Content Note: racism, sexism, transphobia, and overall bad vibes from the year 2025.

 

The Disney Essays, Three of Three

“I don’t want a Disney vacation of our history! I don’t want a whitewashed history, I don’t want a homogenized history. Tell me the wretched truth about America, because that speaks to our greatness.” 

– Senator Cory Booker, April 1, 2025

This is the final Disney essay. It’s been a ride. The first two essays focused on concrete craft elements. This one is a little different. It was much harder to write.

 

A month after the presidential inauguration, I went to Florida.

ReadOUT Festival invited me to come present, and I gladly took the opportunity to do something with my pent-up energy after this banger start to a new year. We had a chat about Queer Resistance, which stories of our struggle and our joy we tell, and why we keep writing, even when our homeland threatens to silence us.

Because in silence, stories are erased.

Because if we don’t play an active part in writing our history, others will.

Because history is a story we tell ourselves, and so in stories, we shape our world. And unfortunately, we live in an oligarchy, and the Disney corporation has massive cultural and financial influence in our country and arguably, worldwide. So, with that power, what is their responsibility as narrators and creators during uncertain times? What’s ours?

As Isaac Fellman points out in his brilliant book, Notes from a Regicide, art is dangerous as both powerful historical record and incendiary propaganda. Narratives can influence, can record, can bear witness, or erase.

This is about who is now allowed on NASA’s website. This is about book banning. This is about the books of Magnus Hirschfeld’s research being the first to burn in 1930s Germany. This is about Missouri, Mary Poppins, and of course, a little league baseball team.

 

Marceline and Main Street, USA

“This level of denial isn’t uncommon in the Disney fandom. And it brings up a huge conflict…when you have a media empire started by a conservative white cis straight man from the early 1900s, the attitudes and morals of that company reflect that. So we have queer coded villains and early films that make fun of gay people and when you go to the theme parks there are many reminders of racist stereotypes on rides.” 

– Marlene Bellissimo and John McDermott, “Disney’s Racist Ride”

“People just want to take the park’s attractions at face value without thinking about the implications of this revised history and then go home.”

– Lindsay Ellis

Let’s start where it all began: a small farming town where a little boy fell in love with the world. And when Walt grew up, he painted a beautiful Main Street USA based on his childhood home of Marceline, Missouri. To this day, you can take a behind-the-scenes tour called “Walt’s Main Street Story” at Disneyland and “Marceline to Magic Kingdom” at Disney World. The Main Street is everything turn-of-the-century Midwest Americana should be: walkable, kind, beautiful, and vibrant. But when you actually visit Marceline, Missouri’s main street, it is a town that has been forgotten. Run down, barely hanging on, most shops boarded up, and the prettiest building is the Walt Disney Hometown Museum. In truth, the family only lived in Marceline for a few years. Most of Walt’s childhood was actually spent in Chicago and Kansas City, eking a life from the crowded dirty cities of the early twentieth century.

But that’s not a happy image, and Disney Parks are known for their cheery atmosphere. What’s so dangerous about a little revisionist whimsy?

The film Saving Mr. Banks follows the behind-the-scenes story of Walt Disney’s Mary Poppins. P. L. Travers, a misanthropic author with a bucketload of childhood trauma, is wined-and-dined by Uncle Walt himself as he attempts to make her book into a full-blown technicolor musical with dancing cartoon penguins. After repeated arguments about how the character Mr. Banks will be portrayed, there is a climactic tear-jerking act three where Walt and Travers bond over their poor fathers and how they wish they could have given the men a happy ending.

“Now we all have our sad tales, but don’t you want to finish the story?” Tom Hanks asks. “George Banks and all he stands for will be saved. Maybe not in life, but in imagination. Because that’s what we storytellers do. We restore order with imagination. We instill hope again and again and again.”

Lindsay Ellis points out that this revisionist history is in the blood and sinew of Disney storytelling in order to make things more palatable and optimistic. There’s a time and place to get a no-holds-barred history lesson, and maybe that time isn’t at a theme park in Florida. Maybe the Disney movie about P. L. Travers isn’t the conduit to talk about how Travers cosplayed Mary Poppins with an adopted son so terribly that they became estranged, or how Walt was a union buster who gave up names during the McCarthy era.

To modern Disney’s credit, they have put forth effort. They’ve pushed back against Ron DeSantis and arguably the current administration, they updated Peter Pan, they changed Splash Mountain to Tiana’s Bayou Adventure, changed Dixie Landing Resort to Port Orleans, added dolls with mobility aids to Small World, and there’s even an inclusive “Sweetest Spoon” showcase for fictional bakers in the Main Street Confectionary.

