Disney CEO, Bob Iger recently made a statement where he says “Disney’s job is not to advance any kind of agenda… We have to entertain first. It’s not about messages.” It is a very strong statement and truly shows where Disney as a company is now, they are a money hungry studio focused more on the money than giving people characters and stories that mean something.

There has been a very clear pattern that Disney has been following for the last eight years. A trend that started right around the time President Trump went into his first term back in 2016. And Disney isn’t the only one who has changed their practices based on the incoming administration.

Animation as a whole is statically a very liberal field. When President Biden went into office there was a real push and want to have more diverse characters both in race and sexuality which has been seen as a positive step in entertainment. Disney though is historically a very conservative company, one that has been known to cut out or scrap scenes and storylines that involve more “progressive” ideas.

But in the last eight years Disney has been in a tough spot, a spot that they didn’t necessarily create. During Trump’s first term as president there was a spike of social media use due to the pandemic. On social media there was a push from younger generations against more conservative ideals to more liberal ones. Disney’s main audience is meant to be young people, but Disney being a company, they didn’t want to lose countries like Russia and China or their conservative audience so they entered this limbo state. The state of soulless remakes and sequels.

On the Disney Animation Studios – Feature Films page there is a list of all of the animated movies that have been released by the company, excluding Pixar projects, and in the last eight years though there have been four original movies in that time all either have very low ratings or have just been forgotten. “Wish,” “Strange World,” “Encanto” and “Raya and the Last Dragon” are the movies that make up that list, with the only notable one being Encanto. The rest have cheap storylines that are just forgettable.

Back to Iger’s statement where he says “It’s not about the messages,” but it’s all about the messages. If there’s no message then there is no movie. In what is known as the “Disney Renaissance,” which happened in the ‘90s, when film after film for the company were smash hits. Most of the memorable animated movies came out of ‘90s Disney. This was a time where the studio allowed its creators to write and produce movies how they wanted too without the studio breathing down their neck. A time where the main focus of a movie was on the story not just how the characters identify.

There is one thing that sticks out in these movies though, and that’s that most of the protagonists are people of color. Now that is a beautiful thing, something that they should continue as a company. It brings representation to groups that otherwise wouldn’t have it, but they’re doing it wrong. These movies aren’t being made to help underrepresented communities, they’re being made so that Disney can say, look, we’re inclusive.

Now if these movies have strong stories behind them and a high marketing budget this would be a very different conversation but that’s not what they’re doing. They have made it very clear that these movies are just to save themselves from being called out about their past. It’s not like Disney hasn’t made any great films where the protagonists were people of color. Movies like “The Emperor’s New Groove,” “Lilo and Stitch” and “Princess and the Frog” are all great examples where the characters’ race wasn’t used as a ploy to seem more inclusive but had real stories and development behind them.

That’s really what this all comes down to is the studio. Disney now is so quick to pull or change stories because they’re “too political” or lean one way or the other. They have lost sight of what made them Disney. Ideas are always changing and there’s no good way to please both sides, other than producing the forgettable slop that they have now. Politics are a part of everyday life and entertainment should focus more on the enjoyment of stories rather than sides.