It looks like the "Walt Disney racist" accusations are still coming and the latest blow comes from Walt Disney's grandniece Abigail Disney.
Abigail Disney has weighed in on Meryl Streep's "Walt Disney racist and sexist" comments, revealing that she has "mixed feelings" but ultimately "loved" the actress' remarks.
Last January 7, Meryl Streep set off controversy during her National Board of Review presentation when she called Walt Disney racist and a "gender bigot.
According to the Hollywood Reporter, Abigail Disney posted two Facebook statuses about her own views regarding Walt Disney, Meryl Streep and Walt Disney Pictures.
She posted "I hadn't heard a word about this Meryl Streep/Walt Disney flap till this morning. Funny how no one mentioned it to me.... Like I was living in some kind of information bubble and nobody wanted to hurt my feelings or something. But if anyone is going to have mixed feelings about a cultural icon, wouldn't it be a member of the family??? More than anyone else??? "
"And if you are going to have mixed feelings about a family member (and we all do) take it from me, you really need to be as honest as possible about those feelings, or else you are going to lead yourself into many a blind alley in life!! ... Anti-Semite? Check. Misogynist? OF COURSE!! Racist? C'mon he made a film (Jungle Book) about how you should stay 'with your own kind' at the height of the fight over segregation! As if the 'King of the Jungle' number wasn't proof enough!! How much more information do you need? But damn, he was hella good at making films and his work has made billions of people happy. There's no denying it. So there ya go. Mixed feelings up the wazoo."
Abigail posted again 10 hours later: "I feel I have to clarify. I LOVED what Meryl Streep said. I know he was a man of his times and I can forgive him, but Saving Mr Banks was a brazen attempt by the company to make a saint out of the man. A devil he was not. Nor an angel. That's the point and if you read ALL her remarks you'll know that's exactly what she was getting at. She said exactly what I said about how in spite of it all, his vision was amazing and he brought joy to so many around the world. So I say Brava Meryl. I don't believe in bashing for bashing's sake but whenever we see a misplaced attempt at hagiography we need to speak our minds!"
Last December 12, 2013, she posted on Facebook, "What my family's business has done is to dumb down and middle-ify and oversimplify (ok, ok DISNEYFY) so much, and while that has rightly and admirably brought a lot of pleasure--joy even-- to a lot of people who needed it given that life can be hard and pleasure hard to come by, it has also encouraged that most grim and American tendency to gloss over the untidy complexities of life, sometimes at great cost to the lived experiences of many others."
Abigail Disney's grandfather Roy O. Disney was Walt Disney's older brother and co-founder of The Walt Disney Company.
