Poor Disney -- just another Mom & Pop trying to keep its nose clean in the rough neighborhood of American culture. That’s how Lloyd Greif, a Los Angeles-based investor sees the multi-billion-dollar entertainment conglomerate. Writing in The Washington Post, he claimed that Disney, in spite of recent events, wants to and should stay out of the “culture war” to avoid alienating its audience. “Choosing sides — Democrat or Republican — is a lose-lose since we’re talking about alienating potentially half of the viewership,” Greif wrote.
However, Disney chose its culture war side a long time ago and doesn’t seem to have paid the price. These are not the products and actions of a company trying to stay above the fray:
- In May 2018, Disney Parks introduced Rainbow Mickey Ears to commemorate Pride Week and donated 10 percent of profits to the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network. It’s had gay pride days at its parks for years.
- The Disney Channel features a gay main character on its show Andi Mack. But this is not the only time the channel showed gay characters to millions of children. The children’s network showed a same-sex kiss during the second season of the animated hit Star Vs. The Forces of Evil.
- Modern Family, a long running Emmy-winning sitcom on ABC, has a gay couple raising their young daughter as two of the main characters. Happy Endings played on ABC from 2011 to 2013 and had a gay main character who ended up in bed with another man on various occasions.
- ESPN, owned by Disney, in recent years has eschewed straight sports reporting for liberal opinion. Its talking heads spend their time pining for the “gay Jackie Robinson,” and whining that Colin Kaepernick has been blacklisted. It runs a race-focused blog called The Undefeated, a magazine hardly distinguishable from Rolling Stone that praised the NFL players who chose to take a knee.
- Freeform, formerly ABC Family, featured a late-term abortion on its popular show The Fosters. Planned Parenthood posted a press release which stated, “Planned Parenthood applauds ‘The Fosters’ for shedding light on a very real decision women and their families have to make each day … It’s time to bring stigma about abortion into the light, expose it and reject it, which ‘The Fosters’ did this week.” Planned Parenthood was also featured in the third episode of The Bold Type on Freeform when the fictional magazine that the show centers around has a fundraiser for the organization.
There are many more examples of Disney taking sides in controversial issues even though this Washington Post article stated that, “Disney has demonstrated a knack for getting pulled more deeply into controversies, even as it tries to avoid them.” Disney is in no way trying to avoid controversial topics and instead features them in their shows and movies.
