Disney, 1999-2000
Jeff Harris, July 1, 2000

But, imagine if the restorers of the Sistine Chapel painted drapery over Adam in the Creation of Man panel or cut the entire Exit from Eden portion out of the ceiling? Lucky for us, they didn't do that, but there has been a tampering like that in the artworld. And the culprits behind this?

Buena Vista Entertainment, Inc. You know this company best as The Walt Disney Company.

Buena Vista has changed the way you look at movies and television shows, but there are some things you never knew about them. Sure, they think they're doing good, but overall, the company is ruining everything that made them special and have become a joke in the entertainment industry. From the censoring of classic films to not even releasing a theatrical masterpiece to a wider audience, Disney has been doing a lot of things that the general public aren't aware of. At least these are a few things that most people are afraid to talk about.

Until now.

Disney Pictures and Home Video: Textbook case of Hack and Slash

Anime fans have often complained that companies often cut up and cut out scenes in their favorite films. This may seem bad, but it's nothing compared to the cuts Disney has done. Many of the studio's films on videos and in a few theatrical re-releases have been edited. Some would think for preservation. But, instead of just removing age, grime, and soot from it, they have totally tampered with the product. The studio has mutilated it to the point of unrecognizableness. All due to being "politically correct" or to use the Disney term, making it "family-friendly." They have cut out every instance of smoking, every instance of brief nudity, every instance of gun use, every ethnic stereotype, and every instance of violence, turning it into a bunch of mindless slush.

Movies like Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Fantasia, The Little Mermaid, The Rescuers, and 101 Dalmations, and anthologies like Make Mine Music, Melody Time, and The Spirit of Mickey have been cut really badly. Some portions have been cut out in some movies (Pecos Bill lighting up a cigarette in MT and Baby Herman lifting up a woman's skirt in Roger Rabbit) while in some films, entire shorts have been omitted (The Hatfield-McCoy short in Make Mine Music is the most recent example).

Okay, this article has only concentrated on the editing of the films. Now it's time to talk about Disney DVDs. At least the DVDs they have made.

Di$ney DVD: Fear of the Format

Ever since it was announced, Disney has been an opponent of the DVD format that's becoming very popular in households across the country. While most studios embraced the format immediately, Disney still is lukewarm on the format.

Disney was one of the major financial backers of the now-defunct format DIVX. DIVX, for those that didn't know, was basically pay-per-view DVD-like discs. You could look at a movie for a 48-hour period, but after the hours were complete, you had to pay for every additional viewing of the disc. It would be the equivilent of paying ADV every time you popped in that worn-out Evangelion video you have in your VCR. It was bad. Thankfully, DIVX is history. But Disney is still not embracing the DVD format. Not entirely. They're slowly bringing out their live-action and animated movies to DVD. However, once you buy them, you're going to have to pay a somewhat high-price for them. For example, The Little Mermaid would cost somebody $39.99 plus tax. Compared with The Iron Giant, priced around $14-$19.95 plus tax, you're paying about $20-$25 more for a Disney DVD. And a decrease in price is nowhere in sight. Why? Well, they're not decreasing the disc because they know people will keep on buying the videos when they rerelease them over and over again. Pity.

The Competition is Fierce: Another One Bites The Dust

Disney needs to realize that people are sick and tired of the formulistic movies. Fill in the parentheses and you have a typical basic Disney movie.

(Insert plain-faced heroine or young hero) is an outcast in society, but wants (insert a dream or a love interest, in some instances, both). The only companions he/she has is/are (insert goofy idiot sidekick[s] who is basically the comedy relief) and the outcast has to deal with the constant physical/verbal abuse from (insert evil parental type or evil bully-type). A song is sung talking about what they want. Then conflict happens. Then a break. Then the bad guys get a victory of sorts. Then the hero gets a final victory and the accumulation of that dream.

That's a basic Disney movie, but these movies have stayed the same for over 60 years, thus becoming cementing this image as the archtypical template of what every animated movie should be like in America. Disney has forever implanted that thought into people's minds.

