The Gospel According to Disney

I recently finished a book called The Gospel According to Disney: Faith, Trust, and Pixie Dust by Mark Pinsky, which examines each and every Walt Disney production and its worldview from a Christian perspective. The author is very liberal, and his comments at times were annoying on that count, but overall it was a fascinating read.

In the end, he concludes that the Disney gospel is “Trust in yourself and follow your dreams”, but is surprisingly lenient to the films even after unveiling that incredibly unBiblical worldview. And, even among the universe populated with weak or overbearing fathers (with not a good mother to be seen) and rebellious children, where nature is king, it is perhaps this message that is the most damaging. For when you look at them, every Disney hero or heroine is thinking about his or herself first of all. Perhaps they serve and care for others along the way, but the point of the movies is shown by the happy endings: the hero or heroine they get what they want and live happily ever after. The movies hardly promote Christian ideals. In fact, Disney did an animated version of the Chronicles of Prydain (called "The Black Cauldron"), and while the books were full of themes such as servant-leadership, humility, and being content in all circumstances, the whole point of the Disney adaptation was—take a guess? Trust in yourself and follow your dreams.

A contrast with the Pixar movies came to me when I was thinking about this, and I realized that there the opposite worldview is true. For example, in "Toy Story 2", Woody gives up personal glory to make a child happy. In "Monsters Inc", Sully cares for a child more than himself, even losing his job because of her. In "Cars", perhaps the most obvious example, the whole movie is about how a selfish car learns to care for others more than himself. This more wholesome focus is conspicuously absent from most Disney movies.