Disney: Worst Ever? Best Ever? | Fr. Jacob-Bertrand Janczyk & Fr. Bonaventure Chapman
July 25, 2024
Fr. Bonaventure: This is Father Bonaventure Chapman.
Fr. Jacob-Bertrand: And this is Father Jacob-Bertrand Janczyk.
Fr. Bonaventure: Welcome to Godsplaining. Thanks to all those who support us. If you enjoy the show, please consider making a monthly donation or more frequently, on Patreon. Be sure to like, subscribe to Godsplaining, wherever you listen to your podcasts. Father Jacob-Bertrand Janczyk, here we are again.
Fr. Jacob-Bertrand: Yep.
Fr. Bonaventure: Yes or no, Disney?
Fr. Jacob-Bertrand: …Yes.
Fr. Bonaventure: Yeah. Qualified. Yes. Okay. Dear listeners, we’re talking about Disney here. I want to jump in on it because I don’t know anything about your position about Disney. So we’re going to talk about the, the goods and the bads of it, but it’s the best to just jump in on this thing and talk about this.
Fr. Jacob-Bertrand: Surprises.
Fr. Bonaventure: “There shall be surprises.” I love that line from CS Lewis Til We Have Faces, I think. When he talks about, you know, in Heaven they’ll be surprises. Like people that you didn’t think would be there actually will be there and the people are like, “Oh my gosh, of course they’d be there.” It’s all just rampant speculation, but CS Lewis is great.
Fr. Jacob-Bertrand: Yeah.
Fr. Bonaventure: He’s kind of–
Fr. Jacob-Bertrand: I probably won’t be surprised.
Fr. Bonaventure: No, because you were going to judge and the 12 tribes of the apostles. But do you remember before we get in talking about particularly Disney, which I’m sure I know some of our listeners are excited about, everyone’s excited about, but they should be? What was your first– like, what’s your earliest memory of Disney? Did you grow up in a Disney family? –
Fr. Jacob-Bertrand: I would say Disney family, no, but we had Disney, like we grew up with Disney movies, and I very distinctly remember, like, you know, those, the VHS, Disney VHS, like they came in like the squishy kind of cases and like plastic smell to them and stuff. I remember that very distinctly from a young age. Like we watched Disney movies a lot. We went to Disney World. I was the first one when I was in second grade. So I’m the oldest of three. So I was second grade. Brother was first grade. Sister must have been like, not kindergarten. Maybe like pre-k. So we did Disney then, but we weren’t like we had like we weren’t like crazy Disney.
Fr. Bonaventure: You weren’t like, you weren’t like well we used to have it. Car antennas, then we’re having these more I don’t think. I know what you’re talking about. Little little, this little guy on the top. Mickey Mouse thing. Okay. That’s great. All right. But you went and you went to Disney World or Disneyland?
Fr. Jacob-Bertrand: World. I’ve never been to land, but I’ve been to Disney World like five or six times.
Fr. Bonaventure: Five or six times! Okay, that’s…
Fr. Jacob-Bertrand: For different reasons though, not all vacation things so,
Fr. Bonaventure: On…business?
Fr. Jacob-Bertrand: So, in college our conference on… I forgot how many year rotation, every sport had their conference championship held at Disney at like, every three or four year rotation. So I had, went for that. High school I think we went because we, for a sports thing like a running thing, and then high school like singing, choir stuff we went a couple times down for stuff there. So like it was school trips.
Fr. Bonaventure: Did you ever sing and run at the same time in competition?
Fr. Jacob-Bertrand: Not in that manner.
Fr. Bonaventure: Oh darn, that would be so cool. It’s like a by-athlon running and singing.
Fr. Jacob-Bertrand: It would be a surprise.
Fr. Bonaventure: It would be a surprise. All right. And what was your, now in Disney World? What was your favorite world, you could say? You a Magic Kingdom Man, Epcot Center guy?
Fr. Jacob-Bertrand: I think as far as the Disney experience magic kingdom, as far as the ride experience, I don’t know. I do like roller coasters and those sorts of things.
Fr. Bonaventure: Not really.
Fr. Jacob-Bertrand: That was a statement. Not a question.
Fr. Bonaventure: Oh, I thought you said, do you.
Fr. Jacob-Bertrand: I said, I do.
Fr. Bonaventure: I didn’t hear the I. Never hear your I. Yeah.
