The Unmagicking of Disney
Hm... don&#x27;t think I agree with a lot the author says, here.<p>Cartoons are compelling because they&#x27;re a colorful, heavily abstracted and anthropomorphized, impossibly expressive worlds without the hard and fast limitations of our physical existence. If Excitebike and lazy Hanna-Barbera cartoons are your only animated escapes from the real world, classic style Disney cartoons offer arrestingly compelling visuals and stories.<p>But 7 year olds probably can&#x27;t remember a time without Splatoon 2 and Super Mario Odyssey and Zelda Breath of The Wild and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. They&#x27;ve not only been watching, but have been interacting with and manipulating environments with that level of flashiness and abstraction for their entire conscious existence. While they obviously will still enjoy cartoons because they&#x27;re beautiful and entertaining, they just won&#x27;t impact them like they did us.<p>I also think this author erroneously asserts that Disney&#x27;s remakes solely prey upon nostalgia. Children, not middle-aged fans of the originals, are still the primary audience for Disney movies, so that&#x27;s not likely. They also assume that our generation&#x27;s media hit the magic Goldilocks balance while the ones that came before us were contemptibly outdated and the ones that came after us were either superficial, or mocking useful social mores, or guilty of some other moral transgression. You might recognize this behavior from, you know, every other generation.<p>Kids growing up now will have a level of media sophistication few non-experts in prior generations could ever hope to match.