By Ethan L. Clay
Tuesday, March 29, 2022
The declarations from Disney’s executive leadership have
been agonizing and predictable, remarkable only for their robotic conformity.
On March 11th, Disney’s CEO Bob Chapek released a
statement which began like this:
To my fellow colleagues, but
especially our LGBTQ+ community,
Thank you to all who have reached
out to me sharing your pain, frustration and sadness over the company’s
response to the Florida “Don’t Say Gay” bill. Speaking to you, reading your
messages, and meeting with you have helped me better understand how painful our
silence was. It is clear that this is not just an issue about a bill in
Florida, but instead yet another challenge to basic human rights. You needed me
to be a stronger ally in the fight for equal rights and I let you down. I am
sorry.
In an internal video sent to Disney employees, Josh
D’Amaro, Chairman of Disney Parks, Experiences, and Products, announced: “We
hear you, we see you, and we value you. The legislation being considered in the
state of Florida, and being considered in other states, it's concerning, and
it's painful to our LGBTQ+ cast, allies, and many in our community.” In a
company-wide email, Ken Potrock, president of Disneyland Resort, chimed in: “I,
too, have heard from many of you about your disappointment in the company
concerning this divisive and discriminatory legislation. Understandably, many
of you feel betrayed, angry and even heartbroken. As an ally to the LGBTQ+
community, this breaks my heart and I want you to know that I hear you, I stand
with you and I support you.” Latondra Newton, Senior Vice President and Chief
Diversity Officer, declared, “I believe it is important to reaffirm our Disney
values and our long-standing commitment to inclusion.”
These extravagant displays of humility and repentance
were precipitated by the passage of Florida bill HB1557, the media blitzkrieg
surrounding it, and especially, internal pressure from a small subset of Disney
employees. These employees (“cast members,” in the language of the company)
mostly work within the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) departments and
LGBTQ+ BERGs (Business Employee Resource Groups). Florida’s bill—officially
named “Parental Rights in Education” but deemed the “Don’t Say Gay” bill by its
opponents—has become a flashpoint in the fraught nationwide debate about how
much say parents ought to have in how and what their children are taught. The
primary bone of contention is this key provision: “Classroom instruction by
school personnel or third parties on sexual orientation or gender identity may
not occur in kindergarten through grade 3 or in a manner that is not age
appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students in accordance with state
standards.”
Polling on volatile issues like this one can
yield wildly different results depending on how the survey is conducted,
but one conclusion is certain: the topic is extremely divisive. So how and why
did Disney’s leadership—a company famous for family-friendly content which
finds broad reception in nearly every country in the world—end up taking a side
in such a heated political battleground? The merits of the law, its provisions,
and its likely effects have been endlessly discussed elsewhere, so I won’t
belabor those points here.
What I can offer is the perspective of a Disney insider.
***
I’m an Imagineer, a job that the company’s website describes
as “the creative engine that designs and builds all Disney theme
parks, resorts, attractions, and cruise ships worldwide, and oversees the
creative aspects of Disney games, merchandise product development, and
publishing businesses.” It’s an incredible job where I get to work with
incredible people, and that’s what makes the current shift in the company
culture so distressing.
If you roam the halls of the Imagineering department,
you’ll encounter Mickey’s 10 Commandments, a distilling of storytelling wisdom
that helps us stay on target when developing new projects.
1. Know
your audience—identify the prime audience of your attraction or show before you
begin design.
2. Wear
your guests’ shoes—insist that your team members experience your creation just
the way the guests do.
3. Organize
the flow of people and ideas—make sure there is a logic and sequence in your
stories and in the way guests experience them.
4. Create
a wienie—create visual targets [wienies] that lead visitors clearly and
logically through the experience you’ve built.
5. Communicate
with visual literacy—make good use of color, shape, form, texture—all the
nonverbal ways of communication.
6. Avoid
overload; create turn-ons—resist the temptation to overload your audience with
too much information and too many objects of interest.
