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Commentary Oregon Daily Emerald Thursday, May 26, 2005 NEWS STAFF (541)346-5511 FEN SlIDICK EDITOR IN CHIEF STEVEN R. NEUMAN MANAGING EDITOR FARED PABEN AYISHA YAHYA NEWS EDITORS MEGHANN CUNIFF PARKER HOWELL SENIOR NEWS REPORTERS MORIAH BAI.ING1T ADAM CHERRY BR1TTNI McCl.ENAHAN EMILY SMITH EVASY1.WESTER SHELDON TRAVER NEWS REPORTERS CLAYTON JONES SPORTS EDITOR ION ROFTMAN SENIOR SPORTS REPORTER STEPHEN MILLER BRIAN SMITH SPORTS REPORTERS RYAN NYBURG PULSE EDITOR AMY LICHTY SENIOR PULSE REPORTER JOSHUA IJNTEREUR PULSE REPORTER CAT BALDWIN JOHN PALMER PULSE CARTOONISTS A1LEE SLATER COMMENTARY EDITOR GABEBRADLEY ANNEMARIE KNEPPER CHUCK SLOTHOWER JENNIFER MCBRIDE COLUMNISTS ASHLEY GRIFFIN SUPPLEMENT FREELANCE EDITOR DANIELLE HICKEY PHOTO EDITOR LAUREN WIMER SENIOR PHOTOGRAPHER NICOLE BARKER TIM BOBOSKY PHOTOGRAPHERS KATE HORTON ZANE RUT PART-TIME PHOTOGRAPHERS BRITT FURTWANGLER GRAPHIC ARTIST DUSTIN REESE SENIOR DESIGNER ELLIOTT ASBURY WENDY KIEFFER AMANDA LEE IONAH SCHROG1N DESIGNERS SHADRA BEESLEY IEANN1E EVERS COPY CHIEFS KIMBERLY BLACKFIELD |OSH NORRIS SPORTS COPY EDITORS GREG BILSLAND AMBER LINDROS NEWS COPY EDITORS JENNY GERW1CK PULSE COPY EDITOR ADRIENNE NELSON ONLINE EDITOR WEBMASTER (541)346-5511 JUDY R1EDL GENERAL MANAGER KATHY CARBONE BUSINESS MANAGER 1 ALINA DEGIUST1 RECEPTIONIST IERED NAGEL PATRICK SCHMERBER HOLLY STEIN IANA SWANSON ROB WEGNER CAROLYN ZIMMERMAN DISTRIBUTION ADVERTISING (541)346-3712 MELISSA GUST ADVERTISING DIRECTOR TYLER MACK SALES MANAGER MATT BETZ HERON CALISCH-DOLEN MEGAN HAMLIN KATE HIRONAKA MAEGAN KASER-LEE KELLEE KAUFTHEIL MIA LEIDELMEYER SHANNON ROGERS SALES REPRESENTATIVES CLASSIFIED (541) 3464343 TR1NA SHANAMAN CLASSIFIED MANAGER KORALYNN BASHAM ANDO KATY GAGNON KERI SPANGLER KATIE STRINGER CLASSIFIED ADVERTISING ASSOCIATES PRODUCTION (541) 3464381 MICHELE ROSS PRODUCTION MANAGER TARA SLOAN PRODUCTION COORDINATOR |EN CRAMLET KRISTEN DICHARRY CAMERON GAUT SABRINA GOWETTE JONAH SCHROGIN DESIGNERS The Oregon Daily Emerald is pub lished daily Monday through Fri day dunng the school year by the Oregon Daily Emerald Publishing Co. Inc., at the University of Ore gon, Eugene, Ore. The Emerald operates independently of the University with offices in Suite 300 of the Erb Memorial Union The Emerald is private property. Unlawful removal or use of papers is prosecutable by law. In my opinion ^^.Can’t bring DISN We teel alter nine years ol boy cotting Disney we have made our point,” American Family Association President Tim Wildmon said on his organization’s Web site. After a nearly decade-long boycott that America refused to get behind and that had absolutely no effect, the AFA gave up. To add to the AFA’s fake victory, the announcement goes on: “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.” Thank you, AFA, for failing to save America from the likes of “Finding Neverland,” “The Aviator” and “Les Choristes.” It’s too bad Miramax founders Bob and Harvey Weinstein will no longer get to produce under the Miramax name they built for nearly 25 years. me uisney/Miramax split, as nas been widely reported, was not a deci sion to dump Miramax for its content. Far more likely, the cause was that Mi ramax was making too much money with hits like “Shakespeare in Love,” “Pulp Fiction” and “Goodwill Hunt ing,” and Disney wasn’t getting a big enough cut. When the Weinsteins started to bomb out with movies like the largely unseen “Kate and Leopold,” “The Shipping News” and “Talk Magazine,” longtime Disney ex ecutive Michael Eisner could justify letting go of the artistically creative brothers with whom he had never seen eye to eye. “It is our hope that the corporate leadership at Disney will see the error of their ways and change directions ... the company can return again to the Disney most came to love and trust in past generations,” the AFA states on its Web site. Though Walt was long dead by the time Miramax was on the scene, he did say, “You’re dead if you aim only for kids. Adults are only kids grown up, anyway.” In order for the compa ny to remain successful, Disney’s ex pansion to more adult-targeted films was inevitable. Back to that “love and trust” of the bygone Disney. I’m curious as to which films, exactly, the AFA was referring. Perhaps it meant the Disney movies that failed to portray a two-parent family, such as Snow White, Cinderel la, Pinocchio, Sleeping Beauty (exist but are absent), The Sword and the