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.
This is a wonderfully insightful and on-point reflection. You’ve captured the irrational heart of modern authoritarianism: even the sanitized narratives of midcentury American myth, once built to comfort and exclude with a smile, now feel threatening to those who long for a return to a mythical past. The core issue, I think, is that we still refuse to confront a painful truth—too many of our fellow citizens believe this country belongs only to a specific type of person. And when that illusion begins to fade, even slightly, it sparks a cultural panic that destabilizes everything.
That IS what happened! They want a much, much starker exclusion. A total exclusion, one that will lead to complete disenfranchisement, poverty, suffering, and even death. And it absolutely started with that --the pricking of the illusion that the country only belongs to a specific type of person. We could see the burgeoning success in deflating that idea just a tad and a possibility that more people could comfortably settle into the idea of a multiracial democracy --that terrifying word inclusion--as seen in, e.g., the George Floyd protests (which didn't do what people hoped but were a very potent public acknowledgement of fairly wide acceptance of every person's right to not be murdered by the police).
Or maybe it was that, because there was some SUCCESS from the lower rungs they'd successfully excluded in the past, white people on the right now don't trust that they can win without a much darker plan--one you can't just use ideology and periodic violence for but one you have to use hate propaganda and terror and total social reorganization for
Obviously, Black success got them very riled up (Obama, etc.) but the thing that makes them need to collapse many aspects of the system and gut the US 'hopeful' culture, the American Dream, the Disney version of Americana, etc. might be seeing some white people going along with this fairly moderate cultural change, especially younger white people. Racists always want a 'race war.' And now we know why--because it's a guaranteed way to consolidate white people. But Disneyland, even in all its white uplift--that's just not the kind of thing that works for what they have planned.
This essay made me see that there's been a huge shift in the culture--and that it even goes to ideas of the past and future. The Disney fantasies were of a great future with nostalgia in the past. But the racists want to make the future like the distant past of their imaginations. Americans were always taught to expect things would get better and better. Now we are only told they must get worse. I NEVER thought this could be so easily changed. But the idea of things getting better and better --always included 'a dream deferred' for Black people and other groups--and this dream is the racists' nightmare. Even though it was an ideology to make people accept an unjust present--it's just WAY too scary for them to contemplate.
Almost 80, I have memories of watching Disneyland every week on TV. Not having access to a color TV until I was out on my own post grad and able to afford one, the Disneyland of my childhood was always in monochrome.
“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.
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.
This is a wonderfully insightful and on-point reflection. You’ve captured the irrational heart of modern authoritarianism: even the sanitized narratives of midcentury American myth, once built to comfort and exclude with a smile, now feel threatening to those who long for a return to a mythical past. The core issue, I think, is that we still refuse to confront a painful truth—too many of our fellow citizens believe this country belongs only to a specific type of person. And when that illusion begins to fade, even slightly, it sparks a cultural panic that destabilizes everything.
That IS what happened! They want a much, much starker exclusion. A total exclusion, one that will lead to complete disenfranchisement, poverty, suffering, and even death. And it absolutely started with that --the pricking of the illusion that the country only belongs to a specific type of person. We could see the burgeoning success in deflating that idea just a tad and a possibility that more people could comfortably settle into the idea of a multiracial democracy --that terrifying word inclusion--as seen in, e.g., the George Floyd protests (which didn't do what people hoped but were a very potent public acknowledgement of fairly wide acceptance of every person's right to not be murdered by the police).
Or maybe it was that, because there was some SUCCESS from the lower rungs they'd successfully excluded in the past, white people on the right now don't trust that they can win without a much darker plan--one you can't just use ideology and periodic violence for but one you have to use hate propaganda and terror and total social reorganization for
Obviously, Black success got them very riled up (Obama, etc.) but the thing that makes them need to collapse many aspects of the system and gut the US 'hopeful' culture, the American Dream, the Disney version of Americana, etc. might be seeing some white people going along with this fairly moderate cultural change, especially younger white people. Racists always want a 'race war.' And now we know why--because it's a guaranteed way to consolidate white people. But Disneyland, even in all its white uplift--that's just not the kind of thing that works for what they have planned.
This essay made me see that there's been a huge shift in the culture--and that it even goes to ideas of the past and future. The Disney fantasies were of a great future with nostalgia in the past. But the racists want to make the future like the distant past of their imaginations. Americans were always taught to expect things would get better and better. Now we are only told they must get worse. I NEVER thought this could be so easily changed. But the idea of things getting better and better --always included 'a dream deferred' for Black people and other groups--and this dream is the racists' nightmare. Even though it was an ideology to make people accept an unjust present--it's just WAY too scary for them to contemplate.
Almost 80, I have memories of watching Disneyland every week on TV. Not having access to a color TV until I was out on my own post grad and able to afford one, the Disneyland of my childhood was always in monochrome.
Why the frump shirt?
To connect the politics of nostalgia with a series from the past.
“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.