TOXIC DISNEY: Crazy Rat Kingdom Rules Like 17th Century Religious Despot
Except There's No Molières In Burbank, Only Kate Herrons
“Deception is the knowledge of kings. Secrecy is the first essential in affairs of State. To mislead a rival, duplicity is permissible; one may use all means against his enemies.” - Cardinal Richelieu
“American decline is real, though the Apocalyptic vision reflects the familiar ruling class perception that anything short of total control amounts to total disaster.” - Noam Chomsky
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What do you know about 17th Century French history? Probably not a lot. But stick with me anyway, we’ll get to the demonic destructive demoralizing Disney rat kingdom soon enough, I promise!
17th Century France: Though King Louis XIII ostensibly reigned over the Gallic nation during the 1620s through the 1640s, the guy who really ruled the country during that time was an extremely powerful, influential and kinda scary super-Catholic dude named Armand Jean du Plessis, better known by his esteemed religious monicker Cardinal Richelieu, or “His Red Eminence” (who else might be called “His Red Eminence”? Just sayin’!).
Anyway, Cardinal Richelieu was arguably not just the most powerful man in France, but also all of Europe. 17th Century France was a global heavyweight, financially and militarily, and His Red Eminence had both feet planted firmly in the two key European power foundations of the period: Bloodline Royalty and the Catholic Church.
Cardinal Richelieu was top dawg of Catholics in France, reporting directly to the Pope (except when he didn’t feel like it, which caused him problems later but that’s another story) as well as Chief Minister and top advisor to King Louis XIII. King Louis XIII, not as smart, not as savvy, deferred to him on many issues. How deferential? When the king’s mother insisted he send Cardinal Richelieu into exile, the king exiled mom instead!
Cardinal Richelieu’s passions were different from the king’s, and his focus more intense. Thus, Richelieu’s personal interests led to some critical macro and micromanaged societal changes for France. Volumes have been written about Cardinal Richelieu’s attempts to centralize power in France, stave off Spain and Austria’s influence on the continent, quell and humiliate the feudal nobility to concentrate control under the crown, and marginalize the pesky Protestant Huguenots.
I’m not here to write about that. The big history’s fascinating, but we’re here for the quirks. For example: Cardinal Richelieu invented the table knife to be used during dinner, replacing the cutting knife. So many people were being stabbed to death during dinner disagreements which got out of hand, Cardinal Richelieu ordered all knives for dining have their blades dulled and tips rounded. We still use them today.
But it was the arts that Cardinal Richelieu truly loved. He had a massive personal library, and sent his minions around the world to track down rare books and manuscripts. He took over the Sorbonne, the elite French university. And he took a particularly strong interest in the stage, theater, which was held in disrepute. He aimed to clean up.
In his quest to normalize and mainstream theater and thespians, Cardinal Richelieu embraced and demanded productions follow “The Three Classical Unities” of theatrical narrative, which were introduced in Italy (where the Vatican/Pope is HQ’d) in the 16th Century:
Unity of Action: A story should be driven by one central plot, with few or no subplots.
Unity of Time: The action in a story should occur over a period of no more than 24 hours.
Unity of Place: A story should take place in a single physical location.
These are incredibly restricting guidelines for storytelling creativity, yet they long outlasted Cardinal Richelieu’s death in 1642. There were a few French playwrights who rose to the constricting task, most notably IMHO Molière and his very funny and cutting satire about religious hypocrisy Tartuffe, which takes place entirely at a Parisian mansion, unfolds over the course of a day, and has no subplot. But that serves my pro-God/anti-hypocrite taste; you might prefer Molière’s playwright peers Jean Racine or Pierre Corneille, if you even have any idea who those Dead White Writers are.
Which finally brings us all the way ‘round to Hollywood’s captured and highly controlled Rat Kingdom of Toxic Disney. For more than a year, there have been rumors and gossip via Reddit, Discord and YouTube pundits that the executive “Royalty” running Toxic Disney has set down corporate content diktats for their top Marvel and Star Wars properties.
These rumors claim Toxic Disney’s narrative guidelines demand that any straight White male character cannot have more lines of dialog than any female character; it must be at least 50/50 or have a woman dominate dialog.
Moreover, for every alleged central "White cis male" who is supposed to be the protagonist, Toxic Disney demands at least two significant female characters to balance him. Don’t follow the diktats and you’ll get tossed out of the rat kingdom, same way Cardinal Richelieu would exile Huguenots for blasphemy.
But should we believe this gossip? Is there any proof? What does the material evidence show? Let’s explore!
The new Toxic Disney+ Star Wars miniseries Obi-Wan Kenobi, three episodes deep out of six, sees its titular hero take a back seat to two female characters: an annoying young know-it-all Princess Leia and a boring one-note dead-eyed Black female bounty hunter. It’s had a few satisfying moments so far, but mostly it’s terrible and clearly holds its iconic White male protagonist in contempt, with washed-up Ewan McGregor delivering the most dispiriting and hollow performance of his career.
In the most recent Toxic Disney Marvel film, Dr. Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (MOM? Let’s note the film was released Mother’s Day weekend), Dr. Strange is a failure and loser, not proactive but reactive to the actions of dark occultist Scarlett Witch and whiny teen trauma victim America Chavez.
