LittleBuford
Well-Known Member
Have you seen the film?
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Wish (Walt Disney Animation - November 2023)
- Thread starter DCBaker
- Start date
You’re right! And it’s pathetic in my opinion.
LittleBuford
Well-Known Member
The difference is critical, though. The two are being constantly conflated, and the result is profoundly unhelpful.
Rather than agenda, I prefer the word argument. And yes, every story/movie/etc. has an argument that it makes, even really simple or seemingly vapid ones.
The issue seems to be that enough people want Disney to continue to tell mostly solid fairy tale style stories with simple moral arguments or interpersonal/human behavior arguments, whereas a lot of the recent fare that has come out has "dared" to tackle larger real world issues in their arguments, usually through metaphor.
e.g.
Lightyear = Don't be a workaholic, you'll miss life. [Not a political issue, but America is such a workaholic society, I can see why it wouldn't be well-received or dismissed. Also, I think people largely just didn't find this one to be entertaining enough.]
Strange World = Society's reliance on fuels are harming the planet, we should innovate ways around that.
Wish = Be wary of authoritarianism and rise up to challenge it as needed.
Everyone's mileage will vary, but I'm a fan of the shift. Talking about the stories of the more recent movies (with adults and kids alike) has been far more interesting than discussing something like Snow White or Pinocchio ever was.
re: representation -- This shouldn't impact the story being told and the argument being made. The idea is that you can literally swap in someone else for any character and it wouldn't change much of anything, so I agree that this is likely a visible scapegoat topic for people who are actually uncomfortable with the arguments that Disney has started to build its stories around.
The issue seems to be that enough people want Disney to continue to tell mostly solid fairy tale style stories with simple moral arguments or interpersonal/human behavior arguments, whereas a lot of the recent fare that has come out has "dared" to tackle larger real world issues in their arguments, usually through metaphor.
e.g.
Lightyear = Don't be a workaholic, you'll miss life. [Not a political issue, but America is such a workaholic society, I can see why it wouldn't be well-received or dismissed. Also, I think people largely just didn't find this one to be entertaining enough.]
Strange World = Society's reliance on fuels are harming the planet, we should innovate ways around that.
Wish = Be wary of authoritarianism and rise up to challenge it as needed.
Everyone's mileage will vary, but I'm a fan of the shift. Talking about the stories of the more recent movies (with adults and kids alike) has been far more interesting than discussing something like Snow White or Pinocchio ever was.
re: representation -- This shouldn't impact the story being told and the argument being made. The idea is that you can literally swap in someone else for any character and it wouldn't change much of anything, so I agree that this is likely a visible scapegoat topic for people who are actually uncomfortable with the arguments that Disney has started to build its stories around.
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LittleBuford
Well-Known Member
I agree with this, but people are using “agenda” for a reason. “Argument” is a term applicable to everything, as you note; “agenda”, however, implies something tendentious and insidious.
mickEblu
Well-Known Member
I think the issue is both poor quality and the DEI stuff. With the former people lose faith in you over a long period of time. With the latter you only get a few chances/ mistakes with certain demographics. Less than that sometimes. One is a loss of faith and the other is a loss of trust.
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Phroobar
Well-Known Member
Your not adjusting for inflation. Make sure to turn that on.
I'm really just never going to understand the DEI argument. As an American WM, why on Earth should I care that people of all sorts are now getting to appear as characters in any movie? I can watch anything at all from the previous 90+ years of moving pictures if I really feel the need to stare in the mirror for awhile.
Source characters were written as WMs because that was the norm at the time those stories were written, but there's (usually) nothing inherently white or male about those characters. It was just the cultural default blank slate.
To tie to Wish, having Rosas be a multi-cultural society literally had no impact on the story being told one way or the other. The characters (such as they were) were defined by their personalities, beliefs, and actions.
Source characters were written as WMs because that was the norm at the time those stories were written, but there's (usually) nothing inherently white or male about those characters. It was just the cultural default blank slate.
