I love Disney. They wrote amazing music, built family-themed parks, and brought stories to life. I hate how people malign or misunderstand what Walt started. When I left for my mission in 1998, the last Disney animated film I had seen was "Hercules", and it wasn't one of my favorites. The next one I saw was the 2004 Pixar collaboration "The Incredibles", which was good. In between, there was a lot of crap, and unfortunately, in that time a lot of people watched it, still thinking it was good stuff because it said "Walt Disney Pictures" on it, and fell under their new spell.
What's wrong with Disney? Disney has suffered some of the same problems that plague the rest of Hollywood. During the last decade, Disney acquired other holdings such as ESPN, ABC Studios, Mirimax, Fox Family, Saban and his Power Rangers, and Marvel Entertainment. Not everything those subsidiaries in this major conglomerate produce is in line with Walt's original projections. Also, Disney reaches children in a way the rest of Hollywood cannot- in the way they establish unrealistic expectations.
Like it or not, life is not as dramatic or exciting as people like to believe. Unlike sitcoms or movies, we don't have to sell the story to an audience in 30 to 90 minutes, and so there are not plot devices or dialogues provided to us so we can overcome the hiccups of real life. Hollywood sells distractions from the mundane routine of real life. We go to the movies because they present situations that are uniquely different from our daily lives. That's what makes it entertaining. If our lives were really like ER or Buffy the Vampire Slayer or CSI, we would find those shows boring, as I am sure doctors, vampire hunters and law enforcment personnel feel about those examples respectively.
If you use Hollywood as your guide for how life should be, even if it's Disney, you will never be happy. There are no themes that play during epic life events. Things don't always work out happily in the end. Not everything we do is important to the 'plot' of life. People have to eat and use the restroom, fix their cars, go to work for poor pay, and have courageous conversations with people for whom they actually DO care, even though they risk being 'unfriended' as a result. Disneyfication of real life established a set of unrealistic expectations for romance, adventure, and life in general, so that people literally expect to live happily ever after even after a very brief and not-so-difficult period of trial or quest for what they seek and then cry foul when they settle down to the task of living with what they have won/earned/received. Humans really do find it difficult to endure.
Do not expect life to play out like a Disney film. Life is full of bumps, bruises, betrayals, and lots and lots of monotonous routine. I know a lot of people who live in a world of Disneyesque delusion, and although they say otherwise, they are not happy. It has created a generation of people always in pursuit of treasures at the end of the rainbow, never happy now, but sure that once they have what they seek that they will live happily ever after.
The happy ending, even when it does come, only comes at the end of ALL Acts, not necessarily at the end of this one that we call 'real life'.
What's wrong with Disney? Disney has suffered some of the same problems that plague the rest of Hollywood. During the last decade, Disney acquired other holdings such as ESPN, ABC Studios, Mirimax, Fox Family, Saban and his Power Rangers, and Marvel Entertainment. Not everything those subsidiaries in this major conglomerate produce is in line with Walt's original projections. Also, Disney reaches children in a way the rest of Hollywood cannot- in the way they establish unrealistic expectations.
Like it or not, life is not as dramatic or exciting as people like to believe. Unlike sitcoms or movies, we don't have to sell the story to an audience in 30 to 90 minutes, and so there are not plot devices or dialogues provided to us so we can overcome the hiccups of real life. Hollywood sells distractions from the mundane routine of real life. We go to the movies because they present situations that are uniquely different from our daily lives. That's what makes it entertaining. If our lives were really like ER or Buffy the Vampire Slayer or CSI, we would find those shows boring, as I am sure doctors, vampire hunters and law enforcment personnel feel about those examples respectively.
If you use Hollywood as your guide for how life should be, even if it's Disney, you will never be happy. There are no themes that play during epic life events. Things don't always work out happily in the end. Not everything we do is important to the 'plot' of life. People have to eat and use the restroom, fix their cars, go to work for poor pay, and have courageous conversations with people for whom they actually DO care, even though they risk being 'unfriended' as a result. Disneyfication of real life established a set of unrealistic expectations for romance, adventure, and life in general, so that people literally expect to live happily ever after even after a very brief and not-so-difficult period of trial or quest for what they seek and then cry foul when they settle down to the task of living with what they have won/earned/received. Humans really do find it difficult to endure.
Do not expect life to play out like a Disney film. Life is full of bumps, bruises, betrayals, and lots and lots of monotonous routine. I know a lot of people who live in a world of Disneyesque delusion, and although they say otherwise, they are not happy. It has created a generation of people always in pursuit of treasures at the end of the rainbow, never happy now, but sure that once they have what they seek that they will live happily ever after.
The happy ending, even when it does come, only comes at the end of ALL Acts, not necessarily at the end of this one that we call 'real life'.
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