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Thursday, May 28, 2015

Answer to a reader

I recently receive the comment below from a reader, I am not going to publish the name here, but if you choose to go digging, you can find the reader’s Name.  I try diligently not to censor comments, except where I find them completely irrelevant to the topic at hand.

Hi, I know you wrote this back in 2011, but I had to comment because I can't understand how you don't see why people say he was a mason. Ok, first of all, have you ever seen Disney's animations? I imagine you have. Every single one of them contain subliminary messages with sexual content, mostly. There are hundreds of videos on YouTube to back me up. The connection I can make between WD and freemasonry without even trying hard is that the last one clearly worships the devil. A man who fills (or allows people to fill) his work with filthy content can't love God. Another thing I believe you've found out by now, since it's one of your hobbies. Believe me, they do not worship God, so you can easily realize who they really worship. Just to be clear, I'm not a conspiracy theory believer, but I do believe you can't deny what's right on your face. Sorry about my poor English. What I want to say to you is, please don't be so naive to think he was just a sweet, brilliant and respectable old man, it's clearly more complicated than that. Maybe not a mason, ok, but he was obviously connected with something bad, which is what really matters here.

To this reader, I don’t see why people continue to say Walt Disney was a Mason.  Having been raise around a few Mason in my youth, I know that, while somewhat secretive about what happens in the lodges regard their craft, I have never found Mason to be deliberately secretive about their association with the craft.  Most Masons that I know freely display the symbolic trappings of their association.  With that said, and my 10+ years of research, I have found only two verifiable Masonic associations.  One is the reference by Roy Disney, in his biography by Bob Thomas, which he states he was a Mason and gave up his membership in order to avoid creating any conflicts with his future Daughter-In-Law’s Catholic views.  The second being a single DeMolay membership card for Walt on display and the Walt Disney Family Museum.  In all the pictures I have seen over the last decade, I have not seen one displaying the symbolic association that I see regularly on display with other Masons I know.  Given all my research and unless someone can present real evidence to the contrary, I will stand by my assessment that Walt Disney was not a Freemason.  I think the whole Masonic association has been created in order to square stories people want to believe about Walt Disney and the rather secretive nature of the Masonic Order make the fabrication easier to sell.  As to whether others in the Walt Disney organization were Masonic members, as that has never been a topic of interest or research to my knowledge.  So I too have not bothered to pursue it.

As for the claim of filthy content, I think this claim, while somewhat accurate, is seriously overblown.  I think many people have made some associations with art work in some releases that is more than is present.  In others there is a frame here and there that may be of a more risqué nature.  However, I think it’s important to note that in the average theatrically released animation feature, there are around 130,000 individually created cells.  If we look at those features release while Walt was alive, that would put the cell count at in excess of 2 million piece of artwork.  I think it is a ludicrous notion to assume that Walt Disney himself reviewed every single cell that went into each of his features.  Now, I know found my research that animation artists can have a rather interesting sense of humor, and have from time to time admitted to sneaking risqué frames into their animations. According to my research, when Walt did discover the inclusion of this risqué content, he made sure it was removed, and I think we do a disservice to history when we try to judge past events based on currently morals and standards.  There are many cases where something that was acceptable behavior long ago, are no longer acceptable by today’s norms.  Also interestingly, most of the more sexually oriented ones have been in features release years after Walt’s passing, and I think unfairly attributed to Walt.

Finally, with regards to what I think of Walt Disney, I do not delude myself into thinking that Walt Disney was a saint.  He was a very creative and talent, forward thinking individual, but he was a man, just a man and fallible like any other man.  I think that we have many individual who have attempted to deify the man, and as such has caused many in the religious community to try to demonize him in defense of their particular God.  Anyone who has really done the research on Walt Disney, I think will tell you that, while he was a very detail oriented individual; he had some many different interests and activities, that he didn’t allow himself to get bogged down in the day to day minutiae of his businesses.

My job as an historian, amateur or not and Disney relate or otherwise, is to present my findings as unbiased as possible.

 

Your comments or questions are always welcome.  If you have a correction or something you think I should look at in my research, please feel free to contact me at mr.grumpyguy@gmail.com

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