So what if there are leprechauns and vaguely Middle Eastern marketplaces in the park? It’s all in good fun. Of course we’re not here for a history lesson, why would Epcot’s American pavilion include all the blemishes of our history? There is still the unspoken rule that we don’t talk politics in the parks. The Hall of Presidents will continue to give the same speech about America being the land of opportunity and a beacon to all the world until Florida is swallowed by the rising ocean. But Disneyland and Disney World and some of their fans do not want the “real world” to bleed in. The parks are meant to be a bastion from that. Surely, there are no real-life politics in Fantasyland.

But for so many of us, our entire existence is political. I remember being at Magic Kingdom the day of Donald Trump’s first inauguration and seeing an entire group of people with matching red t-shirts showing Mickey Mouse with Trump’s hair swoop. Splash Mountain might be a “bit of fun” but also played literal minstrel songs in its queue. And I’m never going to forget the woman who rode the Mark Twain boat in Disneyland with me, a picture of Disney’s Pocahontas with a red handprint over her mouth and the words “Her name was Matoaka” as we chugged past the fake Indigenous settlements.

Because stories create the shape and substance of how we see ourselves. How we are remembered. Do people know Pocahontas or Matoaka?

But what does all this have to do with our thesis? Hooray, Mary Poppins was a terror and Marceline is falling apart and the theme parks have a racist past. Super fun, thanks for ruining my afternoon, Jen.

These are hard truths, but they are truths nonetheless. The truth doesn’t pretend that things were easier than they were, that people didn’t get hurt, that people aren’t still hurting. The Americana shown in Disney is not the Americana that exists, or ever existed, and that, as an American, is important to understand. Because if we don’t face that truth, we can’t fix the problems those truths reveal. We can’t make things better. And although the company has made strides to improve, something really disappointing made me realize how ephemeral this progress can be. Every election seems to turn the tide on whose stories can be told.

Let’s talk about Pixar’s newest show, Win or Lose.

 

“My Name is Kai.”

“The thought of authentically portraying a transgender teenage girl made me really happy. I wanted to make this for transgender kids like me.” 

– Chanel Stewart

Years ago, Disney put out a call for a fourteen-year-old transgender girl to voice Kai, a young trans softball player for their new Pixar series that follows a middle school team to the championships. Chanel Stewart answered the call. But in December 2024, after the election, Disney edited Kai’s story. What could have been a powerful narrative for its intended audience, a way to say, “I see you, and you are enough, you are more than enough,” became a slapdash revision where a girl who used to play baseball now plays softball and for some reason that’s a big deal and causes conflict between her and her father. It falls flat. And since Kai is the heart of the entire series, the eight-episode season culminates in an awkward feeling of, “Okay, so?” It’s a fine, if forgettable, show.

In an Instagram post for Transgender Day of Visibility, animator Danny Barnhart showed what was left on the cutting room floor: The power of Kai giving her name to the team, hearing there’s a nonbinary person she can be friends with, how the colors and sinking and the entire experience of seeing it from Kai’s perspective through animation were all done so lovingly and carefully to show gender affirmation and gender dysphoria. It could have been a masterpiece.

We cannot replace honest, nuanced depictions with simple stories just because they taste better to the deeply incurious. Censorship and appeasement only benefit the oppressor. You might argue “Well, at least it got made, even if queer people have to read between the lines. That’s still progress, right?” As artists and lovers of stories, I hope we’re all past the point of accepting crumbs and headcanons. We deserve better than that. And real progress requires reliable support. An ally who retreats at the first sign of danger is worse than no ally. Because many folx in the LGBTQIA2S+ community trusted Disney when they claimed to want to tell stories for everyone. As the case study of Costco and Target will attest, inclusion is actually good for business. But with this erasure, Disney decided to abandon all the real-life Kais out there at a time when trans girls in sports are already facing so much hate. Companies want our dollars, but not our struggles. And when allies dissolve like cotton candy in a rainstorm, marginalized people are made more vulnerable than they would have been without that illusory bulwark.

So tell your stories and do not hold back. Art without conviction is just commerce in fancy clothes. Let your stories be a beacon for a better world, because someone out there needs to see themself in your truth and know they are not struggling alone. They are worthy of being the main character.

 

What Stories to Tell, What Power Lies in the Storyteller

“We are the gods of our worlds. Never shirk that responsibility.” 

– Bayo Ojikutu

So yes, it does matter.

At ReadOUT in Florida, on that panel, we discussed how writers deserve to have happy stories, to heal our inner child with our own happy endings. It reminded me of Alexis Hall’s author’s note at the end of A Lady for a Duke, where they say they don’t care about any anachronisms in the story; they wanted a happy trans girl tale where she got to be the romantic lead without a tragic weight around her neck. It’s a story that authentically conveys an experience of trans joy written by a trans author, and history isn’t erased or forgotten, it’s acknowledged and then written to empower.