Fr. Jacob-Bertrand: I do. So there’s less of that at Disney, but as far as, in Magic Kingdom, but as far as the experience of Disney, I remember the one roller- Space Mountain in the Magic Kingdom. And when I went and second grade, we were so pumped. My brother and I were so pumped to go on the ride. And we got in line, and as we were getting in line, I was getting really scared like nervous because you have you been, like you’re like inside the ride as you’re in line right? And I’m getting scared and like we’re getting towards the front and I like I lose it like I’m so crying. I don’t want to do it. I don’t want to do it but like my dad my brother and I my sisters too little. My mom doesn’t do roller coasters. We waited a lot forever and my dad was like, tough. Because if I weren’t going to go on then no one was he’s not going to like send me….
Fr. Bonaventure: Common good, private good. You learned very early on. –
Fr. Jacob-Bertrand: Yeah, he was like, you’re getting on. And I loved it, of course.
Fr. Bonaventure: Of course, yeah. Yeah, that’s great. Now Disney is, yeah, I remember when I was on Space Mountain one time, someone had hit their head or something, or they’re had been some sort of injury on it. And so they turned on the lights. –
Fr. Jacob-Bertrand: Oh no, that ruins everything. –
Fr. Bonaventure: It was weird. And it actually felt uncomfortable because those are really close and glad I don’t usually see those things on the tracks. It felt very bizarre. –
Fr. Jacob-Bertrand: Yeah, when we were there, I think for a cross-country conference champs, we, like that the evening after the race for like the awards ceremony and the big banquet dinner whatever was in…is it MGM? What has the big white ball?
Fr. Bonaventure: Oh, that’s Epcot.
Fr. Jacob-Bertrand: Okay, it was in Epcot, is that where Tower of Terror is?
Fr. Bonaventure: That’s MGM, yeah, you’re right.
Fr. Jacob-Bertrand: Okay, so we were an MGM and we like the banquet was like, because right you have Tower of Terror and like the rock and roller coaster right next to each other so our banquet was like in that courtyard there and then the park was closed, it was in the evening, so we had full access to those two rides, like all evening.
Fr. Bonaventure: Oh my gosh!
Fr. Jacob-Bertrand: It was just the two rides, but you could just get off and get on again, it was awesome. It was just the athletes and coaches and stuff which was super cool.
Fr. Bonaventure: Okay, so you got, yeah, good, Disney under your belt there, you could say. We grew up, our family didn’t grow up as a Disney family per se but we started doing vacations there and when I was in middle school and early high school, I suppose.
Fr. Jacob-Bertrand: I cannot picture you in Disney.
Fr. Bonaventure: See I love Disney I was just so warning to the reader- to the listeners. I’m a big Disney fan. I love it. not we’ll get there, but I’m all I’m all for it. For reasons i’ll mention in a second. But we used to go, yeah, Disney, I loved Epcot Center, the little world showcasing stuff. I’m already there right now. I’m just, I’m zoned out. I’m going to Japan one with the Koy or the Canadian one with a little outdoor rocks and the pond stuff. So my brother would like, plan we talk about where we were gonna go next year. We had the Disney thing…
Fr. Jacob-Bertrand: Wow, this is a year? You’re a yearly trip-
Fr. Bonaventure: Oh, yeah. Yeah. I grew up. Yeah. This was the only thing. It was this or and apples during Christmas that we had to look forward to. But, but we did Disney and then when I was in an Episcopalian ordinand, I lived down, I taught noveto right next to Orlando. So I lived right near Disney, and-
Fr. Jacob-Bertrand: How often would you go? –
Fr. Bonaventure: Well, not as often as you imagine, ’cause it’s expensive. But the school had a thing where high schools in the Florida area, they get a Disney night or something. And it’s all night, the park closes, it goes from like 8 p.m. until 8 a.m. or something. Every high school student pulls up here, and I was teaching at a small Evangelical Baptist school. And so we’re going to Disney. And of course, many of the people that were going there and locked in all night were not Evangelical Baptists. So we had to tell the kids, do not go on – see that place over there with the room, don’t go in there. But I was locked in for a night. I don’t like roller coasters, but it was nice to be there. It was kind of, I have to say the best experience is that kind of main street, Magic Kingdom parade every night, you know, this stuff. Okay. So I love, yeah, I love Disney. I don’t think my sister, I don’t remember Disney princess stuff. You probably remember a little bit of that because of your sister. But all right, so Disney is this thing that everyone, I think everyone has some experience with it, whether good or ill. And it seems, at least initially, that kind of quintessential American kind of brand, I mean, it’s like Starbucks and McDonald’s, right? Except they’re food things and Disney is this bigger project when I get into, and you just remind me that Walt Disney in 1923, I think have you seen that first, Steamboat Willie or whatever Steamboat Mickey?
