Hawaiian-Shirt Tyrant

[tealin]

Can John Lasseter Ever Return to Disney?

It takes a lot of guts to speak up about this, when you're on the inside, even with a guarantee of anonymity,* so all my respect to those who did so for this article. It's more or less a follow-up to last autumn's exposé about sexual harassment, but looking at wider organisational patterns and Lasseter's behaviour generally, not just with women.

In 2014 I bookmarked this supposedly light-hearted op-ed by David Mitchell, because it spoke so strongly to my experience at Disney, and the implications of the broad appeal of the song "Let it Go". Since then it's become a bit prescient politically, but in light of the above, I bring it up again: The Idiot's Guide to Being a Fun-Loving Modern Fascist. Lasseter's Disney (and, for all I know, Pixar) was a personality cult, not a fascist state, but it's no more fun to live in Stalin's Russia than Mussolini's Italy – apples and oranges, maybe, but it's all fruit in the end.

*There was an LA Times journalist taking stories for an in-depth article following the exposé, but so few women were willing to speak, even anonymously, that it never got off the ground. The thing about fostering a culture of fear is that it works.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Holy crap, David Mitchell completely nailed it with the Hawaiian shirts. I know more than a few examples of hard-right/proto-fascist types who wear Hawaiian shirts. It's the "dress interestingly/disarmingly" option for uninteresting authoritarians.

[tealin]

I try not to jump to conclusions about people, but those I know who do wear Hawaiian shirts tend either to be Lasseter fanboys or just what you say. (Or both!)

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah, I wasn't trying to condemn all Hawaiian shirts (or the people who wear them), I'm a big fan of the 80s/90s Magnum PI look. For example, the guy in this video: https://youtu.be/Nhpvh6v6PZA OTOH if you told me he was a KGB plant, there to keep an eye on a potentially disruptive boy-band, I'd believe it.

[tealin]

I think, if you actually live in Hawaii, you get a pass on this one. But most of the guys in animation who wear them (who are the ones I've met) have a weird fixation with the 1950s and Tiki culture and the heavily male-dominated, weirdly culturally-appropriative, clean-cut hedonism of that scene. It's usually a pretty reliable warning sign.

I lived in hawaii

[(Anonymous)]

in my youth, up to age 9. I have worn Hawaiian shirts as an adult because of my memories and because they provide an acceptable form of color and spectacle for male dress.
In the past couple of years, I've transitioned to other forms of dress -- partially because of JL and sure to the bugaloo boys. It makes me angry