If you love Disney, its parks, its media, and its merch, listen up.

So I work for Disneyland, and we are talking about striking very soon. So soon, in fact, that we've been hosting rallies just outside of the parks. Yesterday was the 69th birthday of Disneyland Anaheim... it was also a monumental rally.

I haven't seen anyone on tumblr talking about the impending strikes against Disney. Not even going through the Disney tags or searching tumblr for "Disneyland Strike."

Let's talk about why we're striking:

• Cost of living in the immediate SoCal region is nearly 2x as much as we are getting paid.
• Cast members that have worked for the company for long periods of time are still paid as mucha s new hires.
• Disney has showed up to union negotiations with insulting offers, including at 25 cent raise. Most cast members make $19.90
• Disney rarely schedules you. In some areas and departments, you are fighting with your fellow cast members for hours. I have heard of cast members who are only scheduled for 1 4-hour shift per week. Many of those cast members have upwards of an hour commute to and from work.
• Disney Admin has told attractions castmembers [so: rides, rollercoasters, and anything fun you get to do and see at the parks] that we are losing them money, which is why they refuse to schedule us and pay us. In the words of my partner, who also works at the parks, Disney without attractions is an over glorified mall and a food court. Disney needs us, and they know it, but they do not respect us.
• Disney has an unfair attendance policy. It can be very difficult to get a needed day off, even when it has been requested weeks or months in advance. When you do take a day off [with-out accrued sick or vacation time] it counts against you. You can have 3 a month, 6 in 90 days, 9 in 180 days, or 12 in a year. How do you accrue sick/vacation? Hours worked, which can be impossible with the scheduling practices mentioned above. (Most cast members trade shifts among themselves to get around this.)
• Cast members feel unsafe and unsupported in the parks. Many cast members have felt threatened by entitled guests upset that they are following policy. Disney Leads and Managers have to say yes to these guests and make things happen, though. [Which only makes this behavior worse and more dangerous for cast members who are only doing their job.]
• Cast members also report feeling threatened, or even being literally threatened, by management in the parks. Especially cast members who have a second job. Especially cast members who know their rights.
• Further, cast members work in hazardous conditions with pay that does not reflect that. Many cast members report losses of hearing, sore throats, and severe back and shoulder pain. Cast members are also exposed to infectious diseases at a much higher rate.

https://www.sfgate.com/disneyland/article/union-button-contract-dispute-19515296.php?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR2u5o_mvU3i6jpIyHxBUZpEzD2GRSKFf5Pem4uRXqa6vKWDgZuffvINd1g_aem_AA1L0fI1phugJIluYMcDSw

Disney vs. DeSantis is so funny because it's like. Neither side even wanted to get into this. Here's how it's supposed to go: Politician does something stupid. Corporation disavows politician after public pressure. Politician disavows the disavowing. Nothing changes for either party.

But then the Florida governor got stars in his eyes. He saw an opportunity to bolster his standing before the presidential primary. He wanted to be the one who took on The Mouse and won. So in retaliation he decides he's going to tear down the decades-old agreement Disney uses to govern Disney World's district.

And just like that, Disney's batshit insane legal department turns towards Florida like the Eye of Sauron spotting the ring at Mount Doom. They smell lost profit. They smell blood.

Disney will use any and every strategy they've accumulated over the last century of lobbying congress and DeSantis can't back down lest he admit Mickey Mouse beat his ass. He's lost control of Disney World's district even more than he already did. Now he's getting sued.

This all started because Disney was pressured into backtracking their political contributions to Florida and disavowing the Don't Say Gay law. Now they're fighting for something they actually care about: their profit margin. Disney is not an ally to queer people and they're an enemy to progressives, but damn am I rooting for them to keep humiliating the greater evil for the time being. This is high comedy.

Mickey Mouse is Gay

I'm working on research notes for my Hays Code video essay, and I'm reading The Celluloid Closet by Vito Russo. While reading, I came across this image:

[Image description: A screenshot from the ebook of The Celluloid Closet. It shows an old poster of Mickey Mouse playing a harp, with text that reads "always gay!" in large capital letters. Smaller text at the bottom reads "(C) Walt Disney Enterprises." The image is captioned with, "When the word gay meant happy and nothing else." End description.]