Stone and The Lion King (mother ex ists but is largely absent)? Or perhaps the Disney stories that portray a woman as unable to make life choices for herself (Snow White) and as vain (nearly every Disney princess) or seen and not heard (The little Mermaid)? The studio also has a tendency to make men look like lovesick, obses sive dolts (Prince Charming) or angry dominant victimizers (both Beast and _ ANNEMAR1E KNEPPER WORKS ON PAPER Gaston in Beauty and the Beast). Uncle Walt himself steadfastly avoided claiming any social responsi bility for his films: “I don’t pretend to know anything about art. I make pic tures for entertainment, and then the professors tell me what they mean,” he famously quipped. The AFA’s boycott was intended not only for the films but for everything Disney, especially the parks. “Products and theme parks are sub sidizing Disney’s promotion of the ho mosexual agenda,” reads the AFA’s original boycott manifesto. Well, they got that right. Big Gay Mickey has been recruiting kids into gaydom for far too long. What with those sassy shorts, stylish shoes and gloves, not to mention that mischie vous, “come hither” grin. This quote more likely refers to Dis ney allowing entrance of their paying gay customers during Orlando’s popu lar Gay Day celebration. Universal Studios, the Hard Rock Cafe and sev eral other Orlando businesses partici pate as well. Furthermore, Disney has, like many huge corporations who want to keep all of their talented em ployees healthy, extended health ben efits to same-sex partners. Healthcare for your partner is not something the AFA supports. Support is something the AFA lacked during the majority of the boy cott. Even AFA backers had a hard time finding fault with Disney. “When those phone calls came in, asking for evidence of new missteps by Disney, we were pleased to dis cover that they weren’t as plentiful as before,” Wildmon said. Transla tion: While we weren’t willing to keep doing our own research, we did asked others to, and they came up with nothing. Now that he has more money than he or any of his progeny could ever spend, and now that he has brought the company back from the edge of failure on which it was so precari ously perched in the late 1970s and early ‘80s, Michael Eisner is retiring. Instead of recognizing that Eisner could spend the rest of his days swimming in a pool of money, like Uncle Scrooge, the AFA is position ing Eisner’s retirement as a victory for them. With a net worth of $700 million and a company that looks to continue on its upward tra jectory for the foreseeable future, Eisner is clearly the big winner. It must be stated that as a Christian and a human and a feminist, I do find some images Disney projects to De, to say the least, distasteful. Ariel the mermaid looks more like a Playboy bunny than a typical 16-year-old girl. Belle of “Beauty and the Beast” suf fers verbal and physical abuse before deciding in a song, “Now he’s dear, and so I’m sure, I wonder why I did n’t see it there before.” This may seem obvious to the more astute readers, but violence and sexuality are everywhere in main stream media. Disney is no excep tion. Maybe it’s time to step up and be parents instead of asking Disney to raise your children for you. Maybe it’s time to actively participate in so ciety not by shielding your children from all potentially objectionable im ages, but by engaging them in discus sion about why you agree or disagree with what is portrayed. The AFA’s last gasp on the subject encourages people to “keep an eye on Disney. ” “[This] 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... as far as we’re concerned, Disney is on probation.’” As reported by the Orlando Sen tinel, Colorado-based Focus on the Family, one of the groups that led the boycott, has been included in the ear ly stages of the marketing campaign for “The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” And yet Disney is keeping its dis tance in an effort to look Christian, but not too Christian. “We don't want to cater to one fan base over the other, or at the expense of another,” said Dennis Rice, Disney's senior vice president for public relations. Translation: We want as much money as possible from as many different types of peo ple as possible. Don’t you get it, conservative Christians? Disney is playing you! The market for openly Christian movies and products is huge right now (see the profits for Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ” for