TIMELINE KARLIJN KOUWENBERG • OWEN BENNER

22 DECEMBER 2021

INFLUENCE ON SOCIETY

01

WALT DISNEY THE DARK SECRETS BEHIND YOUR CHILDHOOD FRIEND

PREAMBLE

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‎‫‏‬‎‫‏‬‎‫‏‬‎‫‏‬‎‫‏‬‎‫‏‬‎‫‏‬‎‫‏‬‎‫‏‬‎‫‏‬‎‫‏‬‎‫‏‬‎‫‏‬‎‫‏‬‎‫‏‬‎‎‫‏‬‎‫‏‬‎‫‏‬‎‫‏‬‎alt Disney meant a‫‏‏‬‎‫‏‬‎‎lot ‫‏‬‎‫‏‬‎‎to a ‫‏‬‎‫‏‬‎large ‫‏‬‎‎‫‏‬‎‫‏‬‎‫‏‬‎‫‏‬‎‫‏‬‎‫‏‬‎‫‏‬‎‫‏‬‎ ‫‏‬‎ ‫‏‬‎ ‎‫‏‬‎‫‏‬‎‫‏‬‎‫‏‬‎‫‏‬‎‫‏‬‎‫‏‬‎‫‏‬‎‫‏‬‎‫‏‬‎‫‏‬‎‫‏‬‎‫‏‬‎‫‏‬‎‫‏‬‎‎‫‏‬group‎‫‏‬‎‫‏‬‎of people. He was best known for creating Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck, creating the company we now know as Disney studios and creating cartoons for young and old that can be enjoyed by millions of people around the world. However, lately, our Walter Elias Disney has been in the spotlight for a different reason. He is called something sinister, some think he should be called a racist. While Disney was an innovative and successful man, he was also the subject of many controversies, most of which were rumoured to be anti-Semitic and racist. These rumours were, and still are, hard to dispel. In the 1930s, Disney attended meetings of a pro-Nazi organization, the German American Bund. He also hosted a well-known Nazi propagandist and filmmaker, Leni Riefenstahl, and gave her a tour of Disney Studios. To make matters worse, Disney was also accused of perpetuating black stereotypes in its films. The debate over Disney's alleged discrimination and racism continues to this date. These claims come from some familiar faces around Walt Disney's life and a selection of old movies and cartoons released by the Disney studio under Walt Disney himself. Most of these movies and cartoons were made in the 1930s and 1940s. But is there any basis for the claims of Walt Disney's racial ideas or is this just plain folklore? For starters, the term racism is a new term that didn't exist until after WW2. Racism is a very vague description that can mean a lot to many people. The most common use of the term is to describe the oppression of people of colour. Early American history is filled with stories of whites treating blacks as second-class citizens.

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With all background information largely out of the way, now is the time to take a step back and look independently at all the facts to investigate whether there is really any basis behind these claims.

BACKGROUND INFORMATION PARENTS

YOUTH

A POOR YOUTH MADE A RICH MAN

A TRADITIONAL FAMILY COMPOSITION Walter Elias Disney was born on December 5, 1901, in Chicago, Illinois. Baby Walter came into a family of seven and grew up with three brothers and a sister. Father Elias Disney, where Walter's middle name comes from, was a job hopper and almost never had a job for a longer period of time. Special in this family for that time was that mother Flora Call Disney also worked as a primary school teacher. So a simple American family for that time.

In 1911, his family moved to Kansas City, where Disney developed a love for trains. His uncle, Mike Martin, was a train engineer who worked the route between Fort Madison, Iowa and Marceline. Later, Disney would work a summer job with the railroad, selling snacks and newspapers to travellers. His family had very little money. This is why they bounced from Chicago to a Missouri farm to Kansas City in search of a living. Two of his older brothers ran away when he was just four, sick of the constant work and deprivations. Still, Disney persevered, in part because of the support of the family's neighbours. When he was a kid, one of Disney's neighbors hired him to take pictures of the man's horse. He also befriended a boy named Walter Pfeiffer, whose family had been in vaudeville and theater and who introduced Disney to the movie world. Without them, he may never have developed his interest in animation and art, and the studio we know today as Walt Disney Studios would never have existed.

A STAR IS BORN Back in Kansas City after the war, Disney landed a job at an art studio working on print advertisements. He and a coworker left to start their own commercial company focusing on animation, called Laugh-O-Gram. The business was not a big financial success and eventually went bankrupt. And by a weird turn of events, Disney headed to Hollywood.

Disney's new California studio worked on an animated series called Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, which was distributed by Universal Pictures and became very popular. However, instead of increasing Disney's production fee, his client tried to get him to take a pay cut, and when the dust settled, Disney had lost the rights to the popular character. Disney started work on another animated character: Mortimer Mouse. His wife suggested renaming him Mickey, which sounded happier and so the most popular and well-known animation company to date was found.

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Disney attended McKinley High School in Chicago, where he took drawing and photography classes and was a contributing cartoonist for the school paper. At night, he took courses at the Art Institute of Chicago. However, when Disney was 16, he dropped out of school to join the Army but was rejected for being underage. So, instead, he joined the Red Cross and was sent to France for a year to drive an ambulance. He moved back to the U.S. in 1919.

