Have you made a special effort to keep Disney out of your family life? Please share your reasons, experiences and Disney alternatives for a resource list I’m creating. If you’ve written about it, I’ll add you to my blogroll. Comment or email me.
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I am a former Disney corporate employee (“cast member”) and have taken an anti-Disney stance after seeing how things operate from the inside. I feel a little guilty about my participation while working there, so to make up for it, I decided I would not give Disney any of our money once I became a parent. We have made it the entire four years of my son’s life, I am proud to say. And you know, it really wasn’t that hard.
I applaud your initiative. Best of luck – you can do it!
I have a questions for you: why? I don’t think your reasons for boycotting Disney are broad or compelling enough to constitute abstinence from its products. The only thing you seem to have against the company is Disney’s spat with the CFCC and the fact that Disney Channel Shows are terrible. That doesn’t constitute a blanket boycott of the entire thing- it’s like shooting a horse because his tail is dirty. As a consumer, all you experience is the end product- the films and TV shows- it doesn’t really matter where your money goes. If it’s a question of values in children’s entertainment, I hope you know that children in TV shows owned by other corporations can be just as bratty as Hannah Montana.
So I ask you to make a page further detailing why you are denying yourself and your family Disney for a year. Make it a long page. Make it seem like you have good, sensible reasons for doing this. Convince people. I’m saying this not because I want to attack you, but because right now your blog seems less like a campaign against a large corporation, and more of an attention-grabbing personal martyr crusade.
Ross, I have a question for you: Why not?
Why isn’t my reason — the ousting of CCFC from Harvard — good enough?
Doesn’t my reason just have to be good enough for me?
I say this because I know that no matter what I do, or write, or say, someone will have a problem with it. I will always be accused of trying to get my fifteen minutes of fame or attention or whatever.
I’m not trying to change anyone’s mind. I think that’s virtually impossible to do and not where I want to spend my time, frankly. My purpose is to chronicle what my family and I encounter while we try to do this. And build a supportive network with like-minded people (have you read the comments?). I’m hoping that the “convincing” reasons may unfold as the year progresses. Maybe they won’t. I don’t know. But I’m not in any hurry.
I’d suggest reading Henry Giroux’s “The Mouse That Roared: Disney and the End of Innocence,” or viewing “Mickey Mouse Monopoly: Disney, Childhood & Corporate Power” from the Media Education Foundation. There’s more than enough there.
Thanks for taking the time to comment.
Hi,
Just want to give you a note of encouragement. My family abstains entirely from Disney (and most other mass media). I was raised without TV and am raising my children without it. The image and consumer focus that our society has is exacerbated by the media.
We only allow books written by people (not corporate sponsored books). Chores, reading, cooking are about all we allow for indoors. The rest is outdoor time in garden, with the animals, or in the woods.
Good luck on your adventure! I’m sure your family will be blessed by it.
Ross, I can’t speak for Lisa, and do not feel she needs to waste her time “convincing” her critics, but I can share my own reasons. I have been “boycotting” Disney since my now 10 and 6 year old daughters were born. We do not buy their products, see their movies, or watch the Disney Channel. I find it humorous that you feel this would be somehow “denying” (depriving?) them, as in fact, I have seen them instead flourish, living a more creative, healthy, and active life than I believe would have been possible, if they had they become hooked (obsessed) with the newest Disney fad. It is simply a personal choice for OUR family. The Disney role models do not exemplify the values my husband and I are hoping to instill in our children, and that is a good enough reason for us. You seem to be ASSuming that those of us who do not watch Disney would watch “kids just as bratty” on other TV channels? Well, we don’t. And a corporation using its power ($$$) to have a non-profit children’s advocacy group forced out in attempt to silence them – that alone is a good enough reason for me, also. I believe in supporting a group who demands that corporations who market to children consider their emotional and physical well-being. I don’t think asking that corporations NOT use sex and violence in marketing to kids is too much to ask.
Hello there, this should be an interesting experiment
Fight the good fight!
I wrote about your efforts in my blog.
http://stopsheep.tumblr.com/
@Baader, thanks for the link!
Interesting. That word Ross used, “denying,” it is so fascinating for me, in this context. I mean, can you really deny yourself Disney products? Deny yourself something so special and intrinsic to your existence? Can you break such a habit? Can you really deny yourself the chocolate cake? Deny these pleasures? The assumption being that there’s no substitute for the pleasures found in Disney. It’s such a disturbing word to me, in this context. And the fact that they see you as acting the martyr. It’s fascinating that such an institution has essentially become our culture, our reality, to such a strong degree.
Sorry, anyways, just Monday morning ramblings. I find your project fascinating. Your reasons to engage in it are your own. Frankly, if you where to say you are doing this for some broad political ideology or moral reason I’d feel less inclined to pass your blog on to like minded people, but you doing this because you witnessed something that , in your mind, was an injustice, the last drop.
Personally, my long standing pet peeve with much modern Disney (and some old school Disney) is that they tend to take complex and quite human (sometimes even sad and tragic) stories and turned them into two dimensional sugar coated fizz with a camouflaged poison center. But then again, I could be feeling a tad hyperbolic. ;P
I’m pretty against the monopoly that is Disney and we have a No Disney policy in our house. We’re not rabid about it, and I think there might be an errant board book someone handed down secondhand that has Thumper counting or something, but I’d like my boy’s life to be as Disney free as possible. No trips to Disneyworld (why bother when he could see the Grand Canyon, the Big Easy, the Big Apple, or the gorgeous landscape of Vancouver, the American West, or Guatemala?! The world is big enough without Disneyland/world) as I’ve never been am a well adjusted 35 year old adult.
So his will be a mostly “no Disney life”, not just a year. I think we’ll all be fine!
I find this little experiment interesting and good luck to you. Even after reading all of your blogs and reasons for doing this experiment would I ever have any desire to boycott disney. I will fully enjoy our family disney cruise coming up here soon and I will continue to love being part of the disney vacation club (which by the way you can use at other places in the world besides disney and we have and it’s been wonderful). No offense but I will probably pass your blog on to some of my family and friends but it will only be so we can have a laugh and move on. I guess everyone has their own personal agendas and causes they fight for this just isn’t mine.
Jennifer, no offense taken and glad I could bring some joy into the world. I couldn’t take a cruise because I would be miserably seasick. What’s the vacation club?
After I seriously reviewed the way Disney portrays FAIRIES as SEX objects on wall paper for 3 year olds, I decided that the fairy tale was over. I have been accidentily marketing female sexual submission to my daughter from the time she could see, and I am sick over it. I am not that person, and neither is she. There is no room for mixed messages that pertain to a girl’s worth outside of her attractiveness to men. I believe that Disney is not the only problem in our mass media for kids, but they are certainly a huge part of it.
Susan, I think the Fairies are a relatively new marketing machnine — they weren’t around when my kids were little. Sex objects? Tell me more!