Remember, kids, Barbie sez: “The power of the state should be predicated

on the consent of the governed, not the threat of force!”

Today, as part of a Patheos symposium on morality in animated films, I expand my emerging thesis on the New Disney as a source of cultural renewal. Included in the article is my capsule review of five of the New Disney’s films, such as Toy Story 3:

This, strange as it may seem, is a movie about politics. The nature of political community grows from our understanding of the meaning of human life, and the great political conflict of our own time is between two views that are contrasted in this movie. If we exist to serve a purpose higher than ourselves, the political community can have a standard of justice that transcends the will of the rulers. Hence the toys in a good child’s room, who exist to serve the child, have a free and virtuous social order. But if we have no higher purpose – if, as the villain declares, “we’re all just junk headed for the dump” – then our rulers will treat us accordingly. Hence the toys in the day care live in a prison camp. (WALL-E touched on similar themes, although in a more economic context; those who live for nothing but pleasure are fit for nothing but slavery.) Over against Hayao Miyazaki’s attempt to build an anti-political cosmos in Howl’s Moving Castle and The Wind Rises, Toy Story 3 upholds the nobility of the political vocation and the justice – articulated by no less a philosophical authority than Barbie herself – of government by the consent of the governed.

I may just have to write a book on all this. Your thoughts are, as always, appreciated!

Over at JPGB I belatedly review Hayao Miyazaki’s last movie, The Wind Rises:

Jiro knows that he and his team of builders can help catapult Japan out of the economic ghetto. They can feed the hungry children of Japan by building planes – planes that will be used to bomb the children of China….

The attempted tragedy of this movie – we must build our dreams even though they’re used for evil – fails because it is trying to escape from an even deeper tragedy: That the demands of justice are uncompromising and inescapable, that we do not have the option of building planes and then sighing with regret that they’re used for a war of aggression.

We cannot have our cake and eat it, too; we cannot hate or regret injustice and at the same time hate or regret politics.

FOUND: Social scientist with conscience. Appears to have an alarming track record of valuing scientific validity above expedience. Will return to proper owner. Contact Hang Together for further information.

HT readers may be interested in my six predictions for the future of American evangelicalism, as part of Patheos’ big symposium. I ran down some of the other participants’ contributions at FT. I’m pleased to see that neither naiveté nor despair are finding a wide audience among the participating leaders. As always, your comments are welcome!

John Lasseter’s Disney – the Pixar he founded and the Walt Disney Animation Studios he has reformed – are becoming the new source and center of a renewed, and in some ways simply new, American culture. They are the only major institution in the American public square that 1) teaches people the meaning of life, and 2) has the ear of virtually everyone. And the lessons they teach are entirely edifying.

They are slowly but surely turning our dying culture inside out.

They teach us the meaning of death (Toy Story 2) and love (Frozen) and the heroic (The Incredibles) and manhood (UP) and womanhood (Brave) and parenthood (Finding Nemo) and brotherhood (Toy Story) and politics (Toy Story 3) and commerce (WALL-E) and art (Ratatouille) and science (Big Hero 6). No one else teaches these things and is listened to receptively by all sectors of society.

What else do you want? They are becoming the source and center of a new, and renewed, American culture.

As I’ve said before, these people are playing to win.

I am aware that you cannot build a culture only on movies. Questions of authority, and hence of the role of religion, cannot be avoided forever. It remains an open question what will happen when the renewed America of John Lasseter’s Disney clashes with the dying America of Obergefell and Burwell – those cases being as good a couple of proxies as any for the roles of Keymaster and Gatekeeper to our forthcoming Gozer the Gozerian (featuring special guest star Donald Trump as the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man).

I hope and expect that diligent work by the church in the coming decade, work to love America with a holy love and convict America with a loving holiness, will position us for a positive outcome. That positive outcome is not a cultural victory of Christians over non-Christians; what does that idea even mean? A positive outcome would be a new moral consensus between Americans of goodwill and different faiths.

It’s interesting that I’m hearing a lot of people talk about this article, which boils down to “Pixar is a tool of the capitalist oppressor.” The apostles of materialism are right to be mad at the New Disney. People today feel a deep moral disconnect in their daily lives. The materialists, whether in or out of power, rely on that. Those in power rely on it to keep our energies sapped and our minds sluggish; revolutionaries know that it’s the only thing that makes their call for an overthrow of the political and economic system seem either plausible or legitimate. Anything that helps people redraw moral connections in their daily lives without either merely going with the flow or overthrowing democratic capitalism is a deadly poison to them both. We should anticipate that all efforts at moral edification in the public square will be opposed by them, revolutionary and reactionary alike.

But they will be supported by all the non-materialists, which is to say, the overwhelming majority; and, just as important, they are already finding a home in centers of cultural power like Disney.

Now to the business at hand. If you liked my 21 word review of Inside Out, you’re going to love the next 4,000.

(Spoilers ahead!)

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