(LifeSiteNews) — A new documentary on the ideologically-charged controversies surrounding entertainment giant Disney won a handful of awards this month from an independent film festival, suggesting that its message may be resonating beyond its expected audience.
Produced by the Catholic League and hosted by Mercedes Schlapp Walt’s Disenchanted Kingdom “reveals how Disney is pushing an activist agenda and sexual ideology through children’s movies, cartoons and public political battles,” featuring conversations with scores of public figures, including Brent Bozell, David Horowitz, Tony Perkins, and more. It is available to watch for free online.
This month, the Los Angeles International Short Film Festival announced that the film had won its monthly awards for Outstanding Achievement in the Documentary Short category, Best Editing, and Best Sound Editing, as well as an honorable mention for its teaser trailer.
“These projects were shortlisted from a pool of submissions from 21 countries,” the festival says, and “are now in the pool from which it will be chosen the nominees for the 2023 Annual Awards.”
“Our movie has also been selected as a nominee for ‘Best Documentary’ and ‘Best Poster Design’ at The Prisma Film Festival in Rome, Italy; and we are in contention in several other film festivals as well,” adds Catholic League president Bill Donohue. “Moreover, we are delighted to report that our movie is doing extremely well on Amazon Prime, doubling or tripling the number of people who view it each week.”
Once a unifying cultural institution, Disney has in recent years steadily infused left-wing politics into the army of entertainment properties it owns, from appeasing LGBT “representation” demands in the Marvel Cinematic Universe as well as animation aimed at younger audiences, to firing and publicly defaming conservative former Star Wars actress Gina Carano, to the selling of LGBT “pride” merchandise, and more.
Last March, the iconic entertainment corporation took a hardline stance against Florida’s Parental Rights in Education law, which bans schools from teaching children in kindergarten through third grade about transgenderism and other sexuality-related issues, limits discussions of sexuality for older children to “age appropriate” content, and requires parents to be informed of any changes that could affect their child’s physical, emotional, or mental well-being.
Left-wing activists within the company, who misleadingly dubbed it the “Don’t Say Gay” law, pressured the company into taking a stand by staging walkouts in protest of Disney’s initial muted reaction to the law. More conservative Disney employees released an anonymous open letter decrying the company’s internal climate of hostility toward “those of us whose political and religious views are not explicitly progressive.”
The ordeal backfired on the company, prompting the leak of internal videos by Disney executives and creators openly declaring their intentions to inculcate children with LGBTQ+ dogma via their film and television projects, and provoking Florida to eliminate the financially-advantageous “special district” status for its theme park in the Sunshine State.
Partly due to these controversies, Disney closed 2022 with its stock down 45.7%, at its lowest price since before it began releasing Star Wars films in 2015, replaced embattled CEO Bob Chapek with his returning predecessor Bob Iger, and recently began layoffs of 7,000 employees throughout the company.
Even so, Disney continues to resist pressure to abandon its ideological turn; in September it will be hosting the Out & Equal Workplace Summit, the self-proclaimed “largest LGBTQ+ conference in the world,” at the Walt Disney World Resort in central Florida.