Disney Boycott

After initiating a boycott against the Walt Disney Company in 1996, AFA has decided to end the campaign, citing new challenges in the culture wars and some positive signs at Disney, including the resignation of CEO Michael Eisner, effective this September.

"We feel after nine years of boycotting Disney we have made our point," AFA President Tim Wildmon said. "Boycotts have always been a last resort for us at AFA, and Disney’s attitude, arrogance and embrace of the homosexual lifestyle gave us no choice but to advocate a boycott of the company these last few years."

Wildmon said that, from the very beginning, the Disney boycott was about raising issues that were of concern to AFA — especially the promotion of homosexuality in the culture and in the media. "For the first four years or so, the Disney boycott allowed us to do that in countless media outlets," he said.

However, since 2001, Wildmon said Disney almost became "lost among the other battles being fought on a crowded cultural battlefield."

In fact, over the last several years, AFA has received numerous phone calls asking for updated information that justified the continuation of the boycott. But AFA had moved on to other important issues, such as an increasingly activist judiciary and the push for same-sex marriage.

He noted the increasing success of AFA-supported Internet activist outlets like OneMillionMoms.com and OneMillion Dads.com. "These outlets are helping us fight the battle for decency across the board," Wildmon said. "We will continue to keep an eye on the decisions of Disney/ABC, and we may even have our supporters contact the company periodically about the decisions it makes in respect to decency and morality."

Some positive signs
One of the positive things to come out of the boycott, Wildmon insisted, was that Disney seemed to become more cognizant of how it had hurt its family-friendly image among many Christians.

"When those phone calls came in, asking for evidence of new missteps by Disney, we were pleased to discover that they weren’t as plentiful as before," Wildmon said.

Highlighted in AFA Journal articles in 1998, 2000 and 2001, Disney made what appeared to be a determined effort to clean up its act and return the company to its heyday as the preeminent platform for family-friendly entertainment.

Wildmon said there were more recent events that lend hope for a more cautious Disney approach to entertainment. One example, he said, is the coming departure of Disney CEO Michael Eisner, who will step down from his post in September — a year earlier than initially planned. According to a 1998 article in the AFA Journal, AFA had placed much of the blame for Disney’s turn for the worst on Eisner, who became head man at the Mouse House in 1984.

Another positive sign has been the breakup of Disney and Miramax, the controversial film producing company that the Mouse House bought in 1993 for $80 million. The split was announced in late March.

Miramax movies were often the ones that were most offensive to Christians. Commenting about the recent Disney/Miramax divorce, Los Angeles Times writers Claudia Eller and Richard Verrier said that, after the two companies united, "The marriage soon developed strains over such controversial Miramax releases as the 1994 gay-themed release Priest, the teen sex drama Kids in 1995 and the 1999 irreverent religious comedy Dogma."

Wildmon said, "We hope that the end of the partnership between Disney and Miramax will mean the end of films that were extremely offensive to Christians."

Finally, the news that Disney was co-producing a film based on the Christian literary classic, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, by C.S. Lewis, has brought cautious approval from some evangelicals. The film, co-produced with Walden Media, will be released in theaters December 9.

According to an article by the Orlando Sentinel’s Mark Pinsky, Disney has mounted a 10-month marketing campaign to reach the Christian community with news of the film. Toward that end, Disney has hired two Christian marketing companies, Motive Marketing and Grace Hill Media.

Pinsky noted that Disney’s involvement with The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe represented a remarkable change. "For Disney, the Christian marketing campaign represents a sharp break with corporate policy. Apart from Disney World’s annual Night of Joy concerts, the film is the company’s first undertaking with the religious community," Pinsky said, adding that Disney "has carefully avoided religion for most of its history."

In taking the step of marketing The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe to the Christian community, he said, Disney may have disarmed much of the antagonism towards the company that led many evangelicals to boycott the company.

Keeping an eye on the Mouse
While there are still troublesome stains on the Mouse House — the annual "Gay Days," for example — Wildmon said AFA was broadening its focus beyond Disney. "For AFA, the boycott of Disney is now a matter of personal conviction, rather than a matter of AFA ministry emphasis," Wildmon said. "We encourage people to continue boycotting if they believe that to be the right thing to do."

Still, that does not guarantee that AFA will never again call for a Disney boycott, should the company do something particularly egregious. "If, for example, Disney removed the clear Christian symbolism from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe film, then all bets would be off," he said. "So I guess one could say that, as far as we’re concerned, Disney is on probation."