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Ro's avatar

The role Disney and Disneyland played in the culture is fascinating…Disneyland did what you said—sanitized everything, became a kind of propaganda of the future and the past—and more. It created a kind of pretense of rational order and indulged in vast oceans of racism and orientalism—but strangely, perhaps it was not exactly the kind that current fascists want. They want hate, they want direct enemies whom it is permissible to crush, they don’t want people to dream about other lands, or believe science will bring every possible solution, or have a friendly if horrifically condescending and false view of other people and cultures. Even the lies about history are too much for people who want to erase history. Maybe there are different versions of white supremacy because the current trend is about a struggle which white people could lose, and they want everyone stomped out, or much more subordinated in a manner that cannot fit into the Disney worldview. The Disney worldview is largely secular and hopeful, for example. It’s much more amenable to democracy, and it has an internationalist flavor even if that involves imperialism and colonialism.

There’s something ahistorical about the current rightwing even as they constantly pretend to be drawing on history and try to generate nostalgic desires to arrive at the past. They are threatened even of false depictions of the past perhaps because the past they yearn for is unlike anything that ever was, and this can become clear even when you look at something like Disney.

Then when Disney started to moderately adapt to cultural shifts, and made room for certain realities they went absolutely bananas. It drove them crazier than almost any other cultural product. It was so fascinating to see them turn against icons of American ideology like that. Maybe it’s just their fear and suspicion is so intense that the very weight of cultural influence something like Disney could have is innately a threat even if it is posed to support the status quo as much as possible—because the cultural norms it would enforce don’t go very well with the norms the American right prefers—but maybe they never did.

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Kristen Gladden's avatar

“Nostalgia is powerful. It can help us remember, honor, and even heal. However, it can also be weaponized to deny the present, dismantle progress, and anchor us to a version of the past that never truly existed.”

It’s no accident. The etymology of the word ‘nostalgia’ originates from the Ancient Greek words nostos (returning home) and algos (pain, suffering).

A painful return home is how I imagine it.

Your essay is beautifully written. It reminded me that as a child, I genuinely believed I was going to marry Mickey Mouse. He was that real to me. (I was born in ‘69). But it also reminded me that childhood visits to Disneyland as a child were “off” and genuinely haunting to me. This is all to say, your essay captured something very personal for me, a painful return home, if you will. A rarity. Thank you.

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