Team Rodent - Carl Hiaasen [3]
And resistance is called for.
Insane Clown Michael
IN 1996 THE WALT DISNEY COMPANY reported $18.7 billion in revenues, a thunderous 54 percent jump from the previous fiscal year. Its operating income was $3.3 billion (up 35 percent) and its net income was $1.5 billion (up 11 percent). In 1997 its revenues surpassed $20 billion.
Disney touches virtually every human being in America for a profit. That is rapidly becoming true as well in France, Spain, Germany, Japan, Great Britain, Australia, China, Mexico, Brazil, and Canada. Disney will devour the world the same way it devoured this country, starting first with the youth. Disney theme parks have drawn more than one billion visitors, mostly kids. Snag the children and everybody else follows—parents, politicians, even the press. Especially the press. We’re all suckers for a good cartoon.
The money comes in a torrent, from Walt Disney Pictures, Touchstone, Caravan, Miramax, and Hollywood Pictures; from ABC, ESPN, the Disney Channel, Arts and Entertainment, the History Channel, and Lifetime; from Siskel and Ebert, Regis and Kathie Lee, and Monday Night Football; from nine TV stations, eleven AM radio stations, and ten FM radio stations; from home videos, stage plays, music publishing, book publishing, and seven daily newspapers; from the theme parks in Orlando, Anaheim, Tokyo, and Paris; from computer software, toys, and merchandise; from baseball and hockey franchises; from hotels, real-estate holdings, retail stores, shopping centers, housing developments, and soon even a cruise line.
At the core of Disney’s platinum mine is entertainment. No other corporation has the capacity to crank out enough product to gorge the public maw. But as deep and bland as the mainstream has become, there are billions of dollars to be made outside of it; not everyone on the planet wants G-rated fare. When Disney targets adult tastes, it’s careful to leave Walt’s name off the credits. The same folks who brought you 101 Dalmatians, a movie featuring adorable puppies, also brought you Pulp Fiction, a movie featuring junkies, hit men, and bondage freaks. The same folks who produce Home Improvement, a program about a wisecracking TV handyman, are also responsible for Ellen, a program about a wisecracking lesbian.
“Mickey is a clean mouse,” Walt Disney liked to say, but these days not everyone thinks so. Fifteen million Southern Baptists, displeased with the content of certain Disney films and television programs—especially Ellen—profess to be boycotting. Protesters of like mind recently gathered at the entrance of Disney World to demonstrate against the company’s policies of providing health insurance to partners of gay employees and holding an annual Gay Day at its Orlando theme parks. The demonstrators, who foisted pamphlets on carloads of incoming tourists, belonged to Operation Rescue National, an antiabortion group that is branching out to combat homosexuality. One marcher carried a sign that read “If You Love Jesus, Turn Around.” Of course the tourists kept coming. Nothing short of flamethrowers would have stopped them. If anything is more irresistible than Jesus, it’s Mickey.
That Disney is defying the morality police is a positive sign, one that somewhat softens my visceral antipathy toward Team Rodent. Given a choice between intolerant moralizers and unflinchingly ruthless profiteers, I’ll have to stand with the Mouse every time. Many publicly held corporations would have caved at the first throaty outcry from fundamentalists, but Disney continues to stand firm. Obviously the Gay Day promotion makes enough dough and generates enough goodwill that