However, in recent years, the competition has increased. Traditional companies like Fox and Warner Bros. and upstart companies like Dreamworks Animation (led by former Disney head honcho, Jeffrey Katzenberg) have turned the industry on its ears. Some movies may have bombed while others have definitely changed the way we look at animated movies, even though they weren't financial successes. Prince of Egypt, The Iron Giant, Antz, Road to El Dorado, Chicken Run, and Titan A.E. were movies created for all audiences rather than just the kids while Pokemon and Rugrats basically brought the popular daytime shows to the theaters and getting millions in receipts.

However, many of these movies faced competion from rereleases of Disney movies, surpringly disappearing a few weeks after they have done their damaged. The limited re-release of The Little Mermaid killed Prince of Egypt while the tandem combination of Dinosaur and Fantasia 2000 are double-teaming Titan A.E., killing Fox Film Animation as a final result. To use these types of tactics shows you how really predatory Disney really is. Their mission is clear. If it isn't a Disney movie, it shouldn't exist.

Even if the movie is distributed by Disney themselves.

The Princess Lost in the Kingdom

When Miyazaki signed a deal with Disney to distribute numerous titles from his studio, anime fans worldwide thought with one collective breath, "Disney?!?"

Every was shocked that the House of Mouse were getting their hands "dirty" with anime. After all, nobody ever thought that Disney would get involved with the medium after the infamous Kimba-Lion King controversy in which Disney stole a lot of elements from the Tezuka classic and made a lot of money from. Disney promised that they'll NEVER put the Disney name on any of the features they'll distribute (i.e. you won't see a "Disney's Laputa: Castle In The Sky" as the title). Even though they don't have any real financial ties to the company, the Mouse House will remain faithful to original dialogue and films, promising not to make insipid edits to the originals. Disney had been praised for its treatment of Princess Mononoke, and fans are already clamoring for the studio's future releases.

This was the feeling before the film actually got released. Nobody knew exactly HOW the film would be distributed at the time, and when the film opened in North America in October 1999, a lot of fans were angered by what they saw, or should I say what they didn't see. Sure, Princess Mononoke was one of the best anime releases ever made, with excellent dialogue and actors, not to mention staying fairly accurate with the basic storyline, as was the earlier release Kiki's Delivery Service. But hardly anybody saw the darned thing. It wasn't that people didn't want to see it. Disney didn't widely distribute the acclaimed film. Princess Mononoke only opened in a few theaters nationwide and didn't open in every state. And then Disney had the nerve to say that the film was a flop.

Now, I didn't study economics or accounting in college, but to earn a profit, isn't a film supposed to, oh, I don't know, open everywhere in the country?!? The film had Oscar-caliber talent involved and there hasn't been any major promotion on any network, broadcast or cable (well, Toonami promoted the film, but that's it!). And the limited-release of the film definitely hurt its chances to earn a profit. Mononoke had the potential to be one of the highest-grossing movies of 1999, but Disney didn't think the movie would do that good here in the country.

Now the third Miyazaki film dubbed by Disney, "Laputa: Castle In The Sky," is finished. It premiered at the New York Children's International Film Festival this past February to high praise from all in attendance. The movie is in the can. So why isn't Disney releasing it now? Is Disney ashamed of the anime library they have been virtually handed to? It certainly seems that way.

They also seem to be ashamed of the original language the film was produced in, as they have to question if they should even include the Japanese dialogue and subtitles in the upcoming video and DVD release, which could end up costing $50 when it's released, making it unobtainable to the general public again.

Disney and anime goes together like oil and water. They have the potential to blend well. Unfortunately, the kingdom seems to be keeping the princess and the other majestic creations of Miyazaki outside of the castle.

Okay, so the theaters isn't safe, and videos are very bad. Disney television isn't bad, right? RIGHT?!? Guess again.

