I’d like to thank The American Prospect for giving me the opportunity today to publish my first ever article in an actual established outlet, hopefully the first of many. Here’s why I think we need to break up the Walt Disney Company.
This has been an incredible year for the Walt Disney Company. Not only has Avengers: Endgame become the best-selling movie in box office history, but Disney currently holds all four slots for this year’s top-earning films. However, the company’s dominance isn’t quite something to celebrate.
At the moment, almost 38 percent of all U.S. box office sales in 2019 have gone to a Disney-owned movie, down from a peak of over 40 percent earlier this year. And that’s even before coming releases of Frozen 2, Maleficent: Mistress of Evil, and Star Wars: Rise of Skywalker. As we can see by looking at the U.S. box office over the last 30 years, Disney has more than doubled its already significant market share in just five years, reaching an unprecedented point in modern history for a film company…
Within the next couple of years, there is a good chance that the majority of all money made from wide-release movies will go into the pockets of the Walt Disney Company. Even if you consider yourself a dedicated Disney fan, this should concern you…
The Walt Disney Company is no longer the gentle giant of film and animation of yesteryear. Today, Disney is a multinational corporate conglomerate that takes in over $10 billion a year in profits alone. Its consistent growth and strategy of buying out other firms has put the company in a position of nearly unprecedented power in the U.S. media market, and thus in the global media market as well.
This position gives Disney the ability to offer lower-quality products, crush competitors, squeeze profits from other markets, influence politicians in its favor, and more. As the controversy around modern monopolies heats up, it is becoming clear that we need a generalized revitalization of antitrust law in the United States. As part of such a campaign, Disney too must be identified as a monopolistic corporate titan in severe need of being broken up into a number of smaller companies in order to restore both fair competition and the sanctity of American democracy.
Reblogging because, I will say as someone who’s been relatively…. salty in the past over your media takes, I’m surprised how even-keeled and not-condescending this was.
My favorite quote (bolding mine):
This is perhaps the best case for why Disney’s monopoly status is a problem even for fans of Disney and its subsidiaries: The lack of powerful competition means Disney simply doesn’t have to make as many films. Based on the numbers above, the Disney of today would likely have never approved the making of lesser-known fan favorites like Air Bud, James and the Giant Peach, Ed Wood, or O Brother, Where Art Thou?, nor would they have agreed to distribute Japanese masterpieces like Howl’s Moving Castle or Spirited Awayin America.
Reduction in the quantity of movies doesn’t mean an increase in quality; it may well mean the opposite. When Disney decides what ideas to put money behind, they aren’t doing it based on the actual quality of the movie, but on its potential profitability. Ed Wood, one of Disney’s worst-selling movies of 1994, has a 92 percent from critics and an 88 percent from audiences on Rotten Tomatoes. Compare this to Beverly Hills Chihuahua, a film that made 16 times as much in net gross but received a 40 percent and 52 percent, respectively. Guess which would get made today?
I’d also cite Tron Legacy and The Black Cauldron as those sorts of experiments that’d never be done today, perhaps even Kingdom Hearts, and I have a hunch that my Disney-fan friend @friendlytroll would find that a compelling argument.
But, there is one caveat I will add: Any movement to break up Disney needs to be inherently entwined with the movement to reduce copyright duration, because the current copyright monopoly due to its overextension is what’s fueling this “consolidation creep”
Like, I will say, the way copyright has been expanded and the possibility of narrative crossover (A natural tendency of human storytelling, if you know your history) being tied to the “generosity” of a monopoly is an extremely classic “enclosure of the commons” scenario.
Doubly so when one considers the re-conceptualization of copyright as a temporary legal protection to a god-given right, or even the backlash that is punching down at people for their desire for crossover rather than protesting its capture.
I say reduction back to 56 years, retroactively as per the previous extensions, is the most solid idea, specifically because of its precedent in previous copyright law and it being long enough to help individuals more than mega corps*, and also because; essentially; if it were done, everything Walt did during his lifetime would be public domain.**
And, I think the public would be way less willing to back Disney, as some of the cynics suggest they would, if the proposition were framed as “Break up Disney and give its stories back to the people,” rather than “Break up Disney, fuck you sycophantic fan-drones”
So yeah, we cannot separate the fight to break up Disney from the fight to reduce copyright, because the expansion of copyright is the major force driving their consolidation creep. #56OrBust Y’ALL!
