If Disneyland is the happiest place on Earth, then Disney movies have got to be the happiest
movies on Earth: after all, they’re almost always good, wholesome fun.
But unfortunately, there’s a darker side to Disney that many people don’t know.
These are the stories that have put Disney in hot water.
It probably won't surprise you to hear that the Disney of the mid-20th century wasn't
exactly progressive when it came to hiring women.
In fact, Disney even had a form letter it used specifically to tell women who were interested
in becoming animators that they never hired women to become animators.
The letter reads:
"Women do not do any of the creative work in connection with preparing the cartoons
for the screen, as that work is performed entirely by young men.”
According to Open Culture, the letter was standard protocol back in 1938, just after
the release of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves.
Women could apply to become "inkers" or "painters," though, which were the people who colored
in the animated frames.
Even so, Disney didn't recommend moving to Hollywood since, in their words, "there are
really very few openings in comparison with the number of girls who apply."
To be fair, this was the late 1930s, when there weren't many career options for women
anywhere, so in those days this wasn't considered much of a scandal.
It wasn't until copies of these letters started cropping up in modern times that everyone
realized just how problematic Disney had been.
Back in Disney's heyday, the company did some stuff that was pretty blatantly racist.
Everyone remembers the crows from Dumbo, which were clearly an African-American stereotype,
although you'll hear some people argue that because the crows were helpful, friendly characters
they couldn't possibly have been racist.
Never mind that their leader was called "Jim Crow," they were "jive-talkers," and they
were portrayed as lazy and kind of stupid.
"Flyin' speed!
Retract your landing gear!
Raise your fuselage!
Take off!"
But it actually gets worse, way worse than that.
One of Disney's most blatantly racist films was 1946’s Song of the South, which was
basically a movie about how much fun it was to be a plantation slave because you got to
sing and dance around with a bunch of cartoon animals.
According to the Guardian, the film is so ugly and racist that Disney even agreed to
never show it again.
In the U.S., you can't get it on any officially released DVD, Laserdisc, or VHS.
In 2007 there was talk that Disney might reconsider their decision for some reason, but so far
you still can't buy Song of the South from Disney.
And that's almost definitely a good thing.
In the 1999 video release of Disney's The Rescuers, there are two frames that show the
image of a topless woman in a window in the background.
Oddly, the images weren't spotted by some religious group obsessively going through
the video frame by frame in the hope of catching Disney’s indiscretions.
According to Snopes, Disney itself made the announcement after 3.4 million copies of the
tape were already in the hands of consumers.
The company said the frames were added in 1977 by someone working on the film in post-production:
in other words, they were included in the original theatrical release, too.
Disney ended up recalling the release, which isn’t exactly an inexpensive thing to have
to do.
In the golden age of cheap crap produced with overseas labor, very few people seemed to
really care about the working conditions in sweatshop factories.
Today, we tend to think of human rights as being sort of important, although people do
still really like cheap crap.
By 2001, no one really thought it was okay that the conditions in the factories which
produced Disney’s goods were so deplorable.
According to Rabble, Disney was working with not one but 12 Chinese supply factories, where
women regularly worked 16 hour days for ridiculously low wages.
But that wasn't the only thing that caused the Maquila Solidarity Network to name Disney
the "Sweatshop Retailer of the Year", it was also the fact that Disney just didn't seem
to care.
In 2011 Disney factories were in the news again, this time for employing children as
young as 14 and forcing workers to do three times as much overtime as permitted by law.
Instead of just brushing the whole thing off, though, the Guardian says Disney launched
its own investigation, so that's at least an improvement over the previous decade.
Really, though, a company that charges $75 for a sweatshirt ought to be able to use some
of that money to contract with a factory that doesn't mistreat their workers.
Anyone who says "money can't buy you happiness" has clearly never been to the happiest place
on Earth.
While average families save for months just to afford the park’s regular passes, people
who have money were, until very recently, happily shelling out extra cash so they didn't
have to wait in line all day.
In September 2013, CNN reported that Disney was going to change its disabled visitors
policy.
Instead of granting disabled guests instant access to rides, Disney now gives disabled
visitors a ride ticket with a specific time printed on it, so they won't have to wait
in line.
That means no more instant access, though, so it's sort of a net loss as far as the disabled
population is concerned.
So why did Disney do this?
It's because wealthy visitors were paying disabled people to pretend to be family members,
so that everyone in their party could skip the line.
Yes, besides using wealth and privilege to buy their way into a Disneyland experience
that many able-bodied people don't ever get to experience, they also ended up wrecking
things for people who genuinely need the extra assistance.
If there is one thing money can’t buy, it’s class.
Disney World might be magical and exciting and full of memories just waiting to be made,
but it’s also full of alligators, because the park is located in Florida, where alligators
are like pigeons anywhere else.
A lot of Disney's attractions are water-based, like Tom Sawyer Island and the Jungle Cruise.