ADULTHOOD

ANTI-SEMITISM The first claim to be taken under the loop is the claim that Walt Disney was anti-Semitic. This claim stems mainly from a cartoon about the big bad wolf and the three little pigs. In the cartoon, the big bad wolf dresses up as a Jew to sneak into the piglet's house. Disney was known for implementing meaning into its cartoons, so many people also saw a different message in the cartoon. The wolf would be the personification of evil, by dressing up and pretending to be a nice and innocent Jew, the piglets would bring in the bad. However, Walt Disney never gave in to this gossip, so of course, it could just be a coincidence. Another unflattering fact was that less than a month after the Kristallnacht, Walt Disney invited German nazi director Leni Riefenstahl for a tour of his studios.

Riefenstahl was in America to promote her film, Olympia. Among other things, Leni commented during this tour, "It was gratifying to learn how thoroughly correct Americans are distancing themselves from the smear campaigns of the Jews." While this is a tough one to defend for Walt Disney, both figures were prominent in the film industry. Another possible explanation for this meeting could have been Disney Trying to make his films stay available in Germany again after being in consideration to get banned by Hitler. All this doesn't make Walt Disney anti-Semitic, but receiving Riefenstahl so soon after the crystal night was certainly not a neat idea.

As the last of many arguments, Walt Disney was one of the co-founders of the motion picture alliance, an organization created to preserve American ideals and keep communism and fascism out of Hollywood. Even though this organization had a clear goal with an understandable motive, the group mainly consisted of antiSemitsts. Disney knew that antiSemitism played a major role but only stepped away from the alliance when it became known to the outside world.

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Despite a pile of unflattering facts, several things contradict the accusation of Walt Disney's antiSemitic ideas. For example, Disney made several propaganda films against Nazi Germany and their anti-smear ideas on behalf of the American government, the most famous of which was Der Führer face, with which Disney made people think about their freedoms. Furthermore, the writer of Walt Disney's Biography Neal Gabler concluded that Disney was not antiSemitic, Gabler had access to the entire archives of Disney while writing the biography. Gabler also found out during several investigations that Disney employed many Jews at Disney. Enough evidence against the claim that Walt Disney had Anti-Semitic Ideas. Although Disney was friends with people with anti-Semitic ideas and also made a few mistakes here and there, there is too little evidence to say that Disney was also antiSemitic itself, especially if you also look at all the contradictory signals.

SEXIST Another claim often made about Walter Disney is one about frequently repeated sexism and exclusion of women from his company. These allegations arose mainly from the exclusion of female employees within the company. Neil Gabler, the author of Walt Disney's biography wrote in his book "He didn't particularly like women and never trusted them, he was never non-suspicious.". Further, in 1928, Disney told a female soloist, “Woman don't do creative work at this company.” Despite being unacceptable for this time, Disney's behaviour didn't really stand out in those days, many women didn't get jobs at that time. Still, Walt Disney turned out to have a quick mood swing on the subject of women in his studio.

Another claim often made about Walter Disney is one about frequently repeated sexism and exclusion of women from his company. These allegations arose mainly from the exclusion of female employees within the company. Neil Gabler, the author of Walt Disney's biography wrote in his book "He didn't particularly like women and never trusted them, he was never nonsuspicious.". Further, in 1928, Disney told a female soloist, “Woman don't do creative work at this company.” Despite being unacceptable for this time, Disney's behaviour didn't really stand out in those days, many women didn't get jobs at that time. Still, Walt Disney turned out to have a quick mood swing on the subject of women in his studio. For example, in 1935 Walt Disney hired the first woman in his studio, Bianca Majolie. She was hired to write Pinocchio from the original Italian language to a script in English for the company.

Majolie would work on a wide variety of films. She would select music for Fantasia, draw concept art for Cinderella, write material for Peter Pan and create a sympathetic elephant character that would inspire Dumbo. Yet she was often seen as the piss pole for her manly colleagues, she slammed her work and almost bullied her away. Finally, Majolie's career at Disney came to an abrupt end in 1940 when she returned from vacation and found her desk empty. No one had bothered to tell her she'd been fired. Still, firing Majolie was not the end of feminism in the company. As Walt Disney said in 1940, "Girl artists have a right to expect the same opportunities for advancement as men." Furthermore, Retta Scott became the first female animator at Disney and worked on a small film called Bambi in 1942. Furthermore, Mary Blair became the first female supervisor for the film Alice in Wonderland. Eventually, Disney became less and less Sexist and even made a few statements in 1959 that show his change in ideals, "If a woman likes it to heck with man" and “Woman is the best judges of anything we turnout”. Despite the fact that Walt Disney showed slightly sexist behaviour in his earlier years, this behaviour still fitted perfectly into the picture of that time. Although still wrong, he showed that everyone should have the opportunity to grow and this he showed in the years that followed.