Fr. Jacob-Bertrand: I’ve seen clips of it but I’ve not like sat and watched it.
Fr. Bonaventure: If you’ve seen it for five seconds, you’ve probably seen it at all. The story with the mouse kind of thing. And Walt Disney’s vision, Walt Disney’s vision for Disney and Disney Land, and all this is that a place where families could go together and share so that Disney’s kind of main focus is having things that are good for both the young and the old so that you don’t have to like, well, let the kid do his thing. But like everyone kind of is involved. So it has this transgenerational sort of feel and has a different aspects of trans involved in Disney, but that’s the transgenerational feel is one of them. But what so that it’s an I think it’s a quintessential – essentially American thing although they have Euro Disney and such right?
Fr. Jacob-Bertrand: They do. Maybe other places too I think yeah.
Fr. Bonaventure: Japan I think has Disney, I forget, who knows you know we’ll see. Yeah Antarctica probably does not have Disney.
Fr. Jacob-Bertrand: I would- that would probably be a safe bet.
Fr. Bonaventure: Okay, but um so what I mean what do you what do you when someone someone asked you like what is Disney? What does it mean? Before we ask the question of like what is it good for? What do you think about it?
Fr. Jacob-Bertrand: Okay so here, let me give you part of the thought process that’s going: I’m battling a few things as I think about this and one of them is that I like to be a naysayer like nitpick things that are bad. And I think with everything you can always find good or whatever, less than good things, but I like to tend to kind of draw out the things that are less than good and then define the whole thing by that, which is not a good thing always, right? So that’s one thing. The other thing is like, like what Disney are we talking about? Because I think that Disney is a very, has gone through a metamorphose of its own at different points. And like the Disney that I grew up on or like that we grew up on is very different than the Disney that is today.
Fr. Bonaventure: All right. We’ll do utopian Disney and current Disney.
Fr. Jacob-Bertrand: Yeah, so like, you told me in Disney, or like the heyday of Disney, when like those, you know, all the sort of like great animated movies were coming out, the Lion King, the Little Mer-, obviously they weren’t inventing, but like, you know, putting these out, Lion King, Little Mermaid. –
Fr. Bonaventure: Fantasia. –
Fr. Jacob-Bertrand: No. Beauty and the Beast. I mean, at the far end I would-
Fr. Bonaventure: Snow White.
Fr. Jacob-Bertrand: Yeah, and at the far end it’s like, Mulan, Pocahontas, that generation. I give it a thumbs up. I do. Fr. Jacob-Bertrand: I think that the way that Disney, at least with respect to the movies was able to take either sort of stories, classic stories or themes or use like, yeah, stories that, I mean, most of their movies and stuff are stories that existed before that then they kind of put their own twist on and make it, I think they’re, it’s good storytelling, I think it’s generally like good music. It’s good like art in the sense of like the animation and that sort of thing, but I think most importantly like what it teaches is it is it still adheres to the right sort of lanes of good and evil and doesn’t mix those sort of things. Now, obviously sometimes the heroes go through their crisis of whatever and the– But even though it’s a cliche, I think it’s a good thing that the good guy wins, and the bad guy loses or like the love story comes true like because, because…
Fr. Bonaventure: Yeah, though that’s no I like that’s the narrative structure and the focus on the black and whiteness oh, we wouldn’t because the miss a black and white and world’s not black and white But there is the sense in which good and evil are distinct. Good is not evil. You have to believe it’s not good. And that when you’re educating children, they learn best through stories, most of us love stories. And that you need to imprint in them some of these messages, for all sorts of educational reasons. And Disney has that way, the traditional trad Disney, has this way of telling these stories about good and evil, love, and that have the nice dramatic arc, I think, through those things. But at the end of the day, the world is a good place. They have this kind of affirmation vision, which for a lot of people, I mean, for children that’s necessary for them to actually go forward with their parents and then the bigger vision of it. So I think utopia, utopian Disney is not a bad description that because utopias are what children are about in a sense. They’re dreamers. They want to have this kind of vision and you’re supposed to help them imagine these ways. It’s also impressed in how much staying power there is in those simple images and stories. I was just with my niece and brother and sister-in-law a little bit ago and they were getting in the Disney movie stage just a little bit.
