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The company will now allow employees to wear gender-inclusive hairstyles and gender-inclusive theme park costumes, wear their own fingernail styles and their own jewelry, and allow visible tattoos. "Gender-inclusive," by the way, means being allowed to dress in any gender that you feel like. This is to allow the employee more freedom of self-expression. If you are a guy who "feels like" a girl, you can be Sleeping Beauty. If you are a girl who "feels like" a guy you can be Price Charming.
Disney Parks, Experiences and Products Chairman Josh D'Amaro announced the gender-inclusive policy change to the Disney Look on Tuesday, April 13 in a post on the Disney Parks Blog.
"We want our guests to see their own backgrounds and traditions reflected in the stories, experiences and products they encounter in their interactions with Disney," D'Amaro said in the Disney blog post. "And we want our cast members . . . and future cast members . . . to feel a sense of belonging at work."
What D'Amaro ignores is the whole reason why Walt called his Disneyland employees "cast members." The reason that Disneyland "cast members" are called "cast members" is simply because they are actors in a cast, no different from actors on stage or in a movie. Disneyland cast members are actors playing a part.
The employees on Main Street are playing the parts of people who live and work in a small town in middle America during the early part of the 20th Century. The same goes for the employees in all the other "lands" of the park. The whole idea is that the employees are NOT being themselves, they are actors playing roles on the Disneyland stage.
Walt Disney was a master story-teller. His movies and ultimately his theme park reflected good story telling and character development. In every land and on every ride there is a story that is being told. And those stories are being told through the characters, of which the ride operators play the parts. Disneyland is not about the real world. Disneyland is about make-believe and fantasy. It's about getting away from the real world for a while and just having a good time.
"Our new approach provides greater flexibility with respect to forms of personal expression surrounding gender-inclusive hairstyles, jewelry, nail styles, and costume choices; and allowing appropriate visible tattoos," D'Amaro said. "We're updating them to not only remain relevant in today's workplace, but also enable our Cast Members to better express their cultures and individuality at work."
D'Amaro's statement is exactly the opposite of the original intention of Disneyland. Disneyland is not supposed to be about who the individual ride operators are and how they feel. Who cares who they are in the real world? And who cares how they feel? If a person feels alienated at Disneyland because a ride "isn't reflective of their personal individuality" then there's something wrong with them.
It seems even Disneyland merchandise will be reflective of woke "inclusivity." For instance, they will be selling LGBTQ Mickey Mouse ears. And what does that mean? Rainbow colored? Mickey Mouse ears are supposed to be black, you know, to look like Mickey Mouse's ears. I guess I never realized just how homophobic the plain old black one's were. No surprise, Out & Equal, which advocates for LGBTQ workplace equality, partnered with Disney to help develop the new policies.
And they are in the process of "reviewing" and "updating" the rides and attractions too. Sometime ago they took out all the characters from "The Song of the South" on Splash Mountain and replaced them with Princess Tiana and other characters from "The Princess and the Frog," (characters the Disney Company believes are more in keeping with contemporary black sensibilities). Next to undergo changes, The Jungle Cruise.
How long before "Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln" will be taken down? To be replaced by something like "Great Moments with Mr. Biden." Or "Great Moments with Mr. Obama." Once you start attempting to stay relevant to the woke mob mentality, there's no end to it.
Last summer mobs were tearing down statues and monuments which honored past presidents and other American heroes. In keeping with that, the Disney parks will have to abandon all references to those historical giants. I have no doubt they will do so.
I spent the majority of my career working at the Walt Disney Studio creating characters and stories that everyone could enjoy. A large part of what I did was to preserve and keep Walt's vision alive. The people who run things there today are destroying a legacy of more than 90 years. A conscious decision has been made to reverse what Walt Disney built and the values he honored.
So why is the company doing this? It's not that they don't get it. They get it. The current Disney company doesn't want to be the Disney of family values and patriotic America anymore. They don't want to be the Disney which once celebrated our great history and heroes. The Disney organization is joining the far-left progressives. Either they honestly believe the woke drivel they are engaging in, or they are going along with it because they think it will help their bottom line. Whichever it is, it's pathetic, disgusting, and sad.
It's not Walt's Disney world anymore. .