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Subliminal Messaging and The Disney Corporation |
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Maryanne Tucker |
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Conservative Critics |
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Make sure to click your favorite Disney character to read the entire story. |
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In March, 1995 ALL received a call from a concerned Christian. The caller had read in the March issue of the Christian entertainment magazine, Movie Guide, that the movie Aladdin (1993) contained a subliminally sexual message (Bannon, 1995). The article claimed that Aladdin whispers to Jasmine “Take off your clothes”, and also urged the readers to write letters to the head of the Disney Corporation, Michael Eisner, to have the “subliminal message” removed …
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The Lion King was also put on the list of offensive subliminal messages after ALL was contacted by Anna Runge a Carthage, New York stay at home mom (Bannon, 1995). Runge claimed that her four-year old nephew pointed out something coming from the lion’s mouth (Ostman, 1996). The something coming from the lion’s mouth turn out to be the letters that distinctly, to Runge, spelt out S-E-X. After viewing the film, and getting her teenagers to outline the subliminal letters out, she stated “I feel as if I’ve left a pedophile with my…
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While conservative critics were boiling over, many in the mainstream media took the subliminal messages light-heartily and joking. Entertainment Weekly columnist Benjamin Svetkey humorously wrote in his December 1995 article “Subliminal sexual messages. Full frontal male nudity. X-rated dialogue. Gay cross-dressing parties …
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The cultivation of ALL evidence against Disney did not go unheeded. On December 15, 1995, a Fayetteville, Arkansas woman by the name of Janet Gilmer filed a class-action lawsuit against the Walt Disney Corporation and their subsidiary Buena Vista Home Video. This was after she noticed that “hidden sexual content offensive to children” …
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The Little Mermaid was one of the originally discovered subliminal messages and contained not only one but two findings. The first was a clear sexual subliminal message a penis had been draw as a tower of the castle on the original box cover of the movie. The image was first rumored in the July 20th, 1990 issue of Entertainment Weekly section News and Notes. The article wrote that the phallic image and an implication of a disgruntled employee had been a topic of discussion for a group of … |
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Aladdin |
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Janet Gilmer vs. Walt Disney Corp. |
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Media Critics |
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The Lion King |
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The Little Mermaid |
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60 Minutes |
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In 1995 when whispers began to rumble from the Southern Baptist concerning Disney abandonment of their commitment to traditional family values and moral decency, a boycott seems like the only answer (Pinsky, 2004). At the Southern Baptists convention in Dallas on June, 1997 the conservatives made their point as Reverend Tom Elliff, drove the message home “I think a boycott is a Christian response” (Pinsky, 2004)… |
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A Reflection of us |
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Many carry the opinion that pop culture can be seen as a reflection of the people living in it. Bruce Forbes in his article And the Mouse Shall Lead Them: an Essay on the Disney Phenomenon as Religion argues that a weakness of the conservative critics is that they are focusing on “what Disney is doing to us” as they condemn the company’s perceived undermining of “American values”… |