Fr. Jacob-Bertrand: How old is she now?
Fr. Bonaventure: She’s now five and a half or something. And they just started watching Robin Hood – have you seen the animated version from 1972?
Fr. Jacob-Bertrand: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Fr. Bonaventure: And I was just watching this, watching 10 minutes for the night before she went to bed, you’re watching this. And it’s amazing how much I remember. I couldn’t have said drawn up, but the minute I saw it, I can remember exactly what’s happening. –
Fr. Jacob-Bertrand: It’s like Maid Mariam’s like, caretaker, she’s like a big chicken, right? –
Fr. Bonaventure: Like a wolf, yes. She’s like a fox. –
Fr. Jacob-Bertrand: She is, but like her, guardian or whatever-
Fr. Bonaventure: Oh yeah, that’s right. And then the bear is a little John or something. And the cane is the lion and snake. It’s amazing. I haven’t thought about that movie in 25 years or something, but it’s all there. And so how much in the background is involved in that stuff, the encoding you could say of this. And it seems like in our society, this is true for cowboy movies too. We’ve gotten afraid of telling black and white stories because life is complicated. You know, I noticed this with black hat, white hat cowboy movies like three tend to you, my, I think was the first movie, cowboy movie I saw that like, it was not clear who the bad guy was, you know? When the old three tend to humans, it’s very clear where the bad guy is. And I think sometimes with our kids’ stories, we start to tell these kind of complex layered things as if they can know that, but it’s not true. I mean, kids’ world in some ways should be a simpler kind of world. –
Fr. Jacob-Bertrand: Yeah, well even if, even if it is the case, which it probably is the case, that life is more complicated than just like, this is good, this is bad, and just pick one and do it. But in order for people to begin to learn to navigate, how to navigate those complicated situations, you can’t hope for somebody to begin to navigate those complicated situations, if they don’t have a sort of foundational understanding of the basics. Right? So like you have to build on something. You don’t give somebody like a score of music who’s never played an instrument before. You introduce them to like the scales and that sort of, you know, and then they build and build until they’re able to navigate something much more complex. And I think that that’s the case with like, if we’re, I mean, we’re basically talking about it, but like the moral life of engaging with and making choices and just, you know, and if we can’t present, and this is what I think like classic kind of Disney of like the 80s, 90s kind of thing, like did is it did a good job of presenting in a beautiful way and in our way through art and music, like these classic stories of the human person, often told like through animal character, or you know, not always, but that gave us sort of foundational reality of like, this is what we’re after in my life. –
Fr. Bonaventure: It gave a sort of vision of the good life and some fashion in its own little fields. And simplicity point is, I think, important in that when we teach, for instance, physics, we took for instance physics you took physics too,you start out with Newton’s equation ethicals ma and then you work on that for a while and then you add you go along to engineering to all or you add you know more complexity to it air friction you know air resistance all these then you had derivatives all see you build out, but you’re still at the end of the day It’s still ethicals ma that’s structuring it, although you’re making it more complicated, of course. And oftentimes today, at least, it seems a critique about Disney and simplicity, those old-fashioned ones, it’s always not too complex, us versus them, this sort of thing. It gets rid of the idea that actually it is, at the end of the day, there is a simplicity to the moral life, how it’s played out is difficult sometimes, but there is a good and evil and that we have to start with one good and two simple. And then you can build in the kind of complexity, just like in the physics equation, you’re going to build in a little complexity as you go add to things as you’re more capable of it. You can’t teach Hamiltonian and Lagrangians to high schoolers. They won’t know what they’re talking about. But you can teach them ethicals and basic, basic algebraic physics.
Fr. Jacob-Bertrand: Yeah, and I think beyond the movie realm, the experience. Now I’ve been to Disney in, I don’t know. –
Fr. Bonaventure: Godsplaining retreat?
