Four years ago this month, I was in a ballroom in Disney World’s Contemporary resort— but there were no fancy dresses or glass slippers to be found. Instead, the room was filled with roughly three hundred women (and a few men), clad in their business casual best, who were there to attend the inaugural Disney Institute Women’s Leadership Summit.
Never before or since have I engaged in fieldwork that included receiving a rose gold mouse ear cupcake at the end of a session on initiative and creativity, or churros during the breakout mingling.
The Disney Institute is the professional development arm of the Walt Disney Company. They run on site and virtual training in areas like customer service and data analytics for a host of employers in a variety of sectors, including health care, professional sports, and higher education. (Also in 2019, the president of George Washington University commissioned the Disney Institute to consult there, leading to some serious objections from community stakeholders and the pause of the initiative in fall 2020).
What’s interesting to me is how the language of the Disney Institute—like much corporate language— evokes religious language and modes of self-and-community formation. This is not an accident; it is built into the system. (You can read some serious academic discussions of religion and the corporate form over here on the Immanent Frame, and follow those articles to further sources).
Take Disney’s famous employee training module. It’s literally called “Traditions.” (Cue Fiddler on the Roof). Workers in a wide variety of roles are encouraged to take part in Disney’s missions of storytelling and—in the parks— making happiness.
And there are Five Keys for all cast members—Safety, Courtesy, Show, Efficiency, and—most recently— Inclusion.
It is not hard to compare this to religion.
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I’m still figuring out how to tell the story of my visit to the Disney Institute—made more tricky by the legalities of writing about it. Participants were encouraged to share their experiences at the summit on social media, so a lot of what I saw and did is part of the public record (or it was in 2019). On the other hand, participants are not allowed to share Disney’s materials from the seminars (the Traditions course and Keys are well known publicly, so that’s not a worry), or profit from that information (this newsletter is free, but a book will not be—though the point of my book will be to analyze Disney, not share trade secrets).
I’m also struggling with it because of my own deep ambivalence about the Disney Institute—which was quite an experience—and about corporations more generally. You can write a very critical story of corporate practices, their political ramifications, and how what’s said in promotional materials might differ from facts on the ground.
You could also write a glowing account of Disney’s business approaches—and I could share a lot of anecdotal stories from cast members who I met that week and in the years since who have told me how much Disney really does mean to them.
The interesting parts to me are the in betweens and paradoxes.
But what I really want to write about is Robin Roberts.
Though I’m also sort of ashamed about that part.
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On the final day of the summit, the keynote speaker was Good Morning America host Robin Roberts—whose early career was at ESPN, putting her in the Walt Disney Company family for decades. Roberts is also well known for documenting her experiences with cancer and other illnesses—a theme she touched upon in her remarks.
What is embarrassing— very, very embarrassing—is the fact that I—only one year out from a cancer experience— ending up asking her a question.
On a microphone. In front of the whole room.
That story is best saved for the book; it’s long, and I don’t know how to narrate it yet, and I don’t know if it is about corporations or about confessions. I think, in fact, that it is about both—that in uncanny ways modern corporations and popular culture are a site of confession.
But the fact that three days of the summit turned me over from participant observer to —maybe crossing a line?—-into just participant—is more evidence of how very easy it is to get caught up in the emotional fervor of this kind of retreat.
Another hallmark of how religious practices transmit affects.
What she said, in response, made me cry. It still does.
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Last week, I didn’t write here because I had gotten tremendously good news— a clear five-year scan. I had poured all of my feelings about that into some writing on my (now hopefully defunct) cancer blog, and I had no words left to write.
As you can tell from the hesitant tone of this post, I’m still in that headspace.
But—perhaps fittingly— the very last moment of the Women’s Leadership Summit involved “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” (not technically a Disney song, although the Wizard of Oz was part of The Great Movie Ride in Disney-MGM Studios).
So I’ll leave you there for now, on a rainy day in Pennsylvania, on the hinge between sun and cloud that is a rainbow.
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(Below-me with some conference signage back in 2019, with much less hair)
The Disney films have much religious content when looked st with that aspect in mind. And the lead article in the July 2023 issue of Harper's is titled "Doing the Work' The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Wokeness." Religious ferver covers a vast landscape.