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The Man Behind The Myth: Walt's Passing

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Walt Disney is “a legend that will never die,” according to Karen Dotrice in The Man Behind the Myth: Walt’s Passing. Walter Elias Disney lead the movie industry to new heights through his creativity and curiosity. He is credited with hundreds of cinemas, television broadcasts, cartoons, and a handful of amusement parks stationed across the globe. Walt shaped what we know of technology and “movie magic” today. Though, Disney’s legacy may never had begun without the support of his idols. Walt Disney was a legend that has inspired many young artists to, in the words of Mr. Disney himself, “keep moving forward”. However, many claim that Disney was a “racist”, an “anti-Semite”, and a “fascist”. They are wrong in accusing such things because …show more content…

He, like all human beings, had flaws. According to The Daily Beast, “Disney was a fairly typical product of his era: a man who probably absorbed some racial and ethnic biases as a child in the early years of the 20th century, then worked to overcome those biases as an adult in the 1950s and 1960s.” However, many people take this normal bias and created an image of Walt that is racist, anti-semite, and fascist. To back up their argument they claim that Disney created cartoons that were “racially insensitive” as stated by The Daily Beast. An early version of the film Fantasia included a female centaur, whose human half was dark skinned, named Sunflower. Sunflower, at one point, ate a watermelon. This does not represent Disney as racist. Watermelon is a large fruit that can represent the wealth of the centaurs in the cartoon. Also, there were many centaurs eating the fruit, and they were all different colors. It is also said that Disney used the word that is now considered a racial slur. Back then, many people used this term for day-to-day conversations. When Walt did use this word, he did not do so out of smite nor hatred. As a matter of fact, in 1956, Disney hired his first African American animator, Floyd Norman. Floyd was the first of many blacks to earn a job from Walt. Another argument proposed by those who oppose Disney, is that Walt was against the Jewish people. They derive this from the cartoons The Three Little Pigs and The Opry House. In The Opry House, Mickey dressed and danced like a hasid. Yet, The Opry House cartoon was a collection of many different styles of music and dance. Therefore, this does not prove that Disney was against Jews. In The Three Little Pigs, the big bad wolf is described as a “hook-nosed peddler”, as stated by the Daily Beast. There is no evidence that shows Disney used this term as an insult towards the Jewish people. Finally, many people

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