Disney to go woke, regardless

Late Sunday night, The Walt Disney Company announced that the old boss would replace the new boss. This is happening less than a year after Mr. Robert Chapek took over the company. In point of fact, Robert A. Iger made Disney the “woke” entertainment company it has become. And he will now lead Disney, moving forward. And with this announcement, the last attempt to save a traditional entertainment firm has now failed. Nothing remains but for the Parallel Economy to find, and build, its own entertainment – literally.

Disney announces: the reformer is out

Reportage on the Disney announcement comes from Just the News, BizPac Review,The Daily Mail,and Daily Headlines. Disney had fallen over $1 billion short of its “earnings guidance” for the third quarter of 2022. Only last week, CEO Bob Chapek announced massive layoffs. Variety, The Daily Caller, and American Wire News “tweeted” about these layoffs.

American Wire News tweeted about one possible reason for the earnings miss: the movies and TV Disney is now promoting. Here we see a preview of a children’s cartoon show blatantly suggesting that gender is fluid and that hormonal and surgical sexual reassignment of young children is entirely appropriate.

But The Daily Mail clearly shows that Bob Iger put in place many of the “woke” projects that blew up when Chapek was nominally in charge. Too many influencers to count, have pointedly blamed Iger for setting Disney down this path. They also accuse him of setting “time bombs” to “blow up” during Chapek’s tenure. Bob Iger clearly planned to discredit Chapek even as he recommended Chapek to succeed him. And now that discrediting is complete.

Beyond Disney

The problems with “woke entertainment” do not stop with Disney. Without exception, all the great American motion-picture and television companies have taken the same path. Everyone should recognize the old-line names: Radio-Keith-Orpheum (RKO), Universal, Twentieth Century-Fox, Paramount, and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. They, and Disney, at first produced movies (and later, TV shows) that people wanted to watch, and could enjoy. Though RKO folded in 1959, the rest kept going, following this same maxim: the viewer is always right.

No longer. Perhaps the dissolution of the Production Code Administration (“Hays Office”) opened the door for the sea change. Or perhaps the survivors of the Hollywood Blacklist sought an awesome revenge against the American people for, as they saw it, sacrificing creative freedom to safety from the Communist ideology they loved to promote. So they began to introduce into their projects, themes questioning basic ethical values and economic principles. But they could go only so far without having people refuse to patronize them. “Art Houses” sprang up, carrying “experimental” productions that threw to the winds not only morality but basic principles of the writer’s craft.

Today the entire motion-picture and television distribution space is one big “Art House.” “Family friendship” is obsolete, because the idea of “family” is itself obsolete. Anyone who doesn’t appreciate the content these companies produce, they dismiss as bigoted, ignorant, hateful, you name the name, they call the name. Then when people don’t show up, the “creatives” blame the public, and continue to cater exclusively to the “Art House.”

Observe the results

Of the ruination of franchises like Star Wars, and bad spinoff projects like Lightyear, the less said the better. In fact CNAV has covered extensively the rot that pervades the Disney company, going far beyond Lucasfilm and Pixar. For instance, Sheriff Grady Judd of Polk County, Florida, has twice run sting operations against organized pedophiles in his county. The most recent, Operation Fall Haul II, concluded last September. Sheriff Judd hauled in quite the rogues’ gallery, including school faculty and staff, retired and relocated judges – and Disney staff.

Nothing could better illustrate the rot than these arrests Sheriff Judd made. But consider the “not so secret gay agenda” about which one Disney producer boasted. Next consider Disney’s direct opposition to the Parental Rights and Education Bill by Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.). (Disney’s communications director had to resign over that.)

This year, Florida has revoked the Reedy Creek Improvement District that essentially made Walt Disney World an independent city-state. In response, the Governor of Colorado offered Disney a similar “improvement district” in that State. Meanwhile, the Disney board told shareholders, in effect, that they’ll sue Florida for breach of contract.

Who owns it, anyway?

Bear in mind that Disney is not a family-owned enterprise, and hasn’t been almost since Roy E. Disney, Walt’s nephew, stopped running the place. Bob Iger owns a large chunk of stock himself, but hardly a majority share. But look at the other big investors: they include Vanguard Group and Blackrock. Those two firms constitute, or at least form a large part of, what one could call the American Economic Forum. (In contrast to the World Economic Forum, with its headquarters in Davos, Switzerland.) In short, the Deep State owns Disney now, and has for decades.

That’s how Bob Iger could outmaneuver Bob Chapek and say, with a straight face, that getting woke does not mean going broke.

Now that he’s back, expect him to tell Kathleen Kennedy at Lucasfilm, for example, that she’s not going anywhere. Instead, Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni, her two bitterest and most inveterate opponents, will have to leave. And, as she promised, “The Force” will indeed be female. Nor will that even be the half of it. The latest release in the “Marvel Comics Universe,” which “The House of Mouse” also controls, continues this Amazonian theme. Fans of the franchise now dismiss it as the “M-She-U,” and have for years.

What can Americans do?

The only thing Americans can do, is to take their business elsewhere. Disney is the largest combination entertainment producer and distributor and theme park operator, but not the only one. More to the point, the Parallel Marketplace has room for alternative entertainment producers. Daily Wire Productions is one – and ironically, they scored a grand coup by hiring Actress Gina Carano away from Disney. Kathleen Kennedy made that job ridiculously easy, by firing Carano over some Twitter Rule-like violation or other. Carano had been talking about returning to Lucasfilm with Messrs. Favreau and Filoni running the place. But that was before the Return of Iger. Now one must assume that deal is off.

Besides Daily Wire, we see Sherwood Pictures in Albany, Georgia. That company is literally a Baptist church that organized itself into a motion-picture production company to produce explicitly Christian films. You know their names: Flywheel, Fireproof, Courageous, Facing the Giants, and War Room.

Neither of these names are as big as Disney – but they already exist, and offer an obvious alternative. Other companies can form, just as easily as they did. Monopoly lasts only as long as its customers see no reason to look elsewhere. Iger gave people a reason during his entire tenure, and now the company he led has doubled down on it.

Other things

Nor is this all the American people can now do to an out-of-favor Disney. Besides revoking the Reedy Creek Improvement District, it’s time to return copyright to a fourteen-year, once-renewable term. Ninety-five years (plus lifetime of the creator for human-created art and literature) is ridiculous. Worse, Disney and Paramount can hide behind this law to ruin their respective franchises with complete impunity. This includes Star Wars and Marvel for Disney, and Star Trek for Paramount. Under current law, no one will be able to refresh either franchise until 2072 and 2061 respectively. By then everyone will have forgotten them. But take copyright back to a fourteen-year once-renewable term, with a maximum of twenty-eight years, and someone can act now. (Lawyers might call that a “taking of private property for public use,” requiring “just compensation.” But, given the ruin of these franchises, “just compensation” might be a token amount.)

Congress passed the Copyright Act of 1973, as amended, for one reason only: as a favor to Disney. But an implied contract existed, for the company to produce entertainment people appreciated. If they will now shove “woke” ideology down their patrons’ throats, they deserve every sanction against them the Constitution allows. Let the sanctions begin with revocation of the private laws – the privileges – from which they have benefited. And let the Parallel Marketplace add popular entertainment to its offerings.