There was no immediate information about when or in what context this poster was produced, but since I live in Florida, where Disney was involved in the recent "Don't Say Gay" chaos, I felt compelled to go dig up more info.

That digging led me to a copy of Tinker Belles and Evil Queens, by Sean Griffin, which opens chapter 2 ("Mickey Mouse--Always Gay!") with the following:

In the midst of The Celluloid Closet, Vito Russo’s groundbreaking
work on representations of homosexuals in American film, there appears a poster advertising Mickey Mouse cartoons. As a joyous Mickey plucks out a tune on a harp, the poster proclaims, “Always Gay!” Underneath this picture, Russo writes the caption “When the word ‘gay’ meant happy and nothing else.” Although Russo separates Mickey’s personality from the modern connotations of the word “gay,” linking the word “gay” with “homosexual” had begun in various homosexual communities during the 1930s. The word “gay” was used in these circles as a method of code to let others know that someone was “a member of the community” without declaring it to those who would physically or legally threaten them. Furthermore, although Walt and most (if not all) of his employees probably would not have known this new meaning to the word when they created the aforementioned poster in the 1930s, it seems that certain audience members were watching and enjoying Mickey’s “gaiety” in all its connotations.

This dynamic becomes more apparent when certain historical evidence suggests that the phrase “Mickey Mouse” itself was bandied about by some homosexuals as a code phrase. Gay and lesbian historian Allan Berube found a photograph of a gay bar in Berlin during the 1930s called “Mickey Mouse.” A lesbian hobo of the 1930s who went by the name Box-Car Bertha related to Dr. Ben L. Reitman in 1937 that a group of wealthy Chicago lesbians threw soirees called “Mickey Mouse’s party.” Bertha maintained contact with these women in order to borrow money, introducing herself by saying “I met you at Mickey Mouse’s party.”

With this evidence of the use of “Mickey Mouse” as a code phrase
for homosexuality, seemingly benign uses of the name by homosexual figure take on heightened meaning. When openly gay songwriter Cole Porter wrote the lyrics for “You’re the Top” in the early 1930s, he included the line “You’re Mickey Mouse.” In The Gay Divorcee (1934), Betty Grable approaches Edward Everett Horton, who made a career out of playing the bumbling sissy in Hollywood films during the ’30s, and sings to him “You make me feel so Mickey Mousey.” Although what Grable’s character means by this is left open to interpretation, in context she seems to mean that Horton stirs some emotion within her. Yet, “Mickey Mousey” might have had a sly double meaning—especially when a flustered Horton responds to Grable’s assertion, “Well, no wonder!”

I've said before that completely writing off Disney media is a bad take, because Disney media has been very important in queer history. The corporation is evil, but the art has the talent and soul of countless skilled artists, many of whom are/were queer. Painting Disney media as across-the-board soulless and terrible erases the contributions of countless artists who were themselves exploited by the company.

There is such a long tradition of queer people slipping queerness under Disney's radar and into their classic films. I typically use Howard Ashman's work on The Little Mermaid as my go-to example of this, because The Little Mermaid is a very queer movie based on a very queer story by a very queer author.

So it's pretty wild to learn Mickey Mouse himself has been used as queer flagging!

For more info about Disney Queerness, I recommend the video essay "What Makes Disney Villains So Gay?" by Matt Baume, as well as the YouTube channel Dreamsounds.

(Also, if you want to support the production of my video essay about the Hays Code, you can pledge to my Patreon. I still have some texts to track down for research and might have to shell out to buy them.)

anyone else feel slightly insane that this is the tagline of a multimillion dollar company releasing a bunch of cashgrab miniseries in order to milk a dying franchise even more. or have i just not slept well recently

disney employees are starting a full week of walkouts leading to their big walkout on march 22nd, 2022. they’ve asked people to not use disney products during this week. (no disney+, hulu, espn, playing games, watching videos, reviewing/blogging about any of their IP, no going to the parks). this is a targeted and timed action you can concretely participate in.

they’re asking people to also support by using those hashtags and to sign their petition in solidarity.

Disney’s support of the Don’t Say Gay shit is reprehensible to begin with but I think it’s a little strange that the solution proposed by some people is to yell at Disney until they say they support LGBT people and not question why the funny cartoon company can dictate human rights

zoinks cat’s outta the bag!! 🤭