It floored me recently to be engaged in a conversation with another parent who loathed all things Disney. Her children didn’t watch the Disney Channel. They didn’t have Disney products. They didn’t go to Disney films and they didn’t recognize Disney anecdotes. I mean seriously – how can you not love all things Disney?
Grace agreed to a conversation with me about this phenomenon recently provided that I did not use her real name nor the names of her children. Grace is a 35 year-old mother of three. Her children are ages 9, 8 and 5. She and her husband have been married for more than a decade and all of her children are in public school, with her youngest having started kindergarten this year.
The following is my interview with Grace about her anti-Disney stance and where it came from.
Me: Good morning and thank you for taking the time to talk to me about your feelings on the subject of all things Disney. Let me start by asking, did you grow up watching Disney films?
Grace: Oh, my parents took me to see some of the Disney movies when they were in the theater. I was a teenager though when they began their revival – you know with The Little Mermaid and Beauty & the Beast.
Me: Did you ever take a trip to Disneyland or Disney World?
Grace:I vaguely recall a trip to Disneyland when I was very little, but the most I remembered about that was riding on the teacups and then throwing up afterwards. Don’t get me wrong, I think they’re great places – just far too commercial and it’s hard to not appreciate the fact that you can spend thousands of dollars a year just on Disney alone and they know it.
Me: What is your objection to Disney, then? Is it the money? Or the types of movies or shows or something else?
Grace: Actually, it has more to do with the way Disney dominates the child’s imagination. I read this quote once that said Disney is to childhood what Microsoft is to computers – and I hate Microsoft – so you can imagine how I felt about it. When my son (age 9 now) was born, it seemed like every other present we got had some Disney logo on it. When I was growing up, Disney was interesting, but they didn’t saturate every corner of my childhood.
Disney seems determined to become to childhood what Microsoft is to computing: the default operating system for the juvenile imagination
Me: Can you give me some examples?
Grace: Saturday morning cartoons. On Saturday morning, you got up and ran in the living room to turn on one of the network channels and you watched a host of different cartoons from different outlets. Nowadays your options as a parent are to have Nickelodeon or the Disney Channel – PBS is trying to keep up, but even what they offer is pretty limited
Me: Was it a conscious decision to eliminate Disney from your children’s lives?
Grace: Actually, yes – we talked about it at length. Occasionally, we will take the children to see a film, but we won’t take them to see it just because it happens to be a Disney film. Disney shouldn’t and doesn’t own the rights to dominate the imagination and in the last few years, DreamWorks has actually put out several movies that my kids prefer – like Shrek and Shrek 2. But then – there’s the Pixar films like Toy Story and Cars – those are very popular with my kids too.
Me: So you will go see Disney films, because Pixar and Disney are partners and now Pixar is owned by Disney.
Grace:Yes, but we don’t buy into the marketing and we don’t pick up the multitude of items that come out just because they happen to have the logo on it. One of my daughters’ really, really wanted a pink television for her room last year because she’d seen the Disney princess television and when my husband told her would she be happy with any television or did she just want the pink one because it was pink – she said she just wanted a television. We discussed it and bought a regular television for her room so they could watch movies in there since she and my youngest daughter share a room. The pink television is great, but Disney’s name goes on it and the price tag leaps by a $100.
Me: I don’t mean to press a point, but you’re not really anti-Disney so much as you are anti-commercialization?
Grace: I’d say yes to that – but in the last couple of decades, Disney has taken commercialization to a ridiculous level – we have some friends who literally decorated their homes out of Disney catalogs and their children don’t own any toys that didn’t come from a Disney store or Disney line – there’s just a lot more out there and if we didn’t take the stand that we do – chances our, our children are going to miss out on a lot of other opportunities because we’re staring down a narrow Disney corridor to only their products
Me: I can’t really disagree with you there, though I am a Disneyphile myself – on the other hand, I also like lots of other stuff that has nothing to do with Disney.
Grace:But I bet if you had to pick between Disney and somewhere else – you’d rather pick the Disney, right?
Me: More than 50% of the time.
Grace:And more than 50% of the time, I wouldn’t. So – I’m not anti-Disney – let’s just say I’m Disney Selective.
Me: Thanks for taking the time to be Disney selective with me today.
Grace: Absolutely and thank you for asking me.