Disney may have colonized the imagination of the world's children for the best part of 80 years, but -- remarkably, in one of the world's most ostentatiously Christian countries -- the entertainment company has done so without the aid of God, a new book points out.
The Gospel According to Disney: Faith, Trust and Pixie Dust, by Mark Pinsky, an American journalist and best-selling author of a similar book about The Simpsons, shows that the film industry's most family-orientated entertainer has rarely mentioned God, and that such religious figures as there are in its animated films are almost entirely bad.
Pinsky, the religion reporter at the Orlando Sentinel, argues: "In the more than 35 animated [features Disney has produced] since 1937, there is scarcely a mention of God as conceived in the Christian and Jewish faiths shared by most people in the western world and many beyond."
villainous priest
The first ordained character to have a big part in a Disney cartoon was Frollo, the villainous priest in The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and he did not make his appearance until 1996, nearly 60 years after the studio began making feature films.
American Christians appear to have scarcely noticed that none of the Disneyland theme parks -- replete with every other aspect of US main street culture -- has a church. The company's cruise liners do not have a single chapel on board.
The reason, the book says, was Disney's determination not to offend anyone in a way which would hamper the making of money.
Instead, it has quietly subverted the Christian gospel by substituting some decidedly unchristian themes: belief in the power of magic, that good people are handsome and that what you wish for really can come true.
`all about me'
"The Gospel of Disney is all about me," Pinsky writes. "My dreams. My will. `When you wish upon a star, your dreams come true.' The Disney bible has but one verse and that's it.
"Walt's religion was built on the unfailing American belief that virtue and hard work will make all your dreams come true," Pinsky writes.
Pinsky notes that, even in the earliest films, the company shied away from religious symbolism. When Geppetto, the woodcarver in Pinocchio, falls to his knees to ask for his puppet to be given life, he does not pray to God, even though his eyes are raised heavenwards, but to a blue fairy.
In Fantasia, the finale may be Schubert's Ave Maria but instead of showing a stained glass window, as once planned, the film ends with trees forming a gothic arch through which the sunset can be seen.
The book quotes Walt Disney's daughter Sharon as saying that her father, who died in 1966, was a very religious man.
"But he did not believe you had to go to church to be religious ... He respected every religion. There wasn't any that he ever criticized. He wouldn't even tell religious jokes."
A glimpse of a possible Picasso in the home of Imelda Marcos filmed during a visit by her son after his presidential election win has set off a flurry of speculation in the Philippines, where the family that once plundered billions is set to return to power. Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr, the son and namesake of the late dictator, won a landslide victory in Monday’s presidential election, an outcome that has appalled those who survived his father’s regime. Images released by the family showed Marcos Jr visiting the home of his mother, who had displayed Picasso’s Femme Couche VI (Reclining Woman VI),
The images of a besuited Ferdinand Marcos Jr, clad in a top hat and leaning nonchalantly on a Rolls-Royce, dating from his time in Britain in the 1970s, are as you might expect from the playboy scion of a kleptocratic dictator. Yet as the Marcos family returns to power in the Philippines after a landslide presidential victory by Marcos Jr, he is facing calls to stop misrepresenting the circumstances of his studies at the University of Oxford. The university has confirmed that he did not complete his degree in philosophy, politics and economics after enrolling in 1975. “According to our records, he did
HATE CRIME: Officials were investigating a detailed ‘manifesto’ posted online before the livestreamed shooting, in which the suspect outlined his reasoning and plans A heavily armed 18-year-old white man on Saturday shot 10 people dead at a Buffalo, New York, grocery store in a “racially motivated” attack that he livestreamed on camera, authorities said. The gunman, who was wearing body armor and a helmet, was arrested after the massacre, Buffalo Police Commissioner Joseph Gramaglia told a news conference. Gramaglia put the toll at 10 dead and three wounded. Eleven of the victims were African Americans. The gunman shot four people in the parking lot of the Tops supermarket, three of them fatally, then went inside and continued firing, Gramaglia said. Among those killed inside the store was
‘UNITED AS ONE’: Photos showed people working on farms or walking in a North Korean town, indicating that a lockdown does not require people to stay home North Korea yesterday imposed a nationwide lockdown to control its first acknowledged COVID-19 outbreak after saying for more than two years that it had a perfect record keeping out the virus that has spread to nearly every place in the world. The size of the outbreak was not immediately known, but it could have serious consequences, because the country has a poor healthcare system and its 26 million people are believed to be mostly unvaccinated against COVID-19. Some experts say that the North, by its admission of an outbreak, might be seeking outside aid. The North’s Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said that