Occupy Disney

Friends, blog readers, we need to talk.

It is time to take a stand against the devil with mouse ears.

The Walt Disney Corporation has gone completely out of control. In the past eight years, it has bought Pixar Animation Studios, Marvel, and, its most recent prize, Lucasfilm Ltd. It is also, as we speak, in the process of acquiring Studio Ghibli (Ghiblicon.blogspot.com), the Japanese animation studio behind the movie Spirited Away, much beloved by me, and, I’m sure, by anyone who saw it.

Our childhoods have been bought out by this now soulless, money grabbing machine.

The question is, however, what are they going to buy next?

I say this because the Walt Disney Corporation has become the Blob, eating everything in sight and with no signs of stopping.

The original mission of the man Walt Disney was to bring happiness to people with his company’s animated movies. Now, however, its only mission is making money.

We can no longer tolerate this. We, as consumers, need to limit the money we give the company.

The obvious objection to all this, as I understand it, is this may cause Disney to eliminate jobs. I don’t want to put people out of work, either, but Disney will probably do that anyway, whether it needs to or not. 

Following its purchase, Lucasfilm laid off the entire internal development staff at video game company Lucas Arts, “some 150 people” (kotaku.com), which was included in the Lucasfilm acquisition. The statement about the layoffs is as follows:

“After evaluating our position in the games market, we’ve decided to shift LucasArts from an internal development to a licensing model, minimizing the company’s risk while achieving a broader portfolio of quality Star Wars games,” read a statement issued by Lucasfilm. “As a result of this change, we’ve had layoffs across the organization.” (wired.com)

The Disney corporation had no reason to lay off the LucasArts staff. There was no need to minimize the company’s risk, since Disney has no risks to take. It is like killing 150 ants from a colony that controls the world’s sugar population, because they weren’t collecting as much sugar as the colony would like, but didn’t necessarily need.

Now, it isn’t that achievable to stop giving Disney money completely, but we still have to own up to the fact that we created this beast. That’s right. We’re the ones who gave Disney our money. We can still make conscious decisions to mitigate our contributions. Let’s look back to the controversy surrounding the redesign of Merida, the princess from Pixar’s Brave. “The L.A. Times reports -- and IGN has independently confirmed -- that ‘according to a Disney representative on Wednesday, the image of Merida that sparked this maelstrom is part of a limited run of products including backpacks and pajamas. But images of the original Merida will also be available on consumer products.’

Don’t buy Disney’s backpacks and pajamas.

Every dollar that you spend is a vote for the kind of world you want to live in. I don’t want to live in a world where one megacorporation, powered by our complacent consumerism, buys out everything that made my childhood special. I don’t think that’s what anyone else wants, either.