Case (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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fandomsecrets2014-01-24 06:50 pm
case) wrote in fandomsecrets2014-01-24 06:50 pm
[ SECRET POST #2579 ]
⌈ Secret Post #2579 ⌋
Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.
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[ ----- SPOILERY SECRETS AHEAD ----- ]
15. [SPOILERS for Shingeki No Kyojin / Attack On Titan]
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16. [SPOILERS for A Series of Unfortunate Events]
[ ----- TRIGGERY SECRETS AHEAD ----- ]
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17. [WARNING for child sexual abuse]
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18. [WARNING for pedophilia]
[The Venture Bros.]
Notes:
Secrets Left to Post: 00 pages, 000 secrets from Secret Submission Post #368.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 1 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.
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(Anonymous) 2014-01-25 12:39 am (UTC)(link)no subject
Okay, first off, the sexism is based on a letter sent out by the company to a girl inquiring about being an animator. At the time (the thirties), Disney didn't employ women as animators (because few people employed women as anything with that much say), but the staff of colorists (a highly technical, seriously, watch The Reluctant Dragon, it's like they're doing mad science, gas masks and everything), and many of the inkers were women.
The very same year that letter went out, Disney opened a night school for the women on the colorist team to learn to be animators if they wanted to. In 1941, while they were working on Dumbo, Disney told his all-male animating staff that they could expect to see more women soon:
"If a woman can do the work as well, she is worth as much as a man. The girl artists have the right to expect the same chances for advancement as men, and I honestly believe they may eventually contribute something to this business that men never would or could."
So yes, Disney did once have a policy that women didn't do the explicitly creative work. He then not only changed that policy (by just allowing it but not reaching out, then shrugging and saying, "welp, they must not want it), but actively sought out creative women to add to his team, because Disney was a man who appreciated talent in anyone.
So there's that.
The Anti-Semitic thing is one of those creeping rumors that will never ever go away. In the early 30's, Disney, like a whole lot of Americans who had any familial or business ties to Germany, attended meetings of the German-American Bund, a group that was basically trying to spread Nazism in the states. He didn't like it, and he stopped going. Before the war, he reached out to a (female) German filmmaker because he liked her work. In the 40's, he was a part of The Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals, an anti-communist organization with anti-Semitic leanings as well. He left them in the 50's. That's pretty much where those rumors come from.
He also donated money to Jewish charities like The Hebrew Orphan Asylum, Yeshiva College, Jewish Home for the Aged, and The American League for a Free Palestine, and none of his employees, even the ones who hated him (Disney was a perfectionist and a bit of a bully, that much is true) ever said anything about him being anti-Semitic.
Now.
Yes, there's still plenty of racism rampant in old Disney cartoons (Dumbo's crows are infamous, and in the Three Little Pigs, the Wolf briefly disguises himself as a Jewish peddler, which would have been a common enough vaudeville trope). Disney himself certainly held the attitudes and language of his time period as well (I mean, heck, even just calling the women artists "girls" in the above quote sounds pretty awkward today). And the eternal argument will rage on with "Saying 'That was the culture of the time' is no excuse!"
Well... I dunno, but I think tumblr-folk who get apoplectic about that may be building up a mental narrative where they would never have those opinions or make those jokes, even if they had grown up in the 20's. And that's just kind of a dishonest line of though. Sure, there were people who maybe didn't hold those kind of thoughts, but it's sort of like deciding that if you lived in the Middle Ages, you would've totally been a knight or a noble. Possible, but unlikely. And Disney was in the business of entertainment, which relies, to a large extent, on shared cultural tropes. Many of these have become unacceptable now, thank God. Back then, they weren't seen as any more inappropriate than having Bugs Bunny sing opera. It's hard to get mad at an individual person for not treating something as inappropriate when all the social mores of the time said it totally was.
There is still some problematic as balls stuff in Disney, and it absolutely is a good thing to talk about it, to remind ourselves that, yeah, once people totally thought this was okay, and oh my gosh, our society laughed at jokes like that? And Disney himself, while a man with plenty of good attributes and a creative genius, was not always a very nice person. He was a ruthless businessman, he did terrorize his employees (read Bill Pete's biography--like, every doodle of Disney has him looking like the Scariest Boss Ever), and like most business tycoons, he's got his share of skeletons.
But he really wasn't a no-girls-allowed, Jew-hating bigot either.
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(Anonymous) 2014-01-25 01:19 am (UTC)(link)no subject
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(Anonymous) 2014-01-25 01:59 am (UTC)(link)no subject
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(Anonymous) 2014-01-25 04:16 am (UTC)(link)no subject
(Anonymous) 2014-01-25 05:23 am (UTC)(link)no subject
(Anonymous) 2014-01-25 09:25 am (UTC)(link)Disney may not be as sexist as he will was but the dude was a fucking confirmed anti-Semite and racist and contributed to the oppression of Jewish and people of color back then and just because it was "the times" never excuses him for the fact. Not even his own family excuses that. This isn't some values dissonance going on here, those attitude literally got people killed back then and still do today. The vaudeville was a source of all the racial stereotypes that still subjugate people of color to this day.
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(Anonymous) 2014-01-25 05:43 pm (UTC)(link)no subject
(Anonymous) 2014-01-25 09:25 am (UTC)(link)Disney may not be as sexist as people thought he was but the dude was a fucking confirmed anti-Semite and racist and contributed to the oppression of Jewish and people of color back then and just because it was "the times" never excuses him for the fact. Not even his own family excuses that. This isn't some values dissonance going on here, those attitude literally got people killed back then and still do today. The vaudeville was a source of all the racial stereotypes that still subjugate people of color to this day.
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(Anonymous) 2014-01-25 10:27 pm (UTC)(link)I would really like to see your source on this, because I can't find anything that "confirms" this.
He is also the one who took the Academy to task for James Baskett, the first African American to win an Academy Award, not being allowed to attend the ceremony.
Vaudeville wasn't the source of racial stereotypes, but it was where a lot of tropes got played out.
Nothing says anything about "excusing" it. Disney wasn't a saint by any stretch. But you can't look at history in a vacuum, and getting mad at one person when THE ENTIRE INDUSTRY was like that is just, well..stupid. Get mad at the system, get mad at society, but if you're going to point out one person who was a monster, well, then you're going to have to take the time to point at every single other person who was just as much of one.
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(Anonymous) 2014-01-25 01:21 pm (UTC)(link)it's sort of like deciding that if you lived in the Middle Ages, you would've totally been a knight or a noble. Possible, but unlikely.
I see a lot of this around. People coming from what is basically a privileged (yes, using that word on purpose) situation making assumptions on how they would act in a completely different situation.
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(Anonymous) 2014-01-25 01:57 pm (UTC)(link)"If I had lived during the Third Reich, I totally would have planned an assassination attempt on Hitler!"
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(Anonymous) 2014-01-25 02:52 pm (UTC)(link)Ending slavery/the Nazi regime single-handedly!
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(Anonymous) 2014-01-25 03:49 pm (UTC)(link)no subject
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(Anonymous) 2014-01-25 02:21 pm (UTC)(link)It does bother me that they treat their staff badly, a friend used to work for Disney and always referred to them as The Evil Empire. I've read about how bad some of the conditions are for staff at the theme parks. But the films are great for the most part.
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