- There's trouble in the House of Mouse.
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- The entertainment company long synonymous with innocence,
childhood and magic is currently playing out a back-stabbing brawl on the
public stage.
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- Cast in the role of Scar, the evil pretender to the Lion
King's throne, is CEO Michael Eisner, stripped of his chairman of the board
title Wednesday during a circuslike stockholders meeting in Philadelphia.
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- Playing the part of Simba, the inheritor of the royal
mantle, is founder Walt Disney's nephew Roy E. Disney, who accused Eisner
of creating a "soulless" empire.
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- Caught in the middle are the Americans who donned coonskin
caps in the '50s and took their kids to see "Beauty and the Beast"
in the '90s.
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- These followers, and their emotional attachment to the
Magic Kingdom, make the power struggle at Disney more than just an ugly
corporate smackdown.
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- "It's important to us," said Bruno Wiater,
69, of Philadelphia, who attended the meeting, along with 3,000 other grown
men and women, many wearing mouse ears and Pooh sweatshirts. "We're
a Disney family. We go down to Disney World every other year. I've been
going here since its inception."
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- Wiater, a retired civilian employee of the Defense Department,
takes his family to the Orlando theme park every time one of his grandchildren
celebrates a fourth birthday. He owns about 400 shares of Disney stock.
And he's not happy about the leadership.
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- His voice contributed to a 43 percent vote of no confidence
in Eisner on Wednesday.
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- Eisner, who remains as CEO, presided over a renaissance
of the company at the beginning of his 20-year reign, but has led it through
several lackluster years.
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- 'Especially vulnerable'
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- Some analysts worry that the board-room fisticuffs will
harm the Disney brand.
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- "Disney's a great brand because it's about innocence
and purity and happiness," said Lucian James, an independent brand
consultant in San Francisco. "It's especially vulnerable when there's
a corporate struggle going on."
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- The danger of that brand fading anytime soon is admittedly
small, James said. The Disney name still stands as a virtual Good Housekeeping
seal of wholesomeness to parents looking for a safe rental at the video
store.
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- But Disney is no longer the unified empire of old.
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- In the beginning were the simple line drawings of Walt
Disney, whose creative genius and utopian ideals breathed life into every
aspect of the company. The theme parks, television shows and animated movies
bore his unmistakable stamp.
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- Then, in the 1980s, Disney began to grow tentacles.
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- Today the empire includes pricey sports channel ESPN.
It's also ABC, which is everything from the bare derrieres on "NYPD
Blue" to the adult spy games of "Alias." It's Miramax studio,
which gave us such ultraviolent movie overkill as "Kill Bill."
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- 'Cultural penetration'
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- Disney is not just Tinkerbell and fairy dust anymore.
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- While some followers suggest the clock can be turned
back, George Geis doubts it.
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- "Whatever happens here going forward, Disney is
a different company," said Geis, associate dean of the executive MBA
program at UCLA Anderson. "We're out of Eden. We're out of the garden,
and there's some angel set up there to prevent the return."
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- The reference to Eden is apt. Cultural critics will point
out that our pantheon is peopled with Disney characters.
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- "Virtually every American alive has grown up when
Disney was one of the defining cultural elements of childhood," said
Bob Thompson, professor of media and popular culture at Syracuse University.
"The Disney brand name has a cultural penetration that could be compared
with the church in medieval times."
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- A child in Tenafly, N.J., can sip Donald Duck orange
juice, stretch out on Tigger sheets and snuggle up to a Buzz Lightyear
doll while his mom reads from a Peter Pan picture book.
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- That sounds like paradise to Decatur physician Jeff Mizell.
As a kid, he always insisted his family go to Disney World for vacations,
and even today collects rather expensive porcelain figurines called the
Walt Disney Classics.
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- "I am a Trekkie of the Disney world," he admitted.
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- Theme park issues
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- But there are problems beyond corporate governance that
trouble Mizell and others. He still goes to Disney World at least twice
a year, and he said the usually immaculate parks are slipping. The paint
is peeling. The trash needs picking up.
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- Alex Stroup, of the Disney travel Web site www.MousePlanet.com,
agreed that there's "been a general decrease in the value" at
the theme parks. Stroup's site helps people plan Disney trips, and he said
lack of investment in new rides and iffy maintenance are problems - though
probably only visible to frequent visitors.
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- Though the parks provide 40 percent of revenues, this
neglect may be seen as the new regime placing more emphasis on other segments
of the empire. But they do so at their own peril, Geis said.
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- The parks are the sanctuary for the church of Disney,
and if the temple is soiled, the religion suffers.
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- Disney theme park spokeswoman Michele Nachum hotly disputed
criticism of the parks. "We have thousands of full-time cast members
who are dedicated strictly to the maintenance of our theme parks in such
areas as horticulture, our rides, our shops, every aspect," she said.
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- Nachum cited the majority of guest surveys that rate
upkeep and cleanliness as "excellent" or "very good"
and said the corporation has the utmost commitment to the parks. "The
theme parks," she said, "are where the Disney brand lives."
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- Most troubling to some followers is the decline of Disney
animation. After all, the behemoth grew from simple sketches of a round-eared
rodent, and Disney's traditional animation set the industry standard.
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- Lately, the poor performance of four Disney animated
films in a row, along with the departure of Pixar Films - responsible for
such computer-animated successes as "Finding Nemo" - from the
Disney fold, sent tremors through the company.
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- In January, Disney announced it was closing its animation
facility in Florida, which had made the films "Mulan," "Lilo
& Stitch" and "Brother Bear." All animation is now housed
solely at the Walt Disney Studios in Burbank, Calif., where there are about
600 employees.
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- Today visitors to the Disney-MGM theme park in Florida
can still take a tour through the newly renovated animation building, but
there are no animators at work. They're all gone.
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- Genndy Tartakovsky is the creator of two of the Cartoon
Network's most popular shows - "Dexter's Laboratory" and "Samurai
Jack," both in traditional "2-D" animation. When he arrived
in this country from Russia at age 7, Disney meant animation, "the
pure source," he said. "All you wanted to do is to work for Disney."
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- Not so today. "A lot of people coming out of school
won't go to work for Disney," Tartakovsky said. "It doesn't have
the same place in history as it did before."
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- Where dreams flourish
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- As the leadership of Disney sorts out its problems, more
than the fate of a multibillion-dollar company lies in the balance.
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- Disney doesn't just represent a fantasized time of a
gentler, simpler past, said Mizell, the Decatur physician. A theme that
saturates the Disney culture points to an idealized future, a great, big
beautiful tomorrow.
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- That tomorrow, Mizell said, represents hope for many
Americans.
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- Disney's masters must tread softly, he said, because
they tread on our dreams.
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- - Staff writers Bob Longino and Phil Kloer contributed
to this article.
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- © 2004 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
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- http://www.ajc.com/news/content/living/0304/05disney.html
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