7. Tell
one story at a time—stick to the storyline; good stories are clear, logical,
and internally consistent.
8. Avoid
contradictions; maintain identity—details in design or content that contradict
one another confuse the audience about story and time period.
9. For
every ounce of treatment, provide a ton of treat—you can educate people, but
don’t tell them you’re doing it. Make it fun!
10. Keep
it up—everything has to work.
These Commandments are complemented by Disney’s “Four
Keys.” Every new cast member has these four keys drilled into them from day
one: Safety, Courtesy, Show, and Efficiency. For over six decades, the Four
Keys and Mickey’s 10 Commandments guided storytelling and experience-making in
the Disney parks. These guiding principles have been in place, with only minor
alterations, for roughly 65 years—nearly as long as the parks themselves have
existed. They have helped a talented and dedicated team of Disney cast members
tell stories that appeal across demographic, geographic, ethnic, religious, and
political lines.
But suddenly, this is all changing. The last couple years
have brought COVID, lockdowns, the summer of 2020, and the doctrines of
critical theory and its various permutations to the Disney corporation. Ibram
X. Kendi was a featured speaker in the “Reimagine Tomorrow” series, an internal
Disney effort to promote Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives
within the corporation. Employees stuck behind laptop screens at home joined
BERGs and Slack channels, and used their ample spare time for internal
political action. The DEI department within the company expanded by an
astonishing 633 percent in 2019–21, at the same time that nearly every other
department was contracting by 25–75 percent. Most surprising of all was the
addition, in April 2021, of a FIFTH key—Inclusion—to the traditional Four Keys
used in training. “Like The Four Keys before them,” announced
Josh D’Amaro, “The 5 Keys—with Inclusion at the heart—will continue to
guide us as we interact with guests, collaborate together, create the next generation
of Disney products and experiences, and make critical decisions about the
future of our business.”
The sexual revolution, the Civil Rights movement, the
Vietnam War, the assassinations of JFK, RFK, MLK, and Malcom X, the Cold War,
stagflation, the Stonewall Riots, Watergate, Roe v Wade, the space race, the
Los Angeles riots, September 11th, Hurricane Katrina—every major event that
took place in American society since Disneyland first opened its gates in 1955
rolled by and the Four Keys remained unaltered. And yet, in 2021, as the nation
reopened from lockdowns in fits and starts, the Fifth Key of Inclusion was
added. Why now? Why at all?
The short answer is institutional capture, a
term that once belonged to economic theory as regulatory capture.
In economics, this is a form of corruption that occurs when a political entity,
policymaker, or regulator is co-opted to serve a particular constituency and
its interests. In business institutions, the process is much the same, only the
goal is not to change a regulatory policy, but to turn the business itself into
a mouthpiece for an ideology. Disney has been rotting from the inside for quite
some time, but the speed with which its public transformation took place is
truly breathtaking. Florida was the final straw.
During the month of February, much of the media’s
reporting about the bill was heavily negative. Vanity Fair flatly
described it as “bigoted,” “dangerously anti-LGBTQ+ and hugely harmful
to the young people it’s supposedly trying to protect.” This kind rhetoric
continued to appear in the press for weeks, and was rapidly adopted by Democratic
politicians, late
night comedians, and social media
influencers as their cause célèbre. Pressure began to
build from activists within the company for Disney to take a public line and
denounce the legislation, as a number
of other companies had done.
On March 2nd, Josh D’Amaro recorded the first
company-wide communication on the matter—a video in which he spoke about “a
space for all,” “inclusion for all,” “voices heard,” and the “need to talk
freely.”
On March 7th, Disney CEO Bob Chapek sent out a company-wide
email, in which he said that he had “met with a small group of Disney LGBTQ+
leaders to discuss controversial legislation pending in Florida.” He revealed
that a “common theme was disappointment that the company has not issued a
public statement condemning the legislation,” but maintained that “corporate
statements do very little to change outcomes or minds.” Instead, he suggested
that “the best way for our company to bring about lasting change is through the
inspiring content we produce, the welcoming culture we create, and the diverse
community organizations we support.” This boilerplate corporate-speak was
basically intended to say, “Yes, we’re on your side, but no, we’re not going to
put ourselves in the middle of a political debate.”
