A scene from a popular show on The Disney Channel is resurfacing online this week because of its anti-communist rhetoric. Accusing Disney of promoting capitalism to children, social media users have described the scene as ‘deranged’.
Posting a clip from comedy series Girl Meets Word, which ran from 2014 to 2017 and is now available on Disney+, Twitter user @ayynicko posted ‘reminder that Disney is actively giving your children anti-communist propaganda’ alongside the video.
The scene, taken from a season two episode titled ‘Girl Meets Commonism’, shows three schoolchildren embracing communism by working together on a test. Despite scoring 100 on it, they each receive a C grade with the teacher embarking on a lecture about individualism.
‘When you get everything right, but you don’t do it yourselves, it makes you average,’ he says. ‘”A” divided by three is a “C”. Look at you. You’re all the same. You’re average. You’re common.’
‘Commonism,’ main character Riley replies. ‘This is why it fell? People didn’t wanna all be the same?’
‘Without incentive, there’s no motivation. Without motivation, there’s no advancement,’ the teacher responds.
The clip has now been viewed almost 4million times on Twitter with over 3000 replies of people debating it’s contents. ‘This explains why Americans have an irrational fear of communism,’ one social media user replied. ‘They’ve really been conditioned to associate that word with negative emotions.’
‘This speech also makes... no sense...??’ screenwriter Sophia Benoit added. ‘Like outside of it being weird capitalistic propaganda, it’s nonsense.’
Naturally, the replies have since descended into a conversation about whether communism or capitalism is better – but the more jarring question should be, why is The Disney Channel promoting either to kids in such a big way?
The kids are made to feel stupid for even attempting to embrace communism
The teachers words are delivered with passion, the kids are made to feel stupid and ‘common’ for even attempting to embrace communism. Ultimately, the children watching may daren’t even ask about it for fear of being embarrassed in a similar way.
Whatever social system you believe is best for countries to follow, the fact The Disney Channel is promoting any of them to their target audience of pre-schoolers, pre-teens and young adolescents is concerning.
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