evi dence) and Disney, as usual, wants a piece of the action. The “if you can’t beat ‘em, join 'em” mentality nullifies any point the AFA and Fo cus on the Family have tried to make to Disney in the past decade. So Disney is now “on probation.” With a threat like that, Eisner and Team Disney are sure to be shaking in their ... huge vat of money, which they will continue to use to make the same type of movie they always have: Boy meets girl, boy looses girl, violent fighting and exuberant songs ensue, boy gets girl. The End. annemarieknepper@daUyemerald.com OREGON DAILY EMERALD LETTERS POLICY Letters to the editor and guest commentaries are encouraged, and should be sent to letters@dailyemerald.com or submitted at the Oregon Daily Emerald office, EMU Suite 300. Electronic submissions are preferred. Letters are limited to 250 words, and guest commentaries to 550 words. Authors are limited to one submission per calendar month. Submissions should include phone number and address for verification. The Emerald reserves the rigl to edit tor space, grammar and style. Guest submissions are published at the discretion of the Emerald. ■ Editorial Outlawing sexuality is dated and irrational SEX! Now that we’ve got your attention, take a moment to consider these two tidbits of news: Earlier this month, two students at Winona High School in Minnesota were suspended for wearing shirts and buttons with the phrase “I (heart) my vagina.” Forty-five fellow students wore similar paraphernalia; some male stu dents even proclaimed with their clothing, “I support your vagina. ” The reason for this showing of support on be half of a female body part? In February, it was just one person sporting such gear. Inspired af ter viewing the play “The Vagina Monologues,” Winona student Carrie Rethlefsen wore an “I (heart) my vagina” button, which school offi cials quickly asked her to remove. Rethlefsen led students in their larger-scale free-speech battle ear lier this May. ine Winona administration might have stu dents’ best interests at heart, but making the word “vagina” taboo is not the way to keep sex ual distraction out of classrooms. Indeed, Reth lefsen reports that she originally wore her but ton for some time before anyone took notice and demanded that she remove it; if the pin were a real distraction, it would have been no ticed much earlier. Another problem with the school’s stance is that for students, it represents a rule that si lences issues of female sexuality. Rethlefsen has said that she wore her button as a way to subtly speak about issues such as sexual assault. The administration must surely realize that outlawing the “vagina” button was the only real cause of distraction for students. Lifting the regulation on “vagina” gear will therefore be the best solution for everyone involved. At this point, all school officials have accomplished is a reinforcement of the notion that female anato my is automatically taboo — that is, something to be either sexualized, ashamed of, or both. Unfortunately, the regressive sexual politics don’t end there. Currently, the American Civil Liberties Union is working to rid North Carolina of its anti-cohabitation law. According to that 200 year-old doctrine, unmarried heterosexual couples may not live together. The potential problems with this law are not just possibilities, they are reality: One woman in North Carolina was forced to quit her job as a sheriff’s dispatcher after her boss told her to ei ther marry her live-in boyfriend or move out. Likewise, with the anti-cohabitation law, it is le gal for landlords to evict unmarried couples. This cohabitation law is ridiculously outdat ed and should be removed from the books im mediately. In a nation with skyrocketing di vorce rates and an increasing numbers of happy, non-traditional families, there is no rea son that the government should be pushing cit izens into marriage. Since when is it the job of the government to put a scarf on its head and play Yenta? Regressive sexual politics are nothing new to a country founded on Puritan principles. Never theless, in both of these cases, those lauding re pression will hopefully remember that positive sexuality is not impossible: It can be found on a T-shirt, a button, or living right next door. EDITORIAL BOARD Jennifer Sudick Steven R. Neuman Editor in Chief Managing Editor Ailee Slater Commentary Editor Shadra Beesley Copy Chief Adrienne Nelson Online Editor
