I have tried to be clear about this. Animation done by Disney, and the merchandise related to such are not welcome.
Who gives a shit about what lee lets her kid watch? I mean, really? I am a (relatively) big Disney fan, but I don’t care. Not at all.
I think she may (well, probably) have overreacted about Ike’s comment. But her Disney ban is fine. I guess I just don’t care enough, to be honest.
Sheesh. Some of you remind me (just a little) of my childhood friends who were so appalled because I didn’t know the Top 40. Trust me people, kids manage to survive without being barraged by every facet of popular culture.
Sublight, I have no objection to Touchstone Pictures, to at least some of the nonanimated releases under the Disney Films label (although the Santa Clause movies can go, but that’s an issue with Tim Allen and not with Disney per se), or to their release by Disney of “Kiki’s Delivery Service” because Disney didn’t animate it or have any editorial control whatsoever. This means that Dean Jones’ “That Darn Cat” is perfectly ok, as is at least some of ABC’s content (although I haven’t seen much on ABC worth watching). We don’t intend to include a great deal of TV in our child’s life, and that which is included will be carefully selected. (I can count the shows we watch with regularity on one hand.)
And Don Bluth is generally ok. Hell, he left Disney because they were keeping him from doing what he wanted. Disney refused to allow him to produce “An American Tail” (why? I haven’t figured that one out yet), so he did it on his own.
lee is pretty much blase about sports in general. I have a problem, though, with Disney owning two of the the major media venues for sports (ABC and ESPN) and also two sports teams.
lee and KellyM are entitled to ban anything they want from their house for whatever reason they like. But talking about Disney animations not reflecting their values and Disney being “dangerous” tends to bring to my mind the Christian Fundamentalists who ban their children from exposure to Harry Potter for pretty similar reasons, or the White Supremacists who don’t want their children to read the works of black authors or listen to the music of black musicians.
I feel that is an extreme view, reprise, when lee is merely following through on her own opinions and beliefs when it comes to the upbringing of her children.
How would that same view you expressed be measured against the (fairly) universal trend to try to keep explicit sex and extreme violence in the media from the eyes and ears of the child?
I can’t see a damn bit of difference between banning Harry Potter from your house and banning Disney animations from you house or for that matter banning any other artistic work aimed at children.
Explicit sex and graphic violence are usually not a feature of artistic works targetted towards children (thus, the various world-wide ratings systems).
I can understand concern about the way women - and mothers in particular - are portrayed in the media in general (someone please preserve us from pre-teen “girls” magazines and US sitcoms); it seems startlingly odd to single out Disney, and Disney’s animations - at that - from the rest of the media barrage which portrays mothers in a negative manner.
Such a restriction as that on “No Disney” is “startingly odd” to those of us who were brought up in households with no such rule, reprise – but I still think bringing the case histories of fundamentalist and white supremiscist familes into this discussion is an extreme move, and doesn’t really help either side.
BTW, I recall a “No war toys” campaign being waged here not so long ago. Were those parents akin to the two examples you used, just because they didn’t want their children growing up with toys, aimed at children, but which represented weapons of war?
Can we bifurcate the thread in the interest of clarity?
Issue I: Was/ is lee justified/realistic/sane in saying Disney shall never darken her child’s door?
(I say, yes, absolutely)
Issue II: Was Ukelele Ike genuinely being a dick intentionally/unintentionally in his response, or was he just gently ribbing/innocently jesting a new member to the parent club?
( I say the latter)
Posters, please address which issue you take pitter/pittee to task with.
I think Ike made a joke that was based on his life experiences with expectant mothers. I think Lee, for whatever reason, has greatly over reacted.
Just a note: Some people don’t like being laughed at or made fun of. Imagine that!
I’m guilty of being thin skinned at times on some issues and don’t see the humor others do in poking at me (for whatever reason). Maybe lee has similar issues. It’s hard to say "I’m going to do “X” and have someone say basically “Yeah, right”, especially if it’s an unpopular or unusal stance.
Just my 2 cents. I found it rude, too. Kind of like when you make a decision as a young person and someone says “Oh, you have NO idea what you’re doing until you’re at LEAST in your 40s!” or somesuch. It just feels belittling, that’s all.
As to the Disney issue, to each his own. I don’t give a rats ass what lee shows or doesn’t show her kid. ::shrug::
I couldn’t care less whether you de-Disnify your kid or not, really. I think it’ll last about 2 weeks, but that aside, I couldn’t let these bits of ignorance pass without comment.
- Sameness. Do you really see a stylistic sameness in the animation of, say, Pinnochio, Sleeping Beauty, The Jungle Book, Beauty and the Beast, and The Emperor’s New Groove? 'Cause if you do, you need to actually watch the movies. They have vastly different styles of animation, story, and tone.