In the latest Toxic Disney+ Marvel series, Moon Knight, the titular hero ends up secondary to his wife, who turns out to be an Egyptian goddess who saves his butt multiple times. Only one female role overshadows the straight White male hero here, but let’s note that in six hours of Moon Knight, Moon Knight only appears in costume for about 20 minutes.
In the Toxic Disney+ Star Wars show that came before that, Book of Boba Fett, the title character is eclipsed by his badass female assassin companion.
In the Toxic Disney+ Marvel series before that, Hawkeye, the eponymous Avenger ends up playing second fiddle to the two-dimensional teen girl who wants to replace him (and does!), and her mother.
Before those two streaming shows, there were a pair of bad Toxic Disney+ movies: Shang-Chi & the Legend of the Nine Rings, which saw the title character overmatched by his sister, who kicks him in the balls and humiliates him in public, as well as the insufferably unfunny comic relief “Katy” character; and Eternals, which saw nearly all its original comic book characters’ race and/or gender and/or sexuality swapped, making women predominant. Meanwhile, the one remaining White guy Superman-ish hero ends up being a genocidal villain who kills himself.
Before those two lousy movies, Toxic Disney+ offered up Loki, about Thor’s bad boy bro, the mischievous god, who in the streaming series isn’t the cocksure joker of ambiguous motivations we saw in the movies. Instead he’s an angst-y loser who gets kicked in the balls repeatedly by a female version of himself, a bossy and masculine woman who gradually takes command. Turns out Loki’s not a “cis White male” anyway, as series’ director Kate Herron made it a point to emphasize how “It was very important to me, and my goal, to acknowledge Loki was bisexual.” Not “a goal,” but the goal.
In the prior Toxic Disney+ Marvel series Falcon & Winter Soldier, the two male leads were racially integrated, so perhaps only one Strong Female was needed to balance them, a freckle-faced female Antifa-ish terrorist (presented sympathetically).
Before that on Toxic Disney+, there was the Marvel series WandaVision, which at first seemed to be about the two married Avengers, but increasingly became only about Wanda the traumatized Scarlett Witch and the trio of women helping or hindering her, while hubby Vision vanished.
Before all of that, when Disney+ debuted, there was The Mandalorian, whose boss was a woman and which increasingly played up Gina Carano’s character and a bunch of female Mandalorians. That said, The Mandalorian is the lone Disney show with a strong, standout male hero (though not White; he’s Latino intergalactic-adjacent, since he’s played by weak-chinned Chilean Pedro Pascal).
[TOXIC DISNEY+ HINDSIGHT ASIDE: It’s been almost two years since it looked like we’d turned the corner at woke Toxic Disney, when Luke Skywalker showed up to rescue Baby Yoda in the Season Two finalé of The Mandalorian. Fans everywhere (including foolish naive me) offered up Holy Hosannahs to showrunner Jon Favreau as the savior of Star Wars. 18 months later, Favreau the Mandalorian Messiah looks much more like a false prophet, the Judas goat, the company man conniver who gave people what they wanted short-term in order to drive up Disney+ subscriptions faster than Wall Street predictions, but then betrayed Star Wars fans (and certainly Gina Carano) long-term. Jon Favreau tricked dubious old school Star Wars fans into paying for the soul-sucking hackneyed woke entertainment American pop culture abattoir and grotesque grooming machine that Toxic Disney+ has become.]
Now, let’s look forward. What’s up next?
For multiplex-bound Toxic Disney Marvel, next month we’re gonna get Thor: Love & Thunder, where Thor literally loses his hammer (hmmm, what might that signify?) to Natalie Portwoman’s ridiculous Lady Thor, and must answer to the bizarrely female King Valkyrie (who's also inexplicably Black, not a blond Nordic).
The next round of Toxic Disney+ Marvel shows won’t even bother with the bait’n’switch of beloved and iconic male characters brought low and humiliated to replace with new boring two-dimensional female characters. They are the sex-swapped She-Hulk, which in the previews appeared to have special effects on the level of 1990 video games; and the dark occult vvitch series House of Harkness, featuring the evil sorceress from WandaVision.
So yeah, following a fair’n’balanced review, it sure looks to me like there is a top-down diktat from Toxic Disney to play parasite, sucking the life out of long-beloved American pop culture White male heroes and using their monied legacy as a cynical socialism-spurring springboard to less interesting, more predictable, usually masculine and universally unsexy diverse female characters. You’re welcome to disagree of course. But you’re probably wrong.
Thus, if you believe wise King Solomon that “There is nothing new under the sun” or the 19th century (French!) saying “The more things change, the more they remain the same,” it’s worth questioning if today’s most wealthy and influential corporate and political leaders see themselves as modern royalty (Pro Tip: THEY DO), with the wealth and power to dictate the entertainment content the unwashed masses have to choose from. Making and breaking stars at their will. Ask Brendan Fraser.
If that’s the case, and if this elitist hierarchy are globalists first, not America First, then this relentless and divisive attack upon masculinity and heroic personalities makes complete sense. Week after week, month after month, year after year, America is being fed a steady diet of deconstruction, demoralization and demonization of what was previously admired and respected, a never-ending attack upon the nation’s psyche until it snaps.
What particularly sucks about all this is that, for all his faults, Cardinal Richelieu put his country first. He had an eye for talent and actually inspired some classic creative art. We’re not getting shit from Disney. Only shit on.
Great post, thanks Tom.