On March 8th, the bill was passed by the Florida
legislature, and a flurry of rumors emerged about more meetings and demands
from Disney’s DEI department.
On March 9th, during the company’s annual shareholder’s
meeting, Chapek announced that he would be meeting directly with Florida’s
governor to oppose the bill. “I understand our original approach, no matter how
well intended, didn't quite get the job done,” he said.
On March 11th, we received another company-wide email.
“Thank you to all who have reached out to me sharing your pain, frustration and
sadness over the company’s response to the Florida ‘Don’t Say Gay’ bill.” Gone
were the careful references to “controversial legislation.” He continued, “It
is clear that this is not just an issue about a bill in Florida, but instead
yet another challenge to basic human rights. You needed me to be a stronger
ally in the fight for equal rights and I let you down. I am sorry.”
In less than two weeks’ time, the company had moved from
principled neutrality to open advocacy. This new messaging, intended to mollify
the company’s internal critics, accelerated Disney’s meltdown instead. “Brave
Space Conversations” are now held at regular intervals—an absurd euphemism for
struggle sessions designed to allow activists to vent their frustrations while
drowning out dissenting voices. All regularly scheduled company meetings are
cancelled to make room for these meetings, and park leadership opens the floor
to hours-long performative recitations of grievances by hand-picked cast
members. They conclude with grandiose statements about inclusion and fairness
and understanding pain and listening, but not a single nonconforming viewpoint
is heard, either from those who support the bill or those who think Disney has
no business getting involved in this dispute in the first place.
“At Disney,” the company’s website promises,
“inclusion is for everyone. We reimagine tomorrow as our way of amplifying
underrepresented voices and untold stories as well as championing the
importance of accurate representation in media and entertainment.” But, as
usual, “inclusion” only protects those who think like DEI activists.
“Fairness” only
applies to historically oppressed people groups. The only pain worth
understanding is that felt by the subsection of LGBT cast members who
believe that sex education ought to begin in kindergarten. Listening
and seeing is restricted to the approved narratives, and even excludes those
LGBT cast members who support the Florida legislation. I know many of them
personally, and nearly without exception, they are all parents.
It’s incredible that a company—particularly a company
whose brand is family-friendly content—would oppose the perfectly reasonable
view that sexual topics are not appropriate for six-year-olds in a public
school setting. The bill puts the onus back on parents, rather than public
schools, to decide how and if these conversations happen. That perspective can
be debated, but it is not wrong a priori, and a very large number
of Florida voters agree with it. But Disney isn’t interested in allowing a
genuine debate or conversation to occur, it simply wants to satisfy the DEI
activists so they stop making trouble and bad headlines for the company. The
result is that they parrot the party line, offer craven apologies, and ignore
and silence opposition.
Chapek’s March 11th email contained these ominous words:
“Starting immediately, we are increasing our support for advocacy groups to
combat similar legislation in other states. We are hard at work creating a new
framework for our political giving that will ensure our advocacy better
reflects our values.” In other words, the DEI takeover at Disney has been so
thorough that, in future, the citizens of this country will see one of its
largest and most powerful corporations throw its financial and political
support behind progressive political causes. We’ve already seen this in Texas,
where Disney pledged, during an internal Reimagine Tomorrow session, to oppose
a law criminalizing transgender surgeries and hormone treatments for children.
On March 28th, when Florida Governor, Ron DeSantis,
finally signed the bill into law, the Disney Company issued this statement:
Just as once-venerable organizations like the ACLU have
meekly surrendered to capture, Disney has allowed itself to become just another
domino as DEI ideology continues its long march through the institutions.