*Though, I will say also that in this law there’d need to be a program of reparations paid by the corporate rightsholders to those families whose works will lapse because of this, who did not get proper restitution from the corporate owners of said works in the creator’s lifetimes.
Cause, the treatment of independent creators as “collateral damage” is far too common in copyright-shrinking discourse, and a thing we need to talk about, but that’s for another post.
**This also goes for most of the major Marvel superhero properties Disney uses, all the Carl Barks duck stories Duck Tales was based on, and all of the 1950s monster movies that Fox’s big franchises were basically modern revamps of.
Actually didn’t we used to have laws specifically against being this big of a conglomerate? I could swear when I was a kid it was all over the news that some huge corporation was taken to court and broken up into smaller companies. Am I imagining that? If I’m not, what changed and when?
Tutankhamun’s mummy was provided with two daggers encased in gold sheaths, one with an iron blade and the other with a blade of hardened gold. It is the latter specimen which is shown here.
The handle is exquisitely decorated with gold granulation and glass inlays and is fitted with a knob of rock crystal. Dagger length 31.8 cm; blade 20.4 cm, width 3.4 cm; sheath length 20.6 cm, width 4.3 cm.
From the Tomb of Tutankhamun (KV62), Valley of the Kings, West Thebes.
Chinese regime’s propaganda is riddled with contradictions
Vincent Kolo, chinaworker.info
Since Hong Kong’s mass revolt erupted in June, the Chinese
dictatorship (CCP) has pumped out propaganda about a ‘colour revolution’
fomented by the US and other western actors. This is straight from the
CCP playbook. The aim is to mobilise nationalist sentiment to support
state repression while at the same time putting protesters, foreign
media and governments on the defensive.
Internationally there also some ‘lefts’, mostly with a Stalinist
outlook, who parrot Beijing’s line. Mass protests two years ago in more
than 100 Iranian cities against the dictatorship in Teheran were also
dismissed by these groups as a “US backed” movement.
These social media warriors are now among the most ardent defenders
of police brutality in Hong Kong. “Police in America are much worse”,
they say. We agree up to a point, but genuine socialists are consistent.
We oppose police violence in Ferguson, in Paris, and in Sheung Wan.
Those who subscribe to the colour revolution scenario focus a lot on
the role of pan-democratic politicians like Joshua Wong, Martin Lee, and
media mogul Jimmy Lai Chee-Ying, who all have connections with the
right-wing political establishment in the US. But these political
figures did not initiate the current mass movement and the truth is
they’ve been side-lined by the more militant youth since the beginning
of the movement. One of the reasons the current Hong Kong movement is
‘leaderless’ – which is problematic as the struggle becomes more complex
and drawn out – is precisely because of the backlash against the timid
and compromising ‘leadership’ of the pan-democrats in the past.
Fairy stories
We can see the CCP’s ‘colour revolution’ narrative is false because
the regime itself doesn’t believe it. If they really believed Trump was
trying to stage regime change in Hong Kong, as a first step to unseating
the CCP in China, why is Beijing still discussing how much soya to
import, and which parts of China’s financial sector it will allow Wall
Street companies to take over?
This is what they’re discussing in the two countries’ stop-go trade
negotiations. You don’t negotiate on this stuff with a foreign power
that you seriously believe is conducting a covert war (colour
revolution) inside your territory.
Last week, Beijing and Washington agreed the stalled trade talks
would resume in early October. The timing is highly significant as the
talks were originally supposed to take place in September. The delay is a
peace gesture by Trump’s administration to push the talks back so they
don’t interfere with Xi Jinping’s plans for a massive, nationalistic and
militaristic celebration of Chinese power on 1 October, the 70th
anniversary of the CCP coming to power.
