Now is the Time to Seize the Day-Newsies and Deterritorialization

“Even though we don’t have hats and badges, we’re a union just by saying so…”

In his article, “What’s Wrong with Globalization?” Colin Sparks talks about how Disney is involved with what he calls the “deterritorialization” of culture, taking stories that once had a strong sense of place and local flavor and dumbing them down for the masses in order to have them resonate with a larger target audience.   He gives the example of Winnie the Pooh, in which the character of Christopher Robin was taken from his English countryside setting, moved to the suburbs, and given a Midwestern accent so as to make him not stand out as being from any particular place.  The result is a kind of dumbing down of children’s fiction, where kids are only exposed to ideas, places, and values that will reach the lowest common denominator. 

I think it’s interesting that every once in a while corporations like Disney produce a movie that, for one reason or another, ends up slipping past the culture censors, the people whose job it is to boil down anything that is authentic and spoon-feed the resulting mush into children’s minds.   And maybe it makes sense that the Disney movie that was the most radical, the movie that had the most potential to make people question their own values, the movie that had the ability to transport viewers to a very specific time and place in history, also happened to be Disney’s biggest flop. 

I’m talking about Newsies.  This live-action film was Disney’s biggest commercial failure, and it was quickly yanked from theaters and sent straight to video before it had a chance to prove itself. 

Why the rush to bury Newsies?  Disney says the reason was purely economic, but my theory is that Disney suddenly stopped and said, “Holy shit!  We’ve actually put out a movie that could make children start questioning authority!"

For those that haven’t seen it, Newsies is explicitly about class warfare.  It teaches kids, as all good children’s fiction should, that capitalists are greedy, money-grubbing leeches that will literally work children to death, given the opportunity.  And it teaches this profound lesson through the use of synchronized dance and singing.

Newsies is set in a very distinct time and place: New York City in 1899.  The characters all have heavy, almost painful New York accents.  And the story, in my opinion, is more close to reality than any other Disney film has gotten. 

The film is based on a strike that paperboys waged to improve their working conditions (http://www.angelfire.com/nj4/annimh/realdiffsim.html).  Newspaper magnates like William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer built their print empires on the backs of paperboys, who spent all day hawking newspapers on the street for pennies, even having to pay for the papers that weren’t sold.  The boys decided to organize and strike for better working conditions, effectively stopping the papers from circulation while they refused to work. 

Of course, the real strike was broken after two weeks, while in the Disney version the strikers demands were met and they rejoiced in victory.  Nevertheless, the movie offers kids important lessons about the power of collective organizing and solidarity.  I’m proud to say that I first watched in when I was 12, and I continue to watch it whenever I’m in need of some inspiration, often singing along if no one else is around. 

It seems like the lesson that Disney learned, however, was never to make another movie that has an explicit political message.  I’ve seen a few Disney movies that have been produced since then, and they all seem to lack a sense of place or purpose.  In every movie they re-affirm the same tired stereotypes about princes and princesses, regurgitating the same story over and over.  With Newsies, I really felt like I was a New Yorker, even though I’ve never lived there.  I have a lot of other friends that have been similarly impressed by the movie, but apparently we aren’t the wide lump of middle America that Disney was trying to appeal to. 

"And the world will feel the fire and finally know.."

-Dan G.