Tweaking Walt Disney World

This post is by contributing blogger Kelly Coyle DiNorcia, a graduate of our M.Ed. program, and a humane educator specializing in helping parents raise joyful, compassionate children. Find out more about Kelly's work at her website Beautiful Friendships, and her blog, Ahimsa Mama.

Image courtesy of donchiefnerd via Creative Commons.

We just returned from a week spent vacationing at Walt Disney World.

I know, I know.  Disney, the the embodiment of what ails us as a society and a species.  It’s not my favorite place, but it holds fond memories for my husband, my kids enjoy it, and their grandmother lives in Orlando.  And so we go. 

As a student of humane education, I found abundant opportunities for considering all sorts of issues and for practicing critical thinking with my kids; an entire book could be (and has been, many times over) written about the company.  For the purposes of creating a blog post of reasonable length, I’ve decided to focus on four popular rides that could use some tweaks - minor ones, really - in order to truly “weave the importance of diversity and inclusiveness” into guests’ experiences.  (From the website http://corporate.disney.go.com/citizenship2010/familyentertainment/overview/ourapproach/)

1.  Spaceship Earth: This ride is supposed to tell the story of human connection from prehistoric times through the modern age.  I wish I could quote verbatim Dame Judi Dench’s narration of the Dark Ages, but the gist is: When Rome was burned, “we” thought all our knowledge was lost.  Imagine our relief when “we” found out that there were people in Asia who could read and write and had libraries and knew stuff!  Clearly, these Islamic and Jewish scholars are not members of “we”.  Consider: “When the Dark Ages befell Europe, Europeans were surprised and relieved to find that their self-centeredness had not prevented Jewish and Islamic scholars from thinking and learning.”

2.  It’s a Small World:  This classic is Walt Disney’s homage to international unity.  There are over 100 nations represented, and the dolls sing the lyrics of “It’s a Small World” in five languages.  Interestingly, only three of these languages - English, Spanish and French - find themselves among the twenty most commonly spoken languages in the world, which begs the question of how they were chosen.  Anyway…each room represents a different continent, and in Africa, there is a Cleopatra-esque Egyptian or two, elephants, giraffes and cheetahs, and a dark-skinned man dressed in a loin-cloth and carrying a spear.  Admittedly it would be overwhelming to represent each of the hundreds of tribes in Africa; but surely Imagineers could conceive a way to represent the dozen or so distinct ethnic groups that number in the tens of millions.

3.  Pirates of the Caribbean:  Disney marketing wizards have begun using gender-based marketing to present pirates as the boy answer to the princess craze.  After all, male guests need something to do while their female counterparts are being beglittered and begowned at the Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boutique.  As for the ride itself, the scene at the end where the pirates are selling “wenches,” and the individual on the auction block is large, and the pirates are asking if they are pricing her by the pound: It needs to go.  Add “sizeism” to the list of -isms at which Disney may want to take a look.

4.  Walt Disney World Railroad:  This ride was the highlight of my three-year-old son’s trip, possibly of his life.  The restored steam train takes riders around the outskirts of the Magic Kingdom, and on the way through Frontierland it passes a settlement of tipis, campfires and buckskins.  The voice-over says that American settlers were not the first on the scene (so far, so good), but that native plains tribes were the ones to “tame the Wild West.”  While I am not an expert on the philosophy of the native plains tribes and therefore stand to be corrected, I do not think they would describe themselves as having tamed anything, and would posit that the very mindset is utterly foreign to them.  Perhaps more accurately it could be said, “Before settlers staked their claim to the land of the American west, native plains tribes had lived there for millennia.”  Or, “Before settlers stole the land of the American west from the native plains tribes who had lived there for millennia….” 

This list is by no means exhaustive, so please feel free to add your own suggestions!

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