Disney and Television: A Deadly Combination

Ah yes, television. The one place Disney thought they could do no wrong. With shows dominating in prime-time and a popular weekday afternoon lineup of cartoons, Disney had it made in the shade when it came to television.

That is until they announced their merger with Capital Cities/ABC, Inc.

At precisely 12:02 PM EST on that fateful day of their merger announcement, Disney devised a plan to ruin television as we knew it. The first plan was obvious . . . destroy Dreamworks Television. Not many people know this, but prior to their merger with the Kingdom, ABC had a five-year programming deal with the (at-the-time) newly formed studio. One of the major parts of the deal was to completely program Saturday mornings (SatAM) with a blend of many shows from different companies, including keeping the highest-rated ABC SatAM series, ReBoot (aren't you surprised?) on the lineup. However, the first order of business Disney did was basically make the deal between Dreamworks and Disney null and void with a few exceptions (some live-action shows from the studio aired on the network, most notably Spin City while nothing animated by Dreamworks has aired on ABC).

Saturday mornings became a warzone for Disney. Everything that wasn't created by Disney or DiC was an open target for cancellation, including the highly-rated (but underappreciated) ReBoot and the traditional Saturday morning fare like Bugs Bunny and Tweety. In the first year of the Disney invasion of ABC, all but Bugs and Tweety and the few Disney shows on the network was gone, and ReBoot was off the air, leaving many fans of the show in tears. When the lineup, which included a watered-down version of Gargoyles, fizzled, the new network educational standards began.

Three hours of educational programming on network television.

THREE HOURS!!!! Instead of two hours, the next season brought Disney's One Saturday Morning to television. And the world was warped for life. Five hours of educational drivel and cut-up Looney Tunes. And these "ratings" were huge. Two-year olds were eating this up. And now, Disney's One lineup has invaded UPN as well.

Prime-time animation hasn't been easy for ABC as well. The Critic was cancelled in the first year of the ABC/Disney merger while, recently, Clerks, a Toon Askew production for Touchstone Television (but snatched out of Miramax's hands), ended before it could have a decent chance on television (and yet Di$ney's getting ready to make money on the video release of the series).

But wait. It doesn't end on ABC. Disney's other networks began to deteriorate in quality. Disney Channel and later Toon Disney began cutting up every animated short and series seen on its networks. Duck Tales, Rescue Rangers, Gargoyles, even Mickey Mouse shorts were being treated like the Disney movies. Usually, this would be a good thing, but you have to realize that Disney movies are being chopped up for "political correctness."

For example, a pivitol scene on DuckTales was cut out recently on Disney Channel and Toon Disney. Fenton Crackshell was applying to get a job with Scrooge. But after getting tired of his antics, Scrooge got tired of Fenton and pulled out a cartoony gun, and shot buckshots at Fenton. When Fenton saw the buckshots coming towards him, he counted them in mid-air. Amazed at his abilities, Scrooge challenged him by throwing loose change in the air. Fenton counted them in mid-air and got the job. Disney cut out this scene completely. And you thought DiC was scissors-happy with Sailor Moon.

Epilogue

Disney is bad for everybody. They are truly trying to hide the public from the truth. They are single-handedly trying to ruin animation, making them indeed a dangerous group. They're even trying to stop the AOL/Time-Warner merger from happening (not that that was a bad thing, mind you, but still). They forced that one-and-one-half day hiatus of ABC on New York cable systems. Disney has corrupted a major fast-food chain and has even managed to invade malls, arcades, and theme restaurants, spreading their message of cuteness and political correctness. And if Disney has its way, every movie and short that bears the Disney name (and some that don't) would be sanitized like that. Imagine if you will:

- - Bambi's mother not heard getting shot.

- - Snow White not eating a poison apple nor staying with seven men.

- - Scar not being heard getting eaten to death.

Man, I don't have kids myself, but I'm fearing that Disney will only have the sanitized versions when they're around, and I don't want to see that happen. I want Disney to preserve the animated properties as they were intended to be seen, not just for current viewers, but for future generations as well.