1d ago

Disney sells us imaginary heroes while supporting real world villains.

140 comments

Superheros also just preach that you have to maintain the status quo, never tackle the root of the problem, just violently attack the symptoms and that only a small few special people can save you, so everybody else just has to get out of the way and cheer.
- While this is a good narrative to make about Disney if we want to hate on them, it's not true though.
  The Disney movies for kids is almost all about not maintaining status quo and actually challenge it. Or being different than anyone else
  Frozen and Moana are recent examples. Pirates of Caribbean for an older audience. There's many more.
  
  Disney kids movies aren't about super heroes usually. But even Lion King is how you can't escape adult responsibilities and have to continue the cycle.
- Iron Man is about Iron Man realising that selling weapons is bad
  
  Also saying you need to be a rich prick to get anything done
  
  And then giving an unbelievably hangout weapons system to some kid as a gift.
- V for Vendetta
  Yeah the exception that proves the rule but still, anarchy-man is cool
- Yeah, like Mulan showing that girls can also fight or Merida showing that girls have an opinion of their own.
  No more like Mike Wazowski showing all Monsters that laughing is better than screaming. Or Lilo befriending an alien weapon. Or Captain Jack Sparr-oh...
  Remember, we are talking about Disney heroes and A LOT of them question the status quo (not all, but a lot).
- That sounds like the villains' motive in My Hero Academia. A good series about superheroes, and what it means to be a hero. And what it means for those who aren't qualified to work as heroes but do, or try to do heroic things (the fourth season addresses this, as will the upcoming final season (it was in the manga, which is complete), and the Vigilantes spinoff directly covers it.
- You're talking about Disney movies. Intended for children. They're not gonna go shoot someone in the head because they're responsible for denied health insurance.
  Why are you expecting kids movies to be an accurate intricate commentary of society in the first place?
  It's movies, for kids. Most people grow out of that. But some keep being obsessed with "superheroes"
  
  I like Black Adam, he kills colonisers
  
  Why are you expecting kids movies to be an accurate intricate commentary of society in the first place?
  Because what kids watch will influence their sense of morality

JK Rowling wrote a whole book series about how bullying is a horrible and self-perpetuating cycle, and now spends most of her time bullying a marginalised group
- JK Rowling
  No, Joanne!
  I.e., I understand she greatly prefers (absolutely detests) being addressed that way. :D

Wakanda is a monarchist enthnostate that tortures outsiders and even shows outright hostility to those helping them. Their leadership is determined by the most violent among them. And this society is presented a utopia.
I fucking hate these movies.
- I tried watching the animated show recently, and its basically Wakanda throughout history stealing vibranium from other civilisations because they feel entitled to complete control over the element, usually with large amounts of colateral damage and theft of deeply important cultural artifacts in the process. I assume there's some alegory I'm missing but they just come off as assholes.
  
  Are they bad guys in that?
- The country is threatened by a villainous black liberation agitator and saved with the help of the CIA.
  They might as well have had Abdel Fattah El-Sisi play the lead role.
  
  Don't need to jump all the way to Wakanda. Thanos is an eco terrorist. Ultron is a peace activist. Magneto is patterned after Malcolm X.
  The Marvel universe is the story of how a billionaire arms dealer and the US military save the world from deranged leftists. Disney heroes always fight for the status quo and the villains want to make things better (but also they're written to be crazy and violent). It's a billion dollar "I drew you as Soyjak and me as the chad" franchise.
  Walt Disney was a major force behind the Red Scare in Hollywood, turning in his own animators for unionizing, and they've been terrible ever since.

Well, yeah, this is like saying Santa Claus isn’t real lol
- Does Santa Clus support genocides?
  
  Since Santa isn’t real, I would say the answer is a definitive, no.
  
  Not to my knowledge, but that fucker, the Easter Bunny, Leprechauns, and Tooth Fairy all support/practice breaking and entering!

Well the funny part is that most of the "heroes" they sell are not really heroes, just defenders of a status quo america that never really existed
- See also: “Marvel Defenders of The Status Quo” (2022-06-22) by Pop Culture Detective.
- Zemo did nothing wrong.
  
  Zemo literally caused trillions of sentient beings all around the universe to get erased out of existence by fragmenting the Avengers.

