There are several companies that anti-capitalist protestors love to hate and two of them are Disney and MacDonalds. These companies are seen as the very embodiment of American ‘economic and cultural imperialism’. Samizdata contributor and blogger in her own right Natalie Solent once remarked on the Libertarian Alliance Forum (20 June 2002) that there is a near 1:1 correlation between people who slag off MacDonalds, using derisory terms like ‘MacJobs’, and people who are in reality advocating a nihilistic communistic reordering of society.
And yet whilst I think Natalie is generally correct on that point, in the right leaning Daily Telegraph, Andrew Gimson also writes a rather flaccid article about why he too does not like Disney and it has nothing to do with big business.
Like Andrew Gimson, I have nothing against big business and am an avid supporter of globalization. As a result I regard Disney and MacDonalds as remarkable examples of international commerce and I have no problem with them plying their toxic wares everywhere across the globe… hang on a minute…’toxic wares’?
Yes, the truth is, I detest both Disney and MacDonalds. 
Much in the same way as I support the right of looney toon Nazis and incoherent socialists to publicly advocate their idiotic views, so too do I support the right of Disney and MacDonalds to hawk their wares from Peoria to Petropavlovsk… and just as I support the right of people to shout abuse and pour scorn on Nazis and Socialists when they do air their views, so too do I support the right of people to vote with closed wallets in order to protect their children from near-fraudulent cultural hijacking by Disney and heart disease and obesity by garbage-like ‘food’ sold by MacDonalds.
If Disney wants to create animated movies (that are in reality little more than an exercise in merchandising) from whole cloth, then I have no real objection. But when they produce something like ‘The Little Mermaid’, I find my blood boiling. The Little Mermaid is a story by Hans Christian Andersen, and was written not as Disney would have us believe, to convey the message ‘go for your dream, girl, and live happily ever after’. No, not at all.
Your tail will then disappear, and shrink up into what mankind calls legs, and you will feel great pain, as if a sword were passing through you. But all who see you will say that you are the prettiest little human being they ever saw. You will still have the same floating gracefulness of movement, and no dancer will ever tread so lightly; but at every step you take it will feel as if you were treading upon sharp knives, and that the blood must flow. If you will bear all this, I will help you.”
“Yes, I will,” said the little princess in a trembling voice, as she thought of the prince and the immortal soul.
This is far from the pallid castrated ‘culture’ that Disney’s marketing wonks would have you believe the story contains. Now I realise this sort of gritty prose might not sell so well in some places with sugar coated rose tinted views of what children should hear and read, but then why the hell call it ‘The Little Mermaid’ then? Call it ‘The Adventures of Ariel’ or ‘Fishgirl gets her Prince’ or anything that does not claim to have the slightest intellectual similarity to what Hans Christian Andersen was actually trying to say.
Feel free to purchase Disney’s drivel if you wish for your hamburger bloated offspring, but do not kid yourself that your children are hearing anything whatsoever from probably the most famous writer of children’s stories who ever lived.
