This Thursday, April 22, is the fortieth anniversary of Earth Day. In honor of that I’m making it Earth Week on the Disney blog, and I’m going to explore ways in which the Walt Disney Corporation contributes to ecological causes.
Now that green is hip and mega global conglomerates like Disney are getting in on the environmental action, I start to wonder if the trendiness of green initiatives doesn’t sometimes overshadow or outweigh actual conservation efforts.
Take Disney’s Project Green, for example. The House of Mouse throws together a splashy website, herds Joe Jonas and Demi Lovato out of the Disney Channel teen star corral to sing songs and promote the green message, and designs a neat little feature on the website urging kids to make a pledge to help the environment. I thought I’d play around with the website to judge just how serious Disney Project Green actually is about the environment.
Clicking on the “make a pledge” button took me to a new page where Joe Jonas’s irritating song about “the beat of a butterfly’s wings” starts up again (this happens on every page, and the video starts automatically; I had to actively tell it to stop, rather than play), and a little tip about how I can help the environment (for example, mine was to plant a tree for Arbor Day) pops up. There was yet another “make a pledge” button, but I needed to log-in go further. I didn’t want to do that, because I didn’t trust Disney not to spam my email address with more Joe Jonas/Demi Lovato songs.
If there’s one thing Disney’s Project Green website does well, it’s promote Disney’s upcoming “Oceans” movie. Ads for it appear everywhere on the site, and even the butterfly wing song is somehow about it. The movie’s sort of a follow-up to last year’s “Earth,” this time focusing, obviously, on the creatures in and under the sea.
I’ve made no real attempt to hide my skepticism that Disney’s green efforts, at least those covered here, aren’t more about jumping on the hip ecological bandwagon than about wanting to effect real change. But really, that doesn’t matter. No matter the motivation behind Project Green, it could make a real difference.
The thing is, I’m clearly not Project Green’s intended audience and that’s why I don’t find it as moving. The web project is meant for the Disney Channel’s pre-, tw-, and teen fans, particularly those who might not spend much time thinking about the environment.
Songs by some of their favorite Disney Channel stars will draw them in. The colorful, easy-to-use graphics will keep them there. And the small tidbits of environmental information and advice are just the right size for the often short attention spans of the digital era’s youth.
The little conservation tips and facts spread throughout the website will help kids start thinking about ways they can save the environment. The idea will seem cool, since it has the backing of famous faces. Project Green provides a great launching pad for those kids who might be inspired to go seek further environmental information elsewhere.
So really, I ought to keep my scorn to a minimum. Project Green isn’t meant for me, so it’s not going to do much for me. But it just might do a lot for the kids for whom it’s intended, and no matter Disney’s motivation in creating the website, that’s what’s important.
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