Fr. Jacob-Bertrand: Maybe. I would say definitely since I’ve ended, so let’s just say 15, 20 years. It’s been a long time since I’ve been to Disney. Well, it was in college, like 15, 16 years. Yeah. And so I don’t really know what, like the experience of going to Disney is now decade and a half later, but like growing up, even in high school and that sort of thing and a couple times I went in college, they’re like going to the parks gives the experience in a sense of like of that that’s experienced in the movies. It has this like kind of fantasy world, but it’s also there’s some like root in like just like wholesome goodness. It seems or there was. Maybe there still is. I just haven’t been there so much. But like even like walking down Main Street and Magic Kingdom, it’s not totally fanciful where it’s like this is unrelatable, but it’s also not totally normal. Obviously it’s like the magic of Disney that kind of like weaves into the normalcy of what life is. So they’re yeah, so I think that’s really awesome how like the in-person experience worked. –
Fr. Bonaventure: Yeah, that’s no, that’s good point. Disney has this way of, I mean, magic, right? Is that kind of the big thing? And it has a way of making magic or some magical sense, like it’s not doing real magic or anything, but there’s some kind of fantasy about it that we can all step into. And I think people, like I haven’t been there in a number of years as well, but they can easily step into that. Now, here’s an interesting point. And I hadn’t thought too much about this, but as big as I am on Disney, and obviously, the concerns about today, and we don’t need to, as an episode’s probably need to go into that. Hey, here’s the hit list of things that they’re doing wrong, because it’s just the hit list of what culture’s doing wrong. But here’s an interesting point that I haven’t thought about that much is Disney is a secular utopia. What I mean by that is not like Marx’s kind of stuff or communist sort of kingdom in a way, but that has fantasy and magic and all of this, but from the beginning in a way, it has never had God or anything in there. And which is in some ways striking that you can get away with a beautiful, magical florist, without ever a sense of a creator or even anything. So what do we have to make of the… Have you ever thought about, wait a minute, there’s someone missing in this story. And it’s not just like the kind of Christ thing, but like the idea that there’s a, there’s a deeper sense that the justice will be done at some point. There’s a transcendence to it. Disney has like an imminent eschatology and imminent morality. It’s fascinating.
Fr. Jacob-Bertrand: Well, this is unrelated, but very quickly. Like another, well, and I’m thinking of two movies from this era, too. Like Aladdin is another great one. But then I’m thinking, like, what movies, as you’re mentioning, this have any sort of mention of God. So another one that we had in the “Hunchback of Notre Dame”, has the church in it. And there’s a song, like, Esmerelda, that prays to God…
Fr. Bonaventure: Oh, okay, all right.
Fr. Jacob-Bertrand: …at some point, in the beginning, when she’s seeking, it’s like the song, I think God saved the outcast from towards, I think the beginning of the movie when she seeks sanctuary at some point. But the Church is not portrayed in a favor of well, and rightly so in that story anyways. And then the Lion King, when Mufasa dies, Simba sees him later in the clouds.
Fr. Bonaventure: Oh, yeah. Yeah.
Fr. Jacob-Bertrand: But it’s not God. Your point stands, you know, I’m just, but I’m trying to think of them.
Fr. Bonaventure: Are there, like other religious- what are the religious themes?
Fr. Jacob-Bertrand: Yeah. But there really aren’t. That’s true. And I don’t know if that’s I would be interested to like if there were some, if Walt Disney had something to say about that, if that was just like If that was intentional in the sense of like an agnosticism or atheism or if that was just like we’re telling these stories that are written this kind of way and you can extrapolate to some sort of higher objective moral kind of thing but it’s not explicit in this story. I don’t know.
Fr. Bonaventure: Which I, you know, and there’s something you can think, J.R.R. Tolkien goes, oh my gosh, well, Disney, that guy, don’t blame me for not being explicit about my images. That guy didn’t do anything with allegory, but I can imagine Walt Disney’s like, no, the whole thing’s about Christ dying on the cross. You’re like- we’ll see. But I was as it’s also the case that as a brother, Christian brother told me when I was in high school, he said, Christianity is an adult’s religion. And I’ve always remembered that and thought, there’s something kind of right about that, that to understand the meaning of Christianity is something you grow into. And it’s something that you have to have a certain reason and capacity, we have we recognize this with first, you know, Communion and such and you’ve just done this with recently yeah at the parish that there is this kind of that before a certain level, you have symbols for it and such and it’s important to teach children to pray and things but it’s like not as required. It’s not like you’re doing you’re failing the child If you’ve told them a beautiful story about good and evil, and you haven’t told them about God, because in a sense for a child, he might actually not think there’s anything, those categories naturally go together, whereas for us, we are so used to…it might be the case that we’re so used to be, like look good and evil, it’s either with God or it’s not involved at all. Whereas because we’ve been told that you could have it without having God and we kind of were worried about that, whereas children, I think, have a natural kind of sense of the transcendent maybe. And maybe that’s why it doesn’t seem as weird for me that it’s not included. Even though I would like, because our like, veggie tails, for instance, that are very explicitly religious…
Fr. Jacob-Bertrand: Are they? I’ve never watched it.
