In the 19th century Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels may have been right to decry religion as the “opiate of the masses”. In 20th century mainstream entertainment, perhaps no other big studio was more responsible in delivering a new opiate for the masses than Disney.
Under the stewardship of its beloved, rags-to-riches, workaholic patriarch Walt Disney, it steadfastly crafted a space for itself as the ultimate provider of clean, pious family entertainment, filled with talking animals and flying humans and devoid of any of the nasty realities of sex, death, war or politics that shaped so much of the realities of the era...
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