The political and cultural shift against the political Left in 2024 has left Disney in a difficult spot. So, where should the entertainment giant go from here?
Disney was forced to back down in its legal fight with Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL), dropping its lawsuit against the governor for “government retaliation” and going back to business as usual in Florida, resuming political donations to Republicans and securing approval for another major theme park. Disney picked a fight with DeSantis and Florida over a law preventing schools from teaching young children about sexual topics, further tarnishing its reputation among people who don’t want their second graders being taught about sexual attraction, and won nothing but a return to normal operations.
Former Star Wars actress Gina Carano had much more success with her lawsuit. Carano sued Disney after the company fired her for comparing people hating each other for their political views to the environment that brought about the Holocaust in Germany. That was Disney’s excuse, at least, because the company didn’t fire Pedro Pascal for comparing detaining illegal immigrants to the Holocaust itself, and it was clear Disney was worried about the backlash to Carano’s unwillingness to worship transgender ideology on her social media. Because of all of this, a judge ruled her lawsuit could move forward.
To add insult to injury, Disney’s vassal companies have been their own collection of headaches. ABC News had to pay out $15 million to President-elect Donald Trump over a defamation case involving chief political correspondent George Stephanopoulos in which Stephanopoulos went against the warnings of his producers and said Trump was legally found liable for rape (he wasn’t). ESPN, meanwhile, has been through round after round of layoffs and recently spiked the show Around the Horn, whose rotating cast of guests is made up of the most noxious left-wing political voices at ESPN.
Outside of the political and legal arena, Disney has found itself on the wrong side of the culture it has been trying to influence. The delayed live-action Snow White remake, a concept we will revisit later, has been mired in politics thanks to leading lady Rachel Zegler, who has disparaged the original film as being sexist and outdated and has stoked antisemitism online to attack Israeli co-star Gal Gadot and profess Zegler’s support for “Palestine.”
While Disney hasn’t yet cut bait on that pending disaster, a glimpse of awareness of the attitude in the country has finally shown itself after the election. Disney announced that it had removed a transgender storyline from Win or Lose, a streaming series set to drop on Disney+ in February. According to Disney, “When it comes to animated content for a younger audience, we recognize that many parents would prefer to discuss certain subjects with their children on their own terms and timeline.”
This is the same Disney that tried to force Florida to let teachers discuss this subject with children on terms and timelines that parents did not want. Maybe it’s hypocrisy based on fear of political backlash from consumers, or maybe it’s growth. Either way, it is a welcome change at a time when Disney needs to change course.
At this moment, Disney seems to have finally recognized that political lectures and propaganda are not what audiences want to see. Disney backing down from its political war against Florida, in which Disney was the instigator, and publicly announcing the removal of a transgender storyline from a Disney series show that the company is willing to start playing ball with the large chunk of the country that doesn’t believe what a small group of rabid transgender political activists want Disney to be pushing. But where does Disney go from here to continue that growth and cut the political rot out of its branding and productions?
The next step would be to stop policing the politics of quasi-conservative talent as Disney did with Carano, who was fired in the midst of no controversy for benign, if rather silly, comments on social media. There was no real backlash to Carano outside of the same rooms of transgender activists that demanded Disney go to war with Florida. Carano was fired for that and for a clumsy attempt to tell people that they shouldn’t be treating people as enemies for holding different political beliefs.
In a similar vein, Disney should perhaps be a little more careful in not handing top billing to toxic political activists who despise both the product that Disney is paying homage to and the people whom Disney wants to watch it. Zegler dumping all over the story of the original Disney princess in a public setting for not fitting into the bizarre box of liberal gender politics should probably have been the last time Disney authorized her to speak in public about the film, and that is before you even get to her using the release of the trailer featuring Gadot to pander to “pro-Palestinian” terrorist sympathizers.
But Zegler’s resentment of the original Snow White film for its traditional gender roles and having a prince help save the princess has also seeped into the stories in Disney’s princess genre. The most recent Disney princess, Raya from Raya and the Last Dragon (2021), did not have a love interest. In fact, the voice actress behind the character has pushed the idea that the character was gay. The next most recent is Moana, who got films in 2016 and 2024, who also did not have a love interest. Before, that was Merida from Brave (2012), who, again, had no love interest.
You would have to go back to 2010’s Tangled to find a Disney princess film with a traditional prince and princess story. The only other stories that fit the bill would be Frozen (2013) and Frozen II (2019), though neither of the lead female characters in those films are official Disney princesses. Perhaps not coincidentally, Frozen and Frozen II are the fourth- and third-highest-grossing Disney films ever, respectively.
A return to classic storytelling over the objections of toxic feminists who want their princess stories to be prince-less so they can be “empowering” would be a return to form for Disney and a return to a comfortable familiarity for audiences who grew up on that storytelling and want to give their children a similar experience.
Of course, that would also require an originality that has been lost in the era of constant reboots and remakes. On the heels of Moana 2, which again came out just this year, Disney is already in the process of a live-action remake of the original, which came out just eight years ago. Disney is also looking at a live-action remake of Tangled. Elsewhere in the Disney film world, the company just released Mufasa: The Lion King, a “live-action” origin story of the titular character, five years after the “live-action” remake of the 1994 classic. Zegler’s Snow White is another live-action remake, with more coming for Lilo & Stitch (2002), Bambi (1942), Hercules (1997), Robin Hood (1973), and The Aristocats (1970).
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What few original ideas that break through are big hits, such as 2015’s Inside Out and its 2024 sequel, but the most high-profile films are still lazy, soulless remakes of classics or the latest entry in a failing Star Wars film universe or an increasingly convoluted Marvel one. Zegler’s Snow White, on the other hand, is the worst of both worlds: an uninspired, soulless remake of an original classic with the added toxic politics of an actress who resents the story and the audience who loved it.
Less politics, particularly toxic left-wing politics, and more originality that appeals to a broad audience would be Disney’s best bet to return to a position of respect and admiration from parents across the country who have rejected the kind of narrow left-wing slop that Disney has spent the last decade embracing. The House of Mouse can once again become a family-friendly name in entertainment, rather than the polarizing, toxic brand it has become if the brains behind the company are willing to read the writing on the wall after November’s Election Day.