Enjoying Things
My name is Josh, and I used to host a podcast.
Well, that felt good to get off my chest. It was a good podcast, too. Mousterpiece Cinema lasted for eight and a half years; it was a weekly movie-discussion podcast in which I and my co-host (and often a guest) would talk about the movies of the Walt Disney Company. I started the podcast just a few months after Disney had purchased Marvel, and a few short months before they bought Lucasfilm. When I started the show, the inaugural episode focused on Pixar’s Cars 2. The final episode was about Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker.
I stopped doing the show for a few reasons, but chiefly, I had lost the sense of excitement I once felt about doing a weekly discussion show regarding the films that comprised Disney. Early in 2019, I saw some industry story recapping a few Disney release-date shifts. In the story, the full Disney slate for 2019 was listed out and my snap judgment was, “Well, I’m interested in maybe two of these movies.” (One of them was The Rise of Skywalker.)
Most of the movies on the list were films that I either would never have seen if it wasn’t for the podcast and the writing gigs I’d gotten in light of the show’s existence, or movies I might’ve watched begrudgingly with my wife later on down the road, likely on a service such as Disney+. When I started Mousterpiece Cinema, it was fun. In 2019, it felt like work, and that wasn’t ever something I wanted for the show.
Following along with popular culture shouldn’t, to me, feel like work. And if it does, it oughta pay well. (To that end: I await a major publication or online outlet realizing that it needs to create an entire writer-at-large/reporter-at-large position dedicated to all things Disney. I’m not just saying this because hi, hello, I would love to have that position, and would kill it. I’m saying it because the last few days proves that such a position is necessary.)
The Disney Investor-palooza felt like work. It’s been a while since Disney updated the world on its plans for cultural domination, so perhaps because it was a long time coming, this was always going to be a lot. But my God, it was exhausting. A four-hour montage of sizzle reels, everything from a director’s personal story to various animated logos to mere talking points was trotted out, to mostly very adoring fans.
It was, putting it lightly, a lot. At some point during the extravaganza, I couldn’t decide if the more apt visual was that of Homer Simpson…
Or Lucy Ricardo.
There was too much going on for my tastes. It would be a lie if I told you that I wasn’t interested in at least a couple of the projects announced or teased during the four-hour event. A new Princess and the Frog TV series? Sign me up. An original film from the director of Bao? I’m there. And some of the previously announced projects that got re-mentioned during the event intrigue me, too, such as Pixar’s summer-2021 film from the director of La Luna. (A lot, and I do mean a lot, of the projects discussed at the event had been discussed already in the trades. No reason to staunch your enjoyment, but…not all of those announcements were actual news.)
But if I piled up all the things I was excited for from this event, we’d get to maybe eight minutes’ worth of the four hours. What I mostly got a sense of is that Disney just flat-out can never learn the lesson that it bites off way more than it can chew.
To wit: early in the event, Disney CEO Bob “I’m Not That Bob” Chapek revealed that the plan over the next few years was to see 10 Star Wars series, 10 Marvel series, 15 Disney and Pixar Animation TV series, and also some new movies, would be arriving on Disney+. And yet, only months ago, we got the distinct sense that Disney knew it was time to cool it on Star Wars because of how badly The Rise of Skywalker landed.
Tricked ya! I guess? All this makes me think of is how Disney goes all in after one big success, and learns too late that they shouldn’t have gone all in. Remember when 3D was such a huge deal a decade ago? Disney got just about $100 million from a 3D re-release of The Lion King, so they decided to start throwing a random smattering of animated titles back into theaters in 3D, only to realize that audiences weren’t as interested in, say, Finding Nemo in 3D. It’s impossible to know for sure. But I kinda feel like this glut of content will satisfy people’s creative hunger only insofar as filling their stomachs without actually doing so enjoyably.
Which, of course, brings me to the crux of this post, the “let me enjoy things” brigade. Oh, they were out in full force after the event because some of the rest of us dared imply that a four-hour series of sizzle reels was perhaps not a cause for celebration for the future of artistic expression. I can’t speak to anyone else’s experience, but the critiques I saw were not targeted at people for enjoying things, as much as the things we’re being told we should enjoy.
Now, I am sure everyone reading this is a very smart person indeed, but just in case there’s a straggler here, let’s make one thing clear: critical comments cannot stop you from enjoying something. If something critical does throw into doubt your enjoyment of a thing, you might want to stop and ask yourself why it’s so challenging to your psyche. My short answer is this: if my tweets ruin your enjoyment of a thing, that thing may not be very enjoyable after all.
It was the “Let me enjoy things” brigade that prompted me to tweet this.
Over time, I have inexplicably amassed a healthy number of followers on Twitter. Hell, I’m verified. I don’t really know why those things are true, but I’m not going to ask. Point is: sometimes, my tweets get a lot of traction, and this was one of those times. It netted me some new followers. (Like Manohla Dargis of the New York Times! Hello, Ms. Dargis! I would apologize for the bracket-related tweets I will flood your feed with over time, but that’s just life.)
But I am sure the popularity of that tweet will eventually net me some folks asking how it is that I can ding Disney here but also do goofy brackets meant to spotlight the good in the company. (Whatever else is true: I’m never doing a “worst-of” bracket.) Or how I can criticize Disney but also talk about how much I love things like The Rocketeer or the theme parks. To those folks, I remind you that we can and should hold multiple, sometimes warring thoughts in our heads at the same time. We’re all complex being.
To the “Let me enjoy things” brigade, I only ask that you consider those headlines. Consider the thousands of people let go from the Walt Disney Company during this pandemic. Maybe you have! And hell, maybe you are one of those people. I don’t know. But I feel like it’s a challenge to single-mindedly enjoy these announcements — since, again, they’re announcements of things to come, some of which may never actually happen — without acknowledging the grim reality of a corporation gobbling up everything in sight but still managing to lay lots and lots of people off.
I think now of an episode of the podcast from 2013, in which the film of the week was Saving Mr. Banks. Remember Saving Mr. Banks? What a strange, misbegotten movie that was. It’s not quite the making of Mary Poppins as much as it is a film about how the writer of the original story almost unmakes it. An odd, odd movie.
In the midst of the discussion, I posited that when it comes to Disney, we all belong to one of four groups. There is the group that unconditionally loves all things Disney, the group that believes they do no wrong. There is the group on the opposite extreme, those who unconditionally loathe Disney and everything it stands for. The third group are those who think Disney is…y’know, fine! They don’t have strong opinions either way, but they’ll see Marvel movies in the theaters or go to Disneyland once or twice.
Then there’s the fourth group, the group that conditionally loves what Disney can do. The group that knows the people who work for the sprawling Walt Disney Company can make great art, whether it’s in film or television or theme parks or music or beyond. This is the group that accepts Disney as a corporation, but one that can sometimes hit the mark (and sometimes miss it completely). This is the group that knows Disney, like any company, makes good decisions and bad ones, and doesn’t ignore the latter.
I mention all of this as a reminder, to myself and to you. I do not begrudge you being excited at the investor presentation. It’s been a shitty year, and we deserve to be happy about something at the end of this godforsaken time. But no one’s enjoyment is so fragile that it can be ruined by the mere existence of criticism. And if your enjoyment of four hours of ads was ruined by my tweets, or anyone else’s, you need to ask yourself why that is true.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to send Bob Chapek another angry letter asking him why they can revive everything from Hocus Pocus to Chip ‘n’ Dale Rescue Rangers, but still not find the money to greenlight a damn Rocketeer sequel.