This is not just about honouring history. For Xi, who is under
mounting pressure within the regime, and whose ‘strongman’ mantle has
been dented by several setbacks including Hong Kong’s protests, the 70th
anniversary pageantry is a badly needed nationalistic vitamin shot.
This aims to strengthen the regime that is repressing Hong Kong. The US
wouldn’t go along with this timetable if it really wanted to mess with
China over Hong Kong. But it only wants to mess with China over soya and
financial deregulation – there’s a big difference.
Young ‘Maoists’ persecuted
The CCP regime uses the ‘foreign agents’ bogey every time it faces a
significant political challenge. The Jasic Support Group, which suffered
brutal repression, arrests and disappearances last year, for
campaigning in support of trade union rights for factory workers in
Shenzhen, was also accused in China’s state-controlled media of being
financed and manipulated by foreign forces.
The youth involved in the Jasic campaign were mostly ‘Maoists’ and
other left wingers, and some had a degree of illusions in Xi’s regime.
Nevertheless, after months in detention under conditions we can barely
comprehend, they ‘confessed’ in forced video confessions to trying to
“overthrow” the CCP and being manipulated by “foreign forces fixated
with China’s bad side”. It is worth repeating: These are ‘Maoists’. The
idea they were acting in league with Trump or Britain’s MI6 is
ludicrous. But under torture you can get people to confess to the most
fantastic crimes.
The truth is that the US, Britain and other Western powers have no
interest in supporting democratic or workers’ rights in China and Hong
Kong. Their sole focus is to fight for their imperialist economic
interests, the biggest possible share of global markets for their banks
and big companies.
Because the global crisis of capitalism means the economic ‘cake’ is
not getting bigger this brings these governments increasingly into
conflict with China. This is the basis for the trade war and also
explains why some of these governments make more noise today over what’s
happening in Hong Kong than they did five years ago. But this doesn’t
mean they’ve changed their standpoint and are now on the side of the
protests. It’s still a diplomatic chess game with Hong Kong’s protest
movement seen as a possible pawn by Washington and to a lesser extent by
London.
Britain and the US
Five years ago at the time of the Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong the
UK Foreign Office issued a statement saying China’s proposed election
reform offered a “genuine choice”. This refers to the CCP’s infamous
‘831’ ruling, which stipulated that only candidates approved by the
dictatorship could compete for the post of Chief Executive.
The then Conservative Party foreign minister Hugo Swire conceded that
“proper democracy” was not on the table in Hong Kong, but said
Beijing’s offer was “better than nothing”. This pro-CCP line was
dictated by the British government’s desperate hope for Chinese capital
to invest in Britain’s rail, nuclear and financial sectors.
The US position is similar. When former US Consul General Kurt Tong
gave his farewell speech to Hong Kong on July 2, he said the US
government was “disappointed” to see violence and vandalism by
protesters. Tong, the senior US official in Hong Kong, praised Chief
Executive Carrie Lam’s apology as “very sincere” (this was two months
before Lam made her tactical concession to withdraw the extradition
law).
“I think the best thing going forward is to communicate sincerely and
for everyone to talk to one another,” Tong said. This is hardly a
rallying call to support the mass protests.
Tong’s boss, Donald Trump, has made even more Beijing-friendly
statements, calling the Hong Kong protesters “rioters” and declaring the
crisis to be an “internal matter” for the Chinese dictatorship. This is
consistent with Trump’s longstanding position as an admirer of
authoritarian regimes (Putin, Kim Jong Un, al-Sissi). On the subject of
the 1989 Tiananmen massacre, Trump also said the workers and students
were engaged in a “riot” and praised Xi Jinping’s predecessors for the
way they handled the crackdown:
“When the students poured into Tiananmen Square, the Chinese
government almost blew it. Then they were vicious, they were horrible,
but they put it down with strength… That shows you the power of
strength.” [Playboy, Donald Trump interview, March 1990]
In the current situation, the Trump administration is primarily and
cynically concerned with reaching a trade deal with China before the
2020 elections. Hong Kong and its incredible protest movement are
therefore just small change in their eyes.
Still, a few misguided Hong Kong youths continue to bring British and
US flags to demos, probably unaware they are the victims of a political
hoax.
