Of God and Mickey

Whenever she and her husband took their five children to Disneyland, Laurie Zoloth-Dorfman would comment on underlying religious themes evident to her academic eyes. . . . The Pirates of the Caribbean ride into watery depths, flirting with danger and death, but emerging safely . . . similar encounters with evil in the Haunted Mansion or Mr. Toad’s ride.

Family trips to Anaheim were fun for the former Los Angeles resident, now teaching social ethics and Jewish philosophy at San Francisco State University. Yet, she couldn’t resist pointing out what she considered to be “sexist” or “racist” depictions in the theme park.

“Mommy, enough!” her kids would plead. “Never go to Disneyland with an ethicist,” her husband advised friends.

This past week, Zoloth-Dorfman--along with 17 other scholars--found a more sympathetic audience for Disney critiques at the annual gathering of the American Academy of Religion and Society of Biblical Literature, which took place at Disney World.

Disney’s enormous influence on popular culture--the pervasive “Disneyfication” of classic stories through consumer products--has often been aided by subtle religious imagery that is not readily evident to the casual observer, the religion specialists from universities and seminaries contended.

This was not all as pretentious or lacking in humor as it might seem. Fordham University’s James McBride donned Mickey Mouse ears at the end of his talk. Lowell Handy of Chicago’s Loyola University compared the Mouse to the Bible’s King David--both evolved from scamp to beloved figure and, finally, to icon for an empire.

Gary Laderman of Emory University began his paper on “The Disney Way of Death” thusly: “I’ll be the first to admit that this presentation might appear to be on the cusp of utter silliness.”

Nevertheless, Laderman followed with a serious argument that Disney’s early animated films--such as “Snow White,” “Bambi” and “Cinderella”--dealt frankly with death or its threat--a marked contrast to a common academic thesis that 20th-century America has been a death-denying culture.

“In the Disney imaginative universe, death can be overcome and serve as a source of regeneration because of the potency of family relations,” he said.

It’s no wonder, said Zoloth-Dorfman, that most dying children assisted by the Make a Wish Foundation pick a trip to one of the Disney theme parks.

Quest for Entertainment

The ritual, “mythic and social significance of the Magic Kingdom is a profound one,” she said. Family trips to Disney’s parks resemble a religious pilgrimage, she noted. The motifs, she said, include a costly financial commitment, enduring lines outside and inside the parks, wearing of special garb (mouse ears, for example), visiting unique sites in the Pure Land amid thousands of other devotees, and returning with tokens of the trip (souvenirs).

“Disneyland is the secular American version of Lourdes” (the Catholic pilgrimage site), said Zoloth-Dorfman.

Catholic theologian Thomas Ryba reminded listeners of the temporary effects of Disney productions. Agreeing with theorists who see the Disney theme parks as a heaven-like utopia with influential symbols and simulations, Ryba added that it is also a “degenerative utopia” that encourages the visitor to become “the passive recipient of whatever Disney chooses to download.”

This suspension of critical thinking “allows the visitor to bask in the myths” while the Disney imagineers instill “temporary hope for the future,” he said.

Normally, the scholars noted, Disney entertainment products avoid obvious religious symbols. One exception is the central “Tree of Life” in Disney’s Animal Kingdom, a biblical term that suggests a reconstructed Garden of Eden within the Disney World complex. However, a Disney brochure merely calls this “icon” of the park “a symbol of the richness and diversity of animal life on earth.”

Another explicitly religious symbol used in Disneyland is a popular Hindu deity, Ganesha, the elephant god, which can be seen on the Jungle Cruise ride and at the Indiana Jones ride, which takes tourists through a mock-up of an old Hindu temple discovered in the jungle. Hinduism Today magazine two years ago reported mixed reactions by Hindu tourists to the use of their religion’s symbols.

Others, of course, have stronger objections to Disney’s activities. Some religious conservatives, including the Southern Baptist Convention, have called for boycotts of the company, saying the Burbank-based empire is “gay-friendly and anti-family” and has betrayed its founder’s vision.

The generally more liberal religious scholars at the conference were more likely to grumble about what they see as racial stereotyping in Disney movies, or to voice moral objections to the company’s sanitized representation of America’s past and its utopian portrayals of a future dependent on benevolent, large corporations.

A Philosophical Airbrushing

Duke University’s Amy Johnson Frykholm argued that the Utopian--thus sacred--spaces created in Disney’s planned community, Celebration, have no reminder of disharmony. “From the street lamps on Water Street to the awnings of every store”--as well as a town hall lacking an elected government--Celebration’s nostalgic look and feel provides residents “with politics, social conflict, racial division, even history itself, sifted out,” she said.

As for whether Walt Disney was betrayed by the current corporation, Justin Watson, a Florida State professor, said that basically he was not, quoting the founder as urging associates to give people what they wanted: “Dream, diversify and never miss an angle.”

But Disney was betrayed in the sense that he embraced traditional values within a narrow, Protestant Americanism that is steadily being changed by a diversifying population, said Darlene Juschka of the University of Toronto.

More than that, she said, Southern Baptists and like-minded fundamentalists are fighting a losing battle against Disney’s powerful “control over the realm of the fantastic . . . over the American imagination.”