A black and white mentality in a world full of color
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Lindsay Ellis, who has done pop culture reviews under the name The Nostalgia Chick, once tackled the topic of Disney and the presentation of culture and history. The term “Disneyfication” is usually used as a slur for any material where a work of liteA black and white mentality in a world full of color
Lindsay Ellis, who has done pop culture reviews under the name The Nostalgia Chick, once tackled the topic of Disney and the presentation of culture and history. The term “Disneyfication” is usually used as a slur for any material where a work of literature or art ends ups being adapted into something with talking animals who break into song in order to make things more acceptable to mass audiences. Since the Walt Disney Company has made a good amount of bread and butter turning historic fairy tales into understandable stories while selling toys and trips to amusement parks, this is the most common criticism of their films. The changes made to Mary Poppins in adapting it for the screen are so notorious and caused such strife, the story behind the production was made into a film, which in itself has been called revisionist history. However, some of those works have become such an iconic part of our culture they’re identified with American childhood. Ellis argues Disneyfication is the polar opposite of the MAGA ideology, while being somewhat similar in appeal with both relying on make believe and fantasy. Disney assimilates stories from a whole myriad of cultures (which is somewhat problematic on its own) into the emotion they’ve cultivated of childlike wonder and feelings of past comfort that come from their products. The MAGA sentiment is based on appealing to emotions of the past as well, ideas of comfort from a “way-things-used-to-be” familiarity, when the world was full of possibilities. But MAGA is based in a yearning for the past because of present-day resentments, which takes it into exclusions instead of assimilation. This mentality points out at the world and says everything would be better if we didn’t have all of these changes and all of the “so-called progress” of modernity. After the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting, in order to deflect from uncomfortable conversations about weapon availability, the usual suspects decided to argue the problem is actually changes to American culture. According to these brainiacs, it’s not the ability of crazy idiots to get real guns that’s the problem. It’s the fictional make-believe guns and lack of Jesus. The governor of Kentucky decided it was time to talk about video games. Others decided the problem was lack of school prayer and a loss of good values. And the Idiot-in-Chief is now blaming video games AND movies and proposing a ratings system … even though the film and video game industries already has a ratings system, implying either Trump wants something even more idiotic than the current one, or doesn’t know the current system exists before proposing another one. So, just for the moment let’s say these people actually believe their own bullshit, my question is what kind of America would these people argue is necessary in order to make things “right” and good? What would that place look like? Read more