2)Variation: You will not find a bigger Warner Brothers Cartoon fan on the SDMB than me, but saying their style was diverse? Bwah-ha-ha-ha. What makes Warner Cartoons so brilliant is the stunning writing, the fast moving plots and the brilliant humor, not the vast range of styles of animation. There were only four (five if you count Tex Avery) major directors for Warner Cartoons (Jones, Freling, McKimnson and Clampett). Of course they had a sameness of style about them. I defy the casual viewer to distinguish between a McKimmson and a Freling Bugs Bunny cartoon. If you know what to look for you can, of course, but it’s not easily done.
3)Racism: I’ve seen the “blackface Centaurs” bit in Fantasia. It lasted all of about 2 minutes and it’s mostly harmless. The black centaurs shine the hooves of the white centaurs and get scared when the Gods get pissed off. Does the “Got my Shoes Shined” number in the Fred Astaire film “The Band Wagon” also cause you vast emotional upset since a black guy shines Fred’s shoes (in one of Fred’s best dance numbers ever)?
Or, if it’s the way they’re portrayed physically and mentally, why aren’t you frothing at the mouth about Warner Cartoons? Disney had a few “something explodes and now I’m in blackface” jokes in their short features that all studios featured, plus that two-minute segment in Fantasia. Warner had a bunch of stuff far worse than that, by today’s standards. One of their cartoons (“All This and Rabbit Stew”) could have been a recruiting cartoon for the KKK (blacks are stupid, have sloping brows, lips and knuckles that nearly drag on the ground, are lazy, superstitious and have an addiction to gambling). And what’s worse, is that they still managed to make it funny. The Fantasia bit, you watch, blink for a moment and go on. Warner Brothers, on the other hand, was shocking in it’s racism when it was racist. Google the phrase “the Censored 11” to get a taste of what Warner did. Doesn’t stop me from loving and appreciating Warner Cartoons as a whole, though.
So, now that you know that, are all Warner Brothers products going to be banned?
For that matter, are you ever gonna let your kid watch the musical “The Music Man” 'cause “The Jazz Singer” featured black face and was by the same studio?
If you wanna hate Disney, be my guest, but don’t do it out of stupidity.
Fenris
Before my son was born, I swore he would NEVER watch Barney shows, sing Barney Songs, or own Barney toys. He’s 2 1/2 now, and knows all about animals (as far as 3 yr old knowledge goes). He knows what they are, how they move, and noises that they make. He imagines himself as certain animals and plays on that imagination. All of this started because he watched Barney Goes to the Zoo.
Yes, I find Barney to be one of the most annoying things ever developed, but I soon realized…So F*cking What?!? I am NOT their target demographic. He was developed for pre-school aged children, not 20-something, 30-something parents. The kid loves him, and as far as I’m concerned, that’s all that matters. He enjoys the shows, he learns something from them, and (Lee, you’ll find out how important this is in time) he is distracted for a half hour or so, allowing me to get some stuff done around the house or just go to the other room and decompress.
Ignore the joke. Take all that hostile energy and paint his nursery, or start a family quilt or walk around the block. If you get this worked up over something as meaningless as UIs joke, you’re going to be in for a looooonnnnggggggg next 18 or so years.
Flawed equivalence there, I think.
If the “no toy guns” folks had instead taken a kneejerking stance about “no toy guns made by Whammo, but other companies’ toy guns are okay!” that would be a parallel–which would probably draw about the same amount of eyebrow-raisage.
Also, of course, the one “no war toys” thread I recall (in GD, a month or two or three ago) did result in some good-natured ribbing, just like the original mention of the “No Disney stuff!” did. But that wasn’t overreacted to–and it’s the strength of that apparent ire in the overreaction that’s at the heart of most peoples’ concern here.
In that case some people should rather not leave home and voice opinions on public places and have little temper tantrums about being agreed with. Voice an opinion and you will meet disagreement and sometimes that disagreement is done with a trace of irony, it happens, I know because I asked. Imagine that!
That said I’d like to share that after I saw the Jungle Book 2 trailer I felt that I couldnt eat as much as I wanted to barf.
As the poster mentioned in the OP–the doper with a successful 6 years of no Disney, I’d like to say that I was definitely annoyed by Ukelele Ike’s post. And then I thought about it and said to myself, “He meant it as a joke. Blow it off.” So I did, pretty much, although I still felt I ought to say something about it in lee’s support. I do think he meant it as a harmless joke, and he doesn’t deserve a pit thread for it.
On the other hand, I somewhat resent the assumption that anyone who would be anti-Disney would be so for the same reason Christian Fundamentalists would be. Everyone has different reasons for these sorts of choices. For my part, hearing that Disney offered domestic partner benefits was one thing that made me regret my decision to avoid Disney, because it’s one of the few socially responsible things I know of them doing, and something I support.
