After recent failures, Disney is once again committed to creating great stories. It has to be said that for several years now its films have been conceived primarily on the basis of a militant “woke” ideology. And the public didn’t like it, which is why the company is going backwards. Disney’s misadventure offers three important lessons for companies tempted to venture into political territory.
Disney’s drift, which began several years ago, is illustrated by Samuel Fitoussi in his book on fiction (in French). He compares the evolution of Mulan’s character between the 1998 and 2020 versions. He writes: “In the 1998 version, the eponymous character, a brave young woman, disguises herself as a man and joins the army to defend her country. Frailer and weaker than all the other recruits, she is at first a poor fighter (…). Determined, she makes up for her physical shortcomings with superior tactical intelligence and eventually earns everyone’s respect. In the remake, 22 years later, Mulan is the best warrior in China from the start. She no longer has to earn the respect of others – it is hers. She doesn’t have to grow; it’s up to all the other characters to stop underestimating her. With this new Mulan, the screenwriters no doubt think they’ve created a female role model; in reality, the Mulan of 1998 was probably far more inspiring: she taught the power of self-transcendence and perseverance. The Mulan of 2020 doesn’t have to overcome her own shortcomings (which would require hard training and sacrifice) or defeat formidable antagonists or rivals (which would require deliberation, daring solutions, or cooperation with other characters), but she does have to fight against “society” that prevents her from realizing her full potential. In these types of movies, the protagonist is often not very endearing”.
If Disney makes movies whose characters aren’t endearing, then the company is in danger, because that is its purpose and what has made it successful for a century. In other words, the company has sacrificed its purpose to militancy, and the results have not been long in coming. Since 2021, it has lost half of its market value. And it’s not just the financial results. Its brand image has also taken a beating. Long an American icon, Disney now ranks only 77th among the 100 most admired companies in the United States, according to an Axios-Harris survey. It has fallen more than 10 places in just one year! It was even ranked the 5th most polarizing brand of the year. The paradox is that in trying to be “inclusive,” Disney has deeply divided and lost its audience.
Lessons from Disney’s woke misadventure
There are three lessons to be learned from this misadventure. The first is that most people don’t want corporations to become politicized. They don’t want visiting a Disney park or eating Ben & Jerry’s ice cream to be a political act. Contrary to a persistent doxa, they don’t expect corporations to take a stand on major social issues.
The second lesson is that corporate activism is likely to have little impact; it’s even likely to be counterproductive, polarizing a public debate that really doesn’t need it, and sometimes descending into the ridiculous (in the next Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, there are no… dwarfs, so as not to offend this “minority”). Not to mention the fact that it has no democratic legitimacy to take a stand on social issues. It is not elected. The fact that a CEO takes a position on such issues also violates the democratic principle. He has no mandate to do so; he simply abuses his economic position to impose his views because, unlike a normal citizen, he has access to the media.
The third lesson, undoubtedly the most important, concerns the role of business. The management scholar Peter Drucker observed that for a pluralistic society such as ours to function, the autonomous institutions that make it up – and especially businesses – must perform. For him, the key to a company’s performance is its focus on a specific task, its purpose, its primary mission – such as making cars, caring for the sick, or building housing. He adds that while economic performance is not a company’s sole responsibility, it is its primary responsibility and the sine qua non of its existence. It is through performance that a company can sustainably provide products and services that meet people’s needs. Performance is therefore ethical: it is the service that the company renders to the members of society through the achievement of goals that it has freely set for itself. It is on the basis of this performance that the company is judged, and it is on the basis of this performance that the autonomy granted to it is subsequently justified. Performance is therefore the company’s responsibility and the key to its legitimacy.
By venturing into the social and political arena, the company neglects this primary mission. Its performance suffers: Disney is no longer trying to entertain, it’s trying to educate; it’s not the same thing, the priorities are no longer the same. And, as editor Adrian Wooldridge notes in an article on institutional crises, sprawling when you are failing to execute your core function is a guarantee of a crisis of legitimacy. But sprawling, especially by venturing in the political and social arena, is also one of the reasons you fail to execute your core function. The circle is complete: the company, distracted by its political commitments, neglects its primary mission. Its performance declines, as does its legitimacy, including that of its activism, which is not the least of the paradoxes.
Everyone in their place
Disney’s misadventure suggests that we may be coming to the end of a rather crazy period in which corporations were encouraged to believe that their economic power allowed them to influence the public debate, and even morally obliged to do so, rather than remaining politically neutral; that a CEO had more legitimacy to “solve the world’s problems” than a member of parliament. It’s a good thing they are now aware of the considerable risks such a belief poses to democratic society and to themselves. The public’s message seems clear: mind your own business, stick to your own knitting, and all will be well.
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🇫🇷 French version of this article here
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