trying to remember that Disney sucks (even if I like a lot of their IP)

When I was slowly making my way through David Graeber and David Wengrow’s The Dawn of Everything last month, I was having trouble processing all of the ideas in the ambitious, dense book, so I was surprised when one idea sounded familiar: schismogenesis. A few years ago, Cory Doctorow wrote an essay using schismogenesis as a theme. Here’s Doctorow’s explanation of the concept from the original book, and the beginning of his thesis in the post:

According to the Davids, new cultures are budded off of others — a process called schismogenesis — when one group of people define themselves in opposition to another: “They are the kind of people who have kings, so we are the kinds of people who do not.” Or “They are the kind of people whose leaders demonstrate their nobility by never working, so we are the kind of people whose leaders make a show of doing heavy labor.”

This notion grabbed me, because it explained so much about the changes in attitudes I’d seen among my (erstwhile?) friends and allies in the “progressive” world during the Trump years and through the covid pandemic. Specifically, it explained how people who considered themselves politically liberal or even leftist were transformed into defenders of voting machine companies and the pharmaceutical industry, and champions of the FBI.

As Doctorow hints in that last line, he feels strongly that those distrustful of power ought to stay skeptical of powerful corporations and abusive law enforcement—even (and perhaps especially) when they appear to be on our side. I’m surprised that I never bookmarked that essay back in 2021, because it’s stuck with me, and I’ve thought about it a lot in the 2.5 years since.

In fact, I’ve repeatedly thought about it in terms of Disney. As Ron DeSantis has waged his culture war with Disney’s foothold in Florida over the past few years, I (someone who does not at all care for DeSantis) have repeatedly had to remind myself that as much as I don’t like DeSantis, I should probably be careful about cheerleading a massive, wealthy, influential company that has repeatedly used its influence to advance copyright legislation that I don’t care for and whose support for causes I do care for is likely more related to careful calculations about profitability than to any deep social commitments.

I was further reminded of this while reading today’s news that (to quote NPR’s article on the topic):

After a doctor suffered a fatal allergic reaction at a Disney World restaurant, Disney is trying to get her widower’s wrongful death lawsuit tossed by pointing to the fine print of a Disney+ trial he signed up for years earlier.

[…]

The reason it says Piccolo must be compelled to arbitrate? A clause in the terms and conditions he signed off on when he created a Disney+ account for a month-long trial in 2019.

Those terms of use — which users must acknowledge in order to create an account — state that “any dispute between You and Us, Except for Small Claims, is subject to a class action waiver and must be resolved by individual binding arbitration.”

I like a lot of the media that Disney is producing these days (and I grew up on a lot of Disney, too), but stories like this remind me that I can’t just think about Disney as the producer of a lot of Marvel content that I’ve liked recently and as the reason that there is new Star Wars content in my life. It’s also a powerful corporation that does what powerful corporations do, including using the technicalities of the law to downplay liability and protect their bottom line.

Even ignoring this story—which strikes me as peak callousness and cynicism—it’s struck me repeatedly in recent years (see here and here) that my enjoyment of the Marvel and Star Wars content that Disney is producing is distracting me from the fact that the core magic of Marvel and Star Wars IP should really be in the public domain by now, letting other people and corporations put their spin on it. Disney isn’t producing content I like for the sake of the art—it’s producing content I like because it’s profitable. In a world with different IP laws, it’s possible that new Spider-Man stories and Star Wars spin-offs would be even better.

It’s rumored that Disney+ is going to be cracking down on password sharing next month, and without going into too much detail, that’s inevitably going to lead to some kind of rethinking of how we handle that subscription in my house. I don’t know that I have the moral fiber to cancel the subscription outright: For all of my anger at the company now, there is a young kid in my house who really likes the content they produce, and the adults around here do too. At the very least, though, I’m going to write up the EFF right now and order their new “Fix Copyright” shirt that features a Steamboat Willie-era Mickey Mouse on it. That by itself doesn’t change anything, but here’s hoping I make more of an effort in the months to come at remembering that Disney sucks.

• macro
• Communities
• David Graeber
• David Wengrow
• The Dawn of Everything
• Cory Doctorow
• schismogenesis
• Ron DeSantis
• intellectual property
• copyright
• Disney
• Marvel
• Star Wars