Saying that the brilliant man and pioneer who brought the world Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Disneyland and was going to fail so bad with Epcot and run (or almost run) the company into the ground is a really bold claim. My guess is that it doesn’t bother you that Walt’s being “deified” as much as it bothers you that a man known for his patriotism, traditional/ conservative values and love for his country is being deified. Very much like many of the people working for the company now that would like to destroy any trace of those values and themes. Otherwise I can’t see why someone who found their way onto this site would have a problem with the company celebrating the man who started it all. If you’ve watched any of those irreverent shows like Behind the Attraction or that other 6 part Imagineering series they aired a few years ago it doesn’t appear like they are deifying him at all and are trying to make Walt appear very human.
I don’t know where you got all of that from what I said.
I do not personally have any qualms with Disney being patriotic. All I’ve said in the past is that I understand why others may. Being able to understand someone else’s point of view on a matter does not mean that I myself share said point of view.
The reason that I don’t think all the mythologizing they do about Walt is good is because I think the framing they give to him removes what was so remarkable about him. To paint him as this unflappable portrait of constant forward thinking success strips him of his most fascinating attributes and tells only half a story. I do appreciate recent attempts to humanize him a bit more, but I don’t think we have to lie about him or clean him up to do that. He is a figure that comes with a lot of complexity and the Disney Narrative robs him of a lot of that complexity. They boil him down to Uncle Walt, not Walter Elias Disney.
As for his vision for EPCOT, I don’t know why saying it probably would’ve been a massive failure is a sticking point when that has been the popular school of thought for longer than I’ve been alive. There’s a reason it didn’t get built when he passed. There’s a reason some of his most trusted collaborators didn’t see that vision through.
You’re right that I don’t personally share a lot of Walt’s values (I can’t imagine I would share the values of most people from his era), but that doesn’t mean I don’t respect him, that I don’t want any trace of him in the parks, or that I object to any of his values being present within the parks. Nor do I think Disney shouldn’t celebrate him. But there’s a massive difference between celebrating someone and turning them into something they weren’t for the sake of corporate image. The way they sell Walt, make him almost like one of their IPs, is not the way the way to go and it has created so many false impressions of the man among the public and even fans who really ought to know better by now.
You’ve made a lot of big assumptions about my thoughts based on absolutely nothing I’ve said. Not in the post you responded to, and not anywhere else. Nowhere did I say a WORD about Walt’s beliefs, or their presence in the parks. Nowhere. Me asking for them to stop treating him like a god and start speaking about him like the mortal, fallible man he actually was (because that’s far more interesting and far more of a testament to why he was remarkable) doesn’t mean all these things you pulled from thin air.
I don’t know why you felt the need to make this a personal attack on what you perceive my beliefs to be. You’ve got no right to twist my words and tell me what you think I mean when you don’t know me or how I feel about anything. I don’t know why you question why someone like me would be here simply because I don’t care for the way the company chooses to talk about a real person. I may not be a Disney fan in the exact same way you are, but that doesn’t mean I’m not one, and it doesn’t mean you get to jump to all these conclusions simply because you disagree with me. I’ve disagreed with you in the past, but I’ve never spoken to you like that, never attacked or belittled your beliefs, and never questioned how your thoughts could bring you here.
I’m sorry I don’t fit your vision of a Disney fan, but that doesn’t mean you get to make up things about how I think and feel and use those things as “fact” in order to attack my position on something.
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