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For example, in 1935 Walt Disney hired the first woman in his studio, Bianca Majolie. She was hired to write Pinocchio from the original Italian language to a script in English for the company. Majolie would work on a wide variety of films. She would select music for Fantasia, draw concept art for Cinderella, write material for Peter Pan and create a sympathetic elephant character that would inspire Dumbo. Yet she was often seen as the piss pole for her manly colleagues, she slammed her work and almost bullied her away. Finally, Majolie's career at Disney came to an abrupt end in 1940 when she returned from vacation and found her desk empty. No one had bothered to tell her she'd been fired.

Still, firing Majolie was not the end of feminism in the company. As Walt Disney said in 1940, "Girl artists have a right to expect the same opportunities for advancement as men." Furthermore, Retta Scott became the first female animator at Disney and worked on a small film called Bambi in 1942. Furthermore, Mary Blair became the first female supervisor for the film Alice in Wonderland.

RACISM A PASSION PROJECT First, let's step away from the movies and take a look at Walt Disney's passion project to better answer this question; welcome to Disneyland. Walt's take on Disneyland was that it was an immersive, interactive game. Visitors were called guests and staff members were cast, members. With this mentality, employees were not hired, but cast. In less nefarious ways, cast members had to adhere to a strict dress code, later dubbed "The Disney Look," which banned facial hair, hair that fell over the collar for men. it took almost 60 years, but, as of this year, employees at Walt Disney's two U.S. theme parks can finally show up at work with a stylish beard or goatee, but only if they are “neat, polished, and professional,” according to the official memo. However, at Disneyland in the 50s and 60s, even guests with facial hair, not to mention longhaired hippies, were turned away, as they were told they, unfortunately, failed to meet the standards of Disneyland's dress code. The company eventually relented on this policy, though, and allowed all hirsute patrons to enjoy “The Happiest Place on Earth.” Now, the peculiar double standard: Think of any picture of Walt Disney that you have ever seen. What exists in almost all of them? A moustache.

Additional to the hair rules, there were some extra grooming guidelines for the cast of Disney’s parks. Unnatural hair dyes, extravaganza pieces, dangle earrings for women, and makeup were banned from the park. In addition, you need to keep a friendly, positive performance on stage. There are rumours, which don't have a solid base of confirmation, for example, the women's suits only went up to a certain size, meaning that if you didn't fit in, you wouldn't be able to do that job. But the rumour, if not explicitly true, is at least illuminating for the kind of "casting" discrimination applied to the employees. Non-white people, especially black people, weren't seen much as cast members in the park. They often had an extra's role in a prison or restaurant jobs, or perhaps as musicians, but most likely the jobs were backstage at the employee restaurants or buildings. As the movie studio, Disneyland wasn't overly discriminatory, but they certainly weren't progressive by any stretch of the imagination. Walt usually wore his bias in the belief that if you could do the job well, it was yours. But those jobs more often went to white men.

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ACCUSMENTS

Let us take a step back from Disneyland and focus on Walt Disney himself, was he really as discriminatory as some claimed? Let's start with where this gossip comes from to see if they might have some basis to stand on. Most of the accusations come from Disney's wider audience who, after years, once again turned on the classics and to shock saw some very racist and stereotypical themes that they had not noticed before. So these charges stem primarily from the use of racial stereotypes in Disney movies from the 40s. Dumbo’s black crows, Fantasia’s black servant centaurette and Song of the South, a movie so offensive that the Disney company will no longer let it be seen in public. But how racist were these movies? and did Walt Disney influence these stereotypes in any way? More on that in a bit, but first some other accusers.

Walt Disney's niece, filmmaker and social activist Abegail Disney agrees with Streep. In an interview with the Hollywood reporter, Abegail said she sometimes had mixed feelings about her late greatgranduncle but loved him nonetheless. Then Abegail further explained herself about the mixed feelings she had about her mixed feelings.

"I feel I have to clarify. I know ‎‫‏ ‏‬‎‫‏‬‎‫‏‬‎‫‏‬‎ ‫‏‬‎ ‎‫‏‬‎‫‏‬‎‫‏‬‎‫‏‬‎‫‏‬‎‫‏‬‎‫‏‬‎‫‏‬‎‫‏‬‎‫‏‬‎‫‏‬‎‫‏‬‎‫‏‬‎ ‫‏‬‎ ‫‏‬‎ ‫‏‬‎ ‫‏‬‎ ‎he was a man of his times and I can forgive him, but Saving Mr Banks was a brazen attempt by the company to make a saint out of the man. A devil he was not. Nor an angel. That’s the point." ^Abagail Disney about Streeps remark.

“If you're going to have mixed feelings about a family member, you need to be as honest as you can about those feelings, or you'll lead yourself into a blind alley. Anti Semite? Of course. misogynist? NATURALLY! racist? Come on, he made a movie (Jungle Book) about how to "stay with your kind" at the height of the struggle for segregation! As if the song 'King of the Jungle wasn't proof enough already! But he was good at making movies and his work has made billions of people happy. It is undeniable. So there you go. Mixed feelings in the wazoo.”

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Often these claims also come from corners you would not expect them. For example, actress Meryl Streep, who made several remarkable comments at the presentation of the national board or review awards in Hollywood. Here she attacked the then-deceased Disney with charges of having racist tendencies, supporting an antiSemitic industry lobby group and being a sexist.