Parents have a responsibility to teach their children, and parents are, of course, going to want to teach their children their own values, not someone else’s. This is especially true with small children, who aren’t in a position to be able to make informed conclusions. The difference, in my mind, between banning Harry Potter and banning Disney is the age at which kids are exposed to those things–you get Disney as soon as you’re born. You get Harry Potter much later. By the time you’re old enough to read Harry Potter, you have a much wider experience to go from, and are better able to make your own choices. I keep Disney out of my house now (as well as other things–I’ve found individual tapes of things I otherwise don’t mind to be offensive and removed them) so that I don’t have those particular conflicts with what I’m trying to teach my kids. Keeping certain things away from small kids is more like covering up the electrical outlets–mistaken or not, a parent is trying to keep the child safe while they’re still too young to make those calls on their own.
Personally, I haven’t “laid down the law” about Disney gifts–we’ve only gotten one or two, from cousins. The rest of the family knows we don’t like Disney just because they know us, not because we announced it, and just gets other things. Since my daughter has no idea what it’s attached to, I have no problem with the Cinderella jewelry box her cousin gave her. I think I’d be a bit upset, though, if my mother in law told me she’d have to get my kids all the tapes since I would be depriving them, and I can’t blame lee for being upset about that.
I also don’t think Barney is a good comparison. Most folks who don’t like Disney don’t like it for various values-based reasons (and those differ wildly from family to family). Most folks who don’t like Barney just find him annoying. The decision to tolerate something annoying for the sake of a half hour’s peace is not the same as the decision to tolerate something you find morally troublesome for the sake of a half hour’s peace.
Anyway. Yes, I am controlling my children’s environment right now (as much as that’s possible, which of course it isn’t always). That’s my job. In a year or two, my daughter will be making many, many more choices for herself about such things, and it will be my hope that she’ll have a good basis for doing so, and that she’ll be able to talk with me about issues that might come up. But I don’t have any intention of censoring her choices at the library. I’ve laid what foundation I can, and when she’s old enough to begin reading and thinking on that level she’s old enough to ask her own questions and look for answers, and I absolutely believe she should be able to do that. (She’s already beginning to, which I’m glad to see.)
Dealing with “other kids have it” is, as other posters have mentioned, simply not that big a deal, at least it hasn’t been for us. So far my kids have both had other things that they’ve discovered that interest them far more than whatever Disney things the kids they know have, and I guess I’ve been lucky that a short conversation pretty much takes care of the situation. I’ve had a much, much bigger problem, both from school and in-laws, with gender issues. That, too, I deal with in conversation, and hope for the best, but I do admit I grit my teeth when my mother in law says something about how I ought not encourage my three year old son to like the Powerpuff Girls because that’s girly, or when I see that all the gifts to my daughter are Hello Kitty cosmetics (what the hell?) and my son’s all trucks. Hey, my daughter likes trucks too. And my son loves Hello Kitty (if they made a Hello Kitty dump truck, I think he’d probably explode from happiness). But I know that my MIL means well, and loves the kids, and I try to lay the foundations of what I believe in the things I do have control over, and try to deal with the rest by talking about things.
Which I imagine is what lee intends, as well. Which is why it kind of rubs me the wrong way when posters say she’s being overly restrictive, or unreasonable about wanting to be very careful about what her kids take in when they’re small.
I’m not a Disney fan either. I realized this when I was seven, after being taken to Disney World twice (our other family vacations, to the beach and to my grandparents’ house in the country, were a lot more fun) and being given a 20-volume set of The Wonderful World of Knowledge (I thought the books were very interesting except for the parts where the authors insisted on splashing Disney characters all over them). I was even younger – five, at most – when I figured out that Disney’s version of Winnie-the-Pooh was a poor substitute for the A. A. Milne books.
Simply exposing children to Disney stuff doesn’t mean “allowing Disney to shape their tastes” unless you expose them to nothing else. On the other hand, as several posters have commented, making a big deal of forbidding Disney products virtually guarantees that your child will find them attractive.
It’s your kid and your choice, of course, but if I were in your place I’d concentrate on providing plenty of non-pap stories and experiences to counterbalance the Disney stuff, and letting the child see the difference for himself or herself.
I, for one, think that if a two line joke on an internet message board, by someone you do not know, and will never meet, and read by complete strangers, gets your panties in a bunch like this, that maybe the internet isn’t the place for you.
BTW, the over/under for ridiculous threads started by Lee on this topic is now set at 3, as she is at 2 already.
My children have been taught that if someone gives you a present you don’t like, you put a big smile on your face and hug and thank them anyway. Things are unimportant. Relationships are essential.
Hope Mickey is worth all the energy and passion you are devoting to him.
Well. No.
That’s not what seems to be the problems with lee’s post.
To review, again.
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Her reaction to a throwaway comment from Uke was way out of proportion to the original comment by Uke.
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The manner that lee apparently communicates her desires about toys etc. seems incredibly obnoxious and rude.
PunditLisa said it better than I…but the notion of warning potential gift givers (you know, people who have chosen to GIVE gifts, ostensibly out of kindness?) …and threatening them with some sort of implicit blackball for future interactions with her kid seems beyond the pale.