I have been thinking the superhero movies were having many fascist themes themselves. And their popularity was helped by a growing authoritarian movement in the USA.
The actual comics do not have many of the above issues, the movies reinforced certain themes.
I say this as someone who liked the comic books for many decades
- I pissed off a lot of, supposedly left leaning, comic book fans when I told them I thought Tony Stark had a good point that the super heroes in the MCU needed to be regulated. They were doing too much investigating and acting on their own without any oversight to not make people nervous. Same with Justice League Unlimited.
  At least with Superman(2025), the hero's intervention in world affairs was just a scaled up Bystander Effect.
  
  I was thinking something else, like
  The Boys Showrunner, Eric Kripke, says the superhero ultimately exists to protect the status quo, to keep things as they are or once were during more nostalgic times, while the supervillain seeks change. A superhero is pro-establishment, working to uphold the system, and viewers can be trained to believe some exceptional being will fix everything.
  The earlier superhero movies made in the USA helped support the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and there were strategies and meetings to deliberately do just that.
  I think the later Marvel movies drifted away from typecasting the villains and made the plots less American centric. But it did not loose the parallels to the popular movies in Germany made in the late 30’s.
- Yeah it's not great the way supers tend to validate vigilantism. Ultimately you can have rule of law or some form of tyranny. There are middle grounds, but those are the options. Also the hero's journey literary paradigm has regressive aspects. 🤓
  
  I like the comic where Batman beats up a racist cop
  
  superhero movies were having many fascist themes themselves.
  you can have rule of law or some form of tyranny
  Yeah like that one!
  
  "Rule of Law" is itself a form of tyranny. It is nothing more than the dictates of a hierarchical authority, originating from the authority of kings, trying to assert its control over others. It is a fundamentally oppressive system that can and has repeatedly throughout history been used to facilitate the oppression of marginalized peoples.

It reminds me of a meme I recently saw of a preacher in front of a bunch of Indians, and he says "Before we came, you worshipped the SUN!"
And one of the Indians says "Dude, the sun is real."
- He has a point. It's ironic that the only piece of "evidence" most religions have is a book written by humans.
  Any belief in the sun/moon/stars/whatever.... At least you can point and say, there it is.
  But Christianity is normal and not crazy at all, and believing in Ra is the crazy thing.... Sure. Yeah.
  I think it's all nuts. But whatever.
  
  the only piece of “evidence” most religions have is a book written by humans.
  Evangelism typically involves more than just a book. There's inevitably some amount of mysticism - faith healing, weather events that turn the tide of a pitched battle, communing with the dead, miraculous survival stories, straight up stage magic.
  Any belief in the sun/moon/stars/whatever… At least you can point and say, there it is.
  There's inevitably some kind of reverse causation in these faiths. Humans are constantly asserting they can manipulate the heavens with ritual and sacrifice.
- "Yeah well, my god is invisible!"
  "Dude, you can't look at ours or you'll burn your eyes out."

Basically every mainstream media is "We can't kill the villain"
opens history book
LMAO
- And then there is Andor...
  
  Bill Burr shot first!
- This is why I loved the scene in F is for Family when Frank responds to the 'be the bigger and better person and let go' by straight up punching and knocking his abusive elderly dad after meeting up with him instead of burying the trauma further.
  
  People are looking for a left wing Rogan. But I think we have that with guys like Bur

Y'all see the latest Captain America movie? The one where the whole moral was "maybe we can still appeal to their better nature?"
- You still watching that crap?
  
  Yargh, matey. I do be watching whatever the fuck I want.

Roger Meyers, Sr., the gentle genius behind Itchy & Scratchy loved and cared about almost all the peoples of the world

They treat us like the naive children we behave like.

TBH their "heroes" are pretty fascist too. Princes, princesses, etc. It's a total shitshow in terms of class.
- And the ones who are not are almost all solders and cops. With two exceptions that I can think of, Spiderman who might as well be rich do to his friendships and connections and antman who they treated like shit.

But Disney has also been tearing down the imaginary heroes with movies like Captain America Civil War and The Last Jedi.

