Flipping the bird at answers

I wouldn’t count myself as particularly anti-capitalist, or particularly political. But this article on Disney deciding to set up schools in China made me so angry I thought I was going to vomit. Then I read this other article on the same issue, realised it was worse than I originally thought. Like eating cereal for breakfast and then discovering the milk is off. And then upon further investigation, finding that the milk is in fact brake fluid. And the cereal is in fact dog shit. And the house is on fire.

Let’s take a look at why Disney might think they well equipped to handle formal education:

• pretty much every Disney story revolves around someone who is either fantastically rich, or becomes fantastically rich (with maybe the exception of Notre Dame)
• they usually feature tyrannical paternal figures to encourage the notion that responsibility to parents is more important than personal desires
• deformity and difference constitute comedy or evil
• blatantly chauvinistic
• they encourage the notion of a happy ending
• they reduce the world to the simplicity of black and white (quite literally, as everyone knows Disney protagonists are westernised. Can anyone spell ‘white supremacist’?)

I was going to put a picture of The Hulk here to represent my anger, but then I found out Marvel was bought by Disney in August, 2009 so this picture will have to do.

So, without having any previous ideological foothold to guide my negotiation of consumerism in this fast-paced and crazy capitalist world, and yet wanting to feel as though I am making a difference one purchase at a time, I decided to boycott Disney. Yes, that’s right. I am becoming a Disnedent.

This way of life applies ethical consumerism to Disney products. Which means basically I will not consume any more Disney culture. Most ideologies have weird grey areas. Like, is it right to eat meat if you find it on the ground? What if you kill the animal yourself? What if it’s free range? And can they even feel pain, properly, anyway? I can see no such grey area here. Disney’s idea of dabbling in education is for financial gain, a marketing plan that encourages ignorance and is beneficial only to Disney stockholders.

Consider this from the head of Disney Publishing Worldwide:

Disney estimates that it can earn over $100 million in the next five years from the education sector though it’s a challenging market because it’s a country where counterfeit Disney products, including DVDs and merchandise sell more than original ones. China, Hampton said, is a “promising market and as a company it has a high priority for us”.

These sucker companies join Disney in the boycott through affiliation:

• Buena Vista Records
• Holywood Records (sorry Queen, you’re blacklisted)
• Lyric Street Records
• Mammoth Records
• ESPN
• Marvel Entertainment
• Starwave
• Miramax Films
• Fox Family Worldwide
• Saban Entertainment
• The Muppets (not all Jim Henson, Labyrinth is safe)
• Pixar Animation
• New Horizon Entertainment

If you know of any companies that are affiliated with Disney that I should be including in the boycott, please let me know. Just like people sneak meat into shit (fish products in wine for example) it’s difficult to know whether a company is in cahoots with Disney just by looking at them.

Maybe Disney aren’t the only corporation to exploit areas of life that they have no right to touch. But this demonstrates that Disney see no difference between human rights, like the right to an education, and capital gain. They obviously can’t distinguish between someone’s money and someone’s mind. So if you at all give a damn about stopping the rapid decline of intelligence in the world, I would encourage you to join me in this boycott. And even if it doesn’t make a shit of difference to anything, at least you can feel morally righteous in the knowledge that you’re not an accomplice.