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The Disneyland Report > Disney News > What would Walt do? Disney NewsWhat would Walt do? By Cathy Lynn Grossman For nearly seven decades, generations have been schooled by a flickering movie, TV, or video screen in the lessons of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. "Welcome the stranger, respect and accept those who are different, pray when you are in need," Mark Pinsky writes in his new book, The Gospel According to Disney: Faith, Trust and Pixie Dust. "And avoid the temptation of the easy solution — eating a magic apple will never solve your problems." (Related story: Moral lessons learned from early Disney films) Pinsky, religion writer for the Orlando Sentinel, uses "gospel" in the generic sense — a body of values and ethics — to examine the global cultural force of the Walt Disney Co. The book is part of a publishing trend that seeks to analyze the spiritual insights in popular entertainment: Peanuts, Harry Potter, even The Sopranos. Pinsky's first pop-culture-meets-the-Bible book, The Gospel According to The Simpsons, details a counterintuitive message of morality in the antics of Bart and Homer. He isn't the first to examine Disney in spiritual terms. Scores of preachers, scholars and sociologists have studied the legendary cartoons and theme parks that draw families like quasi-religious pilgrimage sites. But Pinsky's book is for the ordinary ticket-buyer, not the academic or adamantly evangelical. Looking at 31 animated movies, Disneyland and Disney World, Pinsky finds a vision of mainline American Protestantism where, he writes, "good is always rewarded; evil is always punished." But it's missing one critical feature: God. Walt Disney, who grew up in a fundamentalist home, never set foot in a church as an adult. And he never wanted belief to be a barrier to any potential viewer or visitor, Pinsky says in a phone interview. The company's contemporary managers — Jews and Christians, gays and straights, men and women — carry on the founder's worldview. "Walt would never do anything that would exclude children — or customers" by being culturally specific, says Pinsky, who honed his eye on Disney in a lifetime of viewing 'toons, first as a child, now as a parent, and in years of reporting on the theme parks in Los Angeles and Orlando. To read the rest of this article, click here. Return to Disney News. |
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