Compare and Contrast: Disney’s Pro-China (Live-Action) Film and Television Arm vs. Patriotic Theme Park Employees
The Walt Disney Company has had a rough 2020 so far.
Due to the temporary closures of major theatre chains like AMC Theatres (which faces possible bankruptcy) and Cinemark, they’ve had to delay a series of films that were set for release this year, including Marvel’s Black Widow, a live-action remake of the 1998 animated film Mulan, and and a series of releases from what is now called 20th Century Studios including The Woman in the Window and the forever doomed X-Men spinoff The New Mutants. Their stock price has also gone down dramatically from their peak price of $151 each. Even worse, all of their theme parks and resorts are closed until further notice. Why? It’s because of the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic, which originated in Wuhan, China but has since spread all around the world.
So, why are Disney’s film and TV divisions still in bed with communist China? This is something that should baffle shareholders. NewsBusters reported last year that although their entertainment content is getting increasingly more and more progressive politically and socially, they’re still doing business with one of the most homophobic and xenophobic regimes in the world today – quite inconsistent when it comes to social consciousness.
Disney’s dealings with China (which are one reason why Bob Iger left his CEO position abruptly two months ago) are even apparent in the pro-Beijing, anti-Trump propaganda being demonstrated on ABC News. In fact, Good Morning America recently celebrated China as a glitter of hope that does not need to be held to any account while claiming the spread is exclusively America’s fault. In addition, they claim that holding China accountable for their lies about handling of the coronavirus pandemic is based on racism and leads to violence against Asian-Americans. They even smeared last year’s pro-Democracy protests in Hong Kong as “intolerant and angry.”
On a side note, at least ABC’s consistent with their left-wing agenda as demonstrated with a recent episode of the Grey’s Anatomy spinoff Station 19, which recently compared ICE to Nazis:
https://www.mrctv.org/videos/station-19-no-days-nazi
Sullivan: And here I am looking at pictures of people who’ve been starved to death in camps, piled them in mass graves. I mean, I was 12 years old. I knew history. I knew about all the evil things that happened in this country to the people that look like me. But now there was someone in my family, someone I loved, who did those kind of things? And he tried to explain to me. He said, uh “Sometimes a nation in crisis needs the patriot who does the unspeakable.”
Andy: MM.
Sullivan: No, he was right. That day, I started to hate him. Six more years I lived in that house. I never spoke to him again. See, the Gestapo, the Geheime Staatspolizei, the secret state police, were legitimate law enforcement for Nazis. They were government employees, storming into homes, into schools, into restaurants, ripping parents from their children, ripping husbands from their wives and then shipping them off to detention centers. People think what happened in Germany could never happen here. There have been multiple reports of sexual abuse on women and children by guards in our detention centers right here. And we just scroll through those reports and shake our heads and do nothing. If we do nothing when we see our fellow human beings, our neighbors, being abused, detained… What happens next?
It’s unfortunate that most of Disney’s TV and film divisions (outside of the work done by their in-house animation arm and Pixar) are getting increasingly political, and more and more reliant on the Chinese market respectively. However, there is one last bastion of hope when it comes to Disney’s businesses, and that is the theme park arm; more specifically Walt Disney World in Florida, which is one of the destinations that’s currently temporarily closed.
A group of essential Cast Members continue to work at the shuttered resort’s Magic Kingdom theme park to raise the American flag every day. In fact, Disney enjoyed this moment so much, they recorded a YouTube video of it:
Videos like this prove there’s still patriotism left at an institution like Disney, and Walt himself would be very proud of these cast members showing their patriotism.
There comes a point in time where American businesses need to take a look at their over reliance on China, and this is one of those times. Most executives, especially Bob Iger, would not have let pro-CCP propaganda into their content, but Disney’s new leadership – including CEO Bob Chapek and Walt Disney Television chief Peter Rice – are demonstrating so far that they would gladly do anything to make America’s leadership, especially President Trump, look as bad as possible; even if it means pleasing Beijing (openly in the case of ABC).
Chapek, Rice, and other Film and TV executives at Disney could learn from their colleagues at the theme parks division on being Americans first rather than appeasing their authoritarian paymasters in the CCP; especially since Chapek in particular originated leading the Parks division. Unfortunately they seem to want to do anything but.
And you wonder why we have Trump as our commander in chief?
