Subliminal Messaging and The Disney Corporation

Maryanne Tucker

Subliminal Messaging and The Disney Corporation

Urban legends concerning subliminal messages in Disney’s film has surrounded the Corporation since the early 1990’s. Disney, once upheld by conservative Christians as the purveyor of good, clean, family-oriented entertainment, has come under fire in recent year for abandoning this perceived commitment. The issue of Disney’s subliminal messages, while not at the for-front of critics concerns, have played their part in painting Disney as an anti-family and unwholesome corporation. Mark Pinsky notes in his book The Gospel According to Disney: Faith, Trust and Pixie Dust, animated films while not a main issue was considered one of the “predisposing factors” in the Southern Baptists call for a Disney boycott. But before the call for a boycott was even on the mind of the southern fundamentalists, the issue of Disney’s subliminal messages was on the voices of a group known as the American Life League (ALL) (Ostman, 1996).

 

ALL, a right-winged, anti-abortion organization has according to Ronald Ostman in his article, Disney and it’s Conservative Critics, led the way in condemnation of Disney. In April, 1995 ALL was the first to officially boycott the company after the film release of Priest through one of Disney’s subsidiaries, Miramax (Snopes). The controversial film which portrays a homosexual Priest and other obscene non-clergy activity outraged the religious community of American and was the firer started of the Sothern Baptists boycott (Pinsky, 2004).