Original Article By John F. Trent At BoundingIntoComics.com:
Former CBC Television Executive Paul Chato explains how Disney’s princess culture has destroyed Star Wars, Marvel, and Pixar.
In a recent YouTube upload to his Call me Chato channel, Chato opens his video saying, “I want to tell all of you why Disney has cratered all the pop culture powerhouses that they have purchased and bitten off more than they could chew. It’s not an incompetence story as much as others have opined although, of course, that does enter into it. It’s actually a mergers and acquisition story.”
First, Chato explains that there is no significant difference between companies like The Walt Disney Company and steel foundries.
He says, “I keep trying to tell all of you that just because we’re dealing with corporations whose output is movies, TV, comic books, etc… what we categorize as creative products that they are somehow different from a steel foundry. They are not.”
“When Michael Eisner became President of Disney, all those old movies sitting, collecting dust were no different from a warehouse full of unsold ribbon steel rusting,” he shared.
Chato goes on to list off a number of reasons on why a company would purchase another one, but notes one it has indeed purchased the company “the challenge is that every company has a different culture. And if you’ve ever worked for HR you’ll know their favorite saying is that ‘culture eats strategy.’”
“Internally, you could recognize major problems and the existing corporate culture will defeat any of your attempts to change things for the better.” Chato then asks, “So how much worse does that get when trying to incorporate the foreign organisms you’ve just bought?”
He then turns his attention to The Walt Disney Company, “In the case of Disney, management rightfully recognized that while their princess brand was very successful it could only get them so far. So let’s buy some boy brands.”
However, he notes, “The princess culture of Disney could not leave the boy cultures of Star Wars and Marvel alone. The force was female, we found out.”
Shifting his attention specifically to Star Wars and Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy, Chato notes, “Many of you might argue that Kathleen ‘The Usurper’ Kennedy came as part of the Lucasfilm package. George installed her himself, but I’m going to put it to you that it would not have mattered if Michael Bay was in charge. The culture crabgrass of Disney would have overtaken the Lucasfilm backyard eventually.”
“From Disney’s perspective it was a blessing that Kennedy was already politically aligned and hell-bent on destroying her boss’s legacy, what luck,” he asserted.
He went on to point to The Force Awakens, “And you just have to look at the output of Disney’s acquisitions. Daisy Ridley was a charming Rey Palpatine, but as others have noted she was clearly the bestest ever not requiring even a semblance of the hero’s journey. The ignominious ending of Han Solo, not even a break for a tissue. And, of course, the wretched trilogy.”
Kennedy made it abundantly clear before The Force Awakens even hit theaters that she had and would be changing the culture of Lucasfilm.
During an appearance at Fortune Magazine’s Most Powerful Women Summit, Kennedy proclaimed, “I think the interesting path we’ve had is the conversation that took place around consumer products. Because there were a lot of companies that were in palce who frankly didn’t initially feel that Star Wars was for girls.”
She continued, “And when you have a company situation where between Lucasfilm and Disney, we were all looking at this situation saying, ‘No, with Star Wars we have to change this. We have to make sure that we create products that are in a sense appealing to both boys and girls.’ What’s wrong with that?”
Kennedy would later detail, “The fact that the company was bought by The Walt Disney Company has been amazing because they very much support the fact that we are trying to grow in the work force a number of women in executive positions and in all positions inside the company.”
“And with the movies that we are making and with the protagonists that we are putting in the stories. So I get a huge amount of support with that,” she continued.
She then touted, “But we have 50% of our executive team are women. And six out of eight of the people in my story group are women. And I’m sure there’s a lot of people that would be surprised that we’re making Star Wars movies and the majority of the people involved in the development of those stories are women. And I think it’s making a huge difference in the stories that we’re trying to tell.”
He also touched on Marvel, “In the case of Marvel, we thought we had an ally in Kevin Feige, but the princess culture shrunk whatever testicles Feige had.”
“Then we have the emasculation of the male superheroes of the Marvel Universe,” he said. “It wasn’t enough to replace them with female photocopies, but they had to be demeaned and ridiculed at every appearance and often kicked in the crotch.”
Chato goes on to point to the upcoming The Marvels film and Lucasfilm’s newest season of Star Wars Visions, Bo-Katan replacing Din Djarin in The Mandalorian, and the Ahsoka trailer appearing to feature only female heroines and male villains.
Interestingly, Chato then notes it’s not just the Disney princess culture, but that culture has been reshaped by a ‘we don’t need no men’ ideology.
He states, “Ironically, the ‘we don’t need no men’ ideology that has taken over Disney doesn’t seem to be able helping their own princess brand either. Rather than giving audiences what they want with perhaps a few twists, we have a Disney that is lecturing its audience. This is the fault of leadership.”
To this point Bob Iger made it abundantly clear that radical left wing ideologies such as gender and sexual identity would remain paramount at the company when he returned as CEO last year.
During a townhall with Disney employees, Iger said, “This company has been telling stories for a hundred years, and those stories have had a meaningful, positive impact on the world. And one of the reasons that they’ve had a meaningful, positive impact is one of our core values is inclusion, acceptance, and tolerance. And we can’t lose that. We just can’t lose that.”
More recently at the company’s 2023 Annual Meeting of Shareholders, Iger made it abundantly clear the company would continue to get involved in politics especially when it came to left wing ideological issues.
He said, “There are going to be times when we decide to weigh on an issue that we believe is worthy of debate because of its relevance and importance to our business or to our employees. And there are times when I actually believe we shouldn’t.”
Iger would go on to compare grooming young children into sexual identity and gender identity ideology to the Holocaust and the Civil Rights era, “And I think if you look back for decades corporate America has expressed themselves on numerous issues of both right and wrong. And our country, I think, is better off for that.”
He continued, “And this was evident during the Civil Rights era, as I recall as a child, when a lot of companies weighed in on injustices that they saw in America. It was certainly true during World War II when those that stood in silence. In some ways still weigh, still carry the stain of indifference.
“So as long as I’m in the job I’m gonna continue to be guided by a sense of decency and respect and trust our instincts that when we do weigh in, we weigh in because the issue is truly relevant to our business and to the people that work for us,” he concluded.
Chato would then turn his attention to Pixar saying, “Disney bought it for its tech, talent, and John Lasseter. But, once again, Disney culture could not stand an outlier like Lasseter, who did not work the way Disney culture demanded. Primarily, because he was demanding. And the drive-by shooting style of passive aggressive management at Disney did not mesh well with Lasseter’s straight from the hip style. So he had to go. Voila.”
“We have seen a continual decline in Pixar quality and innovation ever since. Coincidence? I suggest you do the autopsy on Disney yourselves,” he suggests.
Finally, Chato also asserts that Disney stretched itself too thin with its acquisitions of Lucasfilm, Marvel, Pixar, and more recently Fox.
“I think Disney has been overwhelmed by trying to take complete control of Lucasfilm, Marvel, Pixar, and recently Fox. They have no strategy it seems. They’ve lost their corporate identity. … I have no idea what Disney stands for anymore. Do you? It’s a deluded mess. And in the near term that will be its biggest challenge to fix that.”