Fr. Bonaventure: Veggietales, Evangelical. –
Fr. Jacob-Bertrand: Oh okay, I didn’t know that. –
Fr. Bonaventure: Yeah, they tell a story of like Esther, you know, the cucumber and all this kind of thing. They’re very, if you’re Evangelical, you grew up watching vegeta tails. And that’s fine, but it’s a different thing. You know? –
Fr. Jacob-Bertrand: I’ve not gotten the sense from Disney that it’s, at least in this classic era, anti-God. Maybe Disney, that was his intention. I don’t know, but I’ve not gotten that sense myself.
Fr. Bonaventure: Yeah, yeah. So obviously there’s a lot of symbol, there’s a lot of basic moral catechises in Disney. What about the family aspects of it? You know, is Disney something you recommend to family. –
Fr. Jacob-Bertrand: As far as families watching it or their portrayal of the family? –
Fr. Bonaventure: Oh yeah. –
Fr. Jacob-Bertrand: Yeah, families watching. I think yes, again, in this classic kind of sense, like you kind of said or alluded to earlier that like everything else in our culture that has become totally woke and nonsensical, Disney has certainly done that in a way. So I’d caution against those kind of things. Yeah, I mean, if we’re losing the sense of right and wrong and if we’re losing the sense of truth and it becomes a bit more problematic to just sit a kid down in front of Disney, whatever. As far as the, it’s interesting too though, like I think the portrayal of the family in Disney movies is very weak. –
Fr. Bonaventure: Mm-hmm. –
Fr. Jacob-Bertrand: The portrayal of particular family familial relationships is quite strong, but the family unit is not really portrayed at all. –
Fr. Bonaventure: I mean, so like, you might get to it. Like Sleeping Beauty for instance, Snow White. Like it’s moving to that.
Fr. Jacob-Bertrand: But like look at Beauty and the Beast, there is no mother. Belle has no mother. Aladdin, Jasmine has no mother. And Aladdin has no parents. I believe Pocahontas’ mother isn’t around. Her father is for sure. Like Lion King. –
Fr. Bonaventure: Cinderella. –
Fr. Jacob-Bertrand: Mother, they’re both there in Lion King, Cinderella. –
Fr. Bonaventure: Step mother. –
Fr. Jacob-Bertrand: Hunchback of Notre Dame, he’s an orphan. He’s orphaned by his mother. You know he’s left in the Church. I’m sure there are like what other ones are we like? –
Fr. Bonaventure: Even a newer one I suppose like Frozen. There are a unit but the parents go away. It’s really just two sisters. Yeah. Yeah, it’s interesting that it’s a family friendly thing.
Fr. Jacob-Bertrand: Even like, it’s Finding Nemo, is that Disney and Pixar is that just Pixar. But like the dad goes out to find Nemo. Like there is so– Yeah.
Fr. Bonaventure: Yeah. It might be– yeah, I mean, this is fascinating observations that one Disney is like about, you know, trad Disney is about like moral truths and for the family and yet there’s no God really and there’s no family. So does this kind of –
Fr. Jacob-Bertrand: Very qualified family.
Fr. Bonaventure: Yeah, exactly. But the folks away from the family relations, I suppose…
Fr. Jacob-Bertrand: Even like Little Mermaid, her mother’s not around. It’s just her father.
Fr. Bonaventure: Yeah, and maybe that’s because kids, you know, don’t want kids enough of the parents anyway. And so there’s a focus on like just it’s just them anyway. But it’s true that the the the children are not usually there. I was trying to think, uh, what’s the psychology one, Inside Out? That’s Disney Pixar, right?
