| | rant 234: get ye advertising off my korean-run journal site!
So I log on today and click on my previous entry and what is it that I see to the left of my text? A long, vertical advertisement for none other than Sarah M. Palin. Ah, such is the beauty of this ball of cables. I devote an entire paragraph to slamming the woman and telling her to creep into the woods and her advertising winds up on my page through absolutely no effort on either my part or hers. You can't get that sort of irony with the old-school printing presses. No, siree, if you wrote an editorial highly criticizing someone, usually they had the good sense not to buy adertising space RIGHT NEXT TO IT. God bless you, oh great cyberreality we're all slowly sinking into. I'm not kidding; with smartphones apparently everyone is about 5 years away from being fully connected at all times and answering email instantly. I can't wait.
While I'm talking about annoying large mouse-like things with undue amounts of money and power, I'd like to complain about Disney for a moment.
Last weekend Melissa and I got a copy of Spirited Away, the acclaimed Japanese cartoon. The US rights to Spirited Away were bought by Disney while some of the Pixar guys pushed it while Disney and Pixar were more in bed with each other than they are now. Instead of just releasing the film with subtitles like The Criterion Collection does, Disney decided to redub an English soundtrack with James Marsden, John Ratzenberger, and a variety of other actors. At face value, I don't think this is an offensive concept; what is offensive is when you ALTER AND ADD LINES. Yes, Disney decided that even though Spirited Away was the highest grossing film of all-time in Japan, it needed a little "Disnification" and therefore it substantially changes the denoumont of the film to more resemble The Lion King 6: Simba Applies for Medicare or Life-Size 2: Tyra Strikes Back. We had no idea and naively watched it as-it-came, then later found out from an internet discussion that it's a different experience if you watch it with Japanese audio and standard subtitles.
Here's the thing: people who search out Spirited Away are likely not watching their first foreign film nor their first cartoon. The benefit of changing an ending just so it might be slightly more appealing to American children and drugged-up parents is minimal compared to the damage done with people who want to see the film because it was acclaimed so broadly in Japan. It was a better movie with the original Japanese and Disney had no busienss Disnifying it. Christ, it's about a girl who goes into a land of pagan spirits and gets sucked into working in a bathhouse while falling in love with a guy/dragon who is imprisoned by a Japanese witch after her parents have been transformed into pigs. This isn't Pocahontas here, and changing a few lines isn't going to make it any more palatable to kids into whatever shit Disney is peddling now.
While I'm at it, here's a few more things Disney has ruined/tried to ruin:
1. Their reputation as a good/prestigious employer.
2. CEO wage structures, by paying Michael Eisner ridiculously (the equivalent of 100k an hour) for (to be blunt) fucking up repeatedly.
3. Public Domain/Copyright law.
4. Their own damned theme parks.
5. The reasonable cost of a bottle of water.
I was also thinking about it yesterday, how when I was in college we were reading CivalWarLand in Bad Decline along with another story set in a theme park talking about theme parks and how it's the image of places like Disney World that they're like fantasylands where there is no suffering or death.
I had never thought about theme parks that way. Probably because when I young we were at Epcot center my dad wound up resuscitating a man who'd had a heart attack before the medics could get there. I don't remember this, but I've heard about it enough. Since it was father's day yesterday I was thinking about my dad and how he he taught me the value of magnamimous duty/service by interrupting our family vacations on multiple times to help people and whatnot, how we've stopped on multiple occaisions for him to check on people in car wrecks.
It's not that he needed any kind of compensation for living up to medical school oaths, but here's a contrast: Disney never acknowledged that my father substantially helped preventing someone from dying on their property, but the National Park Service moved our family to the front of a line we weren't even in at the Statue of Liberty because my dad gave miminal medical advice to someone who had minor difficulties in the extreme heat and was already receiving medical attention.
That said, I do still love their theme parks, and Jasmine is still hot in that exotic ethnic way. Let's see if they advertise on my blog now!
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| | Posted 6/22/2009 10:54 PM - 21 Views - 2 eProps - 1 Comment
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