Obama administration wanted Disney to remake Frozen as an AGW agitprop
In 1844, Hans Christian Andersen wrote one of his most famous fairy-tales, The Snow Queen. You may remember it – lots of romantic, touching, supernatural characters and events culminating in a happy end. Dozens of movies, including Czechoslovak and Soviet ones, have been shot over the course of 170 years.
In 2013, the Walt Disney Studios have created another (3D) remake called Frozen. Its budget was $150 million but the movie has earned $1.3 billion. A sister and a snowman are looking for the other sister who has some magic freezing powers.
The musical video above has 410 million views – it is not too far from being competitive with a crazy fat Korean rapper and horses.
I just learned about a political story that is sort of stunning. For quite some time, I thought it was a prank but the Internet sources indicate it was not. A special messenger of the Obama administration for the Arctic, Adm. Robert Papp, ordered Disney to shoot a sequel to Frozen that would be promoting the global warming hysteria.
Thankfully, the company answered with the obvious answer: No, it is a fairy-tale so it has its own optimistic rules that reflect the American spirit and the spirit of our company. And the Obama administration is said to be shocked by this answer! Various extreme left inkspillers are surprised because "Disney has been so active in public awareness campaigns". Wow.
For a democratic country that often sings to be the country of the free, it is simply insane.
I spent my childhood in a totalitarian society, in communism. It did try to distort many things and brainwash people at various points. Mathematics, physics, and chemistry at schools were "clean" but history, geography, and other subjects at school were tainted, and so were the TV news and newspapers, of course. But the regime did have the decency not to touch fairy-tales. An extremely tiny percentage of the fairy-tales that were shot since the 1960s had a hidden political message – and as far as I remember, not a single fairy-tale was spreading the communist ideology explicitly. And Czechoslovakia has shot a hundred or hundreds of them.
Now, in the U.S., it's apparently normal for the White House to expect that the most kitschy piece of contemporary political propaganda will be incorporated to the most profitable 3D fairy-tale – moreover one derived from a classic fairy-tale by Hans Christian Andersen.
Someone has completely lost his mind. It is crazy at so many levels.
One of the less important ones is the commercial aspect. Frozen is a major recent source of pride for Disney – and a source of more than one billion dollars. It helps to strengthen the Disney trademark. Why would Disney contaminate this trademark success by linking it to the lamest, most boring, and stupidest piece of propaganda? "Years of Living Dangerously" was a 2014 global warming agitprop with a huge budget and lots of stars who appeared in this 9-part TV series. And the number of Americans who watched all of its episodes was 410. Just the single musical video from Frozen at the top got 410 million views. Can you see the difference? Did Mr Papp at least offer Disney $1 billion stolen from the taxpayers in compensations for the crippled image of the company as a producer of arts? Or were they supposed to do so for free?
Second, these are fairy-tales for children. Children don't have all the skills they need to reach a qualified conclusion about controversial scientific and political questions which is why the completed (possible) answers shouldn't be pumped into them. It is simply deeply immoral. Children are supposed to enjoy their childhood which should be free of problems. They shouldn't be constantly scared by something, especially if this scary thing is completely fabricated. Children may be harmed and this harm may worsen their whole lives.
And they should be allowed to decide about controversial questions when they can and when they want. If there's a reason to be worried about the climate change, the present children will see that it is the case much more clearly when they grow up than we see it today, so there is no need to preemptively brainwash them, right? And the children don't vote or otherwise decide before they grow up so why should they be programmed to think in this skewed way? As Disney said, fairy-tales – films for children – are by definition movies with a happy end and no such happy end has been invented by the chronic climate fearmongers yet.
Third, a decent government should have some respect for some of the old pillars of the Western culture. Andersen's fairy-tales shouldn't be raped and abused for the promotion of a political message for the same reason why the Bible shouldn't be used to sell toilet paper or porn. Whether you believe the message or not and whether you like the Bible, it's just distasteful.
Just to be sure, there are tons of people in Disney who actually do buy the climate hysteria and Disney has already produced at least one documentary promoting the global warming ideology. But at least, even these people have enough taste to see that the combination of the 3 points above – and perhaps others – is vastly more important than their faith in a superstition that demonizes carbon dioxide.
Americans, including the Republicans, love to deny it but the arrogance represented by the current left-wing U.S. government and its soulmates in many corners of the American society is largely unprecedented, at least in countries that are still considered democratic.
http://motls.blogspot.com/2015/02/obama-administration-wanted-disney-to.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+LuboMotlsReferenceFrame+%28Lubos+Motl%27s+reference+frame%29 |