To tie to Wish, having Rosas be a multi-cultural society literally had no impact on the story being told one way or the other. The characters (such as they were) were defined by their personalities, beliefs, and actions.
Vegas Disney Fan
Well-Known Member
This is partially Disneys fault though, they’ve made statements about not making good stories if they aren’t diverse, made statements about wanting 50% of characters to be gay/minority characters, etc… it just feels like their focus is in the wrong place.
Putting the best story on the screen should be priority #1 but it doesn’t sound like it is when you look at what Disney executives are saying and look at what they are putting on the screen.
It may just be coincidence the story telling started lacking at the exact same time they placed a bunch of other criteria on what they will or won’t make but that seems unlikely.
Phroobar
Well-Known Member
It does get old when WMs are constantly the bad guy or just the dumb guy needing to be shown the light by everyone. They are picking on one group to pump up others. It's kind of like the question on college campus. if there are Asian-American clubs, women's clubs, African-American clubs, where is the European-American clubs? I guess those are support to be the Frats?
How about a movie were things like ethnic, gender or orientation is just an attribute of the character and not a huge plot point? Why can't there be a gay character that isn't comic relief but it just another character in the story that happens to be gay but the story has no bearing on it?
Hard disagree on WMs constantly being the bad guy or the dumb guy. Those might be the ones that jump out at you, though, because the other WMs are just the default-style characters that I talked about earlier. In the case of Wish, the King is likely a WM because all of our leaders in America to-date have been WMs.
Generally speaking, American society writ large has been the "European-American club." In a world where things don't default to that option all the time anymore, I could concede that you might someday see specific groups like this.
Pretty sure you just described all of the ethnic/gender/orientation choices in the three movies I mentioned (Lightyear, Strange World, Wish) where those are all not played for either plot or comic relief, but are simply present.
Vegas Disney Fan
Well-Known Member
If some of the stories circulating are true Wish was completely changed so it would send a message, what started out as the origin story of “when you wish upon a star”, and tie 100 years of Disney animated movies together, ended up with a story of a young girl finding her power and taking down an evil king.
No idea if those stories are true but just the idea they are instantly viewed as believable shows how interconnected the idea of DEI harming story is.
No idea if those stories are true but just the idea they are instantly viewed as believable shows how interconnected the idea of DEI harming story is.
I wonder what real world events could possibly have compelled Wish's creative team to change course to make their story about the dangers of authoritarian leaders instead. Right or wrong choice, nothing is created in a vacuum. What's at issue is the question of whether or not Disney should be addressing such topics in their animated features. I don't think DEI particularly comes into play with this story, just what the characters look like.
BuddyThomas
Well-Known Member
If you do a google search of “Disney Wish political” you will find a bunch of crazy stories from crazy websites come flying up that disagree.
BuddyThomas
Well-Known Member
This quote is incorrect. It is that 50% will be LGBTQ or underrepresented minorities. Not sure if you left the second part out on purpose.
mickEblu
Well-Known Member
No I recently included the whole quote in one of my other posts on another thread.
LittleBuford
Well-Known Member
I just can’t wrap my head around the idea that good storytelling and DEI are inversely correlated in this way. Such an argument would have us believe that a split-second kiss somehow totally derailed Lightyear, as if nothing else mattered to its writers. A film like Elemental, meanwhile, entirely defies this binary, yet those pushing the either/or framing remain silent on such exceptions to the supposed rule.
At this point, I just want this particular dip in Disney’s fortunes to end so that we can move on from this poisonous Culture War stuff.
mickEblu
Well-Known Member
What happened in Elemental that remotely compares to Lightyear? The blink and you miss moment when he gets introduced to his niece and her girlfriend?
LittleBuford
Well-Known Member
The world around you, along with Straight Pride.
LittleBuford
Well-Known Member
The whole film was an allegory about immigration. Its creator tied it explicitly to themes of representation.