A New Disney for a Renewed America

By Published on September 4, 2015

There’s a lot of talk these days about the fragmentation of American culture. While America has always had an important level of religious diversity, today we just don’t seem to have anything in common. We live in separate moral universes, and we seem to encounter each other only on the battlefield. Our imaginative worlds are also separate; everyone watches different movies and shows, reads different blogs, listens to different music.

There’s a lot of truth to this. But there is one exception – an exception so enormous that it points the way toward hope for renewal of a shared culture. The creative world clustered around John Lasseter, which might be called “the New Disney” – Pixar and, since 2006, Walt Disney Animation Studios – speaks to everyone.

The New Disney did not get everyone’s ear merely by turning up the volume – by appealing to the lowest common denominator. Quite the contrary. All its works point us toward a transcendent ethic. They teach us the meaning of life in light of the good, the true and the beautiful. The New Disney teaches us the transcendent meaning of death (Toy Story 2) and happiness (Inside Out) and love (Frozen) and the heroic (The Incredibles) and manhood (UP) and womanhood (Brave) and parenthood (Finding Nemo) and brotherhood (Toy Story) and work (Princess and the Frog) and politics(Toy Story 3) and commerce (WALL-E) and art (Ratatouille) and technology (Big Hero 6).

Read the article “A New Disney for a Renewed America” on patheos.com.

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