrote a story called Gerald Mc Boing Boing about a child who speaks in sounds rather than words which became popular as a radio play; when UPA heard the record they turned it into a cartoon short which won an Academy Award and is now in the Library of Congress. However, when the studio made other shorts with Gerald they were done without his permission or oversite so he had to try again with another medium.
This story was much deeper and dealt with a nightmare he had as a boy; with a giant piano one person could not play, a dungeon full of musicians, and a piano teacher with hypnotics so powerful that he could destroy people atom by atom. It also dealt with xenophobia, elitism, McCarthyism, and toxic masculinity that was common during the 1950s. This nightmare became the plot of The 5,000 Fingers of Dr.T which in my opinion the original script, songs, and storyline are better than the original film which had problems from the very beginning because the studio feared profit losses and indifference to their bottom line rather than respect the integrity and message behind his brilliance. In the original script, the famous Dungeon Ballet was where Bart finally meets his friend the plumber Mr. Zabladowski who is forced to build sinks with a payment system similar to a pyramid scheme.
Bart Collins: How much are you being paid overtime?
Mr. Zabladowski: Two thousand pastoolas.
Bart Collins: Two thousand WHAT?
Mr. Zabladowski: Two thousand pastoolas. Dr. Terwilliker doesn’t pay me in American money — he keeps that for himself. He pays me in pastoolas.
Many songs that were important to the plot and development of the characters were cut; Many Questions reveals Heloise’s state of vulnerability and guilt about not being able to help Bart regardless of the stigma of being a single mother, My Favorite Note and Money were songs revealing Dr. Terwillikers selfish and elitist behavior, Grindstone and I Will Not Get Involved reveal that Mr. Zabladowski like soldiers after the Second World War were given the promise of prosperity and glory at home, but ended up feeling depressed, manipulated, and are told to suppress their feelings and tough it out like a man. His heart only grows three sizes when Bart sings the song Just Because We’re Kids which addresses the danger and weakness of toxic masculine and authoritative parenting.
If the making of this film were a movie called T is for Terrific Allan Scott (Alec Baldwin) who ruined the script would be the greedy henchmen for Roy Rouland (Will Farel) and Stanley Kramer (Steve Carell), and the head of Columbia Pictures (Riann Willson) who in real life had fights with Stanley Kramer over the film losing the studios money. Tim Allen and Tina Fay are Ted and Hellen who not only struggle with executive meddling, lack of oversight, and over-marketing; but the stigma of being a strong-willed married couple despite not having children. Hellen was his editor in chief and his anchor and much of why the Ron Howard version of How the Grinch Stole Christmas is accurate to his own life as a German-American was because much of the grief, depression, sourness, guilt, and anger from the Grinch comes from losing Hellen from an overdose of opioids after being diagnosed with ovarian cancer and the stigma from other women who judged her. She wrote a suicide note saying that she loved him and his work very much but could not bear the ridicule and harm that affected their relationship.
Yet this tragedy and loss helped him write one of the most powerful and most challenging books that have inspired many movements and actions and even a boycott of a film based on it that failed at the box-office. That book is The Lorax and in many ways, Disney and Hollywood’s lack of originally comes from their model cultural imperialism and exploitation of other works and the fear of challenging that system is why they love the philosophy of Ron Hubbard, Walt Disney, and Donald Trump and if an idea they like is good they will rehash and beat it to death like the Thneeds until there are no more Truffula trees.
Shows like Glee, Big Bang Theory, The Good Place, Family Guy, and every Disney Channel sitcom have underlying pro-Christian, anti-intellect, ableist, misogynist, xenophobic, non-neurodiverse, Machiavellian, consumeristic, and pro-competition messages, and anything that challenges this is mocked, abused, harassed, trolled online or canceled like Steven Universe, She Ra, and even Arthur was almost threatened and bullied twice by Hollywood’s army of conservative pundits and censors for a Postcards with Buster Segment with two gay fathers and one recently where Mr.Ratburn and his partner get married. When I told a friend why Sheldon was a poor representation of people like me on the Autism spectrum I was called a snob, the same with my dislike of Frozen.
It is harmful in a country where we have freedom of speech and press, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness that our Government allows for institutions and corporations like Focus on the Family, Scientology, Disney, Drum Corps International, Bands of America, and others to silence victims of abuse, assault, hazing, and torture; people who work at Disney’s parks who are homeless and unionless, low-income music educators and teachers who have been suckered into a culture of competition than community. I have every reason to hate Disney and the monster that Hollywood is and so did people like Art Babbit, Chuck Jones, Bill Mendez, Walt Kelly, Tyrus Wong, P.D.Eastman and all animators, writers, puppeteers, VFX artist, and voice actors that need a union and recognition for fighting, not vilification.