***
So, what do real Disney Parks and Resorts employees think
of this legislation and other initiatives like it? Well, it depends
on who you ask. Younger cast members, particularly those in daily ops who don’t
have families, mostly intone the party line that Florida’s law is anti-LGBT and
represents some kind of effort to “erase” that community.
Older cast members with families, particularly those in
salaried management and creative roles favor parental rights and tend to
support the legislation. What I have found most interesting about my
conversations with this group is that their perceptions depend significantly on
how the question is asked. If I offer a generic “What do you think of the
legislation in Florida Bob [Chapek] keeps emailing about?” many are quick to
condemn it. But if I ask, “What do you think of the law preventing teaching sexual
topics in K-3 grade?” many say they support it. Within the Imagineering
department, the creative groups tend to be against the law and in favor of
Disney efforts to subvert it. The groups working in engineering and
construction tend to support the law, but mostly they just want Disney to shut
up about politics.
The executive group is perhaps most revealing. The
majority of executives, as one would expect, not only toe the party line, but
are extremely vocal in their endorsement, frequently initiating conversations
about the bill as they anxiously scan the room for nods of approval. But others
fall silent during company-wide calls and study their company phones whenever
the topic comes up. I’ve only managed a few private conversations with these
people, and the story is consistently the same: keep your mouth shut or find
yourself the target of scrutiny and likely termination.
This evidence is anecdotal, of course, and hardly
scientific. However, when the walkout finally occurred on March 19th, only a
handful of Disney’s 80,000 theme park workers turned up to protest. As
the New
York Times reported:
Some Disney artists posted support
on Twitter, where the hashtag #DisneySayGay was prominent midmorning. Sixty to
70 Disney employees briefly walked in a loop around Walt Disney Studios in
Burbank. Down the street at the Bette Davis Picnic Area, a smattering of Disney
employees gathered in protest, although they seemed outnumbered, at least at
one point, by members of the news media.
I received a number of “out of office” email replies that
day, declaring that my co-worker would be taking the day off in protest of the
bill, only to see the same co-worker in a Zoom meeting five minutes later. They
were invariably on time and had material ready to present, just like on any
other day.
Pronouncements from the company declare that “the
employees of Disney believe” such-and-such, but nobody appears to have bothered
to ask the employees themselves. The Disney parks division is an incredibly
diverse melting pot of physical, philosophical, religious, and political
variations. We largely mirror the surrounding cultures of Southern California
and Florida, but with a decided lean toward more conservative tendencies. It
turns out that businesses which brand themselves as family-friendly tend to
draw employees who like family-friendly content.
For a company that claims to listen to the voices of
their cast members, the Disney corporation has spent the last couple years
ignoring vast swathes of its own workforce. In recent months, they have gone
further, actively supporting one group while actively suppressing or simply
ignoring the other. We have changed our core ethos, and our storytelling has
suffered under the litmus tests required by DEI requirements. I have been
personally involved in no less than five projects that had their creative
visions dimmed by the dictates of profoundly uncreative DEI functionaries:
Replace that Christmas song, it’s too Christian. Don’t “culturally appropriate”
that visual design, we don’t have a member of that ethnicity on the project
team. Send this script to a “sensitivity reader,” the voice is too male. Remove
“ladies and gentleman, boys and girls” from all park announcements, it
reinforces the gender binary.
Time will tell whether or not Imagineering, and the Disney brand overall, can survive this internal revolution. But current trends are not encouraging. Some of us throw sand in the gears of the DEI machine when we can and produce the same exceptional experiences we always have. The capture is thorough, but Disney has survived periods of darkness before. I encourage everyone to ignore the bloviating of Disney executive leadership, from CEO Bob Chapek all the way down to park VPs. These people are not thought-leaders or cultural revolutionaries. They are cowards held hostage by the prevailing narrative, and they will run in whichever direction that narrative dictates. They do not represent the members of the Disney parks and resorts division. We are as diverse as the country itself, and the company’s attempts to use us as a bloc to push their political agenda is intolerant, exploitative, and profoundly un-Disney.
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