Check
Teaching with Disney edited by Julie C. Garlen and Jennifer A. Sandlin, 2016 (including but not limited to "Teaching Disney Critically in the Age of Perpetual Consumption")
and
The Mouse that Roared, Disney and the End of Innocence by Henry A. Giroux and Grace Pollock, 2010
but the Tl;DR is that their only definition of "heroes" is whatever might sell anything and aligned with the ideology of a "founder" that arguably didn't draw the mouse itself.

DC isn't any better
- It is any better.
  It's also not okay what DC did, but the transgressions are very different in scale.
  Kimmel was faired for saying "MAGA is trying to make it look like the shooter wasn't a MAGA activist", while Felker-Martin got fired for saying "it's a good thing Kirk can no longer take part in podcasts."
  I don't think either of those is grounds for firing, but it's not good to bring them to the same level.
- Ok fanboy

Why did you do it stan?
"The money, of couse."

I've been avoiding Disney (Florida including Disney), since Ron DeSantis tried to ban words "change" and "climate".
I won't change this until the climate is right.

Grace Kelly said something similar years ago: “Hollywood amuses me. Holier-than-thou for the public and unholier-than-the-devil in reality.”. We have all known this for decades. The sleazy hollywood rapist was a thing long before Harvey was outed. They all knew, and yet they all kept their mouths shut.
This is why its always been so perplexing to me that so much of society looks to hollywood for its morality lessons.

Someone post the astronaut meme
- 🌎 👨‍🚀 🔫 👩‍🚀

#corporatelife

It's not just Disney... I'm pretty sure all these 1st world nations do the same. We've been used and manipulated and suckered into complacency from their offerings and or marketed false promises.

Someone should make a parody of that. Like Disney makes a superhero called "Free School Lunch Man" while funding candidates who are against that idea.

Now look at who's running Nintendo (of America). Guy named Bowser. That will never not be funny. (Coincidentally, a guy who hacked one of their consoles and is now essentially a wage slave to them, forced to give up like half his paycheck to them, is also named Bowser.)
Disney and Nintendo are both widely loved companies that have done some very bad things for the world. Maybe the true villains. But, like anything and anyone else, it's shades of grey, neither of them are completely diabolically evil.
- neither of them are completely diabolically evil
  You sure? I don't see any redeeming qualities in Disney nor Nintendo.
  
  The happiness they bring children counts for something.
  
  As always, companies aren't people, they are comprised of people. Not all of these people are diabolically evil. And even then, likely the people making the diabolically evil decisions have some streak in them that's not diabolically evil.
  For example, you can't honestly say that none of the Disney movies had any positive effect on people. Same with stuff that Nintendo does.
  Sure, overall the verdict is "diabolically evil". But there are positives within the overwhelmingly negative.
- Nintendo and Disney aren't evil because they're cooperations, not people. It's the people who sit on top of Disney and Nintendo who are either diabolically evil or spineless cowards who want money and power but are too scared to use it for good. Either way, Nintendo and Disney "don't serve the public interest".

#deep

I can totally imagine the avengers debating for years "well no we still don't have enough proof of genocide, the best action is inaction" while immediately go to raze an Iranian city after an unfounded rumor of a WMD

This just came out and shows this theme. It is awesome Knights of Guinevere: pilot https://youtu.be/MCAdbUaMlAE

Disney absolutely who the antagonist represented in the winter soldier

Maybe that’s why all their stories suck, completely unfounded in reality
- thinking of all the movies where good triumphs over evil
  You're right. Evil usually wins IRL.

They've been like that for a very long time.

Duh, that's a point.

after micky mouse they went downhill. didn't like the mm club as a kid.

Star Wars Andor is specifically there to steam-valve liberals and socialists
not doing anything fans downvote this post 👍

Not for long, soon Disney heroes will be exposing the all-powerful wokestate and overthrowing it.
The woke State stopping supply-side economics that leads to Prosperity obviously.
- supply-side economics that leads to Prosperity
  That sounds too fiction even for comic books
  
  You know, that line makes me think they're just trolling. There's no way they're serious
- Lol you can't just go around making up words
  
  First of all I absolutely can and do makeup words as I see fit. What you can't? That must be embarrassing for you. Second, I have no idea what you're talking about.

140 comments