And it almost seems like Disney was creating alligator habitats on purpose when they built
the Seven Seas Lagoon, a manmade lake located between the Disney Grand Floridian Resort
and the Magic Kingdom.
In the summer of 2016, a 2-year-old boy was killed by an alligator in the lagoon.
Critics blamed Disney for not adequately warning visitors of the danger: according to the Orlando
Sentinel, there were "no swimming" signs, but no signs specifically warning guests about
the gators.
Disney usually tries to relocate "nuisance" gators because evidently there is such a thing
as a "non-nuisance" gator, and although attacks are rare, the fact they happen at all really
seems to be strong evidence against having swampy lagoons full of alligators on park
property.
Sadly, the lagoon isn't the only gator-infested part of the park: a former Disney employee
told the Sentinel he once had to delay the opening of Tom Sawyer Island while employees
shooed off a family of alligators.
Merida was the first Disney princess who looked like a real girl, you know, rather than a
freakishly skinny facsimile of a human female with hair that remains perfect even while
scrubbing castle floors.
Disney was applauded when Merida became the latest in the long lineup of Disney princesses.
Except Disney, while working on new marketing material for Brave, decided they liked things
the way they used to be, so they made Merida skinnier and gave her makeup, a bigger bust,
and a sparkly, low-cut dress with dropped shoulders.
But hey, at least her hair was still messy.
"Merida, you are a princess!
I expect you to act like one."
According to Buzzfeed, Merida's creator wasn't the only one who was pissed off about the
makeover, fans didn't like it, either.
In fact, 200,000 people signed a Change.org petition against the redesign, and Disney
actually responded to the outrage by pulling the new version of Merida from its website
and replacing her with the original.
So hey, sometimes outrage works.
Generally speaking, it’s probably best to just stay away from the water at Disney theme
parks, because if Disney is incapable of getting rid of all their "nuisance" gators, they’re
not going to stand a chance at getting rid of their nuisance amoebas.
According to Yesterland, in 1980, an 11-year-old boy died from a rare brain infection known
as primary amoebic meningitis, or "PAM" for short..
Officials determined that he obtained the infection while swimming at Disney's River
Country water park in Florida.
PAM can happen when a swimmer gets warm freshwater up the nose, which in August is pretty much
all the freshwater in Florida.
And when you're plummeting down a water slide, you’re pretty likely to get at least a little
water up your nose.
PAM is almost universally fatal, so you’re pretty much finished once you contract it.
After the 1980 incident, officials were quick to say that the amoeba is actually very common,
so there's no reason to think that River Country was any more amoeba-infested than every other
warm water lake or river.
Still, there's a little thing called chlorination that mostly prevents PAM in other water parks:
River Country, however, pumped its water from a nearby natural lake, amoebas and all.
Despite the scandal, the park actually remained open and continued to operate for another
few decades.
You already know that Disney has a history of using sweatshops to produce their goods.
But it isn't just overseas workers who get treated badly: Disney's American workers do,
too.
Disneyland alone has 30,000 employees, which seems like a ridiculous amount of overhead
until you realize that the park had roughly 20 million visitors in 2016, most of whom
paid around $117 for their ticket.
To be fair, there are also operating expenses, but then there's also the part where guests
pay $75 for a sweatshirt and $30 for a taco, so tickets aren't exactly the only source
of revenue.
According to the Los Angeles Times, Disneyland's revenue has risen while employee pay has fallen
by around 15 percent.
Most Disneyland workers make less than $15 an hour, and some only make $11 an hour.
If you think that doesn't sound like enough money to survive in Southern California, you're
right: more than 1 in 10 of Disneyland’s so-called "cast members" say they've experienced
homelessness.
It’s the “happiest place on Earth”, alright… for everyone who gets to leave.
In 2017, Disney’s chief creative officer John Lasseter announced plans for a six-month
leave of absence from the company, not because he needed to recharge his creative batteries
or anything, but because he'd just had a bunch of sexual harassment accusations leveled against
him.
Lasseter called these incidents "missteps," but they were way, way more than that: employees
actively avoided him at wrap parties because he was known for groping, lewd comments, and
"drunken carousing."
"That’s Denise Ream, the producer of Cars 2!
She hasn't been on camera yet today!"
"I've been avoiding you."
What's more, Disney knew about his behavior but never took any action against him because
his work has grossed them around $13 billion in just over a decade.
In 2018, the six-month leave of absence turned into a resignation, and while he was apologetic,
it was very much one of those "I'm sorry you think I was bad" sort of apologies, rather
than anything genuine.
In a memo he wrote to employees just before his leave of absence, he mentioned "unwanted
hugs" and said:
"No matter how benign my intent, everyone has the right to set their own boundaries
and have them respected."
Of course, it’s probably fair to say that “benign” isn’t the word his co-workers
would use.
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