4 months 3 bags 2 chances: Whose dreams?

Walt the man

The light show

Walt the man

There is a long term rumour that Walt Disney was a Nazi sympathizer, a fascist, anti-female, anti-black anti-communist. The Nazi sympathizer rumour is especially pervasive and almost certainly untrue. The others, more likely a product of his time and business than his politics but with some small grain of truth.

The Nazi thing comes about because he produced a Donald Duck as a Nazi propaganda video. The video is clearly anti Hitler (to my watching) and to many who watch it, but some disagree.

Disney was castigated by a book called the Dark Lord the Dark Prince or the Half Blood Prince or something like that. It was written as a tell all Disney book and seems to have some truth (the bits about the fanatical perfectionist work tyrant) but then other bits referenced to "secret FBI papers not seen by others about Disney the Nazi seem just as likely to be a hatchet job designed to sell books.

Some referene his friendliness with Leni Riefenstahl who was a German filmaker who was friendly with Hitler and made Nazi propaganda films. She made some comments that Disney was the only Hollywood studio boss who would talk with her which is probably not surprising as all the others were Jewish. Perhaps Disney the Capitalist who wanted to break into the German film market put aside some morals for the sake of business?

So Disney had some other personality traits that seem to add to the view of him as "flawed". He was a relative despot behind the scenes but a paragon of virtue in front of the camera (like all successful capitalists he knew the value of marketing). He did not hire many females or blacks but at that time, not many companies did. He paid his employee animators less than other stuidios but bleieved that they got to be part of a big family with better working conditions and part of a "something bigger".

He was an aggressive anti-communist and anti-unionist but not in the same class as Sam Walton (read in Sam We Trust).

As an aside, Roald Dahl was an anti-semite and a nasty piece of work. Many of the better Dahl works were edited by others for example Mathilda and most of the memorable lines from the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory movie.

A few pics

The Show

The DIsney light show spectacular occurs every night that it isnt raining. It starts at 11 pm so your children, already zonked by aa day of running, eating bad food and lining up, get to be seriously sleep deprived for the next day.

OK - you can start by watching the first 15 minutes of the 20 minute show in the video below

video of show?

Heaps (and I mean heaps) of people had come back to the park once the rain had stopped to watch the show. Kids of all ages but mostly young stood and jostled for space before the show began at 11pm.

The last bus left at 11:30 for our hotel so we had to start walking toward it a bit before the show finished. Some of these pics are from far down the end of Main Street Disney so you cant see all the people still watching the show - most of who don't need a bus as they drive the 30km from Paris themselves.