By contrast, when you’re on an Alaskan Disney cruise, they promote an excursion you can take where you can pan for gold with Donald Duck. It’s a family affair, and you learn the gold miners’ narrative, the ones who colonized the land that the Tlingit had lived on for thousands of years. Yes, there are tours to learn about totem poles, but it isn’t well-advertised like Donald’s gold panning, and in September of 2024, the tour groups were literally in the way of a closed ceremony. The tour guide was doing actual harm in real time as the Tlingit community tried to gather and kept bumping into tourists and wondering why the groups were in the area to begin with.

Anyway, remember how Disney doesn’t have any responsibility to history? So very removed.

Here’s another fun fact: did you know that Disney once planned to have an entire “American History” theme park outside of DC? On actual historical grounds? If Liberty Square is any indication of their authenticity, one can understand why the local community and historians shut this project down. But can you imagine how the story of America would have been shaped by this park if it had come to be? Actually, we don’t have to imagine, because promotional materials, concept art, and blueprints exist.

So ask yourself: Who is getting erased? Whose story is being told, and who is telling that story? And to what end? Whose books are the first to be banned in Florida? Whose representation is being systemically wiped away from your television?

As a white Jewish nonbinary and disabled writer, there are privileges I have and privileges I do not have. There are stories I feel competent to speak about and stories I know aren’t my lane, and people way smarter than me have spoken about them already (please look at the bottom of this article for a list of additional reading). This essay is in itself a question of who has the microphone, where does the focus go, and who is left out. We as writers are responsible for writing down what we witness, but if we also hold privilege, we are responsible for understanding how narrow our scope may be. All storytellers need to be at the table. All stories deserve to be told.

Storytelling seems so small against the schemes of a despot. But like I tell my students, it’s the most important and most powerful tool we’ve got. It connects what is happening right now to our history and also to our future. It is part of the cultural record.

So get in losers, we’re being earnest.

Artist to artist, we need to fight for the truth. Our stories matter. Our tragedies or our triumphs, we each have a voice and a story of what is happening in our lives. The world needs you and your narratives; you are a part of the canon. So we have to shout as loud as we are able, “I am here!”

God knows that’s what I’m doing, even if I’m terrified.

I wish I had a happier note to end this on. We all need one. But we don’t know how any of this is going to end.

I do know that I can keep writing. So can you. We are part of this dialogue, no matter how much some folks don’t want us to be. And if you are in a place of privilege, you can signal-boost the stories that need to be heard, preorder new releases, buy children’s books for little free libraries, stand up in protest at board meetings or town halls, go out and vote. We get to build this theme park we’re all living in. We get a say in what our world looks like.

If we didn’t have that power, then why would some people be so afraid of letting us speak?

 

Okay, I will end on this note:

The story we queer folx are being told about Florida is dark. A lot of people think that red states have just folded. A lot of non-Americans believe that Americans aren’t pushing back. But from my quick visit to Florida, I saw a vibrant, passionate, heartfelt community of queer folx who are battling back against the current. They aren’t going anywhere. They haven’t given up hope.

Despite everything, with all my tired Millennial heart, I still find joy in Disney parks. I went to Disney World after ReadOUT. I saw other queer and disabled and neurodivergent people who also found joy in Disney. Dressing up as characters in Disneybounding outfits, singing songs, and embracing the fandom. For all the parks’ shortcomings, there is still joy to be found. In lines, at food courts, on the buses, I saw queer families enjoying their day. I saw queer folx living. Kids’ faces lit up when they saw Tiana, or when Elsa paraded by, and storytelling is a collective art. At some point, the story is ours to mold and love and build upon and rage against and rewrite and write for the very first time. We are still here. And even if they decide to erase me, I will keep writing myself into existence. I don’t have all the answers, but I do know that I…and all of us…are worthy to be included and seen in the happiest place on earth. We need to look at who has the power to create this place. And if this place is not inclusive, does it really live up to its promise? This is a massive topic for a massive company in an overwhelming and horrifying time. But we’ll keep finding our way, telling our tales, and singing our songs because it fuels the hope and fight and belief that people…and maybe even theme parks…can do better.

Take care of each other out there.

 

Some Further Readings:

“The Mouse Sees No Color: An Examination of the Disney Corporation’s Recent Depictions of Race in American History” (Jordan Kern)

“The True Story Behind Disney’s Pocahontas” (Meera Baswan)

“Trapped in the Mouse House: How Disney has Portrayed Racism and Sexism in its Princess Films” (Jessica L. Laemle)

“Disney’s Disembodied Black Characters” (Hope Wabuke)

“Disney’s Racist Ride” (Marlene Bellissimo and John McDermott)

“The Revisionist World of Disney: Mary Poppins, Walt Disney and Saving Mr. Banks” (Lindsay Ellis)

© 2025 J. R. Dawson