Mickey in a still from Steamboat Willie (1928)
Mickey Mouse has always been a trickster. “Steamboat Willie” features him torturing an assortment of barnyard animals and prevailing—with slight of hand and pluck—over his nemesis, a cat who would later be named Peg Leg Pete.*
So it’s fitting that the latest big Disney news features the Mouse pulling off another trick.
This week, the board of the Central Florida Tourism District— the body formerly known as the Reedy Creek Improvement District— was in for quite a surprise.
In late February, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis appointed his own conservative pals to this board, a retributive move against the Walt Disney Company for its relatively mild support of LGBTQ+ inclusion. This included a declaration that the board wanted “to see Disney be what Walt envisioned.”
That’s not something the state of Florida can do— most of Disney’s content divisions are based in California— but many of us speculated that DeSantis & Friends might use their control over Disney World’s physical development to pressure the company on intellectual property matters (It could have gone like this: “Want to build an attraction featuring a lesbian character? Sorry, no building permit for you!).
But this is Disney World, and sometimes dreams do come true—especially if you have talented lawyers. On February 8—just before the Florida legislature gave its governor the power to appoint board members to the newly altered oversight district— the members of the old Reedy Creek Improvement board signed an agreement giving control of the land’s development over directly to the Walt Disney Company.
(It also states that the company has the right to sue DeSantis’ hand-picked board if they use any of Disney’s “whimsical” characters or other intellectual property).
This appears to be legal.** The deal was completed at open meetings announced in the Orlando Sentinel and entered into the public record.
Disney simply didn’t make an announcement and no one noticed that it happened.
As a result, all the new board can control are…. roads.
Best of all, the new declaration includes a “Rule Against Perpetuities Clause” that states it will continue “until twenty one (21) years after the death of the last survivor of the descendants of King Charles III.”
Source: Inside the Magic.
I spent 10 minutes at my desk yesterday just laughing my head off.
On the more liberal side of Twitter, the discourse was priceless. Many folks compared DeSantis’ war against Disney to other classic blunders, including “Never get involved in a land war in Asia”— a statement attributed to various generals but made particularly memoreable/memeable in The Princess Pride (1987) (streamable, of course, on Disney+).
Even some Disney skeptics seemed pleased. “I’ve never liked Disney, but DeSantis has no right to force his beliefs on anyone or anything,” wrote one user.
Most of the memes can’t be reprinted in this mildly family friendly newsletter. Many included Mickey Mouse giving the finger to the governor.
This one aged quickly, though:
**
More seriously, this latest skirmish in DeSantis’ long winter march across Orlando reminds us of the power of a perceived underdog… and, as always, the power of stories.
It’s had a few difficult years—there were more layoffs this week— but the Walt Disney Company remains one of the most powerful corporations on the planet. One does not mess, legally, with Disney. (Just ask copyright lawyers). This is not a David tricks Goliath story. It’s more of a Goliath trips Goliath story.
We need not cry for Disney, in any event (We do need to cry to LGTBQ+ people in Florida, BIPOC friends in Florida, everyone working and learning in the Florida university systems, and so on). But the schadenfreude of DeSantis’ comeuppance has a certain poetry to it, and it’s worth pausing to notice it.
At Lehigh this week, I heard an outstanding talk by Princeton professor (and National Book Award winner) Dr. Imani Perry, with a great discussion following. She has much to say about American mythologies, and Disney is certainly complicit in how those are formed.
I’m usually hesitant to quote from these kinds of talks—quotes aren’t very useful out of context and the talk wasn’t recorded, to my knowledge—but I wrote this in my notes, and it has stuck with me:
“The fear isn’t that queer people will indoctrinate children but rather that they will free them.”
This is crucial. Books are banned, whole ways of being are banned, because if children get to imagine different social roles and different ways of being. community—they might (gasp!) change society. Disney films are hardly radical art… but the docile white princess of the mid-twentieth century have “been replaced” (if you are doing a highly racist reading of Disney, and yes, that’s what DeSantis and friends are doing) by heroines who are more active, still not usually lesbians, but sometimes single (queer enough, compared with 1950s Disney!), and, sometimes, Black or Latina or Pacific Islander.
This is not freedom (particularly not financially—if you want your daughter to meet Princess Tiana, it will cost you, dearly, and most Americans can not longer afford it). But it is something a bit closer.
And you can stream it for $8 a month.
Florida wasn’t the main point of her talk, but it lingered in its margins. She gestured towards the success of recent stories as one (of many) catalysts for what we see happening politically.
Again, the message here is not “let’s all cry for Disney.” DeSantis or no DeSantis, Disney will be fine. Like all companies, they could, in fact, do more.*** And I seriously doubt that Disney stories are the successful stories Perry meant. Not at all.
But to the extent that Disney has tried to atone for its past (more on that in my book, someday) and to make some new stories—to the extent that they stopped giving money to Florida politicians, after dragging their heels for a bit— the company has angered a lot of people who fear what new stories can do.
Last night, the DeSantis/Trump crowd, furor at Disney (just search for “woke Disney” if you want to see horrible, racist things) was quickly replaced with furor at African Americans and Jews because of Other National News. (If you don’t know that the phrase “Soros-backed” is so associated with anti-Semitism at this point that calling it a dog whistle is just an insult to both dogs and humans alike…. well, now you do).
In other words, we have “real” problems in the world, and Disney will probably get to build all of the sparkling new attractions anyone could ever desire, with no interference from the state of Florida.
But even the catharsis of a silly triumph is worth a good laugh.
We could all use one.
To my readers who have big Spring Holidays approaching— wishing you well! To Christian readers: have a meaningful Holy Week and a blessed Easter. To Jewish readers: Pesach Sameach—may it be a joyous Passover! Zissen Pesach!
*Early Mickey is also, as historian Nicholas Sammond demonstrates, a minstrel, part of the troubling racialized history of animation. There’s another whole piece to be written on tricksters and Disney— since tricksters vary by world literary tradition, and are particularly important in some African American and Native American traditions.
**It will be challenged by the new district’s board, probably at great expense to Florida taxpayers.
**Though their top executive tree seems to include a higher percentage of women and BIPOC leaders than the top leadership of my own university, depending on how you think about the Board of Trustees and other bodies.
Good article. On point. I have been practicing law for 29 years and I honestly never thought I’d have to think about the Rule Against Perpetuities again. I think the only people who would have standing under the law to challenge this contract are people who actually live in Bay Lake. And those 5-6 are employed by...Disney.