Fr. Jacob-Bertrand: I know it but uh…
Fr. Bonaventure: Okay, so yeah, but the family is not as present explicitly in the way as you’d expected to be given the focus on–
Fr. Jacob-Bertrand: That’s sort of wholesome nature of it. >>
Fr. Bonaventure: Yeah, yeah. >>
Fr. Jacob-Bertrand: But again, it’s weird because now that I’m thinking about it, like with the same thing as God’s presence or lack thereof, it doesn’t strike me as– –
Fr. Bonaventure: Problematic. –
Fr. Jacob-Bertrand: In the sense that I don’t think there’s an agenda behind this, and maybe that’s the best way to explain what’s about it. With the absence of God, it doesn’t seem that there’s like an anti-religious, like anti-religious, agnostic, atheistic agenda that’s being foisted upon people. And the same thing with the absence of the intact family unit, it doesn’t seem that there’s an agenda that’s being–
Fr. Bonaventure: Yeah, maybe that’s one of the faults with current Disney or any kind of thing today, that has a sort of propagandist aspect to it. And not only that, but we all expect something to have a propaganda aspect. So we all expect something to have a propagand aspect. So we all expect like, well, what is it really telling us? Whereas traditional Disney was just telling stories, and that’s what life was about anyway. I think this is our, we have a general suspicion of anyone that’s not us basically. And we assume they must be doing something or trying to get something from us. I think that’s true for Disney. And then so it ends up being this, well, look, either you are really explicit about the God stuff and everything else, or like you’re really opposed to it, as opposed to just kind of taking things naturally in that way. And I think Disney at its best is, it is a mirror. Maybe this is right. It’s a mirror of the culture, such that back when there’s the Protestant kind of American culture with good and evil and these things and redemption and finding true love and all of this, that was reflecting that. But now people want to play around with things and they expect moral lesson to be driven down your throat as opposed to just presented in their naturalness, even with some fantastic elements to it. –
Fr. Jacob-Bertrand: Well, what’s your favorite Disney movie? If you had to pick one. –
Fr. Bonaventure: Oh, man. That is a good question. –
Fr. Jacob-Bertrand: Or two, you could pick two. –
Fr. Bonaventure: Oh, I do like Aladdin, but mainly because of Jafar. –
Fr. Jacob-Bertrand: Okay. –
Fr. Bonaventure: I like Aladdin a lot, and the parrots quite a lot.
Fr. Jacob-Bertrand: Iago.
Fr. Bonaventure: Yeah, I have to say, I mean, I mean Rob Williams, he’s fantastic. Yeah, I mean, I was surprised at how much I remember it in light Robin Hood, even though I’m not generally a fan of Robin Hood because he’s breaking the law as far as I can tell, on a regular basis. But there was something delightful about that really went to.
Fr. Jacob-Bertrand: Your favorite. –
Fr. Jacob-Bertrand: Can I pick two? –
Fr. Bonaventure: You can.
Fr. Jacob-Bertrand: So Lion King. –
Fr. Bonaventure: Lion King, you like that, huh? –
Fr. Jacob-Bertrand: Yeah. And actually Beauty and the Beast.
Fr. Bonaventure: I was tempted, that’s a classic one. That’s a good one.
Fr. Jacob-Bertrand: I like, as far as Disney love songs, like, “Tale As Old As Time,” who sings, the British woman in Angela Lansbury right? Right? Is that her name?
Fr. Bonaventure: It sounds right.
Fr. Jacob-Bertrand: I think that’s just like classic Disney. And like the, yeah, the sort of sacrifice of self in it. –
Fr. Bonaventure: Yeah, Beauty and the Beast, that is, yeah. It’s funny, I don’t feel, yeah, that’s, that’s just a great, they’re great. And they’re love stories too, but there’s something noble and beautiful about them. So that’s great. Well, so, so, so was the best is maybe the worst, but generally a qualified, so you start off the qualified, yes, do a qualified, yes, of course. Yeah. It’d be hard to lose Disney, you know, I feel bad because it’s such an American icon, but we’ll have to stop there, folks. Please check out your own favorite Disney movies that you want. Re-watch them with the children if they’re from 1990s or earlier. But while you’re doing so, thanks for listening to this episode of Godsplaining. Follow us on Facebook, platform X, Instagram, TikTok if it’s still around. Like, subscribe, leave a five-star review, and please feel free to donate on Patreon. Also, look in the description links to find links to merchandise, other things, and special upcoming events. We have one particular, it’s gonna be a Disney theme. No, it’s not. It’s a Men’s Retreat, it’s gonna be watching Disney movies the whole time. No, we will be doing men’s things. It’ll be in North Carolina on August 8th through 11th. Father Patrick and myself, I will be leading it on redeeming stoicism. So please join us there. You can check out more in the on the website. Know of our prayers for you. Please pray for us. We’ll catch you next time on Godsplaining.